The Case of the Kidnapped Angel: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Six) (10 page)

“Did you also agree that he should keep the police and the FBI out of it?”

“Did he? I didn't know that.” He shook his head worriedly. “Why would he do that? He had to pay the ransom, but I'd think he'd have the cops in there every step of the way.” He stared at the curl of smoke rising from his cigar. “Sergeant?”

“Yes?”

“How long do we have to stay here?”

“You don't have to stay here at all. You can leave whenever you wish.”

“Well, I'll wait until my wife finishes talking to Ellie.”

Masuto nodded and left the room. Beckman was in the hall outside talking into a telephone. Masuto waited. Beckman put down the telephone.

“Where are they?”

“Downstairs in the game room.”

“Any of them leave?”

Beckman shook his head. “It's like they're all watching each other. Mrs. Goldberg is still upstairs with Newman. Angel's still in her room.”

“And Kelly?”

“He's in the kitchen with Mrs. Holtz. The black kid is downstairs. They keep her running for drinks. By the way, Doc Baxter called. It was a twenty-two short, just as we thought, and he still fixes the time of death between twelve-thirty and one. One more thing—” Beckman paused, relishing the moment. “Wainwright had a couple of cops canvassing the houses on San Yisidro. They found a kid who saw a yellow two-seat Mercedes drive by at about twelve-thirty or so. He remembered it because it's his dream car, and he never saw it before.”

“Did he notice who was driving, a man or a woman?”

“No. He was at an upstairs window, being sick with the flu, so he never saw who was driving.”

Masuto thought about it for a while, and then he said to Beckman, “Sy, I want to talk to Angel Barton, and I don't want anyone else talking to her first. So go upstairs and wait for me outside her room. No one goes in—but no one. And if she wants to leave, just delay her. I won't be more than ten minutes.”

“This Dr. Haddam said—”

“I don't give a damn what Dr. Haddam said.”

“Okay, Okay, Masao. What's eating you?”

Masuto laughed and shook his head. “I'm sorry, Sy. We live in an insane world.”

“What else is new?”

“I try to suspend judgment. Sometimes that's almost impossible. What did you find out downtown about Joe Kelly?”

“He has a record, like Miss Newman said. Seven priors. In and out, he spent maybe twenty years in jail, all of it theft, grand larceny, petty larceny. He's a thief, that's all. He got out on parole eight years ago, and Mike Barton hired him. He's been clean ever since.”

“All right. Go upstairs now. I'll join you in a few minutes.”

Masuto went into the kitchen. Kelly and Mrs. Holtz sat at the kitchen table, each with a cup of tea. Mrs. Holtz was a woman of at least fifty, possibly even sixty years. She was crying, yet seemingly unaware of the tears rolling down her cheeks. Kelly sat watching her, his long, lined and battered face impassive. But that, Masuto realized, could be misleading. A man who had lived Kelly's life would be beyond the point of revealing emotions facially. Masuto felt the tragedy of his own aloofness, but it was a tragedy mankind shared, the tragedy of being fragmented, of each person being walled away from the suffering of others. There was little left for those two people. In all likelihood Kelly could never find another job.

Masuto pulled a chair up to the table, waving Mrs. Holtz back to her seat as she started to rise. “Don't get up, please.”

“I'll get you a cup of tea, Sergeant. A piece of cake.”

“No. No, thank you. Just a few questions.”

“You might as well know about me,” Kelly said. “I got a record.”

“I know.”

“I never slugged anyone and I never shot anyone. I was never busted for carrying a gun.”

“I know that.”

Mrs. Holtz evidently did not know it. She stared at Kelly in astonishment.

“And I never left this place today.”

“Yes. Then you saw Mr. Barton leave with the ransom money?”

“I was washing a car in front of the garage when he pulled out. He had a big brown suitcase, and he put it on the front seat of the car next to him.”

“What time was that?”

“Maybe ten, fifteen minutes past twelve, because after he pulled away I turned off the water and came into the kitchen here for my lunch.”

“That was twenty minutes after twelve,” Mrs. Holtz said. “I remember.”

“Why do you remember the exact time?” Masuto asked her.

“Because inside, in the living room, Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Ranier was having terrible argument. Joe heard it too. He said, ‘What do you think? Maybe they're hungry.' It was joke. I said, ‘No, it's only twenty minutes after twelve.'”

“Did you hear what they were saying?”

“I don't listen. Maybe Joe?”

He shook his head.

“Mrs. Barton was kidnapped,” Masuto said, “and in great danger. Yet you were able to joke about things.”

Mrs. Holtz shrugged. “Is terrible not to care about someone, but she was never nice to us.”

The telephone rang, and Masuto picked up the extension on the kitchen wall. It was Klappham, on night duty at the station house. “The captain left me this number, Masao,” he said. “Bones down at L.A.P.D. called and left this message for you. They picked up the yellow Mercedes. It was parked on Fourth Street downtown. No damage. Mint condition and the key in the lock.”

“Did they dust it?”

“I was just going to tell you, wiped clean.”

Masuto hung up the telephone and turned back to Kelly. “Did you ever drive for Mrs. Barton?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you ever take her to meet anyone?”

“Maybe, but I don't know who she met.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, a lot of times, I drive her down to the Music Center. I drop her off and she'd tell me when to pick her up. Same thing out to Malibu, if she didn't want to bother to drive. We got that big Lincoln Continental chauffeur car, with a bar in it and a telephone and all that garbage, and I guess it made her feel pretty classy riding around in it. She didn't like my driving, but when you been busted as many times as I have, you drive careful, and when she was alone with me she could really let go. She could talk pretty damn dirty. Sometimes she'd cuss me out in French. I don't know the words, but from the way she spit it out I knew she was cussing me. She was always after Mr. Barton to dump me and hire someone else.”

“Did you ever take her to meet a man—I mean did you ever actually see her with a man?”

“Once, when I had to pick her up at the County Museum, she was kissing someone.”

“Who?”

“That's it. I was coming down Wilshire, maybe two, three blocks away. When I got to her, he was gone.”

“Yes. Do you know whether either of the Bartons owned a gun?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Holtz said. “Yes. She left it one day on her dressing table. No, not on it—inside. You know how the top comes up with a mirror. It was there, and Jonesey saw it. It scared her to death. Jonesey was cleaning the room, and she came running to me.”

“Did you see the gun?”

Mrs. Holtz nodded.

“Can you describe it for me?”

“It was small, silver, very small. Like a toy gun. Like guns you see, but they're really cigarette lighters.”

“Thank you. I'll talk to Miss Jones later. You've been very helpful.”

Masuto went upstairs then and joined Beckman, who was waiting for him outside the door of Angel Barton's room. “Anything?” he asked Beckman.

“Quiet as a grave. Nobody in, nobody out. There's still reporters and TV characters outside, but Dempsy's held the line against them. You'd think the telephone would be ringing constantly, but the black kid they call Jonesey tells me that they have an unlisted number and they keep changing it. Still, you'd think a star would have loads of friends.”

“You'd think so,” Masuto said. He tapped at the door of Angel's room. “Where's Miss Newman and Mrs. Goldberg?”

“That room, down the hall,” Beckman said, pointing.

Masuto knocked at the door again, waited a few seconds, and then turned the handle and opened the door. The room was pink and white—white carpet on the floor, pink walls, white bed, pink coverlet, two pink and white angels suspended by wire from the ceiling fleeting over the bed, mirrors on one whole wall, white baroque furniture, a pink and white chaise longue, and lying on it, half-reclining, Angel Barton in a pink robe over a white silk and lace nightgown. Her hair was a hairdresser's triumph—long, spun gold, and two wide, innocent blue eyes stared at them out of a Marilyn Monroe face.

The two men halted just inside the door, staring at Angel, who returned their stare unblinking.

“Sy, close the door,” Masuto whispered.

He closed the door and said, “Masao, what the hell goes on here?”

Masuto walked over to Angel Barton and picked up her arm. There was no pulse and the hand was cold.

“Is she dead, Masao?”

He pushed the lids down over the staring blue eyes. “Very dead, I think.” On the floor next to the chaise longue there was an empty hypodermic needle. Beckman picked it up with his handkerchief.

“How long?” he asked Masuto.

Staring at Angel thoughtfully, Masuto said, “The hands are cold. Twenty minutes, half an hour.” He was examining her arm. There was a single puncture mark. “What's the smell?” he asked Beckman, who was sniffing the air.

“Ether.”

“I thought so. Go downstairs, Sy, and tell Dempsy that no one leaves the house. I've been stupid, and I don't want to go on being stupid. Then call the station and tell them to get another cop over here and to inform the captain. Then call Baxter and tell him we want him and an ambulance.”

“He'll love that.”

“We'll try to live with his displeasure.”

Beckman was studying the hypodermic. “No prints.”

“No, he wanted to get rid of it, so he wiped it and dropped it.”

Beckman left the room. Masuto walked over to the dressing table and raised the lid. There was the gun Mrs. Holtz had spoken about. It was a small, expensive purse gun, twenty-two caliber and probably, Masuto guessed, of Swiss make. He took it out, hooking his pinky through the trigger guard and then brought it into the light of a lamp, studying it carefully. It bore a clear set of prints which, he was convinced, would match those of the dead Angel. He then wrapped it in his handkerchief and dropped it into his pocket.

He then walked over to the dead Angel and stared at her thoughtfully. She was indeed a very beautiful woman, even in death. He tried to analyze his own feelings. Had he been the cause of her death? Was his own failure to anticipate it to be condemned? Should he have known? There was something missing. He was not attempting to exonerate himself. There was simply something missing.

He bent over the dead woman now and raised one of the eyelids he had closed before, peering at the cold blue eye it revealed. Then he lowered the lid again. There were two doors at one side of the bedroom. Masuto went to them now. One led to a bathroom, where tile and sink and tub were in varying shades of pink. The other door opened on an enormous walk-in closet.

Masuto flicked on the closet light, staring at the racks of dresses, slacks, and evening gowns. One entire wall of the closet was devoted to a shoe rack, holding at least a hundred pairs of shoes and, at the bottom, four pairs of riding boots. He then went through the racks and finally found, not on the racks, but carefully folded on a shelf behind the dresses, six pairs of whipcord breeches. What this added up to, Masuto could not for the life of him imagine. Possibly nothing. Possibly she liked to ride. In the detective stories he read occasionally, everything pointed in a specific direction. But here were things most curious that pointed nowhere.

The Departed Angel

“You don't need me,” Dr. Baxter said sourly. “I don't have to dance attendance on every corpse you clowns turn up. I was in the middle of my dinner—”

“It's ten o'clock,” Wainwright said apologetically.

“Civilized people eat late, and if you think I'm going to spend all night doing an autopsy, you're crazy. I'll get at it in the morning.”

“All we want to know,” Wainwright begged him, “is why she died.”

“Because her heart stopped. It causes death.”

“Come on, Doc, be reasonable.”

“Are you reasonable? What do you think they pay me to be medical examiner for this silly town of demented millionaires. All right, you want to know what she died of? I'll tell you what she didn't die of. She didn't die of an over-dose of heroin, if that's what you're thinking. She's not a user.”

“Was she murdered?”

“How the hell do I know whether she was murdered? I'm not a cop, and I can't read the minds of the dead. When I cut her up, I'll tell you what I find.”