Читать книгу Take a Step to Murder - Day Keene - Страница 8

THE MORNING WAS older and colder than it had been. Streamers of steam were rising from the heated pool. The men standing in front of the unit milled uncertainly for a few moments then walked slowly down the drive toward the front of the court and the cocktail lounge. Renner hoped they were on their way to buy a last drink to Angel.

He hoped the paisanos bought a lot of drinks to Angel. In the spot he was in every dollar counted. Right now best friend was a cash register.

Kelcey lingered behind the others. “Do you think she is going to be all right?”

Renner lived in Unit One. He unlocked the door. “Just why should you be concerned?”

“Because I could go for that babe.”

“That’s right,” Renner said. “I remember. You told me back on the cliff. You’d like to get your hands on her. I knew how you meant.”

Kelcey turned sullen. “So what’s wrong with that? The kid looks like she could use a few dollars. And what with her skirt up around her neck like it was and him with his zipper open, I’ll bet she and that old guy in the car were doing plenty when they went off the road.”

“At ninety miles an hour?”

“Well anyway, getting ready.”

Renner leaned against the jamb of the door he’d just unlocked. He’d skinned the knuckles of both of his hands. One knee was showing through a ragged tear in his right pants’ leg. In crawling past the broken steering post to get at Tamara, he’d not only ripped off one patch pocket of his best gray flannel suit, he’d also wiped the bloody leather clean. Every bone in his body ached. His muscles felt as if they had been systematically beaten with a hammer.

Not that any of that really mattered. Thanks to chance or fete or whatever one wanted to call it, the accident on the cliff had called Tamara to Kelcey’s attention far better than the little scene he had intended to stage. Kelcey was hooked but good. But now that he had what he wanted, now that he had the stage set, the thought of allowing Kelcey to force himself on Tamara, even for the one moment of intimacy necessary to file a rape charge against him, sickened Renner. Even if Tamara was willing to go all out to help him, and he still had that to discuss with her, he didn’t know if he wanted to go through with this thing, if he could go through with it and keep any semblance of self-respect.

There was a name for men who allowed other men to use their women’s bodies.

Maybe it was better to let the court go.

Right now all he wanted was a hot shower and a change of clothes. And, even more important, to be left alone.

“Look. Be a good fellow,” he told Kelcey. “Take some of your god-damn money and go up and lay it on my bar. Your sobriety is showing.”

He slammed the door behind him but before he could even take off his ruined coat someone knocked on the door he’d just slammed.

It was old man Manners.

“What now?” Renner asked him.

The old man was apologetic. “Some fellow in the bar wants to cash a personal check. And Tony says will you please come okay it?”

“Why not?” Renner shrugged. “Why should I be able to take a shower? I only own the joint.”

He walked up the drive with Manners. The old man was concerned. “That was a brave thing you done, Kurt. But what are we going to do without a tow truck?”

Renner told him. “Without After all, it was the first time we’d used it.”

“It was insured?”

“Everything I have is insured.”

The old man persisted. “But even if the truck is insured, what about personal liability? Does your policy cover Angel? What if his widow sues you? So he was only a Mex. Them having six kids and him being their only source of support, there is no telling how big a judgment a jury might bring in against you.”

It was an angle Renner hadn’t considered. If his policy didn’t cover Angel and Angel’s widow should sue him, she could take him for every dime he had. And even if he managed to save the court she could take that, too. He stopped feeling sorry for Tamara and was angry with her. If she had followed his instructions and made connections with the local bus none of this would have happened. Still, Tamara couldn’t help it if Angel had left early. Angel had left early to go a long way. And all Tamara had been trying to do was reach the court on schedule.

Always something.

There were four cars parked in front of the pumps and five times that many in the parking strip in front of the cocktail lounge. Renner was wryly amused. Death and sex and taxes. The court hadn’t done so much business since the day he’d opened and the good people of Mission Bay had driven out to buy a beer and use the toilets while they inspected the luxury tourist court that old Max Renner’s boy had built.

The check looked good to him. He okayed it and walked on into the office of the court to see if the insurance policy on the truck was in the files. It wasn’t. It was probably with the rest of his legal papers in his safety deposit box. He turned, startled, as a flash bulb popped to see Tom Sourira, the local I.N.S. correspondent, pointing a camera at him.

“What’s the idea?” Renner asked him.

Sourira grinned. “You’re news. Big news. Don’t tell me you don’t know who the old guy in the car was?”

“No. I don’t.”

“The John A. Baron,” Sourira said. “The guy who sails yachts to Hawaii. The multi-millionaire playboy.”

“Oh,” Renner said. “That Baron.”

He considered the information. It could be an added complication. It probably would be.

“You watch,” Sourira said. “Right now all the big-town newspapers are rushing reporters and photographers here. By morning this place will be jumping.”

The reporter glanced through the window and saw Sheriff Prichard and Doctor Flanders coming down the drive and hurried out to amplify what information he had.

Renner took a deep breath and followed him. The matter was out of his hands now. What happened from here on would depend on whether or not Tamara had kept her head, how much she’d told Flanders and Prichard.

Doctor Flanders answered the reporter’s questions by saying yes or no when he could. No, the girl wasn’t badly injured. Yes, she’d had a bad shock. No, his examination had revealed no evidence that she had been molested sexually. No, Sourira couldn’t take a picture of her. She was still in a mild state of shock and he had given her a sedative and she would probably sleep until morning.

Sourira turned his questions on Prichard and learned more from him than he had from the doctor.

Yes, the girl spoke English, with a faint but decided accent. Yes, he had talked with her. If the information she had given him was correct her name was Tamara Daranyi. She was a Hungarian refugee who had entered the United States in 1956 on a student’s visa. She was nineteen years old and said she had studied voice and piano at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles for a year. Recently however, having run out of money she had been earning her living as a part-time model and entertainer.

Jubilant, Sourira left to phone in his story.

When he had gone, Sheriff Prichard looked coldly at Renner. “Now I wonder if we could talk to you, Kurt.”

Renner led the way back into his office. “Of course.”

Prichard had recovered the hat box he’d mentioned. He set it on Renner’s desk and opened the lid. As far as Renner could tell the only articles in it were several pairs of nylon stockings, a few changes of lingerie, a cheap evening gown, a pair of high-heeled slippers, a small kit containing theatrical make-up and a large red plastic shoulder bag.

Renner felt his way. “Miss Daranyi doesn’t seem to be doing so well.”

“No,” Doctor Flanders said coldly. “What’s more she’s frightened to death of something or someone. That unconscious act was a pose. I suspected it the minute you and Bill got out of the police car. She just didn’t want to be questioned.”

Renner continued to feel his way. “Just what did she tell you?”

Flanders lighted a fresh cigar. “To begin with she said she came out from L.A. on a regular Los Angeles to San Francisco bus and got off at Cove Springs to change to the local bus for Mission Bay. But the girl at the bus stop told her the Mission Bay bus had just left. So while she was standing in front of the bus stop wondering what to do and a nice looking elderly gentleman in a good car stopped and asked if he could be of assistance, she accepted his offer of a ride.”

Prichard took up the story. “She was crying so hard when she did talk it was difficult for me to understand her. But I gather Baron began to make a play for her almost as soon as she got in the car. The usual ‘nasty old man’ routine—driving with one hand and fumbling at her with the other.”

“Why didn’t she get out of the car?”

“She couldn’t. He was driving too fast.” Prichard was grim. “Then when he finally managed to pull up her skirt and get his hand on it and keep it there he got so excited he, well, that’s when they went over the cliff.”

Renner was glad Baron was dead. If he wasn’t he’d probably kill him for having put Tamara through such a nasty experience. He didn’t quite know what to say. He said, “Isn’t that about the way we had it figured?”

Doctor Flanders said coldly, “Except for one thing, Renner. Are you certain you never saw her before? Are you certain you don’t know the girl?”

“I’m positive,” Renner lied.

“Then why should she be headed for here?”

“She was coming here?”

“That’s what she said,” Prichard said. He took a worn wallet out of the red plastic shoulder bag and laid two one dollar bills and some change on the desk. “Let’s have it, Kurt. Why should a pretty nineteen-year-old girl, a genuine countess in the old country, according to her story, a girl with practically no clothes and only two dollars and thirty-eight cents in her purse, be headed for a tourist court the hell and gone from anywhere, a court run by a man she claims she doesn’t know?”

“How should I know? Why didn’t you ask her?” Renner said.

“We did,” Doctor Flanders said. His voice was distinctly unfriendly. “That’s what makes us so curious. She said she hoped you would give her a job. Just what sort of a job?”

Renner felt his tensed muscles relax. Tamara hadn’t panicked. Despite missing the bus and becoming involved with Baron, she’d managed to stick to the script.

“Oh. So that’s it,” he said. “I should have known.”

“You should have known what?”

Instead of answering the question, Renner asked one of his own. “Just how well did you search her purse, Bill?”

Prichard shrugged. “I just checked the money she had and confirmed the name she gave me with the name on the cards in her wallet. I didn’t pry.”

Renner picked up the red plastic shoulder bag and emptied its contents on his desk. “In that case,” he said, quietly, “let’s pry.”