He said nothing, merely waiting with a sick expression on his face.
I said, “You should have tried to find out what he did with the money before you panicked and killed him for the insurance. Tom Austin made some discreet off-the-record inquiries and found out Schroeder was buying controlling interest in a rival electronics company somewhat smaller than this one. Austin figures his plan was to let this company go bankrupt, then have the other company buy it up for a song, and end up controlling both companies without the bother of sharing things with a partner. In Austin’s opinion, you could have recovered the assets he drained off if you had taken him to court, and even could’ve had him jailed for embezzlement if you had wanted to. It would have been simpler than killing him.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he insisted with more desperation than hope of belief. “Your case is based on nothing but conjecture.”
“Sure,” I admitted. “It’s also only conjecture that Marybell repeated to you the phone conversation between Schroeder and his wife that she listened in on, and that’s what gave you the idea. Your partner never told Marybell to phone Clayton. You told her to phone him and say the message was from Schroeder. That was to make sure that at the very least he would have no alibi for the time of the murder; at best, he would be seen prowling around Schroeder’s apartment house by witnesses. I’ll make a further conjecture. My guess is that all the time sucker Sam Clayton was ringing the doorbell, you had Walt Schroeder under your gun inside the apartment. When Clayton finally gave up and went away, you forced Schroeder to drive you to Forest Park where you did the job. Have I got it about right?”
“You haven’t got any thing right,” he croaked. “I never killed him.”
Looking at the redhead, I said, “If your only part in this was phoning that message to Sam Clayton, you probably could get off the hook as an accessory by telling the truth about who told you to make the call.”
She had become quite pale also. She looked at Moore.
“He’s cooked anyway,” I said. “As soon as I book him, I plan to get a search warrant for his home. This was such a good frame that I imagine he felt secure enough not to bother disposing of possible evidence. We’ll probably find the shoe bearing the heel-print that matches the bloody one on Schroeder’s forehead. And the murder gun.”
Jacob Moore’s gaze inadvertently flicked sidewise at his top right-hand desk drawer. I was around the desk and had jerked the drawer open before he could shift his eyes forward again.
As I lifted out the.38 revolver, he squeaked, “You can’t take that without a search warrant!”
“Check with your lawyer,” I advised. “I had probable cause to believe you were getting ready to reach for a weapon.”
I looked back at the redhead.
“I don’t want to get into any trouble,” she said huskily. “If Jake did it, I had no knowledge of it.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Who told you to make that phone call to Sam Clayton?”
Her gaze flicked to Jake Moore, then away again. Almost inaudibly she said, “It was Jake.”
I took out the little card I carry outlining arrested persons’ constitutional rights and began reading them to Jacob Moore.
Stolen Goods
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1979.
It wasn’t much of a twenty-fifth-birthday celebration. I was dead broke except for the rent money stashed in my room. Stan had a few bucks, but he had promised to take his mother out to dinner. All he was willing to blow for was a six-pack.
It was a warm Saturday afternoon, and we were just drifting around in Stan’s station wagon, sipping beer. Stan had just turned off Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood onto a street called Archwood when he suddenly pulled over to the curb and set his beer can on the floor between his feet.
I was slumped down with my knees against the dashboard. Figuring he had spotted a cop, I quickly set my beer on the floor too and sat up.
But it wasn’t a cop that had caught his attention. It was a duplex house a little way down the block. A sign on the lawn in front of the farthest unit said FOR RENT and gave a realtor’s address and telephone number. A U-Haul truck was backed into the driveway, and a man and a woman were just mounting the porch steps.
He was a burly, thick-shouldered man of about forty, wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt that exposed powerful forearms matted with black hair. She was a well built but rather substantial blonde of perhaps thirty-five in slacks and low-heeled shoes. Presumably they were the Stokeleys — a decorative redwood sign with that name printed on it hung just below the porch roof in front of the door. As we watched she preceded him through the open front door.
Then I saw what had attracted Stan’s attention. A console television set stood on the grass at the bottom of the porch steps. Apparently the couple had carried it from the house and set it down instead of loading it onto the truck, then reentered the house for some reason.
“What do you think, Jerry? Stan asked.
I looked at him. “About what?”
“Think we could rip it off before they come out again?”
“Are you nuts?” I inquired. “Suppose they caught our license number?”
“It’s too late anyway,” he said ruefully. “Here they come.”
The man was backing through the front door, carrying one end of a sofa. The woman had the other end. They carried it down the steps and slid it onto the truck, then lifted the television set on after it. Apparently they had decided after they got the TV set outside that the sofa should go on first.
As the man raised and latched the truck tailgate, the woman went back up the steps to close and lock the front door. Through the barren windows we could see there was still some furniture inside.
I said, “They must not be moving a distance. It looks like they plan to make more than one trip.
We watched as the woman came back down the steps and both she and the man climbed into the truck cab, the man behind the wheel. After the truck had driven off, Stan examined the nearer unit of the duplex thoughtfully. The front drapes were open and no one could be seen inside.
“It looks like their neighbors are out,” he commented.
“So?”
Instead of answering he climbed out, walked up the sidewalk to the duplex, and rang the upstairs bell. After waiting a few moments he returned to the car.
“Nobody home, he said. “Do you think there’s an alley behind the place?”
“Why don’t you drive around and see?’ I suggested.
There was an alley, and the backyard of the duplex was surrounded by a six-foot-high redwood fence that the neighbors couldn’t see over.
Stan parked so that the rear of the station wagon was just beyond the gate. He opened the rear end before we went through the gate. I went up the back-porch steps first. I examined the neighbor’s back door, and made a face when I saw it had one of those fancy deadbolt locks that don’t work by spring action but have to be locked with a key.
The other one was a simple spring lock. It was unlikely anyone was inside or the woman wouldn’t have locked the front door but just to be safe I pounded on the door.
When no one answered I tried the knob. The door was locked but spring locks are no problem. It took me about fifteen seconds to push the bolt open by shoving a plastic credit card into the slit between the door and the jamb.
The door led into the kitchen. A quick glance around told us there was nothing of interest there. Off the kitchen was a dining room devoid of furniture. A pair of bedrooms off a central hallway were empty too. The only room still containing furniture was the front room, and it contained only three items — an overstuffed chair, a spinet, and a combination AM-FM radio, tape-and-record player.