When a man disappears with thirty-five thousand dollars he does it because he wants to — or because somebody else wants it to be that way.
I thanked the girl behind the counter and walked back to the Liston, House.
The day desk clerk, a cheerful-looking man in his fifties, got up.
“I’m already registered,” I said. I decided it wouldn’t do any harm to ask him if he might know anything about Rogers. “I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for a Sam Rogers. He was registered here a week ago and then he just seems to have disappeared. Perhaps he told you where he might be going?”
The clerk went over the book until he found Rogers’ name and then thought about it. Finally he shook his head. “Afraid I can’t help you. Never even saw him, as far as I can remember.”
Then something did come to his mind. “There was a note on the pad to give him a call at six-thirty in the morning. I saw that when I came on at seven and it hadn’t been checked off. I asked Bert about it — thinking that he might have forgotten to wake the man — but Bert said to cross it off. Rogers had already left. Bert’s the night man here. Bert Dryer.”
“I’d like to talk to Bert. Where can I find him?”
“He has a little cottage just outside of town. Sort of a rundown place and he lives alone.”
I got more specific directions then drove to Bert’s house. It was a ramshackle affair with two fifty-five gallon fuel oil tanks on a rack beside the kitchen window. A sagging barn and a few small sheds were on the property too. A beat-up old sedan was parked on the gravel driveway.
I pulled up behind it and went to the back door. There was no answer to my knocks. The car in the driveway told me that he was probably home, but if so, he was playing possum for reasons of his own.
I went over to the barn and opened one of the big double doors.
Parts of a car were scattered around inside and someone had evidently been using a torch to cut the body into pieces. I thought it might have been a dark blue ’56 sedan.
I looked for license plates, but there were none. However the motor was still there and I copied the block number.
I went back to the house and knocked once more. Then I tried the door.
Bert Dryer was there and he had a good reason for not coming to the door. He lay on his back on the littered kitchen floor. His wide open eyes were looking at nothing in this world. It had been a fast death and one bullet in the chest had done the job.
I went through the small living room and took a look at the bedroom. The house wasn’t too clean, but as far as I could tell, nothing had been disturbed.
I wiped my prints off the back door knob and went to my car. I drove back to Eaton City and went to the phone booth in a drugstore.
I put in a call to the State Motor Bureau in Missouri.
“This is Sheriff Rhiordan in Eaton City, Wisconsin,” I said. “I have an abandoned vehicle here carrying your state’s license plates.”
Evidently he reached for his pencil. “What’s the number?”
I gave him Sam Rogers’ license plate number. “And check out the motor number too. The plates might not belong to the car.” I gave him the motor block number I’d copied in Bert Dryer’s barn.
“It’ll take ten, fifteen minutes,” he said. “Want me to call back?”
“No. I’m not in my office. Won’t be back there for a while either. Suppose I call you?”
That was all right with him. Getting a car identified wasn’t as private as finding out somebody’s bank balance and he didn’t have to check up on me.
I made a chocolate soda last twenty minutes and then phoned him again.
“The license plates were issued to a Sam Rogers in St. Louis.” He gave me the address of one of that city’s hotels.
“What about the motor number? His car?”
“Yes. That checks.”
I thanked him and hung up.
When you want to get rid of a car, you have your troubles. If you push it over a cliff or drop it into water, nine times out of ten, somebody will find it sometime and begin asking questions about it.
But if you take the car apart, cut it into pieces, and drop a fender here, a door there — in a dump, in the woods, in a lake, nobody’s going to get too curious about why the piece is there. And it looked like that’s what Bert Dryer had been doing with Sam Rogers’ car.
But why?
It didn’t take too much imagination to figure something logical. Suppose Bert had killed Sam Rogers. And why would he kill Sam? As far as I knew Bert and Sam had never seen each other until Sam registered at the Liston House, so that let out anything personal. And that left only one strong motive. Money.
Sam had been planning to skip out on his wife and his partner. He had closed his savings account in St. Louis and cashed the draft in Milwaukee. He had been carrying the money with him and somehow Bert had found out about it.
But now Bert was dead. I thought that meant that Bert had had help when he got rid of Rogers — someone who had been afraid that Bert might get weak — or someone who didn’t want to share the money with him.
I made a call to the Washington Hotel and got Irene Rogers.
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you,” I said. “It looks to me like your husband is dead. It’s my guess that he’s been murdered.” There was a silence and then a calm voice. “Tell me about it.”
I told her what I knew and what I suspected. “Did you know he had the thirty-five thousand on him?”
She hesitated and then made up her mind. “I might as well tell you. Sam and I were going to break with Pete after he got through with this last list. Sam withdrew his money from the bank and was carrying it with him. He’s built that way. He didn’t want it out of his sight. We were going to the East Coast. Did you go to the police?”
“Not yet. Should I?”
Her voice was definite. “No.”
“They’ll be in on it eventually. When Bert’s body is found, the police will also learn that I asked where he lived. They’ll question me and I’ll have to tell all I know just to protect myself.”
“If the police get hold of the thirty-five thousand I might have a lot of trouble claiming it. After all, Sam didn’t get it exactly clean and legal. If you find the money before the police — and don’t tell them about it — five thousand of it is yours. Does that impress you?”
“I’m impressed. I’ll do the best I can.”
When I stepped out of the drugstore, Pete Cable was standing there, waiting, on the sidewalk.
He smiled. “Been busy?”
“I thought you were going back to the big city.”
“I got to thinking things over and I decided that maybe there was more to all of this than meets the eye.” He worked the cellophane off a cigar. “So I decided that maybe I ought to stick around and see how you operate. This morning I followed you to that little place outside of town and watched. When you drove away, I took a look in the barn myself and saw the pieces of a car. And I thought to myself that the paint job looked kind of familiar. Then I took myself to the house and opened the door like you did. The man was mighty dead, wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t make him that way.”
He nodded agreeably. “Didn’t say that you did. Didn’t even think so. Besides I didn’t hear a shot. But it got me to thinking more. Why should somebody be cutting up Sam’s car? And why would somebody want to kill that poor little old man? Night clerk at the Liston House, wasn’t he? So I came back here and drove along Main Street until I saw your car.”
“Did all your thinking give you any answers?”
“Not exactly. But I always feel that when there’s trouble, there’s money at the bottom of it. Right?”
“Nice day today, isn’t it?”
He puffed a light to his cigar and threw away the match. “I noticed while I was poking around that place the cops didn’t show up. I guess you forgot to call them?”