Outside, I stuffed a smoke in my face and fired it up. I offered him a Lucky and he accepted it. Unlike the chief, he wore no cap, and within that butch cut didn’t have enough hair for the breeze to riffle it. The wind would have taken my hat if I hadn’t really snugged it down, and it snatched the smoke away from both our cigarettes, making vapor trails as we walked down the middle of a street in a town that would bustle in a few weeks. Right now it was deader than Sharron Wesley.
I said, “I was over in Wilcox the other day.”
“Yeah?”
“You know a guy named Dave Miles?”
“Naw.”
“Head of security at the brick factory.”
“Don’t know him.”
“I also talked to Sheriff Jackson.”
“Him I know.”
“Talked to Chief Chasen.”
“Him I know, too.”
“There’s a theory we three kicked around that the Wesley murder might be the work of the same maniac who killed those two college girls in Wilcox. And also that other young gal found strangled on the beach between Sidon and there.”
We were outside the hotel now. Wind whipped at his dark-blue blouse and my suit coat, flapping them like flags.
“Those college girls,” he said. “They were killed with a knife. Not choked, right?”
“Right.”
“And that other one, the girl on the beach? Wasn’t she strangled with a nylon?”
“Right again.”
Dekkert shrugged his big shoulders. “Sharron was strangled with powerful hands, not a stocking. And I don’t see what those girls in that barn have to do with anything.”
“There are similarities. All three cases, including the Wesley dame, involved young women-good-looking ones-murdered and left naked, their clothes never found.”
The deputy seemed to be mulling that as he sucked up smoke, then exhaled and let the wind whip it away. “Sharron wasn’t that young, though.”
I grinned. “Yeah, but she wasn’t old. She was under forty and still a beauty. You knew her, right?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know anything about those other cases, Hammer, if that’s why you brung it up. Out of our jurisdiction.”
“Yeah, each kill in a different jurisdiction. Confuses the issue, muddies the waters, don’t you think? Somebody’s smart. Or knows enough about how law enforcement works to think of spreading his hobby around.”
Dekkert was frowning. It made the half-dozen bandages crinkle and bulge. “Is that an accusation?”
I raised my hands in a peace-keeping fashion. “No, just an observation. Buy you a drink?”
He was still frowning.
I made myself smile at him. Not nasty at all. “Come on. Bury the hatchet. Two old ex-New York PD coppers having a nightcap. Couple other points we should discuss… about your friend Sharron.”
“What?”
“You don’t call her Mrs. Wesley or the Wesley woman or the Wesley dame, I notice. You call her Sharron. You said you knew her. Let’s talk about that.”
He sneered at me. His fists were bunched. He was getting tired of this. So was I, but I needed to keep this thing friendly. “Why the hell should I, Hammer?”
“Because,” I said, and pitched the butt sparking into the night, “I think you might like to know what I know.”
That he thought about, too, but not for long. He just nodded, and gestured for me to go inside first. I shook my head and gestured for him to do that. I might be playing nice with him but I wasn’t going to turn my back, not on this bastard.
“Give me a second,” I said, in the lobby.
He stood impatiently while I tried Velda on the house phone. Still no answer. I hung up and nodded toward the bar, and we walked over there.
Soon, in a back booth, with beers in front of both us, and fresh cigs going, we started our friendly chat.
“I was in New York this evening,” I said, “and ran into Johnny C. You know, Johnny Casanova?”
Dekkert couldn’t have cut it at that table in the Waldorf suite-his was anything but a poker face, eyes tightening and even twitching at the mention of the gambling chieftain.
“Seems he was Sharron Wesley’s silent partner,” I went on. “Actually more than silent partner-he owns the place. She was a front. Apparently he has something on her, and bled her out of her fortune and even her mansion. He was just letting her live there in a few meager rooms in return for playing hostess. Also, bag woman. But still just another employee.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
I figured he was lying, but I wouldn’t press it-not just yet.
“Dekkert, what was your role out there at the casino? I’ve heard it said you were a bouncer, but I can’t imagine a guy of your gifts would be satisfied with a crummy menial job like that.”
His eyes were hard and dark and barely blinking. “Well, Hammer, you’re wrong. That’s all I did out there-just some security. When I was off-duty. Like cops do.”
Then he drank about half his beer in one gulp.
“Okay,” I said, “but I’ve known you for a long time, Deputy Dekkert. You are nothing if not shrewd. Johnny C’s role out there, you’d pick up on that. Sharron Wesley’s unhappiness, her resentment against Casanova, you’d pick up on that, too.”
“So what?”
“So I think there’s a cache of money somewhere in that mansion or anyway on that property. It might be as little as the last weekend’s take, which would still be plenty. But it might be more.”
“More, huh?”
“A lot more. If Sharron was skimming, for example. Planning to take a powder to a better life, maybe down where the mambo is a local dance. But the thing is, sooner or later, Johnny C is gonna come out Sidon way, looking for that dough.”
A tiny sneer. “How does he even know there is any dough?”
“Oh, he knows. I don’t know how, but he told me tonight, so he knows. And when the heat dies down, and there’s no chance of running into coppers crawling around the Wesley grounds, Johnny C will come after what he considers rightly his.”
Dekkert slugged down the rest of the beer and pushed away the mug, then set his balled fists down like mallets. “Did he do it? Did Casanova kill her?”
There was rage in that once-handsome, bandage-spotted face. He cared about Sharron Wesley. Was that why he’d gone ape on Poochie when she was missing? Not the money, or anyway not just the money… but love? Had our boy Dekkert been just another love-sick calf?
“No, Johnny didn’t murder her,” I said. “And he didn’t have her bumped, either. Anyway, I don’t think so. That would be killing the golden goose before the egg got laid. He would have questioned her… you know what kind of questioning, Dekkert, old pal. The kind you subjected that little beachcomber to.”
“But she wasn’t beaten,” he said hollowly.
“No. She was strangled. And you don’t strangle somebody you’re trying to make talk.”
He nodded slowly. “So what are you after, Hammer?”
“I figure you know that property better than anybody. You worked out there. You knew Sharron. Maybe we could turn up that dough together.”
He grunted a laugh. “What, a midnight snipe hunt? Forget it. I did work out there, sure, and I knew her a little. She was a nice broad. We had some fun, time to time. But I never saw any sign she was tied up with Johnny C. And I don’t believe she was stealing money. It was her own place, not his, as far as I know. She took the cash
