Paula Benjamin paled. The red-haired man said, “Let’s go see if your other dolls are asleep yet, Cindy.” He scooped up the little girl and carried her from the room.
Mrs. Benjamin said, “My — it isn’t my brother, is it?”
“No,” I replied. “Your husband.”
Her color returned and I got the curious impression that she was relieved. “Oh. What happened?”
Her reaction was hardly what Fred Bruer had led me to expect. She sounded as though she didn’t particularly care what had happened. I saw no point in trying to break it gently, so I let her have it in a lump.
I said, “The jewelry store was held up this morning. Your brother is unharmed, but the bandit shot your husband. He’s dead.”
She blinked, but she didn’t turn pale again. She merely said, “Oh,” then lapsed into silence.
Robert Craig came back into the room alone. The woman looked at him and said, “Andy’s dead.”
A startled expression crossed the redhead’s face, then he actually smiled. “Well, well,” he said. “That solves the Cindy problem.”
Paula Benjamin stared at him. “How can you think of that now?”
“You expect me to burst into tears?” he asked. He looked at me. “Sorry if I seem callous, Sergeant, but Andy Benjamin was hardly a friend of mine. He had me named correspondent in a divorce suit. What did he die of?”
“A holdup man shot him,” I said and glanced at the woman.
Her face had turned fire red. “Did you have to announce that?” she said to Craig. “Sergeant Harris isn’t interested in our personal affairs.”
Craig shrugged. “You and your brother! Never let the neighbors see your dirty linen. Everybody was going to know after it broke in the papers anyway.”
“It won’t break in the papers now!” she snapped at him.
Then her attention was distracted by little Cindy toddling back into the room, carrying two dolls. Her mother swept her up into her arms.
“Oh, honey!” she said, kissing her. “You’re going to get to stay with Mommie forever and ever!”
I thought it was a good time to excuse myself. I told both Craig and Mrs. Benjamin it was nice to have met them, traded a final smile with Cindy, and left.
By now it was noon. I stopped for lunch, then afterward, instead of checking in at headquarters, I went to the courthouse and looked up the divorce case of Benjamin vs Benjamin.
Andrew Benjamin’s complaint was on file, but as yet an answer hadn’t been filed by Paula Benjamin. The disagreement between the two was more than the “little squabble” Fred Bruer had mentioned, and Andrew Benjamin’s reaction had been characteristically vindictive.
The dead man’s affidavit was in the usual legal jargon, but what it boiled down to was that he and a private detective had surprised his wife and Robert Craig together in a motel room and had gotten camera evidence. Divorce was asked on the ground of adultery, with no alimony to be paid the defendant, and with a request for sole custody of little Cindy to be granted the father. Benjamin’s vindictiveness showed in his further request that the mother be barred from even having visitation rights on the ground that she was of unfit moral character to be trusted in her daughter’s presence. As evidence, he alleged previous adulteries with a whole series of unnamed men and charged that Paula was an incurable nymphomaniac.
When I left the courthouse, I sat in my car and brooded for some time. Fred Bruer’s remarkable powers of observation took on a different significance in the light of what I had just learned. Maybe his detailed description of the bandit hadn’t been from observation after all, but merely from imagination.
I drove back to the ten hundred block of Franklin Avenue. The jewelry store was locked and there was a Closed sign on the front door.
I went into the pawnshop. A pale, fat boy of about twenty who looked as though he were suffering from a hangover was waiting on a customer. The elderly Mr. Jacobs glanced out from the back room as I entered, then moved forward to meet me. I waited for him just inside the front door, so that we would be far enough from the other two to avoid being overheard.
I said, “Mr. Jacobs, do you happen to know if the partners next door ever kept a gun around the place?”
He first looked surprised by the question, then his expression became merely thoughtful. “Hmm,” he said after ruminating. “Mr. Benjamin it was. Yes, it was a long time ago, but I’m sure it was Mr. Benjamin, not Fred. Right after they opened for business Mr. Benjamin bought a gun from me. To keep in the store in case of robbery, he said. Yes, it was Mr. Benjamin, I’m sure.”
“Wouldn’t you still have a record?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said in a tone of mild exasperation at himself. “It won’t even be very far back in the gun book. We don’t sell more than a dozen guns a year.”
He went behind the counter and took a ledger from beneath it. I moved over to the other side of the counter as he leafed through it. The fat young man, whom I took to be nephew Herman, was examining a diamond ring through a jeweler’s loupe for the customer.
Max Jacobs kept running his index finger down a column of names on each page, flipping to the next page and repeating the process. Finally the finger came to a halt.
“Here it is,” he said. “September 10, ten years ago. Andrew J. Benjamin, 1726 Eichelberger Street. A 38 caliber Colt revolver, serial number 231840.”
I took out my notebook and copied this information down.
“Why did you want to know?” the old man asked curiously.
I gave my standard vague answer. “Just routine.”
I thanked him and left before he could ask any more questions. The customer was counting bills as I walked out, and nephew Herman was sealing the ring in a small envelope.
Amateur murderers usually don’t know enough to dispose of murder weapons, but just in case, when I got back to headquarters I arranged for a detail to go sift all the trash in the cans in the alley behind the jewelry store. They didn’t find anything.
There was nothing more I could do until I got the report on what caliber bullet had killed Andrew Benjamin. I tabled the case until the next day.
The following morning I found on my desk the photographs Art Ward had taken, a preliminary postmortem report and a memo from the lab that the bullet recovered from the victim’s body was a 38 caliber lead slug and was in good enough shape for comparison purposes if I could turn up the gun from which it was fired. There was also a leather bag with a drawstring and an attached note from the local postmaster explaining that it had turned up in a mailbox two blocks from the jewelry store. The bag contained the original of the deposit slip of which I already had the duplicate, two hundred and thirty-three dollars in checks, and no cash.
I had a conference with the lieutenant, then together we went across the street to the third floor of the Municipal Courts Building and had another conference with the circuit attorney. As a result of this conference, all three of us went to see the judge of the Circuit Court for Criminal Causes. When we left there, I had three search warrants in my pocket.
Back in the squad room I tried to phone the Bruer and Benjamin jewelry store, but got no answer. I tried Fred Bruer’s apartment number and caught him there. He said he didn’t plan to open for business again until after his partner’s funeral.
“I want to take another look at your store,” I told him. “Can you meet me there?”
“Of course,” he said. “Right now?”
“Uh-huh.”
He said he would leave at once. As Police Headquarters was closer to the store than his apartment, I arrived first, though. He kept me waiting about five minutes.
After he had unlocked the door and led me inside, I got right to the point. I said, “I want to see the.38 revolver you keep here.”