Maybe some skirt was making things hot for him and he had to get out. Maybe he was afraid the Kingmans were going to fire him, or somebody was threatening to tell them the tale on him, and he'd be out anyway-and he figured he might as well take a little something along. Maybe it was just impulse. People aren't always reasonable, in fact I'd say very seldom.'
'I know, I know,' said Mendoza. 'But look at a couple of other things to add up. Why a note to tell Mrs. Bragg he was leaving? All he had to do was go six steps from his own front door and tell her in person. She was home that Friday night, we know. He didn't leave in that much of a hurry, not when he took time to pack up all his personal belongings. Why in hell should he thumbtack that note to his front door instead of ringing her doorbell? And if he was in such a hurry, why did he take time out from his packing to do a little desultory gardening on that anemic-looking Tree of Heaven out there? She says she had her nice new trowel about noon that day, she knows, because she used it to pry open a can of paint.'
'A trowel,' said Hackett in exasperation. 'A trowel, for God's sake.'
'All right, all right, it won't take long to look!” Mendoza turned and went out to the kitchen. 'I couldn't help remembering it, we get in the habit of noticing things automatically, that's all. Damn it, look-the man had lived here for nearly three years, and if he didn't cook his own meals he made coffee in the morning anyway, he used this table for something sometimes.' He laid a hand on it; it was steady, but when he moved it to any other angle it rocked at a touch. “How does a table get shoved around out of its usual place? In the process of cleaning the floor, something like that. I doubt if Twelvetrees was that good a housewife. A bachelor living alone, mostly if he doesn't hire it done it doesn't get done-what the hell? But the table was in the wrong place on Wednesday morning-before you got here, Woods-and Mrs. Bragg said she hadn't got round to cleaning here yet. And that trowel was over there by the kitchen door. Why?' He shoved the table clear away from the trap door in the iioor at this end of the kitchen. It was about two feet by two and a half, the trap, and covered with linoleum like the rest of the floor; only a little dark line round it, and the small flat hinges, betrayed its presence. One of the makeshift arrangements to be found in such jerry-built new rental units, in a climate where jerry-building wasn't always detectable at once. Mendoza reached down and pulled up the trap by its dime-store bolt, which slid back and forth easily. 'Who's going down?'
'Not you, obviously,' said Hackett, 'in that suit. I'll go.'
'You've been gaining weight, I don't think you could make it. All right, it's my idea, I'll do the dirty work.' Mendoza sat down and slid his legs through the opening.
'That's a lie, a hundred and ninety on the nose ever since I left college. Be careful, for God's sake, don't go breaking a leg-hell of a place to haul you out of.'
'Hell of a place to get anything into,' added Woods to that, gloomily.
'He gets these brainstorms,' said Hackett, squatting beside the trap resignedly. 'About once in a hundred times he's right, just by the law of averages, you know, and that convinces him all over again to follow his hunches. Well?' he bellowed down the hole, where Mendoza had now vanished.
' No me empuje -don't push me! I've just got here.' Mendoza's voice was muffled. 'I need a flashlight, hand one down… Valgame Dios y un millen demonios! ' That came out as he straightened too abruptly and hit his head on the floor joists. Like most California houses, this sat only a little above a shallow foundation; the space undemeath the floor was scarcely four feet high.
Hackett laughed unfeelingly. 'He wants a flashlight-why didn't he think of that before? You got a flashlight, Woods?'
'I seldom carry one in the daytime,' said Woods.
“That's funny, neither do I. Use your lighter!' he advised Mendoza heartlessly.
There followed a period of silence but for the muffled sounds of Mendoza moving around cautiously down there; then another curse and a longer silence. Suddenly Mendoza straightened up through the trap and demanded an implement of some kind. 'Failing the trowel, a soup ladle or something-look in the drawers. The place is furnished, there ought to be tablespoons, a cake server-'
Hackett rummaged and offered him a tablespoon, a hand can opener, and a long wooden fork. 'Nada mds? A big help you are,' and Mendoza vanished again with the spoon and fork.
'Does it come on him often?' asked Woods sympathetically, offering Hackett a cigarette.
'Thanks. Five days out of seven he's as sensible as you please. I've thought tranquilizers might help, but on the other hand, just once in a while he does hit pay dirt. I got it figured that it's because essentially he's a gambler-he's in the wrong line, he ought to have been a cardsharp. He calls himself an agnostic, but that's a lie- he's superstitious as hell about his hunches, whether he'd admit it or not.'
'Well, we all have foibles,' said Woods. 'I knew a fellow once who collected paper bags, had a closet full of them. Card player, is he? I kind of fancy myself at bridge, does he go in for it?'
'I think that's a little genteel for Luis, he likes poker. But he won't play for the kind of stakes you and I could stand.'
Mendoza's upper half appeared through the trap; he rested an elbow on the ledge and laid the fork and spoon tidily on the floor. His shoulders had collected a good deal of dust and his tie was crooked, but he looked pleased with himself.
'If you've finished slandering my character, and the phone's still working, chico, you can go and call the rest of the boys.'
'Hell and damnation,' said Hackett incredulously. 'You don't mean he is down there?'
'Didn't you hear me fall over the suitcases? Give me a hand.' Mendoza hauled himself out of the hole up into the kitchen, and began to brush down his clothes fastidiously. 'You can stop looking for your embezzler, Woods, and hand over what you've got on him to us.'
'Holy angels in heaven,' said Woods mildly. 'No wonder I couldn't find him. How, when, and where exactly, Lieutenant?'
'Not being a doctor and having only the lighter, I'll pass that one. He's not very deep, only six inches or so on top of him, and I just dug away enough to be sure. The hell of a job it must have been to get him there-and of course I'm premature in saying it is Mr. Twelvetrees, but it's somebody, and in male clothing, I think. And, at a guess, he's been there just about the time Mr. Twelvetrees has been missing. About four feet from the trap, say under the door to the living room. And three suitcases alongside him, not buried.'
'I will be damned,' said Hackett. 'This one you really got by radar, boy. And I suppose from now on you'll quote it every time anybody laughs at your hunches.' He looked at the gaping black hole of the trap- 'And how the boys are goin' to love that job.' He went to call headquarters for a homicide detail.
FOUR
It was six o'clock before they were finished at the apartment. Mendoza went down again with the surgeon and the men to fix up some kind of light; all of them let out frequent curses, crowded together down there. Woods went down to look at the corpse when its face emerged; he provoked an outburst of profanity on his way up by inadvertently pulling out the wire from the nearest outlet down the trap, and plunging the laborers into darkness. He shoved the plug back in and said to Hackett tersely, 'Twelvetrees, all right.'
Down below, Mendoza could be heard telling someone to keep his clumsy paws to himself, they'd get to the corpse all in good time, but if there was any little something buried with it by accident, he'd like to see it before it got buried again. 'Well, well,' said Hackett. 'It is, is it? How?'
'Surgeon thinks a bang on the head, or several bangs.'
Hackett grunted. They sat smoking, carefully sharing the ashtray out of the Facel-Vega to avoid using anything here, until Marx and Horder climbed out of the hole laboriously with all their equipment and Marx called back down, 'What d'you want up here, Lieutenant!'
'Everything, everything! And don't forget the bottoms of window sills and the tops of doors!”
Marx sighed and shrugged at Horder; they went into the bathroom to start. Mendoza came up and hauled out the suitcases, one by one, as they were handed to him. 'O.K., boys, now we get busy.' He sat down on the davenport and produced a folded envelope.
'Treasure-trove from the grave.'
