There was a long walk up a flagstone path that curved through a series of gardens, ending abruptly at the foot of a gently sloping lawn that encircled a fine old house. A three or four car garage was set back in the shadows under the trees and behind that the faint outlines of a tennis court probing the sky with metal fingers of its fence corners.
“Some dump.”
Logan nodded curtly. “Some have and some don’t. I’ll let Gardiner have it. Taxes on this place must cost a fortune.”
“Yeah, it’s rough having to be a bank president and live in style. I feel for him.”
“Quit being class-conscious,” he said.
Evidently there was some communication between the gate and the house. The door opened as we were going up the steps and an elderly woman in a severe black dress smiled and ushered us in. She took Logan’s hat, escorted us into a walnut-paneled room lined with books and said, “Mr. Gardiner will be right with you, gentlemen. Make yourselves comfortable.”
We didn’t have time to do that. Havis Gardiner came in before we had gotten seated, nodded hello and pulled a chair up for himself. He was as distinct as the men of distinction come. Strictly sharp in a hundred-buck pin-stripe suit and looking like he just stepped out of the pages of a magazine. His graying hair was freshly trimmed around the edges and for a minute I was wishing it was me sitting over there instead of here with a bandage for a hat and a headache to keep it company. He waved for us to sit down and crossed his legs carefully enough to show he was teed off about something. Logan and I shared the couch and lit up a pair of cigarettes.
“You have something on your mind, Mr. Gardiner?” I asked.
“That’s a mild way of putting it. The way you seem to move events around to suit yourself is quite disturbing.”
“Like last night?”
“Like last night. Do you realize what you did?”
“Sort of. Maybe you better explain in case I missed a point.”
Gardiner looked at Logan. “Tell him, Alan. You’re more familiar with conditions than I am.”
“Hell, he won’t listen to me.”
“Tell him anyway.”
Logan tapped his butt into an ash tray. “We’re after two things. Robert Minnow’s murderer and a couple hundred thousand bucks. Your coming back here has spread this case wide open again as fars as we’re concerned. Until now you were tagged for both jobs, now there’s reason to believe that you never pulled anything.
“Let’s look at it this way. Minnow, as District Attorney, wasn’t concerned with the law-abiding element... it was the gang making Lyncastle a criminal paradise that he was after. He was doing fine until he happened to get called in on a routine case of suspected embezzlement, then all his good work was washed out when the embezzler killed him out of pure revenge. That embezzler was supposed to have been you.”
“Great,” I said.
“Shut up. However, after you ducked out of sight it made the case certain, and in one respect, even if it wasn’t you, the heat was directed away from the guilty party. Now we know this much. Vera West could have done the actual embezzling, though the details of it aren’t clear yet. The money involved was worth killing for, especially if the murder could be directed away from herself. We know too that after it happened Vera and Lenny Servo, who we’ll unofficially class as part of the criminal element of town, were pretty chummy until Vera disappeared.
“Now for the reasons for her disappearance. She might have stuck close to Lenny as long as he could afford her some protection, and there’s no doubt at all that he’s influential enough to give plenty of protection. She had enough dough to pay for that protection and enough to make the proposition interesting to him, too. But remember this, it was still big dough and if you could get away without splitting it, a couple hundred grand could make for some pretty fancy living. Vera might very well have taken that cash without cutting Lenny in and taken off for somewhere.”
Gardiner nodded approvingly. “Or,” he added, “Servo could have kept the money and killed Vera.”
“I like it better the first way,” I said.
Logan’s butt poised over the ash tray. “Why?”
“Because Servo was in love with her, that’s why. She left him flat somewhere along the line.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I get around,” I grinned. “You mentioned something about Vera being dead. What about it?”
Gardiner looked at me squarely. “The investigators for the insurance company have managed to trace Vera West out of the state. There’s no need going into detail of how they did it, but they found that she had spent some time in the state capital then moved on to New York. Her last known address was a small uptown hotel off Times Square, but after she left no further trace of her was found. The investigators went on the premise that she might have died, and checked with the New York police. Their morgue records showed two cases of drowning, both suicides, either of which could have been Miss West. Since both bodies had been buried in a pauper’s grave an exhumation for purposes of facial identification wasn’t practical. After so long a time decomposition would have made identification impossible.”
“So?” I said.
“So there’s still the money to be accounted for,” Logan said. “There was no indication on Vera’s having lived high.”
Gardiner saw the frown on my face. “The point is this, Johnny, the case is not exactly a local one any longer. Since it has been reopened, the insurance company for the bank has its own men assigned to the case working in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I am quite aware of the situation that exists as far as our local police force is concerned, which is to say that in their minds the case is already settled except for a positive means to identify you. Now, you have been a sort of a center of the controversy. You can upset things if you aren’t careful.”
I stood up and flicked my butt into the fireplace. “In other words, I’m to pull in my horns?”
“Until the proper authorities have reached a conclusion.”
I could feel.Logan’s eyes on me, waiting to see what I’d do. I said, “The insurance company and the F. B. I., what are they looking for?”
After a moment’s pause Gardiner said, “Primarily a murderer, then the stolen funds.”
“That’s very good,” I told him, “very good. Me, I want a killer too. But that doesn’t come first. I want a whole town of people to know that Johnny McBride didn’t have anything to do with anything. I want to prove that there’s still something to be proud of in a name and you know how I’m going to do it?”
They were both waiting for me to tell them and I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Nope, the horns don’t get pulled in. Not even a little bit. Maybe the cops’ll trip over me some, but there’s more of a chance that somebody else will trip over me first.”
I expected an argument and didn’t get any. Gardiner shook his head in a slightly puzzled fashion. “I... understand quite well how you feel, Johnny. Please understand this. I’m not trying to interfere with your... crusade. I know the kind of people you’re dealing with and I don’t want you to be in further trouble before we come to the truth of the matter.”
“Like getting myself killed?”
“Yes.”
I looked down at Logan. “You feel the same way too?”
“More or less. You’re screwing the works up pretty nicely.”
“Then if Vera’s still alive and she pulled this stunt you’re willing to see her pay for it?”
He got mad first, then dropped his eyes. “If she’s behind it.”
I said, “Nuts,” and was going to say more. The words were there in my mouth but they didn’t come out. My mind was going around in cute little circles making ends meet here and there and a picture started to form that was vague in a way but with definite outlines that could paint a picture of murder.