Murder Roundabout Read online

  “My wife’d like you to have a look at her wagon,” Heimrich said. “Says it’s talking back to her again.”

  “Points, I wouldn’t wonder,” Purvis said. “Or plugs maybe. Course there’s always the exhaust. Any time she wants to bring it in, Cap’n. How’s the kid?”

  “Michael’s fine,” Heimrich said. “Glad school’s started up again.”

  “Funny thing for a kid to be glad about,” James Purvis told his beer. He was in his sixties; the hand which held the beer was a strong hand, with dirt ground into it—a hand long worked with.

  “Can’t remember I was,” Heimrich said. “By the way, many people around here own Porsches?”

  “Half a dozen, maybe,” Purvis said. “Let’s see—Steve Drake’s got one and Sam Jackson over in the Pass. And Jim Brennan. Bellmore over at Cold Harbor’s been pushing them out since he got the agency.”

  “Anything special about them?”

  Purvis turned toward Heimrich and shook his head and said, “Don’t know as I get you. Rear engine. Fast as hell when they’re tuned up. Special?”

  “Motor make a special kind of sound, say?”

  “Sports car,” Purvis said. “About like most. Not like the big cars. You thinking of Jim Brennan’s job?”

  “Not especially,” Heimrich said. “Something about it?”

  “In the shop now,” Purvis said. “The kid’s working on it. Tune-up. But it needs a lot of work on the exhaust and I’ve got to get the parts from Bellmore, and Bellmore takes forever, on account he wants to service them himself. Too bad about Mrs. Weaver.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Brennan’s Porsche, now. It was what my wife calls talking back to him?”

  “Talking to everybody, want to put it that way,” Purvis said. “Came in with it this morning and you could have heard it down in The Flats. On his way to the train. The reverend picked him up and took him along to the station.” He emptied his glass and put it down on the bar. “Got to get back to it,” he said. “Jennie Bleeker tried to climb a tree in her Caddy.” He turned from the bar. He spoke into the taproom’s dimness and said, “’Morning, Mr. Weaver. Sorry as hell to hear about it.”

  Ralph Weaver was something under six feet, but not much. Behind him, Sergeant Charles Forniss towered. Weaver nodded his head toward Purvis but did not say anything.

  “Got to get back to it,” Purvis said, and this time left the taproom through the door to the parking lot.

  Weaver wore a blue suit and a felt hat. He wore a shirt which, as he walked toward the bar, Heimrich decided was a silk shirt. It had the initials “RW” interwoven on a breast pocket. Weaver’s hair was black and his face was smoothly tanned. He had sharp, dark eyes and he wore a signet ring on his left hand.

  “Hello, Heimrich,” Weaver said. “This where you work?”

  “Sometimes,” Heimrich said. “Actually, I thought you might do with a drink, Mr. Weaver. Helps sometimes.” He looked over Weaver’s head at Forniss, who nodded his. “A bad thing to have to do,” Heimrich said to Weaver.

  “No damned need for it,” Weaver said. “Nobody ever looked like Netty. Think it was somebody else?”

  There was a strident quality in his voice, and he spoke loudly.

  “Think you’ll find the bastard who killed her?” Weaver said and looked at Heimrich through hard eyes. “Or just waiting for him to walk up and buy a beer?”

  Heimrich had for some reason expected suavity. But suavity may well drain out of a man who has just looked down at a body once very beautiful and said, for the record, “Yes. That’s my wife.” And watched the body slid back into a refrigerated compartment, filed there until a pathologist got time to take it apart. “Stinger, bartender,” Weaver said, in the same voice.

  It was a hell of a time of day for a stinger, Heimrich thought and looked at his watch. Not that any time, from his point of view, would not be. A hell of a time, almost, of morning.

  They watched Harold make a stinger.

  “Couple of things I’d like to ask you,” Heimrich said, and gestured toward a table in a distant corner of the taproom.

  “Told the sergeant here it was my wife,” Weaver said. “What more …”

  But then he stopped and, as he reached out to pick up his glass from the bar, his hand shook.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Got me where I live. It’s a hell of a …”

  He stopped again and put the glass back down on the bar and, his hands freed, pressed them against his forehead; held them there for several seconds. They waited. Weaver picked his glass up again and turned and started, saying nothing, toward the table Heimrich had indicated. Heimrich followed him and Forniss said, in an undertone, “Want I should…?” and Heimrich nodded his head. So, at the corner table, Ralph Weaver sat between two tall and solid policemen. He drank from his glass and put it down. His hand did not shake now. He took a silver cigarette case out of his jacket pocket and a cigarette out of the case. Heimrich could not remember when, in recent years, he had seen a silver cigarette case. This one had a monogram on it. Weaver flicked a lighter for his cigarette. The lighter didn’t have a monogram.

  “Sorry I was jumpy at first,” Weaver said. “Afraid I damn near shouted at you.”

  Now he spoke in a lower tone and the voice more nearly matched the outward suavity of the man. It was still not, somehow, right for the man. Even low-pitched, a certain stridency remained in it. One of the voices which carry, Heimrich thought, and that Weaver probably did not know it. Nobody really hears his own voice as the voice is.

  “Seeing her that way,” Weaver said. “It’s—it was a hell of a thing, Captain. To look at her …”

  He stopped speaking and stared at the coal of his cigarette. Heimrich waited a few seconds. Then he said he knew what a shock it had been; that he wished he could, for a time anyway, leave Mr. Weaver alone.

  “Give you,” Heimrich said, “more time to pull yourself together. But—”

  Weaver was shaking his head.

  “Get it over with,” he said. “Help if I can. How, Captain? Do I know anybody’d want to kill Nettie? No. Tell you this much. I’d look for a woman. Men didn’t hate her. Men loved her. All she ever had to do was crook a finger.” He tapped ash from his cigarette on the rim of a tray.

  “Did she? Often?”

  Ralph Weaver looked at Heimrich and raised his black eyebrows.

  “Crook a finger,” Heimrich said.

  “What the hell are you—” Weaver said, and his voice was harsh again. But he did not finish the sentence, and his voice changed back to suavity. “Realize you’ve got to ask all sorts of things, Captain. Way you mean it, no. Oh—hell, she was Annette LeBaron. You know that. She—you know her at all, Captain?”

  “Slightly,” Heimrich said.

  “Then you know what she looked like.” For a moment, then, he pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, as he had when he stood at the bar. He put his elbows on the table. But then he straightened and said, “Men were crazy for her, Captain. Always were. And she knew it and liked it. Sure. Part of what she was. What made her the LeBaron. If you mean more than that—”

  “Now, Mr. Weaver. I have to find out whatever I can. It’s my job.”

  “She saw other men, sure. Had lunch with them. Dinner sometimes. My business takes me away a lot. Mostly to the Coast. I was going there this noon when I heard about—when I heard.” He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes for a moment. Then he went on. “I had to leave her alone a lot and she wasn’t one to be alone. Had to leave her alone too damn much. Did she play around? I don’t think so. A man never knows, but I don’t think so.”

  “Any special men?”

  “Not that I know of. In New York, people in the business. Advertising people. I got her a good many jobs doing TV commercials. And guest spots. Lots of those. She was still Annette LeBaron. She was—happen to see her in Forgive Me Never?”

  Heimrich shook his head.

  “Missed something. Great in that. Even the damn
ed reviewers broke down and—” He shrugged. “Nothing to do with this,” he said. “Nothing surreptitious about any of her meetings with producers and ad men. Told me about them. She’d say, ‘I had lunch with Benny Silverman yesterday. Wants me to—’ Whatever Benny did want. That sort of thing. Money in it, sure. But that wasn’t the big thing. Get her out of this dead hole and—” He stopped abruptly. “Forgot you live here, Captain,” he said. “What she thought of it.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “She made that clear last July, I understand.”

  “That damn picnic,” Weaver said. “Went off on that, sure. A little under the weather, the way women get. And—maybe about half stoned. That wasn’t like her but—hell, she just blew up. We thought we had the house sold and were getting out. She cried about it afterward. Was shook up as all hell.” He put his cigarette out. “Matter of fact,” he said, “it was a mistake our coming here. She wanted it. Thought she wanted it. Saw herself as—I don’t know, exactly. ‘The serenity I’ve never had,’ she said a good many times. And things about just wanting to be a wife and have flowers around her. Sort of a misty dream some people get. Flowers didn’t grow much, as it turned out. She wasn’t a countrywoman, that’s for sure. Never did learn to tell the difference between poison ivy and creeper, and she was damn susceptible to ivy. Way I am.” He paused for a moment. “The real thing was,” he said, “she missed being Annette LeBaron, and all that went with that.”

  “She’d lived here before. When she was married to Stephen Drake.”

  “Captain,” Weaver said, “who knows a damn thing about women?”

  He finished his drink.

  “If you think she had a lover and he killed her, I’m damn sure you’re off base,” he said. “You’ve thought about—well, there are bad actors around everywhere, Captain. Wild guys. Nuts start out to burglarize a house and a beautiful woman shows up and—whammo! You’ve thought of that?”

  “Now, Mr. Weaver. We’ve thought of that. There’s nothing to indicate your house was broken into, but we’ve thought of that. When were you last at the house, Mr. Weaver? See your wife there?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Call it evening. I was flying out to the Coast this noon. Package deal. Found there was some stuff I wanted up here and drove up to get it. Had to get right back to town to go over some things with a script writer. She wasn’t happy about that. But she was fine otherwise.”

  “Say anything about what she planned to do last night?”

  “Oh, something like, ‘Leaving me to open a can of soup. Watch TV.’ Dramatized it a little, but wasn’t sore about it. Said, ‘Oh, I’m used to it.’ And that she’d be damn glad when we moved back to California. I’m pretty much shutting up shop here. Everything’s out there.”

  “Speaking of that,” Heimrich said, “what is your shop, Mr. Weaver? There seem to be several Weaver offices around New York.”

  “Actors’ agent,” Weaver said. “Anyway, mostly that. Handle a few script writers nowadays. And put packages together and—say fingers in a good many pies, Captain. May do a movie on the Coast, if I can get the right people. And the right distribution setup.”

  “You were your wife’s agent?”

  “Way we started out. Quite a while back. Sold her for Forgive Me Never and, like I said, she wowed them. After she’d married this guy Drake, that was. After that broke up. Before she married Jim Brennan. Last few years, as I said, a good many guest spots, commercials. Beauty products, mostly. She was a natural for that sort of thing.”

  “Not Hollywood?”

  “Not what we wanted for her. She—well, she was in her middle thirties, Captain. Beautiful as ever but they get crazy notions in Hollywood. Last offer I had for her was mother of a teen-age daughter. Not her sort of thing. And we didn’t need the money. She held on to a bit—quite a good bit. And I’m not precisely broke.”

  He looked at his watch, as if the last thing he said had reminded him of a need to check the time. The time was almost twelve-thirty.

  “Want anything more?” he said. “Because I haven’t got anything’ll help. And—well, I’ll have to make telephone calls. About arrangements. As to the—as to my wife? I mean …”

  “The pathologist will be finished this afternoon,” Heimrich said. “After that, any time.”

  “The newspapers. They know? The TV networks?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “They know by now, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Then?”

  “We’ll be in touch if we think there’s anything you can help us with,” Heimrich told him, and he and Sergeant Forniss stood up as Weaver stood, and they watched him go out of the taproom into the lobby where there was a telephone booth. They sat down again.

  “Came out of it sort of fast,” Forniss said. “You didn’t press him very hard, M. L.”

  “Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Time enough for that if we find something to press against. How’d he react when he saw her?”

  “Jolted,” Forniss said. “I’d figure that. Anybody would be. She must have been quite a looker, M. L.”

  “She was,” Heimrich said. “Grief?”

  Forniss shrugged heavy shoulders. He said that mind reading wasn’t his department. But then he added, “He didn’t seem all that broken up, did he? Once he got talking.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Rather detached, on the whole. But things hit people differently. Also, he puts up a front. Find anything at the house?”

  “Couple of the boys going over things,” Forniss said. “Ray Crowley’s walking around in tall grass.”

  Heimrich told him why Crowley was walking in tall grass, and about the car tracks in the dust of a farm lane.

  “Weaver’s got a Cadillac,” Forniss said. “Monogram on both doors. Out in the rain some time recently. Wipers been working. They had a joint account at the Metal Exchange Bank. Sizable. Fifty—” He interrupted himself to take a slip of paper from his jacket pocket. “Fifty thousand seven hundred and forty-six dollars and nineteen cents,” he read from the slip. “Sizable for a checking account. Wonder if …” He shrugged his shoulders again.

  “If it’s one of the arrangements he wants to make,” Heimrich said. “Yes, probably. Before they put the flag up.”

  In most states, and New York is one of them, the “flag” goes up on joint accounts when one of the depositors dies. The account is blocked. But banks are not omniscient. If a survivor is alert, he may beat the flag and save annoyance which sometimes is protracted.

  “All right, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Know anybody in Weaver’s line of country? Which seems to be varied.”

  “Happens,” Forniss said, “I know a man works for an advertising agency. TV shows and that sort of thing.”

  Heimrich was not surprised. The chances were always high that Charles Forniss would know somebody almost anywhere.

  “Want I should?” Forniss said, and got “Now, Charlie. Give your friend a ring. Or—go in and buy him a drink. And you might ask Weaver’s bank if he’s been around, at a dead run. Probably won’t tell you, but there’s no harm in asking.”

  Forniss went toward a telephone in the Inn’s lobby. Weaver was in it. Heimrich sipped his drink. A smooth number, Ralph Weaver was. Given to monograms. To silk shirts. Broadway in the sense that Mrs. Drake would mean Broadway. Which didn’t, of course, prove anything. Heimrich carried his only sipped-at drink back to the bar. Harold had several customers at one end and Heimrich went to the other end. After a minute or two he caught Harold’s eye and beckoned with his head.

  “Mrs. Weaver come in much?” Heimrich asked the barman when Harold joined him.

  “Wouldn’t say much, exactly,” Harold said. “Something wrong with the drink, Captain?”

  “Fine drink,” Heimrich said. “Little early for me is all. She did come in?”

  “Once or twice a week, maybe,” Harold said. “Had lunch over at that corner table, usually. The one you and the sergeant and Weaver were sitting at.” There was interest, curiosity, in his voice. “Bad
thing about her,” he added. “She sure was a looker.”

  “Bad thing,” Heimrich said. “Bad for Mr. Weaver. Had to identify her body. She come in alone?”

  “Not the sort who’d need to,” Harold said. “Anyhow, ladies usually use the dining room when they’re alone.”

  “Locals? I mean the men she came in to have lunch with?”

  A bartender in what amounts to a local pub knows everybody who comes often, is aware of strangers.

  “Some of them. Some I didn’t know. Friends of her husband’s from the city, I figured.” He looked across the bar at Heimrich. “Types,” he said. “Know what I mean. Meaning no disrespect to the lady.”

  “Weaver himself come in often?”

  Weaver had not, and especially not in recent months. A while back, he and his wife came in maybe once a week; had a drink in the bar; went across the lobby to the dining room for dinner. Not so much in, say, three-four months.

  “All right, Harold. Who’d she come with? Besides these men you say were types?”

  “Well,” Harold said, “Jim Brennan a few times. And Ollie Drake a couple of times. With Brennan it looked like business, sort of.”

  Heimrich repeated the word, “Business?”

  “Spread papers out on the table sometimes,” Harold said. “Like they were going over them, know what I mean? Long sheets with blue covers. Heard he was her lawyer, didn’t I? He and Steve Drake, anyhow.”

  “That’s right,” Heimrich said. “Sounds as if they were going over contracts, doesn’t it?”

  “Could be.”

  “She and Oliver Drake?”

  “Just have a drink or two and talk. He comes in most days, anyhow. Office right across the street.”

  “Mrs. Weaver drink much?”

  “Not to say much,” Harold said. “Couple of daiquiris, mostly.”

  “Brennan?”

  “I don’t get it, Captain,” Harold said. He suddenly grinned at Heimrich across the bar. “You all at once against drinking?” Then he looked at Heimrich’s glass, which was still half full. “Or is it supposed to have something to do with her getting killed? Don’t see how it could have.”