Murder Most Strange (12 page)

It was a lovely day, not too warm but sunny and
blue-skied. Smiling to herself, Alison went out the front door, and
was instantly greeted by a couple of cordial baas. She took one look
and uttered a shriek.

All the Five Graces, fat and woolly and busy, were
feasting greedily on the new landscaping. One of them had nearly
denuded an Italian cypress tree of its greenery as far up as a sheep
could reach, two others were munching happily on hibiscus bushes and
the other two were eating the lawn. Cedric was lying in the drive
watching them.

"Oh, my heavens!" wailed Alison, and ran at
them waving her hands. They didn't budge, looked at her happily.
"You!" she said to Cedric. "You're supposed to be a
sheepdog! Oh!"

She ran up the hill toward the old winery, calling
for Ken. They both came out of the little apartment as she arrived,
breathless: Kearney tall and loose-limbed, his little wife plumper
than ever. "What's up?" asked Kearney.

"The sheep—eating all that
expensive—landscaping," panted Alison. "Those cypress
trees—a hundred dollars apiece, and the lawn—"

"Oh, dear," said Kate Kearney.

He scratched his chin. "I did a little thinking
about that—should've mentioned it maybe. But there's a good deal of
ground here, plenty of wild growth. Thing is, this climate's a little
new to me, the long dry spell. They were happy enough with all the
wild stuff, but now the rains are over it's all dried up and
naturally they'd hunt for anything fresh and green."

"But we'll have to do something!"

"Yes, reckon I'd better shoo 'em into the corral
while I put up a wire-and-post fence all around the house to keep 'em
away from that."

"A wire-and-post fence—around my beautiful
house!"

Alison was outraged. "But it would look
horrible!”

"Well, a nice white picket fence-"

"Around a Spanish ranch house?" said Alison
crossly. "The only thing that would look right at all is a
cement-block wall. Pierced cement blocks or something."

"Well, now," said Kearney, "that'd
take a while to put up and cost quite a bit."

"I know, I know!" said Alison.

"You'd better let me
put up a wire-and-post fence just temporary till you get the wall
bui1t," said Kearney. Alison marched down the hill to meet the
twins, fuming, with Cedric bouncing ahead of her. She scowled at his
fat woolly rump "Sheepdog, my foot!" she muttered.

* * *

When Hackett came in at five-thirty he heard about
Eileen with interest. "There's just no line on Parmenter at all,
Luis. No sign of any friends or acquaintances even. On second thought
it occurred to me if he was pushing pills, he wouldn't let the orders
show on his books—anyway, they look perfectly ordinary. I talked to
the business people along there, and they just knew him by sight."

"Yes, he seems to have kept himself to himself,
as they say," said Mendoza.

"What about the hot suspect John was after? I
ran into him at lunch and he said they'd just gotten a new address
for him."

"Yes, they picked him up. He had an alibi,"
said Mendoza.

"He was at his sister's wedding reception with
about forty other people."

Hackett swore tiredly and got up.

Mendoza went home to hear
all about the depredations of the sheep and the necessity for an
expensive new concrete wall around the house.

* * *

The middle of the week was usually slow for the night
watch; tonight they'd have been just as glad to be busy. They'd heard
about Eileen, and they were worried about her. The squad on that beat
was alerted to check the Bartovic house every so often, but there
hadn't been a sign of him yet, and the A.P.B. hadn't turned him up
anywhere else.

About ten o'clock Conway went down to Communications
and borrowed a radio so they could monitor the Traffic calls. If he
did show up they'd know it right away.

But nothing happened until eleven-thirty when the
desk called up a heist. "All right, we're on it," said
Conway to the phone. "Where'd you say? The—what the hell? Yes,
okay."

The address was the Music Center over on Grand, and
it was, of course, the man with the Doberman again. Bill Moss had
hung around after he'd called in.

The victims were Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Muller, and they
were annoyed and angry. He was a big fat man in expensive clothes, a
prosperous-looking stockbroker; he mentioned his firm name at once,
as if underlining that a man of such eminence shouldn't have such
things happen. She was younger, with blue-tinted hair and a diamond
necklace. They'd attended a concert here, and it had ended rather
early but they'd run into some old friends and stayed talking in the
lobby. So when all four of them came out, there was hardly anyone
else in the parking lot, most cars gone, and the friends' car was
parked nearer the exit. And when they got up to their own car, they'd
heard somebody following them—

"I couldn't have been more scared of a gun,"
said the woman, shuddering. "I'm just terrified of those dogs,
and that one looked as savage as a wild beast—"

"How much did he get, Mr. Muller?" asked
Conway.

"Nearly seventy dollars, damn it. At least he
gave me back my wallet." And of course neither of them could
offer any description.

"Didn't he ask for your jewelry, Mrs. Muller?"
She was wearing quite a lot of it, obviously valuable.

"If he had, I'd have handed it over, but no, he
didn't."

"Outrageous," said Muller. "I'd like
to know what you're going to do about it."

But it was a rhetorical question, and Conway didn't
tell him there wasn't much they could do about it. It was a new and
offbeat caper, and just no way to chase it down at all. The Mullers
got into their car and drove off, and Bill Moss began to laugh.

"It's not really funny," said Conway.

"I guess not. But that's a weird one—and it's
a damn funny thing how so many people are scared of the Dobes, when
they'd walk up to something twice as big and say Nice doggie. Dogs
are dogs, after all, and you can't generalize about breeds much. From
going through the special course for working with the dogs we've got,
I've acquired a theory about it. It's all on account of their ears
being cropped."

"How's that again?"

"The Dobes. They get their ears cropped, the
flap cut off. It's been outlawed in England, and I wish they'd outlaw
it here. But it's a funny thing, you see a Dobe with its natural
ears, it's just a nice big friendly-looking dog."

Conway laughed. "You
could be right. Anyway, there's not much chance of dropping on this
one. Him and his savage beast."

* * *

Mendoza had left orders that he was to be called if
Bartovic was picked up. But on Wednesday morning, with Hackett off,
there was no news about Bartovic or Eileen at all. Bartovic's car
hadn't been spotted, he hadn't come home, and his mother said she
didn't know where he might be.

Cindy Hamilton had come in yesterday to look at mug
shots, but of course hadn't made any. Higgins was feeling annoyed;
all the immediate possibles on the hair-trigger heister had been
exhausted with inconclusive results. "If you're interested,"
he told Mendoza, "I'm halfway convinced it was Osterberg. He's
got the right record for it, and he matches the description. He's got
no alibi, we just can't pin it on him without more evidence."

"The southern accent," said Mendoza.

"Oh, damn it, he could have faked it. Who said
he had one? Just Burroughs, and he's not a good witness."

Mendoza looked up at him, looming over the desk;
Higgins might as well have COP tattooed on his craggy face. "Forget
about it and come help me scare somebody, George."

"Pleasure. Who?"

"Mrs. Bartovic."

But she wouldn't scare. She was a fairly stupid
woman, and it finally became apparent that she really didn't know
anything to tell them. She gave them the names of Rudy's best pals
again, but they'd been checked out already with no result. The two
younger brothers were just sullen.

The day wore on, and nothing much happened. One of
the squads reported a body in an alley off Alameda, and Palliser went
out to look at it, reported that it looked like another derelict dead
of natural causes: a man about seventy, nothing on him but half a
bottle of muscatel and a single dollar bill. The city would end up
burying him.

Everything seemed to have come to a standstill,
suddenly and unexpectedly; for once they didn't have enough to do. 
From experience, they knew it wouldn't last; but with Eileen to worry
about, it worried them.

About three o'clock Mendoza had wandered out to the
communal office where Higgins, Glasser, Grace and Wanda were
fidgeting around; Wanda went down the hall and brought back coffee
for everybody. "You know how it's going to end," she said.
"When he's picked up, he'll have her body in the trunk, or
finally tell us where he left it. Oh, damn. I know these things
happen, but—"

"She's a damn pretty girl," said Higgins
gloomily. The sister had given them a photograph by now, bringing it
in this morning, in case they wanted to send it around. She'd said
miserably that she couldn't get in touch with Randy, Eileen's ex-boy
friend, maybe he'd already gotten another girl. Eileen was as cute as
a button, with a freckled tip-tilted nose, hair like a new penny, a
wide friendly smiling mouth. Into the little silence came Lake's
voice from the corridor.

"Yes, ma'am? What can we do for you?"
Whatever reply he got was inaudible; in a minute he came down to the
big office with a woman and said, "It's Mrs. Bussard,
Lieutenant; About an I.D."

"Bussard?" said Mendoza. "I don't—"

Glasser got up and so did Wanda. "Yes, Mrs.
Bussard?"

They were surprised to see her, anybody, on that one.
She looked as if life had used her hard; she was a woman looking to
be too thin, with fast-graying brown hair, sagging lines in
weather-beaten-looking skin; she was cheaply dressed in an
ill-fitting navy pantsuit and white blouse.

"The police told me you'd found Gerald's body
down here," she said in a fiat voice. "The police in
Bakersfield, I mean. I didn't even tell that officer I knew Gerald,
but it got to bothering me. I was still married to him after all, I
had a kind of duty. I suppose. To see he isn't buried in a—a
potters' field or anything like that. I haven't got much money but I
guess I could afford something. It got to bothering me, so I took off
from work and drove down this morning."

"We're sorry to ask you." Glasser
hesitated. "Isn't there anyone else who could—"

She shook her head. She looked very tired. "It's
all right, I don't mind. Just looking at him. I just wondered—I
guess Annie wasn't with him, then. What did he die of?"

"He shot himself, Mrs. Bussard," said
Glasser quietly. That inquest was scheduled for tomorrow, along with
one on Marion Cooper.

"Oh," she said. "Oh." She had
taken the chair Mendoza pulled out for her. She leaned back in it and
shut her eyes. After a long moment she said, "It's queer how
things turn out. When we got married he'd just started his own
business—nice roadside restaurant up there, good class. We were
doing good for a while. But you wouldn't be interested in that, I'm
sorry." She straightened up. "Where do I have to go?"

"Mrs. Bussard," said Wanda gently, "there
was a girl with him. He'd shot her too. Would you know who she was?
She was about twenty-three, a very pretty girl with long black hair
and blue eyes."

She sagged in the chair. "Annie," she said.
"Annie."

Wanda fled down the hall for a glass of water; but
she was sitting up straight again when she accepted it. She took a
sip, and sat just holding the glass. They gave her time.

"So Annie's—gone too." She drew a shallow
breath. "So I guess I got to tell about it. Annie—she was our
daughter. Gerald's and mine. The youngest one. He—he did it to all
of them—soon as they got to be thirteen, fourteen. You know what I
mean. I never found out about Sandra, it just grieved me when she ran
away. I don't know where she is, never heard. But after Julie run off
she wrote me a letter, told me why—so I knew what was wrong with
Annie. I was ashamed—tell anybody, have him put in jail—and
then—then they just went away together, he took her away. That was
five years back, I never heard nothing since." She put the glass
down on Landers' desk and stood up. "I'd better go and look at
them now," she said. "To say it is them, and whatever you
want me to do."

Wanda and Glasser took her
out.

* * *

There wasn't a smell of Rudy Bartovic all day. At
five o'clock, after kicking it around with everybody in, Mendoza
amended the A.P.B. to cover eight counties around. He could be
anywhere.

Higgins went home early. Grace and Landers left about
ten minutes later. Palliser was talking about dogs to Glasser, who
didn't seem to be interested; he was saying that the obedience
training Roberta had been doing with their German shepherd was really
taking effect, it was a lot of work but with a dog like that worth
it. Glasser was unresponsive. He hadn't written the final report on
the Bussards yet. Palliser stabbed out a final cigarette and went
out, and Glasser followed him. Wanda had already left.