Severed Key Read online

  Verbalizing the contradictions brought a response from Kelly.

  “Tracy probably went up the way we came down,” she said. “She often used the back stairs to come to my place, especially if she wasn’t dressed for the elevator.”

  “But why go to Keith’s apartment at all? He was downtown—”

  “She mightn’t have known that. Jack’s a night person. He sometimes slept until ten or so. Besides, if the zombies were walking—”

  “The what?”

  “Zombies. You know—bad dreams we get with our eyes open. If Tracy was doing all that much drinking in the morning, she must have had zombies.”

  “Then why didn’t she stop at your door instead of going on up to Keith’s?”

  “Are you kidding? Do I have strong, manly shoulders to cry on? Honestly, Mr Simon Drake, for a real smart lawyer you can ask awfully stupid questions.”

  Simon walked back to the bathroom door and stood staring down at the false eyelash embedded in spilled cold cream on the floor. “I suppose it takes a steady hand to put those things in place,” he reflected.

  “What things?” Kelly asked.

  “False eyelashes. The hair from one—the one on the floor, probably—was found under Tracy’s fingernail. Did she always wear them?”

  “Whenever she went anywhere.”

  “Even up the back stairs.”

  “I suppose so. Why?”

  “Just asking.” He touched the robe on the back of the door. “She didn’t even take time for this,” he added. “Those zombies must come on fast.”

  Kelly watched him with careful eyes. “You don’t think Jack Keith killed her, do you?” she asked.

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. People do kill people, and sometimes it’s kind of extemporaneous—like an explosion.”

  Simon nodded gravely. “And sometimes it’s kind of premeditated—like a frame-up,” he said.

  It might have been his legal training—that basic indoctrination that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty—or it might have been something as unreliable as an emotional tie to a trusted friend; but when Simon left Tracy Davis’s apartment he was no more convinced of Keith’s guilt in her death than when he had first heard the shocking news from Lieutenant Howard. There were things that Lieutenant Howard didn’t know. He didn’t know about the letter Jack Keith had received from Stockholm, for one thing, and he didn’t know about Jack’s postscript to his telephone call to Simon at the Century Plaza. Also, if Simon could pull it off, he wasn’t going to know about the visit to Tracy’s apartment. Pledging Kelly to secrecy, he followed her out of the back door.

  “You go back upstairs and see who that man is sleeping on your divan,” he said. “You may get another party started.”

  Simon took the stairs down one floor and then switched to the automatic elevator. He punched the GARAGE button and let the silent cubicle slide him down to the huge underground parking area that serviced tenants of the building. At mid-morning the garage was almost empty. He had no difficulty locating the slot bearing Keith’s name on a neat wall-hung sign. It was close to the exit and unoccupied. The sight of it brought an uneasy sense of void. He hadn’t expected to find Keith’s car (the police would have found it long ago if it had been left at home) but he had hoped to find an attendant who might remember the last time the big bronze Cadillac had been in the garage. There was no attendant. The area was protected by automatic gates that could be operated only by tenants. Simon took the elevator back up to the lobby and went out into the street.

  The Jaguar was parked halfway down the block, and the plain-clothesmen seated in a black and white which was parked in the loading zone in front of the building didn’t so much as raise his eyes when Simon passed by. But just to make sure he wasn’t followed, Simon drove a devious route through the maze of hillside streets before cutting back to the boulevard. He stopped at the nearest news-stand and bought the morning papers. Parked at the kerb, he skimmed through the front pages. There was no report of the discovery of Tracy Davis’s body, and, considering the bizarre nature of her death, it was the kind of story that would delight any editor on a dull day. The police, for whatever reasons of their own, had kept the story out of the early editions, and that made Keith’s absence all the more ominous. If he was in hiding, it meant that he knew about the murder. He could know that because he had picked up the police call on the short-wave portable radio he carried in his car, or it could mean that he had returned to the apartment at some time during those five or more hours that had elapsed between Tracy Davis’s death and the discovery of her body. Or it could mean that he knew who had killed her—or that he had killed her himself. None of the possibilities were encouraging.

  The waiting game was a sorry sport, and Simon had no liking for it. He started his own search for Keith. It began by trying to get inside the detective’s mind. He had been busy before making that phone call to the Century Plaza. He had learned things that didn’t come from a coroner’s report on the death of Arne Lundberg. Simon decided to begin his search from the place where Keith had started his investigation. He drove back to the Century Plaza again and left his car with the doorman. Passing through the lobby, he looked casually for Sandovar without breaking his pace to the manager’s office. Sandovar was nowhere in sight, but an introduction and a brief request did bring a response from the man in charge. The room reserved for Sigrid Thorsen was still reserved. It had been taken for a week and paid in advance. By whom? The manager smiled.

  “Are you from the police, Mr Drake?” he asked.

  “I’m an attorney,” Simon said. “Miss Thorsen is dead. There’s the matter of a small estate—”

  “I see. I asked because this is the second time I’ve given this information. Miss Thorsen’s reservation was booked by the Mercury Travel Agency in New York City.”

  “And her plane reservation?”

  “The same source, I would imagine. That really doesn’t concern us here.”

  “I see. Now, let’s see if my ESP is working. The other time you gave the same information—was it to a red-haired private detective named Keith?”

  The manager laughed, nodding. “A friend?”

  “Sometimes. It depends on who he’s working for. He beat me to the information this time. When was he here—yesterday?”

  “The day before yesterday—about this time.”

  “Of course,” Simon reflected. “We had dinner that night. He told me then about the reservation. He just didn’t tell where it originated.” The manager was a busy man, and Simon was preparing to leave the office when he remembered Sandovar. “Oh, I think you have as a guest a man I met in Las Vegas last week—a Mr Sands. He must have checked in on Friday. Could I have his room number, please?”

  Now the manager laughed. “You really do have ESP, Mr Drake.”

  “Keith made the same inquiry?”

  “The same. Mr Sands has a suite—you can get the number at the desk. And you might find this interesting, because Mr Keith did—his reservation was also made in New York by the Mercury Travel Agency.”

  Simon thanked the manager and stopped at the registration desk on his way out. He got the number of Sands’s suite but declined to have a call put through to the occupant. He had too much on his mind now to take on the alleged Sandovar so soon. In a quick flashback his mind focused on what he had glimpsed through the open door leading to Keith’s bedroom just twenty-four hours earlier—the black telephone dropped carelessly on the bed. The time differential would have made it possible for Keith to telephone his New York contacts and learn whatever he might have learned about those reservations before he wrote a note for his sleeping guest and slipped off to the coroner’s office. Even without seeing the murder room, Simon could guess the telephone was no longer on the bed when Lieutenant Howard’s men found the Davis girl’s body. She had been strangled with the belt from one of Keith’s robes. The telephone would have been in the way.

  He located a nook in the l
obby that was secluded enough to house a battery of public telephones and rang up The Mansion at Marina Beach. Chester answered the call.

  “Marina Heights Lonely Hearts Club,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Simon asked. “Is Hannah giving you a bad time?”

  “Not me. It’s that poor honky with the co-educational plumbing. Hannah’s been perched on the second landing balcony with her binoculars all morning. She won’t even come down for lunch.”

  “Man and Hannah Lee does not live by bread alone,” Simon said. “Now, listen. This is important. I’ve got a file on Jack Keith in my study—income tax records. Look it up, get the number of his answering service and ring me back. Got a pencil?”

  “Will the kitchen reminder slate do?”

  “Anything so you don’t forget this number.” Simon read off the number on the telephone, waited for Chester’s affirmation and hung up. He had time for one and a half cigarettes before the telephone rang. Pen in hand, he jotted the number Chester delivered on the inside of a match folder.

  “I take it you haven’t located the red-head,” Chester said.

  “You’re right. Nothing from that direction?”

  “Not a jangle. You don’t think he really strangled that chick, do you?”

  “Not unless he had a better reason than anything I can imagine. Stick close to the phone just in case. And, Chester, if Hannah stays up on that landing too long send up a pitcher of ice water.”

  The answering service was operated by a lady who sounded like a recorded message. Her file on Keith showed that he had switched his calls to her office prior to going to Kelly’s party and checked in at six-thirty a.m. the following morning. During that time he had received one call—from New York City. By using all the charm and legal persuasion in his repertoire, Simon was able to con the lady into believing that Keith’s life, not to mention her monthly fee, depended on tracing the source of that call. Minutes later, he was talking to a certain Aron De Witt of the De Witt Investigation Service.

  “My name is Simon Drake,” he said. “I’m a lawyer.”

  A jaded voice responded, “I’ve heard of you, Drake.”

  “I am Jack Keith’s lawyer—and his friend. Keith is missing. Have you talked to him since yesterday morning?”

  There was a slight pause. The reply sounded a shade less jaded.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Keith is being sought by the Los Angeles police—Homicide division.”

  “Homicide?”

  Simon smiled at the mouthpiece. The voice inflection was improving. “Frankly, I’m worried,” Simon added. “Keith hasn’t contacted me—the most logical thing to do in this kind of trouble. I’m going to ask you to stretch your ethical code a little and tell me what you and Keith discussed yesterday morning. I suspect it was something called the Mercury Travel Agency.”

  There was no answer.

  “Assuming that silence means assent,” Simon continued, “I’ll try to stimulate your vocal chords with a little name-dropping. What about Sigrid Thorsen for a starter? Johnny Sands? Arne Lundberg?”

  “All right, I’ll buy your story,” De Witt answered. “Three out of four isn’t bad.”

  “Who is the fourth?”

  “The man who operates—among several dozen other ventures—the Mercury Travel Agency: Angelo Cerva. Heard of him?”

  It must be getting stuffy in the telephone niche. Simon began to perspire. “Better than that—I’ve seen him.”

  “That’s what Keith said. Cerva’s changed his base of operations.”

  “And three people are dead,” Simon mused.

  “The Thorsen girl and Lundberg. Who’s the third?”

  “A local butterfly named Tracy Davis.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “I don’t think anybody had until the police found her body in Keith’s bed. Now suppose you tell me everything you told Keith yesterday morning and maybe I’ll be able to fit Tracy into the picture.”

  De Witt’s story was brief. Keith had rung him up the first time immediately after learning that Sigrid Thorsen and Sands travelled with the same agency. He wanted details on their respective bookings and background material on the agency itself. Sands’s flight had been booked originally on the plane taken by the Thorsen girl. Her own booking was a week later. Then Sands cancelled and Sigrid took his cancellation. Sands took an earlier flight to Las Vegas.”

  “Was there a relationship between Sigrid and Sands?” Simon asked.

  “It looks that way. He set up the screen test that got her her first television commercial. I wouldn’t have learned about that if I didn’t have a dirty mind.”

  “No confessionals, please. Where does Cerva fit in the triangle?”

  “Nowhere—except that he banks the agency profits. He’s too careful to leave tracks.”

  “But not too careful to be seen with Sands at the Los Angeles airport. Did Keith mention two men named Franklin and Pridoux?”

  “Negative,” De Witt said.

  “That’s odd—no, it isn’t. You’re in New York. They’re from D.C. He would have used another contact.”

  “Now I think you owe me some answers.”

  “Later. I just told you—three people are dead who were alive before Cerva came west. I don’t want the body count to go up to four.” Simon started to hang up the receiver when a fragment of his last conversation with Keith surfaced from memory. “Wait a minute, De Witt,” he said. “The last time I talked with Keith he suggested that he knew who had written that retainer letter from Sweden. Did he get the information from you?”

  “Retainer?” De Witt echoed. “Oh, sure. The letter from the father who turned out to be dead. No, he’d just traced the letter the night before we talked. He must have worked out that angle himself. The only thing he did say, and we weren’t talking about the letter, was something about a Costello angle. No, this is what he said, exactly: ‘Maybe they pulled a Costello twist.’”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you examine his files. Maybe he’s worked on another case that clued him in on the letter business.”

  “I wish I could,” Simon answered, “but the law has his place sealed off like a contagion ward. I’ll just have to find him.”

  “I hope you do before he ends up wearing cement sneakers.”

  “Thanks,” Simon responded dryly. “I need all the bright encouragement I can get.”

  Simon left the telephone and walked to the front entrance. He gave the doorman a claim ticket and waited for his car. A taxi pulled up to the kerb and deposited a pair of so obviously newly-weds that the rice still seemed to be clinging to their hair. They reminded him of Wanda and he wondered if the Las Vegas police had stopped bothering her about Jack Keith’s disappearance, and then he pondered De Witt’s gloomy commentary and tried to picture the impending wedding without a best man. The picture wouldn’t take. Keith was too resourceful to get boxed in so easily, especially if the box was oblong with six brass handles.

  The doorman returned, finally, muttering over the generation gap. He had been ringing the garage for five minutes without receiving a response from a newly-hired attendant. Simon decided to get the Jaguar himself. He retraced his steps across the lobby and took the elevator down to the garage. He could find no sign of the attendant, but he knew the car would be near the exit ramp since he wasn’t an overnight guest. He found it quickly enough. The keys were in the ignition. He opened the door and started to get in, but, as the door swung outwards, he glimpsed a reflection of someone in the rear-view mirror. Thinking it was the delinquent employee, he turned just as a large man, his face lost in shadow, raised his right arm and brought down a blackjack that grazed Simon’s left eye before smashing into the chrome frame of the mirror.

  The brief warning given by the reflection was enough. Simon rolled backwards as he fell and scrambled to shelter behind a convenient Cadillac. An arresting shout echoed through the vault-like garage. Peeri
ng between the wheels of the Cadillac, Simon could see his attacker hesitate momentarily and then turn and run towards the daylight at the end of the exit ramp. He was a huge man who loped with the easy grace of an athlete. His hair looked white until he reached the sunlight. It was blond—incredibly thick and blond. Using the side of the Cadillac for leverage, Simon pulled himself to his feet as the shouting attendant arrived on the scene.

  “What’s going on here?” the boy cried. “Hey, you’re hurt! Your eye’s all over blood!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  AT ABOUT THE same time Simon started his day’s work at the Los Angeles coroner’s office, the day was beginning in a different way for four young people fifteen miles south of Tijuana.

  The sea was calm. Waves lapped lazily at the sands of Rosarito Beach as if stirring themselves awake after a peaceful night’s sleep, and the sun, rising in a cloudless sky, shrank to a small patch of shade behind the van. It was the sun in his face that awakened Travis. He opened his eyes and squinted at the sky. It was warm. He threw back the folds of the army blanket that had covered him and stretched and wriggled in the sand. Then he sat up and sniffed the air. Coffee. He looked around for his boots. Finding them half buried under the battered guitar case he had used for a pillow, he emptied sand out of each one and then drew them on with loving care. They were the finest boots he had ever owned. He had bought them with the biggest half of his first two weeks’ pay cheque after his return from Vietnam. When they were on he stood up and breathed deeply of the sea air, counting audibly—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Then he hitched up his trousers and began to sing in a loud voice: “Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part—”

  The smell of coffee was coming from the far side of the van. Travis took the guitar out of the case and walked around the back of the van slapping the back of the guitar in passing. “Rise and shine, lovebirds!” he shouted. “The honeymoon is over!” On the far side of the van he found the girl, Nita, still dressed in the bright pink blouse and skirt she had worn to the wedding, bending over the beach fire tending the coffee pot and a skillet in which were frying two yellow-faced eggs. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.