knowing it happened is sobering. But inside the house, Ski was jubilant, as was Bones.
“Progress,” Bones said. “We’ve got enough fingerprints from this place and the empty house next door to keep the F.B.I. busy for a month.”
“I don’t have a month. I don’t have a week. Every day, this case slips further away.”
“We’ve made some progress,” Ski said casually.
“All talk and theories. I need some hard evidence.”
“Oh,” Ski said sardonically. “Well, how about this. The killer is about your size, maybe a little shorter, ten pounds heavier. He was wearing dark pants, a dark shirt, and a bowler. He cased the neighborhood for an hour or so the day before he killed her. At about 6:00 a.m. the day of the killing, the killer parked his car in the empty lot at the end of that strip of stores up on Main. He walked down six blocks to the house next door, after ascertaining that nobody was home from the papers gathering on the porch and possibly calling once or twice. He sat at a table near the front door for the whole day. Actually, he ate a sandwich, which he probably brought with him, and took the refuse with him when he left.”
I sat there entranced as Ski painted a verbal portrait of the killing. And he was almost as good at it as Bones.
“When Verna went inside, the killer went out the back door, went to the side of her house, and watched her until he heard her drawing a bath. He wouldn’t have used the front door, too chancy, but none of the windows were locked either. He went in, took off his gloves, went straight into the bathroom, and about 9:18 p.m. he shoved her underwater. He held her under for about five minutes. Then he noticed the radio, pulled down the shelf, and let it drop in the tub with her. He went out the same way he came in, walked back up to his car, and at about 9:50 he drove away.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“An old man two blocks over had a stroke six months ago. He sits on the front porch swing all day, every day. He saw the guy drive by four or five times. Tan-and-black ragtop. He thinks a Ford. A kid left his baseball mitt up at the ball diamond. He went up there on his bike to get it when he got up about 6:15 a.m. He was riding slow because he had a flashlight in one hand to see where he was going. When he passed the house, he saw the guy we described jimmy open the door. The guy had a small penlight in his mouth and the kid got a good shot of his hands. He was wearing black gloves. Gloves in May?”
Bones picked up the story: “He sat there all day, waiting for it to get dark. He sat by the front door so nothing would surprise him, even brought a sandwich, and ate it there. We know Verna never locked her windows. We found some threads under the bottom sill; he probably tore his jacket coming in. He went in the bedroom, saw her in the tub, took off the gloves so he wouldn’t have to carry them away wet, then he rushed her, shoved her head underwater, and you know the rest. He left the same way, walked back up to the stores, and drove off into the night. We know that because a druggist and his wife were doing inventory, and they saw a guy in a bowler come out of the Meadows about 9:50 and drive off in the brown-and-black ragtop that was parked at the end of the strip all day.”
“No facial description?” I asked Ski.
“No.”
“License number?”
“No.”
“Have you put out an APB on the car?”
“Yeah, but they can’t stop every black-and-brown Ford in the county.”
Bones said, “We got a fresh print off the shelf the radio was on. Another one off the commode trigger, like Ski suggested. We also picked up several prints off the table next door. Nobody eats with gloves on. We’ll isolate the prints in Wilensky’s bathroom and compare them to the ones on the table. If they match, and we can find the guy, we got our case.”
“How soon will you know whether they match?”
He pursed his lips and thought about the question for a minute. “Five days?”
“Five days!”
“It’s gotta go to Washington and then go through the F.B.I. process.”
“Three days.”
“I’ll push for four. And that’s fast.”
I nodded. Then Ski threw one in from the deep outfield.
“I think this bird’s an ex-con,” he said.
Bones looked at him with surprise. “How do you figure?” he asked.
“Who else would set up a job where he has to sit in one spot all day but a guy who’s spent a couple of years sitting in an eight-by-ten cell day in and day out.”
Bones smiled. “If he is, his prints could be on file here in the state.”
“It’s too easy,” Ski said. “We ain’t gonna get that lucky. This guy’s a pro. Casing the job, figuring out how to do it, noticing the papers on the porch so he knew there was nobody home. He had it all figured out.”
“Yep,” Bones agreed. “But even pros make mistakes. If he had just thrown the radio in the tub without drowning her first, she would have been killed instantly, and we would never have known the dif. Ironic, isn’t it? That blunder may just get him a noseful of gas.”
Me? I was wondering what kind of car Eddie Woods was driving these days.
CHAPTER 22
I was high up on Beverly Drive when I found Boxwood. I could see why Millie asked me if I wanted directions. It wasn’t much of a street-barely two lanes wide and unpaved. The sign was lost among shrubs and trees. I made the sharp turn and followed the bumpy road around several curves. There was an occasional mailbox but the area was so heavily forested you could hardly see the houses from the road. Then the woods to the south began to thin out and I could catch fleeting glimpses of Beverly Hills and to its right, in the early evening haze, the sprawling Twentieth Century-Fox lot. I could see the big arc lights occasionally streaking into the evening sky from the sets where Tyrone Power or Gene Tierney or Don Ameche, the reigning monarchs of the studio, were probably shooting a scene in New York or Singapore, courtesy of the designers and carpenters who created movie magic.
I came on the property suddenly. The forest closed in on me again, I went around a shallow curve, and there it was. A stone wall about three feet high enclosed several acres of woods. The mailbox was imbedded in the wall. I could see the house flickering past through the trees, about two hundred or three hundred feet back in the woods. I turned in an open gate and drove down the dirt road that wound lazily around trees and wild bushes to the house.
It was a surprise. In my mind I had pictured one of those big Beverly Hills mansions, but this house was rustic, a high-peaked, one-story built of stone and wood. Cedar shingles surrounded an enormous chimney that was in the center of the structure. I drove past the carport, its door raised and the Pierce-Arrow Phaeton parked inside, up to a massive teakwood front door.
I was wearing my best suit, the blue linen double-breasted, with a pale blue French-cuffed shirt, a yellow tie with little blue dingbats, my best cordovan wing tips, and the small gold cuff links that, with $784, were my inheritance from my father. I had sixty-five bucks in my wallet including another ten Moriarity had given me for expenses. I was dressed to the nines and why not. I was going to take a Coldwater Canyon princess to the deli for dinner and to a free movie.
Chimes rang softly somewhere inside. The door opened immediately and she was standing there, her grin as wide as Sunset Boulevard and her eyes sparkling as they caught the rays of sun filtering through the trees.
“Hi,” she said. “Any trouble finding the place?”
“Came right to it.”
“I know, you’re a cop,” she said. “You can find any street in town and you remember phone numbers.”
She took my hand and led me into the house, stepping aside as she did. The dog sat behind her. A pure white German shepherd, larger than Rosie, his pointed ears straight up on alert, his eyes, coal black at the center ringed with flecks of yellow, looking straight at me.
