Livingston was awake now. ‘On my way, baby, on my way.’
He jumped off the bed. He was wearing shorts and a tee-shirt. He pulled on a pair of corduroy Levis and slipped on a plaid shirt and strapped his hip holster to his belt. On the way out the door he grabbed a fur-lined jacket. It took him fifteen minutes to get to Domino’s apartment.
‘Okay,’ he said as Sharky opened the door, ‘what you got up your sleeve now?’
Sharky led him into the kitchen. He had made a pot of coffee and he pushed Livingston into a chair, shoved a cup of coffee in front of him, and sat down with his legal pad.
‘What I did,’ he said, ‘I washed the place from top to bottom and I made a list of everything that was even slightly out of the ordinary. Stuff like keys on the living-room table, suitcase on the floor, bottle of wine on the kitchen cabinet, everything. Then I went back over the list and made a second list, only this time I only put down stuff that seemed to relate.’
‘Uh huh,’ Livingston said.
‘Okay, here’s what I got:
‘Item: An eighteen-dollar bottle of wine on the kitchen counter still in the bag, two wine glasses, and a corkscrew. The wine was purchased yesterday. There are six bottles of wine in that rack over there, including a bottle of Lafite-Rothschild.
‘Item: Keys on the coffee table in the living room. Six keys altogether. Two go to a General Motors car, two look like regular house keys, and one is a safe deposit box key. The other one was not on the key ring. It fits the door to this apartment.
‘Item: A beat-up Samsonite one-suiter on the floor beside the bed, pushed back against the wall. The stuff in it is messed up, all pushed over to one side. It contains a tennis dress, sweat socks, underwear, no toilet articles, no make-up.
‘Item: The luggage in the closet is all Gucci. Worth a fortune. Not a scratch on it.’
Livingston looked up, the coffee cup forgotten in his hand. Sharky went on.
‘Item: A blue and white windbreaker hanging in the closet.
‘Item: One yellow negligee on bed, spread out very neat. ‘Item: One small leather case filled with make-up on the table and a Lady Schick electric razor. In the bathroom there’s another electric razor. An Osterman, also for a lady,
‘Item: No purse on the premises, no bank book, no address book.’
Livingston lit a small Schimmelpenninck cigar and twisted the legal pad around so he could read it. ‘Well, that’s a nice job, considering you musta done it in your sleep, but what’re you drivin’ at?’
Sharky chuckled. ‘Okay, follow me on this. If Domino was going on a trip, why did she go out and spend eighteen bucks for a bottle of wine when she had one in her wine rack? And why was she getting ready to open it? You don’t open a bottle of wine like that unless you plan to drink it all. So why open it if she was going to leave? Second, there’s the suitcase. Look in the closet. She has three pieces of gorgeous luggage in there. Why would she carry that old beat-up job in there? Also look around here, Arch. The place is neat, neat, neat. Look in the suitcase. All the clothes are shoved to one side. But the negligee is spread out very prim and proper. Also the travelling case of make-up and the electric razor. Why two razors? And the windbreaker in the closet? It’s the only jacket in there. All the rest of them are in the hail closet. Don’t you see it, Arch? She wasn’t packing to go anywhere, she was unpacking. She took the make-up case and the electric razor out of the bag, that’s why the clothes were mussed up. And she put her windbreaker in the closet. She was planning to put the negligee on, not pack it. The apartment key wasn’t on her key ring because it wasn’t hers. It was loaned to her.. . by Domino. Domino has a Mercedes, these keys are for a GM car. Don’t you see it, Arch. Domino was out of town and the dead lady was staying in her apartment. Scardi killed the wrong person.’
Livingston looked down at the list. He was still sceptical. ‘You’re reaching, baby. I mean, some of this makes sense but...’
‘No purse. No bank book. No address book. Where are they? They’re not here, because Domino took hers with her and the woman SearcH killed didn’t bring hers.’
‘You’re moving too fast for me.’
‘I had to make sure, Arch, so I went down to the parking lot and I started checking those GM keys in every General Motors car down there. I checked fourteen before I found the one the keys fit. A seventy-five Riviera. This was under the seat. She must have forgotten it.’
He slid a woman’s wallet across the table to Livingston who opened it and stared at the licence behind the plastic window.
‘Je-sus Chee-rist,’ Livingston said softly.
‘I’ve never seen her before, but I’ll bet you have.’
Livingston looked at the photograph on the driver’s licence and nodded.
‘Tiffany Pans,’ he said.
‘Scardi hit the wrong woman, Arch.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he was after Tiffany all the time.’
‘It’s possible, except for one thing. Scardi’d been snooping around here for a couple of days. It took him a while to luck into the Jackowitz set-up. So unless Tiffany made her plans several days ago to spend Friday night here, he wouldn’t have known she was going to be here. And if he didn’t know she was going to be here, he was after Domino.’
Livingston jumped up and began pacing the room. ‘Sure, it makes sense that way. Domino left here yesterday morning. Then Scardi went into the Jackowitz place and started watching the apartment. When Tiffany came in, he came across and cut down on her the minute she opened the door. She was backlit. And she and Domino are about the same height.’
