Gretchen was sprinkling the brown front lawn with a desultory hose. She looked too big for the pocket-handkerchief yard. The sunsuit that barely covered her various bulges made her look even bigger. She turned off the water when I got out of my car.
“What gives? You’ve got trouble on your face if I ever saw trouble.”
“Dewar is dead. Murdered. A skin-diver found him in the sea off La Jolla.”
She took it calmly. “That’s not such bad news, is it? He had it coming. Who killed him?”
“I told you a gunman from Nevada was on his trail. Maybe he caught him. Anyway, Dewar was shot and bled to death from a neck wound. Then he was dumped in the ocean. I had to lay the whole thing on the line for the police, since there’s murder in it.”
“You told them what happened to Ethel?”
“I had to. They’re at the rest home talking to her now.”
“What about Ethel’s money? Was the money on him?”
“Not a trace of it. And he didn’t live to spend it. The police pathologist thinks he’s been dead for a week. Whoever got Dewar got the money at the same time.”
“Will she ever get it back, do you think?”
“If we can catch the murderer, and he still has it with him. That’s a big if. Where’s Clare, by the way? With her sister?”
“Clare went back to L. A.”
“What for?”
“Don’t ask me.” She shrugged her rosy shoulders. “She got Jake to drive her down to the station before he went to work. I wasn’t up. She didn’t even tell me she was going.” Gretchen seemed peeved.
“Did she get a telegram, or a phone call?”
“Nothing. All I know is what Jake told me. She talked him into lending her ten bucks. I wouldn’t mind so much, but it was all the ready cash we had, until payday. Oh well, I guess we’ll get it back, if Ethel recovers her money.”
“You’ll get it back,” I said. “Clare seems to be a straight kid.”
“That’s what I always used to think. When they lived here, before Ethel met Illman and got into the chips, Clare was just about the nicest kid on the block. In spite of all the trouble in her family.”
“What trouble was that?”
“Her father shot himself. Didn’t you know? They said it was an accident, but the people on the street – we knew different. Mr. Larrabee was never the same after his wife left him. He spent his time brooding, drinking and brooding. Clare reminded me of him, the way she behaved last night after you left. She wouldn’t talk to me or look at me. She shut herself up in her room and acted real cold. If you want the honest truth, I don’t like her using my home as if it was a motel and Jake was a taxi-service. The least she could of done was say good-bye to me.”
“It sounds as if she had something on her mind.”
All the way back to Los Angeles, I wondered what it was. It took me a little over two hours to drive from San Diego to West Hollywood. The black Lincoln with the searchlight and the Nevada license plates was standing at the curb below the redwood house. The front door of the house was standing open.
I transferred my automatic from the suitcase to my jacket pocket, making sure that it was ready to fire. I climbed the terraced lawn beside the driveway. My feet made no sound in the grass. When I reached the porch, I heard voices from inside. One was the gunman’s hoarse and deathly monotone: “I’m taking it, sister. It belongs to me.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Sure, but not about this. The money is mine.”
“It’s my sister’s money. What right have you got to it?”
“This. Dewar stole it from me. He ran a poker game for me in Vegas, a high-stakes game in various hotels around town. He was a good dealer, and I trusted him with the house take. I let it pile up for a week, that was my mistake. I should’ve kept a closer watch on him. He ran out on me with twenty-five grand or more. That’s the money you’re holding, lady.”
“I don’t believe it. You can’t prove that story. It’s fantastic.”
“I don’t have to prove it. Gelt talks, but iron talks louder. So hand it over, eh?”
“I’ll die first.”
“Maybe you will at that.”
I edged along the wall to the open door. Clare was standing flat against the opposite wall of the hallway. She was clutching a sheaf of bills to her breast. The gunman’s broad flannel back was to me, and he was advancing on her.
“Stay away from me, you.” Her cry was thin and desperate.
She was trying to merge with the wall, pressed by an orgastic terror.
“I don’t like taking candy from a baby,” he said in a very reasonable tone. “Only I’m going to have that money back.”
“You can’t have it. It’s Ethel’s. It’s all she has.”
“–you, lady. You and your sister both.”
He raised his armed right hand and slapped the side of her face with the gun barrel, lightly. Fingering the welt it left, she said in a kind of despairing stupor:
“You’re the one that hurt Ethel, aren’t you? Now you’re hurting me. You like hurting people, don’t you?”
“Listen to reason, lady. It ain’t just the money, it’s a matter of business. I let it happen once, it’ll happen again. I can’t afford to let anybody get away with nothing. I got a reputation to live up to.”
I said from the doorway: “Is that why you killed Dewar?”
He let out an animal sound, and whirled in my direction. I shot before he did, twice. The first slug rocked him back on his heels. His bullet went wild, plowed the ceiling. My second slug took him off balance and slammed him against the wall. His blood spattered Clare and the money in her hands. She screamed once, very loudly.
The man from Las Vegas dropped his gun. It clattered on the parquetry. His hands clasped his perforated chest, trying to hold the blood in. He slid down the wall slowly, his face a mask of smiling pain, and sat with a bump on the floor. He blew red bubbles and said:
“You got me wrong. I didn’t kill Dewar. I didn’t know he was dead. The money belongs to me. You made a big mistake, punk.”
“So did you.”
He went on smiling, as if in fierce appreciation of the joke. Then his red grin changed to a rictus, and he slumped sideways.
Clare looked from him to me, her eyes wide and dark with the sight of death. “I don’t know how to thank you. He was going to kill me.”
“I doubt that. He was just combining a little pleasure with business.”
“But he shot at you.”
“It’s just as well he did. It leaves no doubt that it was self-defense.”
“Is it true what you said? That Dewar’s dead? He killed him?”
“You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got the money that Dewar took from your sister. Where did you get it?”
“It was here, right in this house. I found it in the kitchen.”
“That’s kind of hard to swallow, Clare.”
“It’s true.” She looked down at the blood-spattered money in her hands. The outside bill was a hundred. Unconsciously, she tried to wipe it clean on the front of her dress. “He had it hidden here. He must have come back and hid it.”
“Show me where.”
“You’re not being very nice to me. And I’m not feeling well.”
“Neither is Dewar. You didn’t shoot him yourself, by any chance?”
“How could I? I was in Berkeley when it happened. I wish I was back there now.”
“You know when it happened, do you?”
“No.” She bit her lip. “I don’t mean that. I mean I was in Berkeley all along. You’re a witness, you were with me on the train coming down.”
“Trains run both ways.”
She regarded me with loathing. “You’re not nice at all. To think that yesterday I thought you were nice.”