Kiss and Kill (6 page)

“Suppose you caught up with the killers there?”

“That's the idea,” said Ed emptily.

“Alone? There's probably three of them. Could you handle three hoods and get Liz out at the same time?”

“The police—”

“Why do you think I haven't phoned ahead for help? We can't stir the fuzz up until we have your wife out of danger.”

“You're right, Barney.” Ed tried to relax; he leaned back. Barney watched him struggle to get loose.

“Take deep breaths, Ed. And empty your head. Just concentrate on breathing, as if you'd come up from half-drowning.”

Ten minutes later Ed was snoring.

Barney swallowed a benny, lit a cigarette, and turned the radio on low.

It was his seventh day of driving.

4

The woman's name was Ingrid Johns; she was a fifty-year-old librarian who worked for a chemical research company. She lived in a four-story former mansion that had been converted into dowdy apartments.

Barney parked across the street half a block away. “Wait a half hour, Ed, then call her number. If there's no answer, yell copper.”

As he crossed the street a curtain moved; he glimpsed a face just pulling back from a second-story window. There was an apartment-for-rent sign on the corner of the weathered building. He entered and started climbing. On the second landing a latch clicked as he passed a door: he glanced back and saw a glittering eye spying from the crack, then blank out as the door closed. Barney climbed on to the next floor.

He knocked on the door of the Johns woman's apartment. Waiting, he noticed that a new lock had been installed; there were shiny hinges and some cracks in the wood. It looked as if the door had recently been battered in, then repaired. Barney knocked again, waited five minutes, and went back downstairs. The door on the second-floor landing opened again, full this time; he saw a head of black shoe-polish hair and a face mapped with wrinkles. The shoe-button eyes were laughing as if the old woman was enjoying a joke.

“Looking for Ingrid?” she asked eagerly.

“Yes. She seems to be out.”

“She's dead,” said the old woman with satisfaction.

Barney realized that he had been expecting just that. Unconsciously he had added up the smashed door and the apartment-for-rent sign and reached the dreary conclusion.

“When?”

“Three nights ago.”

“How?”

“You can think what you like.” The old nut started to close her door.

“Wait. How do
you
think?”

Barney caught the mingled odor of gin and lilacs from the old woman's apartment.

“She was murdered, that's how.”

The door closed for good this time; Barney heard the bolt click into place. He knocked, waited, then shrugged and left the building.

At the car he said to Ed Tollman, “Ingrid Johns is dead. There's an old crock of a woman up there who claims she was knocked off. From anyone else, especially from what we've been running into, I'd believe it in a shot. From her …” He shook his head. “We'd better check.”

He drove to a gas station and from an outdoor booth phoned the police. It was true that Ingrid Johns was dead. She had been asphyxiated by gas from her stove. The official verdict had been accident or possible suicide. The Johns woman had lived alone; she seemed to have few friends and no family; these things happened all the time.

“A neighbor woman said it was murder,” said Barney to the officer on the line.

“What's her name?”

“I don't know. She lives downstairs.”

“One minute.” The man was gone for five. When he came back on, he said, “I've got the report here. We took a statement from the neighbor but couldn't make much sense out of it. She's a gin rummy. Something about a cat, and a dog barking.”

Barney had to make a conscious effort to control his voice. “A dog? What kind of dog?”

“We don't even know if there was a dog. We certainly didn't find any sign of one. Look, the woman was dead without a mark. The oven gas was on and the flame was out. There was nothing taken from her apartment as far as we could tell. There was not a single sign of forced entry or violence. Just no evidence of murder.”

“But the neighbor downstairs—”

“Is she a beady-eyed old gal with shiny dyed-black hair and a face like a pickled prune?”

“That's the one.”

“Hell, that old woman calls us at least once a week,” the precinct man said with disgust. “Either she's being followed home from the bus by a suspicious character, or she's seen a face at her window—on the second floor!—all sorts of fairy tales. You can waste your time if you like, Burgess, but we've got too damn many other things to do.”

Barney hung up and returned to the car. “Let's go back and talk to the old woman. They've got her on the crank list, but she said one thing that made sense.”

The old woman refused to let them in, or even to discuss Ingrid Johns's death. She had hooked the night chain.

“That man's a detective,” she said, pointing at Ed. “I don't trust detectives.”

“And what do you think I am?” grinned Barney.

“You?”

“I'm the detective.” He showed her his card. “I'm working for him. We're trying to find his wife. She was a friend of Ingrid's.”

She tried to close the door, but Barney stuck his foot in the way. “I called the police. They think you're crazy.”

“What do you think?” the old woman asked archly.

“I think you're playing a little game, letting people believe you're weak in the head. You get a kick having cops running all over your place. It's a fine game, only it has one drawback. Comes the time when you
want
them to believe you, and they don't because you've convinced them you're a nut.”

“I don't have to listen to this,” said the old woman suddenly.

“No, and you don't have to pretend there are faces at the window any more, either. Your imaginary dangers are over, lady—you've got real ones now.” He showed her the photograph of the wrecked car. “These people were with Ingrid on her Mexican trip. This is what happened to them. The man who drove the tour bus was shot in the back of the head. Two of the others are missing.”

She looked at the photo with avid interest. Then she unlatched the chain, opened her door wide, and said, “Come in, boys.”

The room was musty and overheated. The only easychair was occupied by a Persian cat, which stiffened as Ed and Barney came in. When they had seated themselves in knobby chairs, the cat lay back and glared at them.

“Is that Charles?” asked Barney suddenly.

The old woman looked surprised. “How did you know? Ingrid wanted me to have him.”

“Did she actually say so?”

“She brought him to me just before she died.”

Barney frowned. “I don't understand.” He signaled Ed Tollman, who seemed about to burst, to be quiet.

“Exactly what is it you don't understand, Mr. Burgess?” Before he could answer, the old woman said: “I live alone and do as I please. Sometimes my fancy takes flights, but when I see something, I see it. I'm not crazy.”

“What did you see?”

“‘Hear' is a better word. The night she died, I heard heavy footsteps upstairs. I heard a dog bark, just once.”

“What kind of bark?” asked Ed in spite of himself.

“High. A yip. Like from a little dog.”

The two men exchanged looks.

“I suspected Ingrid had funny kind of visitors. None of her friends brought dogs here, because Charles wouldn't allow them in the apartment. I went up and knocked. After a long time Ingrid called out that she didn't want to be disturbed. She sounded very nervous to me. I came downstairs and phoned the police. They promised to investigate. A half-hour later they called back to say they'd talked to Ingrid on the phone and she said she was all right. They told me to go to bed and stop worrying. I did, but I woke up four hours later. I went up again and smelled the gas. This time I called the landlord, who knocked the door down. We found Ingrid dead.”

“You didn't see her visitors leave?” asked Barney sharply.

“I watched the front. But there's a back stairway to the alley. They must have gone out that way.”

“And yet she left her cat with you before she died. Why?”

“The day of Ingrid's death, I was just coming home from the store and I met a young woman I'd never seen before coming down the stairs from the direction of Ingrid's apartment. I said hello, but she looked straight ahead, didn't even smile, as if she hadn't seen or heard me. She looked awfully upset to me! So I went to my window and watched her get into her car, a new-looking convertible, a great big cream-colored one. She just drove off. I couldn't imagine who'd be visiting Ingrid—”

“What did the strange woman look like?”

“Very neat, well-dressed. Conservative. I'd say a businesswoman, or in some profession.”

“Hair?”

“I don't remember. Yes, I do. Sort of short.”

“How old?”

“I told you. Young. Between thirty and fifty.”

Even Ed smiled faintly.

“So you went up and asked Ingrid—” prompted Barney.

“Wrong. She came down and asked
me
—to keep her cat for a few days. I said, ‘Of course, I'll keep Charles for you. Where are you going?' and she said, ‘Away. It's better that you don't know, then you can't tell anyone.' I was kind of put out, but I didn't say anything, Ingrid looked so upset. And that night she died. So don't tell
me
she committed suicide, or it was an accident. What with her giving me her cat, and those heavy footsteps, and the little dog and all,
I
say she was murdered.”

And I say, Barney said silently, you were never righter, old woman.

On the sidewalk Ed Tollman said, “Her visitor must have been Claire English.”

“Maybe,” said Barney. “But not necessarily.”

“She said a businesswoman—”

“And you immediately connected it with that efficient voice on the phone. But who knows what this old woman really saw?”

“I don't know. Short hair, tailored clothes—”

“To me that could spell an off-duty call girl. A businesswoman might have a wild mop and clothes that look like hell.” He got into the car and slid behind the wheel. “If it was Claire, we may soon know. We're only three days behind.” He pulled out into the street. “Check the map, Ed. I want the shortest route to Detroit.”

At a roadside diner that evening, Ed voiced a thought that had long since occurred to Barney.

“Liz must have been with them when they killed Ingrid. They can't afford to set her free now.”

Barney spooned his bean soup in silence. He felt no optimism, but Ed needed cheering up. “The dog barking was a good sign.”

“That what?”

“That she's alive and probably being treated well.”

Ed looked at him adoringly. “How do you figure that, Barney?”

“Why didn't they kill the pooch at once to get it out of their hair? It's a small dog, a yipper, and that kind can be a bloody nuisance when you're on the prowl. Besides, he's a dead giveaway to your wife's identity. In spite of all this, they haven't disposed of him. So they must want something from Liz, and we can be pretty sure they won't harm her until they get it.”

“But what could it be?” asked Ed helplessly. Then he muttered, “As if it mattered. Whatever it is, when they get it out of her, they'll kill her, too.”

Barney went back to his soup. Ed was so right.

It was still dark when they got into Detroit. They found school teacher Rodney Aiken's small frame house in a raw-earth new development.

The sky was lightening when Barney knocked on the front door. It swung inward under the impact of his knuckles. Barney motioned Ed out of the car, and together they entered the little house.

In the kitchen they found the coffee pot filled and plugged into an alarm radio set to go off at 7
A
.
M
.

“Let's check the bedroom,” said Barney.

The blanket was thrown back and the pillow was rumpled. Beside the bed, folded over a chair, lay a pair of trousers and a white shirt. Under the chair a pair of shoes gleamed neatly parallel, with ironed socks draped over their toes.

“Chronic bachelor,” Barney said. “Lifelong, I'd say, or he'd never have developed such neat habits. What's this?”

On the nightstand, beside an open book, stood a little pharmaceutical bottle of tiny white tablets. Barney picked it up. The pharmacist had typed on the label, “To be taken as directed,” and the name “Rodney Aiken.” But someone, obviously Aiken, had stuck a narrow strip of adhesive tape around the bottle and lettered on it in firm masculine capital letters, “NITRO.”

“Nitroglycerin tablets,” Barney said, putting the bottle down. “A vasodilator. Used by cardiacs.… It's easy enough to put all this together, Ed. He got up some time after he went to bed—got up or was awakened by something. He didn't dress, because his clothes for the day are still here. Smells to me like force. He was either hauled off in his pajamas, or he's still in the house.”

“I saw a door opening off the kitchen,” said Ed. He wet his lips as if his mouth was dry.

It led down a wooden stairway into a basement pungent with sawdust. The basement contained a complete woodworking shop: lathe, jigsaw, planer, electric drills. Against the plane slumped a pajama-clad man with wisps of hair fringing a naked scalp. Glassy eyes bulged from a black, swollen face. Like the eyes, the mouth was wide open; the tongue was hanging out.

“I ought to be used to this by this time,” said Ed Tollman faintly, “but somehow I'm not. Death, nothing but death. I'm sick of it!”

“Easy, Ed,” said Barney. Ed swallowed and turned away. Barney was examining the dead man's neck. He could find no signs of strangulation. “Looks like a heart attack.”