“No, I’m afraid not. It would have been impos sible for anyone to lock the shed door using pieces of twine.”
“Why would it?”
“Because the key turns hard in the lock,” Loomis said. “I know that because I turned it myself, several times. No one could possibly turn it with twine. Or even with clothesline or rope, using slip knots and manipulating from under the door. No, sir-the only way that key could have been turned was by hand.”
So much for that theory; he’d shot it down pretty good. But I said, “I don’t suppose there was anything inside the shed that might point to foul play?”
He shook his head. “No signs of a struggle, no foreign objects to indicate another’s presence- nothing whatsoever.”
“How long has Meeker been dead?”
“Several hours. Rigor mortis had already set in.”
“Sometime this morning?”
“Early this morning, yes.”
“What about other marks on the body?”
“A bruise on the jaw and lacerations of the right forefinger and the left elbow, all of which the coroner’s assistant says were the result of the fall.”
“Couldn’t that jaw bruise have been caused by a blow of some kind? With a fist or some type of weapon?”
“It could have but it wasn’t,” Jeronczyk said. He did not have as much patience as Loomis; he was beginning to sound annoyed. “Now why don’t you just drop the matter, all right? Mr. Meeker died in a freak accident and that’s all there is to it.”
“He’s right, you know,” Loomis said. “You can’t make malice where none exists. Suppose you just follow me to Rio Vista, sign your statement, and go on home and forget the whole thing.”
What could I do? I followed him to Rio Vista, signed my statement, and went on home. But I was damned if I would forget the whole thing. No matter what Loomis and Jeronczyk said, no matter what the evidence seemed to indicate, I was convinced that somehow Ozzie Meeker had been murdered.
When I entered my flat, it was a few minutes past seven o’clock and San Francisco was full of pea-soup fog. I opened a bottle of beer, took it into the bedroom, and dialed Eberhardt’s home number. No answer. So I called the Hall of Justice, but he wasn’t there either, — one of the Homicide inspectors told me Eb had taken the day off. I left a message for him to call me when he came in in the morning-and wondered if he was out somewhere tying one on. Well, what if he was? He was entitled, wasn’t he?
I sat there working on my beer and staring at the phone. I had already called Kerry from a pay phone in Rio Vista to tell her the news about Meeker and to cancel our dinner date for tonight. She’d taken it well enough, but underneath the calmness in her voice I could tell she was frightened. Two deaths already-would there be more? Were her folks in any danger? Maybe she was even worried about me; I wanted to think so, anyway. And I wanted to see her tonight, except it was more important that I see her mother instead. I had not told her that; I had said only that I didn’t expect to make it back to.the city until late. I also hadn’t said anything about the map of Arizona in Meeker’s studio, or what was written on it in felt-tip pen.
After a time I caught up the handset again and called the Hotel Continental and asked for the Wades’ room. I had called there, too, from Rio Vista, but Cybil and Ivan had both been out. I’d left a message for her, saying that it was urgent I talk to her and that I would call again around seven-thirty.
The line buzzed five times before she picked up. “Yes?”
I told her who was calling. “Are you alone, Mrs. Wade? Can you speak freely?”
“Why, yes. Ivan’s been out all day, at a meeting with some local amateur magician’s group. What is it you want to talk about?”
“I don’t think we should discuss it over the phone,” I said. “Can I see you tonight?”
“Is it about Frank Colodny’s murder?”
“Yes. And there’s been a second homicide; Ozzie Meeker was killed today.”
An intake of breath. Then silence for six or seven beats. Then “Oh my God” in a voice not much louder than a whisper.
“I can meet you in the hotel bar in thirty minutes,” I said.
“No, not here. You don’t live far away, do you? Kerry said something about Pacific Heights …”
“Would you rather come here?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” I gave her the address. “When can I expect you?”
“Right away. As soon as I can get a taxi.”
We rang off, and I got up and took my beer into the living room. I felt more apprehensive than anything else. Cybil Wade seemed to be a key factor in this tangled business, and there was no sense in denying it any longer. Or in not sitting her down and asking her some fairly blunt questions. I had backed off from her before because she was Kerry’s mother; but now Meeker was dead, and there was that notation he’d made on the Arizona map, and Dancer was still locked up with a murder charge hanging over him. It was time to bite the bullet.
I rummaged around in my file of Midnight Detectives until I found one with a Samuel Leatherman story. Then I sat down on the couch, communed a little with Max Ruffe, and waited for his maker to come by and tell me a tale that was fact, not fiction.
SEVENTEEN
She got there at 8:05. She was wearing a gray coat and a gray pantsuit made out of some kind of shiny material, and her coppery hair was pulled back into a chignon. On most women that kind of hairdo is severe; on Cybil Wade it highlighted the shape of her face and the still-smooth texture of her skin. The face, with the bruise almost gone under light makeup, and the sweet tawny eyes were composed, but below the surface, like a rippling undercurrent, you could see anxiety. She was a woman with secrets, and she was afraid that I had gone poking around and found out what some of them were. She was wrong about that, but if I had my way, she wouldn’t be wrong much longer.
I showed her inside and took her coat and hung it up in the closet. Like Kerry, she did not feel ill at ease in strange surroundings. She had herself a look around, her eyes lingering longest on the shelves of pulp magazines; if she felt any distaste at the room’s untidiness, she didn’t show it. Then she went over and took a closer look at the plastic-bagged rows of pulps.
“You really do have an impressive collection, don’t you?” she said when I came over to the couch behind her.
“Substantial, anyway.”
She turned. “Kerry said it was impressive and it is.” Pause. “She also seems impressed with you.”
“Does she? Well, it’s mutual.”
“I thought it was. That’s part of the reason I wanted to come here tonight, you know, instead of meeting at the hotel. To see where you live, find out a little more about you. Motherly interest, I guess you could call it.”
Uh-huh, I thought. Maybe she was sincere, but maybe she was trying to con me a little, too, so I would go easier on her. But it was not going to work. If she was mixed up in murder, I wasn’t about to let her off the hook just because she was Kerry’s mother. I could be as hard-boiled as Max Ruffe if it came down to that.
I said, “Why don’t you take a seat, Mrs. Wade. I’ll get us something to drink. Brandy, beer, coffee?”
“A beer would be fine.”
I went into the kitchen, opened up two bottles of Schlitz, got a glass for her out of the cupboard, and carried them back to the living room. She had gone to sit in one of the chairs and picked up the issue of Midnight Detective with her Samuel Leatherman story; she was looking at the interior illustration. There seemed to be a kind of sadness in her expression, but it went away as I crossed over and set one bottle and the glass on the table in front of her.
She put the magazine down again. ” ‘My Body Lies Over the Ocean,’” she said. “Frank had a positive genius for concocting the worst titles. But he was a good editor. He knew when a story didn’t work and why it didn’t work, and he never fiddled with copy. Some editors fancied themselves writers and were forever changing sentence structure and tampering with style, but not Frank.”