Not so in Ross Murdoch’s basement.
The basement was laid out in a maze of narrow hallway, walls and doors. It smelled of the fresh lime green paint on the walls and of the air conditioning that really wasn’t necessary on an Indian summer day like this one. There were no bugs, no cracks in the floor and, God forbid, no cobwebs. Each door was marked with a neatly painted sign. FURNACE ROOM, LAUNDRY ROOM, and two others, BOMB SHELTER was what I was looking for and BOMB SHELTER was what I found.
The shelter was pretty much as it had been described. Very good living room and kitchen furnishings took up half of it; the other half offering six sets of bunk beds and a couple huge armoires. In the kitchen area there were enough boxes and crates of canned foodstuffs to keep a small army going for a year or so. Same with cigarettes, cigars, soda pop and alcoholic refreshments. There was a large carpet that looked to be the indoor-outdoor stuff that would hold up for a while. And the electrical generator in the east corner was imposing both for its size and its fire-engine red color. There were plenty of lamps, a portable 17-inch TV and a large Zenith radio that had so many buttons it could probably tune in Mars if you wanted it to. Home sweet home.
The dead woman spoiled everything.
She was sprawled on the brown corduroy-covered couch. Arms flung wide, silver silk blouse torn to reveal small breasts contained in a white bra, blue skirt pushed up to mid-thigh. She wore blue hose and silver flats. She had wonderful flawless legs. The purple bruising on her neck likely showed the means of her death. Some murder victims look horrible, their expressions reflecting clearly the terrors and suffering they went through. Other corpses appear almost peaceful. As if their passing had not been all that bad; or as if their passing had been something that they might have secretly wished for.
If the young woman’s skin hadn’t just now given a trace of the blue tint that would soon invade it, you’d have thought she was just resting, waiting to be called to dinner.
Her face was the most interesting part of the picture, not because it was so beautiful, which it was, but because it belonged to the young woman whose black-and-white glossy Hastings had shown me earlier this morning.
I walked the length of the room. Cliffie wouldn’t search it properly so I assumed it would fall to me. I spent twenty minutes down there. I imagined Ross Murdoch was wondering what I was doing. But he was scrupulous about staying out of my way. He’d looked scared enough to put me in charge, something he probably wasn’t used to. Everything about him spoke to being the king of the walk.
I didn’t find anything remarkable. I’d been hoping for something obvious. A button. A footprint. A note saying: “Yes, I killed her. Here’s my home phone number. I’ll be waiting for your call.”
But no such luck. Police science would have to take over from here. Cliffie had a recent graduate of the Police Academy as his number two now. He wasn’t a genius but he was competent and if Cliffie let him do his job — “Who cares about all this mumbo-jumbo!” I’d heard Cliffie snap at the guy one night—he might actually come up with some interesting ideas.
Now it was time to go back upstairs.
“You’ll have TO tell me everything, Ross. Everything. That’s the only way I can help you.”
He didn’t say anything. He just sat slumped behind his desk. He just looked sad, scared. I wondered if he was in shock.
I leaned forward, put my elbows on the front of the desk and looked right at him. “Who was she, Ross? I already know who she is. But I want to hear you say it. And then I want to hear you say that she was your girlfriend.”
“Her name is Karen Hastings. She wasn’t my girlfriend. She was our girlfriend.”
“What?”
“Three of my best friends from here—we went to a business convention in Chicago. She was a hostess in a booth. We all got drunk together—and more than once—over the four days we were there.” The men in his group were, like many men their age who’d taken Jack Kennedy as an icon, into sailing, hot air ballooning and, inevitably, a mean game of touch football.
“Meaning you four and the woman?”
“Yes. And then we decided—you know how things can sound perfectly sensible when you’re drunk—that we all needed some excitement in our lives but that running around on the side was too risky. But what if we all chipped in and set up a mistress in a nice apartment not far from where we lived? Shared the expenses and shared the woman. This was two years ago. Before I’d decided to run for governor.”
“I think the word you want here is prostitute.”
“Yes. But of a very special kind. So anyway, we all pitched in and arranged for a very nice apartment and for a monthly allowance and for a clothing allowance. We even paid for her life insurance. And to have her visit a doctor every two months.”
“She liked the idea?”
He laughed but without pleasure. “She loved it. We didn’t find out why till later. She was wanted by the Chicago police for extortion.”
I sat back in my chair. “This is about the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of.”
“There were a couple stories just like it back east. That’s where we got the idea. We just assumed we’d be better at it.”
“And you didn’t see any of the pitfalls?”
He shook his head. “You don’t need to remind me, Sam. Right away there was jealousy among the men. Two of them developed crushes on her. One of them I think fell in love with her. And then there was the fact that she started seeing other men on the side. I didn’t get jealous of that—the more I got to know her, the less I wanted to do with her—but I couldn’t figure out what we were paying for. She was ours. We were paying her way.”
“And then she started shaking you down.”
He looked surprised. “God, she wanted more and more money all the time.”
“That kind of arrangement, Ross. They always come back for more.”
“She didn’t wait for that. She said she’d contact my political enemies. Sell them the story. She changed. In Chicago she seemed so—sweet.”
“She was planning this all along. The first time she probably didn’t know how wealthy you were. Then she found out you were running for governor. You were going to be a very big payday for her.”
“I knew that, of course. All I could think of was getting through the election.”
“There’s also a good chance that she would also have sold her story to your so-called enemies, anyway.”
“Oh, God, you know I hadn’t thought of that. You really think she would’ve done it?”
“I can’t say for sure. But probably. How about the others? How much did she get from them?”
“The same for all of us. We divided all the payments by four.” He tried a clumsy joke. “I wonder if you can divide a murder four ways.”
“It’ll be tough. You’ve got her body in the basement.”
“I didn’t put it there. I really didn’t. And I certainly don’t know who killed her.”
Now it was my turn to get up and pace. I suppose that’s sort of impolite, in somebody else’s office and all, but I needed some kind of exercise suddenly. Sitting in the chair just made me realize how hopeless his situation was. For one thing, he might very well have killed her himself, put the body in the bomb shelter, and then concocted this fancy tale of “discovering” her down there. Surprise, surprise.
I went over to the window and looked out on the day. “I’m going to assume for the minute that you didn’t kill her.”