Smoked Out (Digger) (13 page)

"Don’t resent it. Voltaire liked to work in his garden, too. You drove your car to work Sunday?"

"Only after he finished
Candide
. Yes."

"And you had the car all day?"

"Yes. Wait. No."

"Ahah, the guilty knowledge doth stumble clumsily from his lips."

"Not quite. Mrs. Walker asked me in the afternoon if she could use my car for a while. I told her she could. Did she go and hit somebody with my car?"

"No. About what time was that?"

"She borrowed the car around one. I guess she had it back around three."

"Did she say why she needed your car?"

"No. She’s creepy. She doesn’t talk much."

"How long have you worked for her?"

"Just a month."

"You ever hear her mention a Doctor Welles? Or Jessalyn Welles?"

"No."

"Okay." Digger stood up and walked toward the door.

"That’s it?"

"That’s what?"

"No explanation of what this is all about?"

"Of course not. It’s part of the way we break you down psychologically. Two more weeks of these middle-of-the-night visits and I’ll have you confessing to the murder of Richard’s nephews."

"Another police frame, another innocent victim," Collins said. "Richard got a bad press from Shakespeare. He didn’t kill those kids."

"Doesn’t matter. If I had worked the case, I would have got a confession."

"Listen, you’re not a bad sort for a cop."

"Thank you. You’re not a bad sort for a criminal degenerate."

"If you ever want to come up and talk about books or anything, come on up."

"Maybe I will. But if I do, you’ve got to get rid of all those roaches in the ashtray."

Collins looked at the ashtray quickly, guiltily.

"It’s empty," he said. "I flushed it before I answered the doorbell. ‘Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.’ Even if it’s only a doorbell."

"I still prefer Lear," Digger said. " ‘Tremble, thou wretch, that has within thee undivulged crimes.’ You’re twenty years old?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Kids weren’t that smart when I was young."

"There wasn’t that much to read in the Cro-Magnon era."

"You’re sweet," Digger said. "You’ll never see me again. Unless, of course, you’ve been lying to me."

"What’ll you do then?" Collins asked. "Hit me with your face, like you must have done to the last guy?"

"Be careful, smartass, or I’ll let the air out of your muscles."

Moira Walker. That name meant something to him, but what? Who was she? Why had she chosen to watch Mrs. Welles’s funeral from inside a parked automobile forty feet away from the graveside?

Digger looked up and glanced in his rear-view mirror. It was there again. The yellow car; staying two cars behind him, but following him.

Two blocks ahead, Digger found what he was looking for. He made a quick right-hand turn, then jumped onto the gas pedal, drove down another fifty feet and pulled into a driveway.

A few seconds later, the yellow car drove by him. Digger backed out of the driveway and followed the yellow car down the block. When the driver of the other car realized he was on a dead-end street, he started to make a K-turn to go back. Digger parked the white Mazda crossways in the street to block the exit.

He got out and walked over to the other car, opened the passenger door and got inside.

Ted Dole looked at him with an expression of pain on his face. It was hard to tell if it was caused by embarrassment or fright.

"If I had wanted tennis lessons," Digger said, "I would have signed up at the club."

"Very funny, Kelp."

"So I guess we ought to talk," Digger said.

Dole’s hands were clenched tightly on the steering wheel of the small Japanese sedan. He sighed heavily.

"Okay. You want to go somewhere? Maybe we should get a drink?"

"It’s time," Digger said. "Park and we’ll take my car."

Dole was quiet while Digger drove a half-dozen blocks to a cocktail lounge that advertised early lunches. Finally, the tennis pro said, "I don’t know what we’re doing here."

"You’re going to tell me why you’re following me," Digger said.

"No law says I have to. I can drive anywhere I want," Dole said sullenly.

"That’s true," said Digger. "And I’ll tell my friends at the L.A.P.D. about it, and maybe they’ll be very interested in you."

"That doesn’t worry me," Dole said.

"Try this," Digger said. "I got beat up last night. I am of a mind to bust your fucking head."

"I didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened to you."

"Then I could bust your fucking head just on general principles. We’ll talk inside."

Digger turned off the motor and went into the brightly lighted cocktail lounge. Dole, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and bright green slacks, glumly followed him.

They sat at the bar. Digger brushed off the attempts of the bartender to talk to them. When he left, Digger said, "So what’s it all about?"

"When you talked to me, I didn’t believe your bullshit story about being a public relations man."

"Why not? I thought I was a pretty convincing liar."

"Yeah. Well, you told me you were at the Sports-land Lodge, so I called there and they didn’t have anybody registered named Tim Kelp."

"I slipped up," Digger confessed. "So why were you following me?"

"I don’t know. I just, well, I just wanted to know who you were and what you were up to."

"And what’d you find out?"

"Nothing. You drive around and talk to a lot of people, and I still don’t know what you’re up to."

"Suppose I told you I don’t think Jessalyn Welles died in an accident."

Dole looked over at him sharply. "No?"

"Suppose I said that maybe a jealous lover that she tossed over couldn’t take it and helped stage her accident?" Digger said.

"Hold on. You talking about me?"

"You know any other of her jealous lovers?"

"You’re not as stupid as I thought you were, Kelp."

"That’s not much of a compliment, but I guess it’ll do."

Dole suddenly drained his glass in one large gulp. "Okay," he said. "Jess and I were having an affair."

"I know that. What ended it?"

"I don’t know. Seven, eight months ago, she told me it was over. Right after her father died. I don’t know why."

"And you’re still carrying a torch after all those months?"

"I really loved that woman, Kelp. She was…something different in my life."

"So why follow me?"

"Because you just didn’t ring true. I wanted to know who you were. And why you were interested in her. Do you think there was something fishy about her accident?"

"I don’t know," Digger said. "Do you?"

"I didn’t until now," Dole said.

"Why don’t you like Dr. Welles?"

"Because he’s a snake. He had a woman like that and he was out screwing anything that walked."

"Did his wife know?"

"No. She never did. When he was a member at the tennis club, he hit on every woman in the place. She just didn’t ever know. She was one of those trusting people."

"And you never told her?"

"I didn’t have the heart. She loved me, Kelp, but she loved him, too. I just didn’t want to see her hurt, even over that bastard."

"You didn’t send anybody to work me over last night?"

"Why should I? No, I didn’t."

"Who’s Moira Walker?"

"Jess’s best friend. They used to take tennis lessons together."

"Where is she now?"

Dole shrugged. "I don’t know. She had some kind of an accident. Her husband was killed, then she stopped coming around. Jess didn’t talk about her. Who the hell are you?"

"Did you know that Welles gets a million dollars from his wife’s death?"

"You’re an insurance snoop," Dole said.

"That’s right. He gets a million dollars."

"If he had anything to do with Jess’s death, he won’t ever get a chance to spend it," Dole said grimly.

Digger turned back to his drink.

"I believe you," he said. "But it was probably an accident."

Dole turned down Digger’s offer of a ride back to his car. He said he wanted to drink alone for a while.

Back in his hotel room, Digger looked through the pile of clippings. They went back over ten years, and Moira Walker was in them almost as much as Jessalyn Welles. The two women apparently had been inseparable. They were photographed leaving together on a cruise, working together on a fund-raising committee for America’s Faceless Poor, opening the annual blood drive of the Hospital in the Hills, presenting the awards at the annual philanthropic awards banquet. And then, eight months ago, no more Moira Walker. Dole had said she was in an accident and her husband was killed. Perhaps the woman had been badly injured, Digger thought, and her movements restricted. But if she could drive to a cemetery to watch a funeral service, why couldn’t she get out of the car like everybody else and stand at graveside? Time to ask.

In the suburbs of the Northeast, Moira Walker’s home would have been pleasantly upper-middle class. On Lloyd Avenue in Beverly Hills, it rated somewhere between well-off and very wealthy. A maid answered the doorbell, took Digger’s card, looked at it suspiciously as if it contained the key to the German High Command’s code, then vanished, leaving him standing on the front steps.

She came back in three minutes, apologized for leaving him there and escorted him inside. The house had a four-person-wide curved central staircase to the second floor. The front hall surrounded the stairway on both sides. The maid led him to the last room on the right, a large study with a piano. The room was blackened with heavy drapes covering one whole wall. Digger could see a faint shard of sunlight from under one of the drapes. There were no lights on in the room.

Digger sat in a chair in the darkened room and waited, looking at the plants that lined the far wall. A minute or so later, Moira Walker entered through the drapes behind Digger. The room was splashed in light for a moment, then went dark again as the drapes swung closed.

The woman was wearing a dirt-smudged gardener’s skirt, a short denim jacket and heavy leather gloves. From a canvas hat hung a heavy gauze mask that looked three or four layers thick in the dimness.

Digger turned, saw the woman in silhouette for a moment against the sunlight, then could see nothing as the room again darkened.

"Don’t get up," she said. Her voice was surprisingly musical. Looking at the beekeeper’s helmet, he realized he had expected a croaking baritone that might have fit in one of the Man-in-the-Iron-Mask movies. "Forgive my appearance. I’ve been working in the garden."

Digger found the entire impression of the scene eerie. In the darkened room, Mrs. Walker sat ten feet away from him on a piano bench. Her voice seemed to come from behind the bee mask like a ventriloquist’s voice from out of nowhere.

"You went to Jessalyn Welles’s funeral, Mrs. Walker?"

"Yes."

"May I ask why?"

"She was my friend."

"But not recently," Digger said.

"Why do you say that?"

"I looked you up in the newspaper file. There were pictures of the two of you on this committee and that board, going here and going there, and then, for the last six months or so, nothing."

"We kind of drifted apart. Exactly what business is this of yours, Mister Burroughs?"

"I’m looking into the death of Mrs. Welles before my company pays an insurance policy."

The woman did not groan. She was probably too ladylike for a groan to slip out. But she took a long sip of air. Digger waited.

The woman asked, "A large policy?"

"Very large."

"What is it you want of me?"

"Do you think Mrs. Welles’s death was an accident?"

"What do you think, Mr. Burroughs?"

"I don’t think, Mrs. Walker."

"Life is simpler that way, isn’t it?" she said. "I have no reason to believe it was anything but an accident. And now, if you’re done with me…"

"Ted Dole, Mrs. Walker. Do you know him?"

"A tennis instructor."

"Was that all? After all, you were very close to Mrs. Welles."

"I don’t think there’s anything more to say."

"Alyne Gurney?" Digger asked.

Mrs. Walker shrugged.

"Lorelei Church?" Digger asked.

The woman rose to her feet.

"I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore, Mr. Burroughs. I have this feeling that you are not really a nice man."

"You’d get very little argument on that, ma’am. Why did you borrow a car to go to Mrs. Welles’s funeral?"

"I really would appreciate it if you left, Mr. Burroughs."

Digger stood. "One last question, Mrs. Walker."

"No more."

"Had Mrs. Welles been ill?"

"Please go." There was nothing but anguish in the voice. It was the sound of someone who had just looked through the gates of hell and knew that it waited for her.

Mrs. Walker stood up.

"I can let myself out," Digger said. "Thank you very much. I know this is painful and you’ve been very kind." He walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

Digger waited by the front door for three long minutes. Upstairs, he could hear a vacuum cleaner running and the faint sound of a woman singing tunelessly over the noise of the appliance.

Digger walked back to the room on the far right side of the hall. He paused outside the door, listening, heard nothing, then stepped inside.

The room was empty but it was now awash with sun. The floor to ceiling drapes were open and the sliding glass doors leading to the garden were open. Digger could see Moira Walker, her back to him, kneeling down over a mound of earth. There were no beehives in the small yard. On the ground next to the woman was her beekeeper’s helmet. From behind, the woman’s hair was fiery red. Most red hair looked rusty, but her hair was almost purple. It was a natural color that only one lucky woman in a hundred thousand had.

Digger waited by the glass doors. Mrs. Walker turned to pick up a garden tool and Digger recoiled into the shadows of the room. He felt a chill raising the hair on his arms.

The beautiful woman’s face that he had seen in all the clippings, the cool, imperious loveliness, was gone. Moira Walker’s face was twisted and scarred. Her right eye looked taped open, wide, as if the flesh around the socket had been ripped off, and all that was left was a gigantic eyeball floating around inside a hollow socket. One corner of her mouth was pulled downward as if a weight had been attached to that side of her lip. The once-smooth skin of her face was cratered with the thick red lesions of scars that had not healed.