As for my ribs, I decided it would be less painful if I just stopped breathing.
The sun had moved several degrees higher in the sky before I forced myself to consider getting up. I glanced at my watch; it was 7:30. If I didn’t get up soon, the real maid would come along and vacuum me off the rug. I struggled to my feet and surveyed the room from an upright position. There was no one in it.
I checked the rest of the rooms and didn’t find anyone else. None of the beds had been slept in. I went into the kitchen and put some ice in a baggie for the back of my head. I found the front door then and walked to my car.
The sun was so bright outside that for a full five minutes I couldn’t do anything but stand by my car squinting, holding the ice to the back of my head. As I stood there, I heard the morning traffic on a main street about a quarter mile away. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the stark light, and I could see normally again. I did not like what I saw. Pamela Dyer lay hunched up in the backseat of my car looking dead.
I jerked the door open and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t any. Her black hair had fallen from the tight bun and settled around her shoulders in coarse, tangled strands. It gave her a frivolous kind of appearance I wouldn’t have thought possible. Her neck above the crepe dress was blotched with dark bruises: she had been strangled. The body was stiff and cold, growing stiffer and colder. I went around to the trunk of the car and got out an old blanket I kept there. I wrapped her carefully in the blanket, placed the body inside the trunk, closed it. My ribs were smarting the whole time.
I eased myself into the car and pulled out of the driveway. As I left, I noticed the Mercedes from last night was missing. I didn’t know where I was going; I was just getting away from there.
I ended up at a small city park at the northern edge of Phoenix. I drove up to one of the covered picnic tables they call ramadas and parked the car. When I was sure no one was around, I opened the trunk and hefted Pamela Dyer’s body onto the picnic table. It was a gruesome job.
I got in my car again and aimed it toward an open coffee shop. I went first to the bathroom to wash my face. There was a large bruise on my left cheek, and the skin was broken. I had almost forgotten about it with all the other rough stuff that had happened to me. I bent my head over the sink and tried to wash out some of the dried blood that was caked in my hair. I patted my hair dry with a paper towel, then went out to get some breakfast.
The waitress thought I’d been run over by a truck, and she told me so. I ordered a lot — not because I was hungry, but because I needed food — and began scanning a morning paper someone had left behind. I half expected to see a headline reading, “Private Investigator Strangles Woman and Hides Body in Park.” It wasn’t there, however.
The food came and I ate it. It didn’t taste very good, but I felt less light-headed with something in my stomach. After I finished, I went back to a pay phone and dialed the police department to tell them they would find the body of a dead woman at the park. It would take them several days to identify the body, especially if the media didn’t pick up on it. I needed those days to figure out the mess and clear myself against the time someone finally reported Mrs. Dyer missing.
I got into the car one last time and drove to Delbert Evans’s office. I had to talk to someone.
When I got to Delbert’s office, no one was there but Delbert. It was 8:50. I found him rummaging around the secretary’s desk looking for a paper clip. He greeted me with a grimace and told me I looked like I had been run over by a truck. I guess waitresses and insurance salesmen think the same.
We went into the inner office and sat down. Delbert put on a brave, expectant face and said, “Well, August, how is the investigation going?”
“Mrs. Dyer is dead.”
Delbert jerked like he had been shocked digging his bread out of the toaster with a fork. His face turned two shades whiter. “How did it happen?” he asked breathlessly.
I told him the whole wad, starting with my visit to Grey’s office and ending with the disposal of Mrs. Dyer’s body. He sank lower and lower in his chair as I told the story, and by the time I was finished, his chest was at the same level as the desk top. “August,” he said, and pulled himself up. “We hired you to find the pendant, not to antagonize Mr. Grey and Mrs. Dyer, and certainly not to have Mrs. Dyer killed.”
That wasn’t quite straight, but I let it slide.
“And frankly,” Delbert continued, “I don’t think it was very wise of you to remove Mrs. Dyer’s body from the premises. You’ve just made it that much more difficult for the police to solve the murder and clear you.”
“Be serious, Del. If I had called the police from the house when I found the body, clearing me would have been the last thing on their minds. I would be their number-one suspect. As it stands now, I’ll still be the guy they go after when they identify the body. The maid who works at the house knows I talked to Mrs. Dyer last night because she answered the phone. She might even have been at the house when I got conked; I don’t know.”
“But what about the man with the gun? Wouldn’t the police suspect him?”
“They would if they’d believe what I told ’em. But cops would as soon listen to winos in the street as private investigators.”
“What are you going to do then, August?”
“Go on with the investigation. Mrs. Dyer’s death and the theft of the pendant must be related. I don’t know exactly where the gunboy at the house fits in, but he’s got to be the link between the two. It’s clear Mrs. Dyer wasn’t telling us the whole story.”
Delbert started to ramble on the way he did whenever he got excited. Chiefly, he was concerned that I be more careful and not involve myself or the insurance company in any more murders. I couldn’t argue with that. I tried to calm him down anyway, and I spent another fifteen minutes or so talking with him about his golf game. I wouldn’t know a five iron if you hit me over the head with it, but I faked it.
I left after scrounging the first name of Mrs. Dyer’s maid from Delbert — that was all he knew — and went home to my apartment. There I licked my wounds and helped recycle aluminum by drinking a few beers.
The name Evita and a ten-dollar bribe were all the clerk at Valley Domestic Service needed to supply me with the full name and address of Mrs. Dyer’s maid. Her full name was Evita Salaiz, and she lived on East Roosevelt in a very bad neighborhood. In fact, she lived about three blocks south of my office.
The house was a gray stucco number built around 1803. The lawn surrounding it had been planted in the same year but wasn’t around now to tell the tale. Two yellowish bed sheets hung from a rusty clothesline in the side yard, providing the only shade for the whole place. A maroon Packard stood decaying nearby. I went up a cracked sidewalk to the porch and knocked at the screen door.
The Roman Empire rose and fell in the time it took someone to answer the door. The someone was a dark woman in a short white slip and nylon panty hose. Her breasts were round and obscenely full, her thighs big and muscular. She smiled at me and tilted her hips at an insolent angle. She looked about as hard to get as the time of day.
“Miss Evita Salaiz?” I asked.
“Yes.” she said huskily, “that’s me.”
“May I come in? I’d like to talk to you about one of the people you work for.”
“No, you cannot come in,” she said, and effectively blocked my way with her chest. “Who are you?”
I tried to look past her into the house, but the room was too dark. “My name is August Hammond,” I said in something like an official tone. “I’m the insurance investigator assigned to Mrs. Dyer’s case. Did you work at her home yesterday?”