Labyrinth (The Nameless Detective) Page 6

  Maybe the answers to one or more of those questions would point up the truth. Or maybe Donleavy and Osterman would get lucky and find a neighbor who had seen the killer leave and could identify him. Talbot and the cabbie and I would have seen him ourselves if we had arrived just a short time earlier; Carding could not have been dead more than a few minutes when I found him.

  Well, in any case Donleavy was a first-rate cop and it was a good bet that he would get to the bottom of things sooner or later. Which was enough for me—but what about Laura Nichols? How was she taking it? Assuming she knew by now: I had neglected to ask Donleavy, in the wake of his revelations, if he had got in touch with her.

  I stood and returned to the bedroom and redialed the Nichols number. This time, on the fourth ring, there was an answering click; Karen Nichols’ voice said a moment later, “Yes? Hello?”

  “Is your mother there, Karen?” I asked when I had identified myself.

  “No. She left hours ago.”

  “Do you know what happened today?”

  “Yes. Some friends and I were at Civic Center all afternoon; I just found out a few minutes ago. Mother left me a note to call her at the hospital. God, it’s just terrible. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Your uncle didn’t kill Victor Carding,” I said.

  “I know that. He couldn’t hurt anyone. But the police think he did, in spite of what mother says you told them. They have him under arrest at the hospital.”

  “They’ll change their minds when they’ve had a chance to investigate further.”

  “Are you really sure of that?”

  “Pretty sure. Did your mother say when she’ll be home? I’d like to talk to her.”

  “No, she didn’t. But she wants to talk to you, too. She said to give you a message if you called: You’re to see her tomorrow morning as early as possible.”

  “At your home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she tell you why, specifically?”

  “Mother never tells me why she does anything,” Karen said, and there was undisguised bitterness in her voice. “Never. She just goes ahead and does it.”

  I let a couple of seconds pass before I said, “I’ll come by around nine, then.”

  “All right.”

  “And try not to worry. Your uncle’s receiving the medical care he needs; things’ll work out okay in the long run.”

  “Will they? I hope you’re right.”

  We said goodbye and I put the receiver back into its cradle. I hoped I was right too—and I also hoped that Mrs. Nichols did not want to see me tomorrow morning so she could tell me face to face what a lousy detective she thought I was. She was not the most understanding and compassionate of women; the way she treated and alienated her daughter was proof of that. So she was probably capable of blaming me for not keeping her brother—and the family name—out of this mess; and of stopping payment on the retainer check she’d given me. Which would make a difficult situation even more difficult.

  But then, maybe she had something else on her mind. Unpredictable was another adjective you could use to describe her.

  In the living room I sat down again with the issue of Popular Detective and tried to read. No good; I was too restless now to concentrate on the exploits of pulp detectives. I put the magazine aside and wondered when Eberhardt was going to show up.

  Two seconds later, in the crazy coincidental way things happen sometimes, the downstairs door buzzer went off. I crossed to the speaker unit mounted beside the door, pushed the Talk button, and asked who it was. Sure enough, Eberhardt’s voice said, “It’s me, hot shot. Buzz me in.”

  I buzzed him in. And then opened the door and waited for him to come clomping up the stairs and along the hall. When he reached me he nodded and grunted something unintelligible. Moved past me to stand looking around at my sloppy housekeeping, his head wagging in a mildy disgusted way, as I shut the door.

  “You ever clean up this pigsty?”

  “Only when I’m entertaining a lady.”

  “Not getting much, then, are you?”

  “Not getting much,” I agreed. “Sit down. You want some coffee? A beer?”

  “Make it a beer.”

  I went to the kitchen, got a couple of bottles of Schlitz out of the refrigerator. When I came back Eberhardt had cleared some of the crap off the sofa and was sitting with his legs splayed out in front of him. He looked tired, irritable, and even more sour-faced than usual.

  He said as I handed him a beer, “Seems you had a pretty busy day for yourself.”

  “You heard about what happened in Brisbane?”

  “I heard about it, all right. Makes two murders in two days you’re mixed up in.”

  “Eb, I’m not mixed up in the Christine Webster shooting.”

  “No, huh?” he said mildly.

  “No.” I sat down. “Any leads yet on who killed her?”

  “Nothing definite. We haven’t been able to trace her movements past seven P.M. on Tuesday. Her roommate, Lainey Madden, had a date that night; and just before she left at seven, Christine told her she was planning to spend a quiet evening at home.”

  “How about a lead on why she had my card in her purse?”

  “That we’ve got,” Eberhardt said.

  “You do? What is it?”

  “She’d been getting anonymous letters and telephone calls,” he said. “The threatening kind. Lainey Madden says she was considering going to a private detective about them.”

  “Were they death threats?”

  “Not in so many words. Veiled stuff.”

  “How long had she been getting them?”

  “About two weeks.”

  “She have any idea who was responsible? Or why?”

  “Not according to the Madden girl. Neither of them could imagine why anyone would have it in for Christine.”

  “Could it be a sex thing?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.” Eberhardt took some of his beer. “Christine kept the letters and the roommate turned them over to us; nothing sexual or obscene in any of them. Or in any of the calls either, apparently. There is a sex angle, though. Which you already know about if you read today’s papers.”

  “I didn’t read them; I guess I should have. What is it?”

  “She was pregnant,” he said.

  “Ah—Jesus.”

  “Yeah. Four months along.”

  “You get a line on the father?”

  “Damned good line. She was engaged to a kid she met at S.F. State last semester. Only man in her life the past six months, Lainey Madden says.”

  “What did the kid have to say when you talked to him?”

  “We didn’t talk to him. He’s disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Missing since last Sunday night. From up at Bodega Bay.”

  Bodega Bay was on the coast about sixty-five miles north of San Francisco. I asked, “What was he doing up there?”

  “Working in the commercial fishing business,” Eberhardt said. “He decided to skip school this semester, the way we heard it, because he was running low on money. Nobody’s seen or heard from him since around nine P.M. on Sunday.”

  “Well, I guess that makes him your number one suspect.”

  “Sure. But it’s not as simple as it might look. Not by a damn sight, it isn’t.”

  “You mean because of the threats? Maybe the kid made them himself.”

  “Maybe. Thing is, there’re complications now—a whole new can of worms.”

  “What can of worms?”

  “One you seem to be smack in the middle of.”

  “Me?”

  “You. And the missing kid.”

  “Eb, what the hell are you getting at?”

  “The kid’s name is Jerry Carding,” Eberhardt said sourly. “He’s Victor Carding’s son.”

  EIGHT

  I sat there and gawked at him. All I could think of to say was, “Jesus Christ.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

&
nbsp; “When did you find this out?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Didn’t mean much then, where you’re concerned; I didn’t know you were working on a case that involved Victor Carding. Logan and Klein went to Brisbane to talk to Carding last night. That’s how we learned the kid is missing; Carding’s been trying to locate him ever since the accident, to tell him about his mother’s death. He didn’t have any idea where Jerry might have disappeared to, he said. Told the inspectors his son was in love with Christine, couldn’t possibly have killed her—the usual stuff you expect to hear from a father. And that was it, until we heard about his murder late this afternoon and how you were involved in that too.”

  I stood up and took a couple of turns around the room; I was still trying to get my thoughts sorted out. Eberhardt drank beer and watched me expressionlessly.

  After a time he said, “I talked to your friend Donleavy before I came over here; he filled me in. He also told me the nitrate test on Carding’s hands proved negative, and that there weren’t any powder marks on his clothing. So it couldn’t have been suicide the way you thought.”

  “I know. He called me with the same news.”

  “How sure are you this Martin Talbot is innocent?”

  “Positive. I’d swear to it in court.”

  “It’d make things simpler if you were wrong.”

  “I suppose so.” I lowered myself into the chair again. “First Christine Webster, then Victor Carding. And Jerry Carding is missing. You think he could have been a target too?”

  “You mean murdered like the others? Some nut with a grudge wasting not only what’s left of the Carding family but also the kid’s girlfriend? Come on.”

  “Hell, crazier things have happened,” I said. “It could be a psycho deal.”

  “I doubt it. Not that kind.”

  “So maybe not. But there’s another kind I can think of.”

  “I’ll bet I know what it is. The kid himself is a psycho; he went berserk and murdered both his girl and his old man. Right?”

  “Right. That would pretty much explain everything, including his disappearance.”

  “Sure it would,” Eberhardt said. “It’s the best theory we’ve got so far. But it’s also got too many holes and loose ends to suit me.”

  “Such as?”

  “The kid’s character profile, for one thing. Friendly, serious-minded, well-adjusted; wants to be a journalist. No quirks, no apparent hangups. Pacifist on political and ideological issues. Everybody Logan and Klein talked to said he’s got strong feelings against violence of any kind.”

  “People aren’t always what they seem to be, Eb. Things can happen inside them—pressures, compulsions, psychological shifts.”

  “You think I don’t know that? But there are usually indications, small attitude changes of one kind or another. And according to the people who know him, Jerry Carding’s the same kid he always was.

  “Then why did he vanish all of a sudden?”

  “Yeah—why? I sent a man up to Bodega Bay today, but he hasn’t been able to dig up any answers so far.” Eberhardt got out a pipe and a pouch of tobacco, began loading one from the other. “Anyhow,” he said then, “another thing is the time element. The kid dropped out of sight on Sunday, Christine was killed on Tuesday, and Victor Carding was murdered today. If somebody goes berserk, it doesn’t take him two days to commit his first homicide and two more days to commit his second.”

  He was right, of course. But for the sake of argument I said, “So maybe he didn’t go berserk. Maybe he just went insane—the cunning kind of psychosis. He plans his murders, carries them out at two-day intervals.”

  “Nuts,” Eberhardt said. “And that’s not a pun. Cunning lunatics don’t go after friends and members of their own families; they pick random victims. They also operate in a set pattern, the same kind of MO in each case. There’s no pattern here. Take the weapons, for instance.”

  “Weapons? Plural?”

  “Plural. Webster and Carding weren’t shot with the same gun. The girl was killed with a .32 caliber weapon—and there was no sign of it near her body. Carding was killed with the .38 you found in Talbot’s hand. Like I said: no pattern, but plenty of holes and loose ends.”

  “You figure two different murderers, then?”

  “Not necessarily. But it looks that way.”

  I did a little brooding. “Has Donleavy been able to trace the .38?”

  “No. It doesn’t seem to be registered anywhere. Probably an outlaw weapon.”

  “But it could have belonged to Victor Carding.”

  “It could have.”

  “And so could the missing .32.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Was Carding upset about Christine’s death?”

  “Klein said he was, yeah.”

  “What did he have to say about his son’s relationship with her?”

  “Not much. Why?”

  “Did he seem to approve of it?”

  “Yes. What are you leading up to?”

  “A possible answer, maybe.”

  “Which is?”

  “Suppose Carding hated Christine for some reason,” I said. “Suppose he was responsible for those threatening calls and letters. And suppose he was the one who killed her—lured her out to Lake Merced on some sort of pretext; she knew him well enough to have gone there to meet him after dark. Then suppose Jerry found out about it, confronted his father today, lost his head and grabbed up the .38 and shot him. Revenge motive.”

  Eberhardt lit his pipe. “I don’t like it much,” he said between draws.

  Neither did I, but I said, “It is possible.”

  “Possible, but damned unlikely. Donleavy and the Brisbane police searched the Carding property; they’d have found the .32 if it was there.”

  “Carding could have got rid of it after shooting the girl.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that point. But what’s the motive? Why would a man hate his son’s girlfriend enough to want her dead?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was the unbalanced one, not Jerry. Maybe his wife dying sent him around the bend.”

  “He’d still need a motive, crazy or not.”

  “Well, what kind of guy was he? What were his attitudes, prejudices, things like that?”

  “We’re still checking and so is Donleavy. But he seems to’ve been a pretty average sort. Worked as a carpenter and construction laborer, built the Brisbane house himself fifteen years ago, got along well with his neighbors. Devoted to his wife and had a good relationship with Jerry, who’s an only child; Klein says he was grieving deeply over the wife’s death and worried about the kid’s disappearance. His only vice appears to’ve been booze. He’d been arrested once for drunk driving and once for public drunkenness, and he was about half-smashed last night—a borderline alcoholic.” Eberhardt shrugged and wreathed himself in a cloud of pipe smoke. “There’s nothing in any of that to support your theory.”

  “No,” I said.

  “It just won’t wash. It doesn’t explain why Jerry disappeared from Bodega Bay, or why he wouldn’t have surfaced between Sunday and today. And how could he have known his old man was the one who killed Christine? Clairvoyance?”

  “Okay, Eb, it was just an idea.”

  “You got any others you want to hash out?”

  “No. I don’t suppose the neighbors noticed anything today, before Talbot and I showed up?”

  “Uh-uh. Donleavy and the Brisbane cops drew a blank.”

  I finished my beer, thought about getting another one, and decided against it; my stomach already felt bloated and gaseous. For a time I watched Eberhardt pollute the room with more acrid pipe smoke. It had a heavy smell and it made my nostrils itch. Give me cigarette smoke any day, I thought—good old cigarette smoke. Finally I stood and went over and opened one of the bay windows a little, to let in some fresh cold air.

  “Still bothers you, huh?” Eberhardt said when I came back.

  “What?”

  “No
t being able to smoke yourself.”

  “Sometimes. Not too much anymore.”

  “You’re a hell of a lot better off. I wish I could quit.”

  “You could if you had something growing on a lung.”

  He made a face. “Yeah,” he said.

  I stifled a belch and sat down again. “You think it’s possible that the two murders are unrelated?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “Hell no. Jerry Carding’s girlfriend and father both get shot to death within two days of each other, and the kid himself drops out of sight; there’s got to be a connection somewhere.” He paused and tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. “There’s already one connection we know about,” he said.

  “Meaning me.”

  “Right. Your business card is in the girl’s purse; you’re working for the sister of the guy who accidentally killed Carding’s wife; and you find Carding’s body.”

  “That is coincidence, Eb. At least as far as I know.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. First you heard of Victor Carding and the Talbot/Nichols clan was yesterday morning?”

  I nodded. “After I left you at Lake Merced.”

  “Any special reason why the Nichols woman picked you out of all the other private eyes in the book?”

  “She didn’t tell me if there was.”

  “What did she have to say about Carding?”

  “Just that he’d threatened her brother’s life after the accident, and tried to attack him, and she was afraid he might come after Talbot again.”

  “She didn’t indicate she knew Carding personally?”

  “No. She called him a ‘common laborer,’ but that doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “Did she mention Jerry Carding at all?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that corroborates what she told Klein and Logan tonight. They talked to her at the hospital where Talbot’s being held. She says she never laid eyes on either of the Cardings or heard of them before the accident. Talbot claimed the same thing a little while later.”