Carnival of Death (20 page)

Daly and DuBoise exchanged glances.

Daly asked, “Does this Mrs. Bennett come in often?”

“At least two or three times a week.” The clerk added, “Usually with her regular boy friend. But sometimes with a punk like the one you’re talking about and sometimes with older men who look like she might have picked them up in some bar.”

“Then Banks wasn’t her regular boy friend?”

“No. She’s been coming here for maybe six months or so, but he only came around the half dozen times, all of them in the last few weeks.”

Daly took a newspaper picture of Tim Kelly from his pocket. “How about this man? Is, or was, he her regular friend?”

The clerk studied the picture. “No. I never saw him with her. Her regular boy friend is perhaps thirty-five, rather thin, with a deeply lined face. About my height. A flashy dresser. I never heard him say what he does, but he looks and talks as if he might be a promoter of some kind.”

The description was vaguely familiar but neither Daly nor DuBoise could place the man.

Daly said, “All right. So far so good. Now describe this Mrs. Bennett. And take your time. We aren’t in any hurry.”

The clerk took the breast pocket handkerchief from his coat and patted at the drops of perspiration beading his face. “Well, to begin with I’d say she is about five feet two and weighs one hundred and ten or fifteen pounds, with plenty going for her fore and aft. What I mean, she’s really stacked.”

“How old a woman is she?”

“It’s difficult to tell. In the neighborhood of thirty, give or take a few years.” The clerk added, “She’s the kind of a dame who always uses a lot of expensive perfume and goes in for long false eyelashes and eye shadow and that sort of thing.”

“Blonde, brunette or red-haired?”

“She’s been a platinum blonde ever since she started meeting her boy friends here. But it isn’t natural.”

“How do you know?” DuBoise asked.

The clerk perspired even harder. “Well, it only happened the one time. That was about three weeks ago.” He glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall back of the desk. “Three weeks and two nights ago. Anyway, she checked in around midnight and like she always does she said that Mr. Bennett would be along in a few minutes. But when no one had phoned by one o’clock, she phoned from the unit and asked if I would be so kind as to step next door and buy her a pint of good bourbon and deliver it with some cracked ice. And, her being the good customer she is, I said I would be happy to.”

“Go on,” Daly said.

“Well, after I got the whiskey I walked it and the ice back to her unit and I knocked on the door and she called that it was open and said I should come in. So I did. And there she was all alone, lying naked on the bed, with everything showing. What I mean she didn’t have a stitch on. She was nice to look at, and I looked.”

The clerk paused, savoring the memory. “Then after I’d set the pitcher of ice and the bottle of whiskey on the dresser and she’d told me to take a five from some bills lying near her purse, she asked me if I thought she was pretty. Naturally, I said yes. I said she had one of the most beautiful bodies that I’d ever seen.” The clerk patted at the perspiration on his face. “Then she asked me if I would like to make love to her and when I said I would, she told me to lock the door and take off my clothes and get in bed with her. And I did. And she damn near loved me to death. What I mean, it was two hours before I got out of the unit, we were at it most of the time, and she enjoyed every minute of it as much as I did.” The clerk searched his mind for some explanation. “It was like it was a disease with her. Even after I’d done all I could, she still wasn’t satisfied.”

“You say this only happened once?”

“That’s all.”

“Did she give you any explanation for acting the way she did?”

“No. She didn’t say hardly anything. Just the one time while we were resting. Then it was like she was talking to herself.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, like I said before, she’s usually very polite, very much the lady. Soft cheese wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But that night, with both of us lying there stark naked and her doing her best to get me excited again, kind of panting like, as if she was talking to herself, and using the four letter word for it, she said she’d get even with the dirty Irish son-of-a-bitch or wear out her you-know-what trying.”

Daly and DuBoise exchanged glances.

“Now tell us this,” Daly said. “Assuming that the address in Beverly Hills she signed on the registration cards is a phony, outside of putting a police stake-out on the motel and waiting for Mrs. Bennett to keep one of her nocturnal rendezvous, have you any idea how we can locate her?”

The clerk returned his handkerchief to his pocket. “Cold turkey, what’s it worth to you, Mr. Daly? And don’t give me that bit about either talking to you or to the cops. With a big shot like you as hot on her tail as you are, she’s probably mixed up in something so big that when it does come out the cops will board up the La Hacienda and I won’t have a job. So what’s it worth to you, in cash, for me to tell you where you can find her?”

Daly took his wallet from his pocket and laid two twenty dollar bills and one ten dollar bill on the counter.

The clerk shook his head. “Not enough. But make it twice that and I’ll spring. A hundred bucks will give me a little cushion until I find another job.”

Daly laid two more twenties and another ten on the counter.

The clerk put the money in his pocket. “Walk straight through the door and back through the arch to Unit 14. Mrs. Bennett came in a little after midnight and her boy friend showed up five minutes later. As far as I know, they’re both still here. At least I didn’t see them leave.”

• • •

When no one answered his knock and alert to prevent a repetition of what had happened in the cabin in the mountains, Daly cautiously opened the unlocked door of the unit and looked in.

The room reeked of perfume and spilled whiskey. Judging from the rumpled state of the bedding, there was little doubt about the purpose for which the unit had been used. A man’s clothes were folded neatly on a chair beside the bed. What appeared to be a bloodstained lace brassiere was lying in the still wet shards of a shattered whiskey bottle on the floor. But neither the elusive Mrs. Bennett or her male companion of the evening were going to do any explaining. She was gone. He couldn’t talk.

Hearing the drip of water, Daly walked through the unit to the bathroom and looked in. The mirror of the medicine cabinet was misted with steam. There was a dropped wet towel on the floor. The head of the shower in the shower stall was still dripping. Daly reached up to turn off the shower and changed his mind. Instead, he walked back to where Gene DuBoise was standing.

Whatever passions and ambitions had motivated the man on the bed were stilled. Whatever pleasures he’d known, with whomever he’d known them, were ended. The thin-faced man who, the Sunday before, had introduced himself as Jim Carver, public relations man for the new East Valley Shopping Center, was dead. Someone had fired three shots into his head. Then, not content with that, in a frenzy of passion or anger, they’d tried to obliterate his features by beating at his face until the shattered whiskey bottle had broken.

“Not more than five or ten minutes ago, I’d say,” DuBoise said. “Possibly while we were talking to the clerk. Then after she used the bottle on him she took a shower, presumably to wash off the blood that must have splattered on her.”

Daly picked a long platinum blonde hair from one of the pillows, examined it thoughtfully for a moment, then returned it to where he had found it. “Well, I guess this is it. Are you thinking the same thing I am?”

DuBoise nodded. “Considering what the clerk just told us, yes. She was putting her books in order. A final balancing of debits against assets.” He added, “But there’s still the physical aspect to consider.”

Daly looked at the bloodstained brassiere on the floor. “I think I’ve figured that out. I think I know how that was managed. Although it was for an entirely different purpose, I saw the same transformation in the DiFantis’ living room.”

T
HERE WAS
nothing about the building to distinguish it from any of the other apartment buildings in the area. It had a modest pool and a self-service elevator. It was clean and well-kept and tenanted by salaried store and office personnel who worked in the district and who liked to live close enough to walk to and from their various places of employment.

It was, Daly thought, the sort of a building in which she would live. He rode the elevator up to the third floor, then walked down the silent hall to the front of the building and knocked lightly on the door of Apartment 303.

“Just a minute,” a woman’s voice called.

A moment later there was the sound of a chain being removed and Grace Lindler opened the door and peered at him owlishly through her dark horn-rimmed glasses.

“Mr. Daly,” she puzzled. “What are you doing here this time of morning? What do you want?”

If possible, the cashier looked even less attractive than she had on any of the other times when Daly had had occasion to speak to her. Her bare feet were encased in leather slippers sizes too large for them, She was wearing a red flannel bathrobe so much too big for her she’d had to roll the sleeves and pin up the hem. A small lank of still damp mouse-colored hair had fallen over one of the lenses of her glasses. Not even the voluminous folds of the too-large robe hid the fact that her upper body was as flat as a man’s.

“Your hair is still wet,” Daly said.

The girl in the doorway looked even more puzzled for a moment, then lifted the lock of hair from the lens and secured it with a hair pin. “I don’t see it’s any concern of yours, but it usually gets at least damp whenever I take a shower.” She added, “And I take one every morning before I go to work. As the old saying goes, I may not be beautiful, but I’m clean. Now what can I do for you?”

“May I come in?”

Miss Lindler shrugged. “I don’t know of any reason why not My neighbors are very broad-minded. You have to be to live in this man’s town. Come in.”

The skirt of the too-large robe swishing around her bare ankles, she led the way into a small living room. It was tastefully, if inexpensively, furnished. There was a fragrant aroma of coffee percolating on the stove in the adjoining kitchenette. It was all very homey and pleasant.

Miss Lindler continued into the bedroom. “But I’m very much afraid, if you’re not worried I’ll corrupt your morals, whatever it is you want you’ll have to talk about in here while I finish dressing. It so happens it is five-forty-five in the morning and I have to be at the garage at six-thirty as the first truck rolls at seven.”

Daly stood just inside the door, leaning against the jamb, and looked around the room as she sat on the bench of a dressing table, applied a film of cold cream to her face, then slapped her face vigorously with the fingers of one hand.

“All right. Let’s have it,” the cashier said. “What do you want with me this time of morning?”

Daly continued to inventory the room. It was as tastefully furnished as the living room had been, a woman’s room. The bed had been slept in and hastily made up. The prim blue dress with the demure white collar that Miss Lindler had worn on the day of Kelly’s funeral was laid out on the spread. There were pink bows on the lamps on either side of the dressing table. The only incongruous note was the big red leather chair in front of the windows.

Daly asked conversationally, “His?”

The girl turned on the bench and looked at him. “His? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do,” Daly said. “You’re still very much in love with him, aren’t you, Grace?”

“In love with whom?”

“Tim Kelly.”

She hesitated briefly before she spoke. “Yes. As a matter of fact, I am. But since when is that news? I told you and Mr. DuBoise that in the restaurant.”

“Yes,” Daly admitted, “you did. And it was a very clever cover. But you didn’t tell us the whole story. Tim was your lover, wasn’t he, Grace? You bought that red leather chair for him. Those are his robe and slippers you’re wearing.”

The girl reached behind her for a towel and wiped the cold cream from her face with one hand. “What is this? Did you come here to laugh at me?”

“God, no,” Daly assured her. “You’re much too deadly to be laughed at.”

The cashier’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Deadly?
Me
, deadly? You have to be joking, Mr. Daly.”

“No,” Daly said. “I’ve never been more in earnest.” He added, “But if you are considering pulling the trigger of the gun in the right-hand pocket of your robe, the gun with which you killed Davis and Jim Carver and, probably, Tommy Banks, it won’t do a bit of good. The show’s over. The curtain came down at the La Hacienda a few hours ago.”

The girl continued to sit with one hand thrust deeply into the right-hand pocket of the oversized robe. “It must be the time of morning. Either that or one of us is drunk.
I
don’t know any of the men you’ve just mentioned. But
I
have been following the story quite carefully in the newspapers and on television. And I seem to recall that the police are looking for a big-breasted platinum blonde. She was seen in the cabin of the boat owned by that phony doctor. I also believe you encountered her in a mountain cabin.”

“That’s right,” Daly admitted. “A cabin she rented under the name of Thelma Banks. Using the name of Mrs. Milo Bennett, the same woman also rented two clown costumes and bought two rubber masks late last Friday afternoon. Then, after sending two of her lovers to beat me up in the KAMPC-TV parking lot to cast suspicion on the patsies she’d picked, she spent all that night letting Tommy Banks, whatever his real name was, make love to her to nerve him for his part in that farce at the shopping center. And only a few hours ago, in Unit 14 at the La Hacienda Motel she ended her somewhat less than platonic relationship with the last of her stooges by firing three shots into his head. This after she had allowed him to be sexually intimate with her at least twice.”