Love Me and Die (6 page)

I opened the draperies wider and let them come almost together. She shifted her big purse under her arm and started forward. She reached the cactus.

A motor roared to life in the near distance. A car gunned into sight. It stopped with a squeal of brakes directly opposite Toby. I could see a face dimly framed in the window. I could see moonlight glittering on a gun barrel.

I opened my mouth and yelled. My voice bounced off the window pane in front of me. I couldn’t hear any shots but I could see a piece of cactus explode and go spinning off into the air.

Toby Jessup froze, one foot lifted to take a step. Her head made a slow turn toward the street. Another piece of cactus flew into bits.

Toby Jessup went down on her face in the grass.

The car gunned up and away. It was an old coupe. I saw its taillights disappearing. One was red. The other was white where the glass was broken out.

I
OPENED
the door and ran outside. The area around the motel was strangely quiet. No one had come to see the cause of the shooting. I realized the sniper must have used a silenced gun.

Toby Jessup jumped to her feet as I came close to her. She stared at me with the numbness of shock in her expression. She made a whimpering cry and began to run. She came toward me and then veered away. I reached for her and missed. I could hear her breathing in gusty, jerky sobs. She turned in the direction of the street. She didn’t act as if she had been hit by anything more deadly than shock.

I went after her. She moved fast for someone handicapped by a tight skirt and high heels. She got as far as her car. She was trying frantically to get into it when I reached her.

I grabbed her arm. I said, “Take it easy. You’re all right now.”

She whimpered again and twisted around to face me. The shock was still on her face. Suddenly she threw her arms around my neck and pressed herself against me like a child hunting refuge from the bogy man. She wasn’t crying, but she shook all over with every breath she took.

I let her stay there until she began to quiet down. Then I pulled her arms away from my neck very gently. I held her by the elbows and looked down into her face. Her expression was beginning to lose its look of shock.

She seemed to realize how close she was to me—a man. She pulled her arms away and stepped backward. She said, “Thank you. I’m fine now.” Her voice was tight and stiff.

She opened the door to the Thunderbird and slid beneath the wheel. She calmly unsnapped her purse and began to hunt inside for her keys. She had them in the ignition before I realized she really did intend to drive off without an explanation.

I said, “The hell you do.” I reached in and took the key out of the ignition. I walked around the car and opened the door on the other side. I slid into the seat.

She said, “Please give me my car keys, Mr. Ditmer. I want to go home.”

I said, “You’ll go home, all right—under escort. But first I want a little conversation. That’s what I came here for; that’s what I’m going to get.”

She said with icy anger, “I’m not used to being ordered around.”

I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. I said, “Tonight you were shot at. Tomorrow it might be me—or someone else. All I got at the Jessup plant tonight was a runaround. Tomorrow it’s going to be different. Because tomorrow I’m going to have some basis for asking questions.”

She said, “I don’t understand.” It sounded pretty feeble.

I said, “You told me Bonita Jessup was going to use me. But you never did get around to telling me how she was going to pull the trick. And you forgot to tell me why.”

“I don’t know how,” Toby Jessup said. Her voice lost some of its stiffness. “I’d have told you if I knew.”

I took out my cigarettes and offered them. She refused with a quick shake of her pony tail. I lit a cigarette for myself. I said, “Then tell my why.”

“I don’t know that either,” she said in a small voice. “I really don’t.”

I didn’t believe her. I said, “You can’t be an executive in an outfit as small as Jessup Trucking and not know that there’s some kind of trouble. Bonita knows. Your uncle knows.”

She started to shake her head. I said roughly, “Your uncle accused me of being a spy for some outfit that wants to buy up Jessup cheap. He also told me that Jessup has assets of two million bucks. The two statements don’t make very good music together.”

She said, “Mr. Ditmer, honestly—”

I flipped my cigarette to the sidewalk. I said, “Mr. Ditmer, hell! My name is Joe Coyle. I’m Ditmer’s partner. Bonita knows that. Turk Thorne knew it. Bonita knows it because Turk told her he recognized Art when Art was working in your warehouse. And my guess is you know it too.”

She said, “That isn’t true. I thought—”

I interrupted her. I said, “I don’t care what you thought. But I do care that Art Ditmer disappeared three days ago. He sent in a report Sunday night that he was being followed. It was his last report.”

I had to fight to keep from grabbing her arms and shaking her until something useful came out. I yelled, “Art’s missing and you’ve been shot at twice. Can’t you get it through your head that this is no game for little girls to play at?”

“I never thought it was a game,” she said stiffly. She sat a moment, staring straight ahead through the windshield. I saw her shoulders slump as if the weight she was carrying had become just a little too heavy.

She said reluctantly, “My father was one of the founders of Jessup Trucking. It’s a company with a fine reputation.”

She stopped talking. I said, “So you don’t want to tell me anything that might harm that reputation. Is that it?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

She looked at me and her expression was that of a schoolgirl caught trying to play a pair of steady boy friends against one another.

“I wanted to frighten Bonita,” she said slowly. “I thought she would see you at the plant tomorrow. Then when she had her meeting with you tomorrow night, she’d realize you were a detective and she’d stop. And I did think you were Mr. Ditmer!”

I said, “She’d stop what?”

“Trying to ruin the company,” Toby said with sudden force.

I said, “Back up and try that again. You aren’t making much sense. She owns sixty per cent of the company and it’s making good money. Why should she try to ruin it?”

“I don’t
know
why,” Toby said vehemently. “I thought you—I mean Mr. Ditmer—could find out.”

I kept pressing her, “Just how is she trying to ruin the company?”

She said reluctantly, “There’s been trouble with some of the trucks lately. I don’t know what it is.” She looked pleadingly at me. “Really, I don’t. I manage the office. No one tells me anything if they don’t have to.”

I didn’t want to be inundated by a flood of self-pity from her. I was in no mood to cope with it. I said, “You have to have
some
idea, damn it!”

“And don’t swear at me. I don’t like it.” She emphasized the remark by reaching down and tugging at her skirt. It was too dark for me to see her knees even if I had been interested.

I said, “All right. Delete the ‘damn it.’ ”

She didn’t appreciate that either, but she said, “I know that Rod Gorman has been upset lately. Not at all easygoing like he used to be. And he had a frightful row with Turk a few days ago.”

“They had a row about what?” I demanded. “And when exactly was ‘a few days ago’?”

“Rod has been upset for over two weeks now,” she said. “But it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that he fought with Turk.”

Her voice was reluctant, as if she thought she might be giving away company secrets. She said, “And I don’t know what they were fighting about. I really don’t. Turk was going off just as I came to work Tuesday morning. He stopped in the office to leave some invoices. Rod came running in from the loading platform. He said something to Turk I couldn’t hear. Turk walked outside. Rod followed him. I could see them standing by Turk’s car, arguing. Then Rod hit Turk. Turk hit him back and knocked him down. Then Turk got in his car and drove away. Rod got up and went into Bonita’s office. He was mad all day.”

I said, “And you don’t know what they fought about?”

She said, “No. Nobody tells me anything.”

I said, “Did you ask your uncle?”

She said, “He just said it was personal—something to do with the way Turk handled the truck routings on his night shift.” She looked through the dimness at me. “But I think it was more. I think it had something to do with what Bonita is up to.”

“But you don’t know what that is?”

“I told you—” she began.

I said, “So you told me. Could the two have been fighting over Bonita herself? Did she ever drop one of them in favor of the other?”

Toby said coldly, “I don’t listen to office gossip.”

I said, “It’s information like that that counts some times. Bonita brought both Turk and Gorman to work for the company, didn’t she?”

Toby said, “Not exactly. She brought Rod in to be traffic manager. Eight months ago the night manager retired, and Rod brought Turk from Tucson to take over the job.”

I said, “Is that when Gorman lost out with Bonita? When Turk showed up?” She didn’t answer. I added pointedly, “That’s the kind of gossip I can check easily enough, so you aren’t protecting anyone or anything by keeping quiet.”

She said, “Bonita dropped Rod for Turk about three months ago.”

I remembered what Bonita had said to me in her office earlier. Turk had been her boy, without a doubt. I wondered just how much Gorman resented having been replaced by a bigger pair of shoulders. Enough to have killed Turk?

I said, “Could Gorman be in a position to hurt the company in any way?”

“I don’t see how,” Toby said. “And why should he?”

“To get back at Bonita for giving his sheet-warming job to Turk Thorne.”

“Really!” she said. She was almost unbelievable, like something out of a Victorian melodrama. She added in a less icy tone, “Besides, if that were true, why would Rod try to have me killed? I certainly never suspected him of anything.”

I said, “He might think you do. He might figure that’s why you went to Tucson to talk to Art Ditmer. By the way, how did you know Art was meeting Bonita tomorrow night?”

I couldn’t see her very clearly but I knew she was flushing with embarrassment. She said, “I listened. Her secretary was out. I went into Bonita’s office to get a voucher signed. She and Turk were in the inner office, but the door wasn’t quite closed. I heard her tell Turk she had a date for tomorrow night with a detective named Ditmer. She said she wanted Turk to find out what he could about Ditmer because she thought he might be planning to blackmail her.”

I said, “Blackmail her about what?”

“She didn’t say, but Turk seemed to know, because he said, ‘I’ll take care of it, sweetheart. I ought to find him easily enough. There couldn’t be too many detectives with that name in this part of the country.’ ”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking that Toby’s information and what Bonita had told me didn’t quite gibe. From what Toby said, Turk didn’t tell Bonita who Art Ditmer was; he didn’t know at the time. But Bonita said Turk had recognized Art working in the warehouse.

I said, “This was Monday?”

“Monday night,” she answered in a positive tone. “I’m sure, because we weren’t open at night on Sunday and Turk wasn’t there Tuesday night.” She added as an afterthought, “I wasn’t either, of course.”

“You don’t work every night?”

“None of us do except Turk. And Rod lately. But we only come in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights to catch up with the extra work. And other nights if it gets too heavy, but that isn’t often.”

I said, “Then Tuesday night nobody but Gorman was working late?”

“Rod and a girl at the emergency switchboard,” Toby said. She stirred restlessly. “I’m terribly tired. Could you wait until tomorrow to ask me anything more?”

I could tell by her voice that she wasn’t kidding. She’d just about had it. I said, “Okay, and take it easy going home. I’ll be right behind you, so you won’t have to worry about the boy with the gun.”

She shivered. She said, “Did you see him? Or the car? I remember hearing it and then that cactus just exploded. It took me forever to realize I had been shot at and to make myself fall down. It was awful. I’m afraid I lost my head.”

I said, “You did fine, considering everything. And I didn’t see much—a vague face, a gun. I did get a look at the car, though. I’ll know it again.”

I got out of the Thunderbird and into the Mercedes. Toby led the way. She did a careful job of driving. We checked through the border and then headed through Ramiera toward the Jessup plant. A half mile or so west, she turned left into the hills. We climbed through an area of fancy homes to a district of fancier apartments high on the slopes.

She was a half block ahead when she turned right into an apartment-house driveway and disappeared behind a tall slender building. I slowed down to make the turn. My headlights ate through the darkness on the street and picked up the outline of a car parked at the far corner.

I almost forgot to swing the wheel. The car up ahead was an ancient coupe. One of its taillights reflected back red. The other couldn’t. The glass had been broken out.

I
TURNED INTO
the driveway and followed Toby into a parking area behind the apartment house. I pulled alongside her Thunderbird. I climbed out and went around to where she sat behind the wheel.

She said stiffly, “Thank you for escorting me. I can manage by myself from here.”

I said, “Where did you get the idea that every male animal is panting after you?”

She tipped her chin up at me and started to open her door. I put a hand out and slammed the door shut. I said, “For your information the car your sniper friend was driving is parked outside. He could be in it or he could be waiting for you—behind one of those cars, in the elevator, in the hall, in your apartment.”

She said, “Oh!” She didn’t say anything else.

“Start your motor and back around. Get ready to drive out of here fast if you have to,” I told her.

“What are you going to do?”

I said, “If I can get my hands on him, I’m going to have a cozy little chat.”

I left her and hiked back to the street. I crossed it and started up the sidewalk on the other side. The coupe was still where it had been. I couldn’t see anyone behind the wheel and I angled across the street to make sure the car was empty. I reached the driver’s door. I put out my hand to turn the handle.

The driver must have been lying flat on the seat with the door unlatched and his feet ready to kick it open. It swung suddenly with enough force to knock over an Arizona mule. The handle caught me in the ribs. I went back and slapped my tail on the pavement. I rolled to my knees in time to see a pair of dark trouser-legs going out the other door. I heard footsteps pounding down the dark sidewalk.

I got up and limped to the sidewalk. I caught a flickering glimpse of heels as someone scooted into the lobby of an apartment building on the far corner. I ran for it.

It was a five story affair with its lobby opening directly onto the street. I ducked into the lobby. It was too small to hide anyone. My pigeon had disappeared again.

I started for a flight of stairs at the far end of the room. I stopped as I spotted a row of mailboxes set in the wall. I let my eyes run across the names on each box. I wasn’t really surprised when I recognized one: Rod Gorman, Apartment 202.

I said, “Well, well,” to nobody in particular. I climbed the stairs to the second floor. A sign on the wall said that apartments 201 to 209 were to the left. I went to the left. I was in a big hurry. I wanted to see if Rod Gorman owned a beat-up coupe or if he was entertaining a friend who owned one.

I took a bend in the corridor without checking. I walked right into something hard and fast-moving. It caught me on the right temple. I spun sideways and slammed against the far wall of the corridor. My back hit the wall. I stuck against it for a moment. Then I slipped to the floor. I sat there, blinking my eyes and trying to get some sight back into them.

I heard soft footsteps on the thick runner in the hallway but I couldn’t tell which direction they were taking. They faded out and left me all to myself.

I decided to try standing up. I needed the wall at first; then I was able to move with nothing but my legs helping to hold me up. I headed them in the direction of Apartment 202.

It had a bell. I pressed it. I heard it ringing inside. There were no answering sounds. I rattled the doorknob. I decided I was wasting energy. If Gorman was the driver of the old coupe, he wasn’t about to answer the bell. If the driver was a friend of Gorman’s, he wouldn’t answer either.

Or maybe he hadn’t come here, I thought. Maybe he had gone down the stairs and outside, to do the job he had come for. I made it back to the street. I looked for the coupe. It was gone. I kept walking. I turned into the driveway I had come down a few moments before. I stepped around the corner of the apartment building.

I half expected to see the coupe there or to see the Thunderbird gone. But everything looked about as I had left it. Toby had followed my orders and turned her car so that it headed for the driveway. I waved both arms at her and started forward.

She had the motor idling softly, and both of her hands were gripping the wheel. I leaned against the car. I needed the support. I said, “He ran into the apartment building across the street on the corner. He went up the stairs to the second floor—down toward Apartment 202.”

She said in a thin voice, “You mean where Rod Gorman lives?”

“That’s right. Only he doesn’t seem to be home.”

She said, “Of course not. With Turk gone, he’s working at least until midnight.”

The clock on her dashboard read 11:35. I reminded myself to find out tomorrow just how long Gorman had worked tonight.

I said, “Cut the motor and come on. The coupe’s gone, but it could be parked around the corner and its driver relaxing in your hallway.”

She had no cracks to make this time. She did as I told her. We went through a rear door and down a carpeted hallway to an automatic elevator. We rode it to the fourth floor. I walked ahead of her to the end of the hall. She had Apartment 407.

I said, “Unless he managed to get inside, you’ll be all right now.”

“I have the only key,” she said.

I said, “Just keep your door double-locked.”

I waited until she had gone in and locked the door. Then I backtracked to the Mercedes. I circled the area but saw no sign of the coupe. I guessed the sniper had decided to wait and make his next try when there were fewer witnesses.

I put the Mercedes in the garage of my motel unit and cut the lights and motor. I started to climb out and weariness slugged me harder than the boy in the hallway had.

I tried to remember when I had eaten last. And when I had slept last—unless lying on the office floor with a mickey in me could be called sleeping. I couldn’t think back far enough.

I forced myself to open the door and climb out of the car. I forced myself a little harder and made it to the top of the stairs. I forgot all about the redhead and her cute trick of registering as Mrs. Brogan. I unlocked the door and barged into the room.

I needn’t have worried. The redhead was asleep in her own bed. She had left the bathroom light on and the door slightly ajar, giving me illumination enough to see my way around. She had also left a scrawled note tucked in the mirror over the bathroom washbowl:

Food on the desk. Don’t worry about waking me up. 1 emptied the bottle. No point in waiting up for you. You’re probably too tired, as usual. Love
.

The ‘love’ was barely legible. The note had two large rum stains on it. I thought that the redhead had displayed consideration for me I didn’t know she had. I threw the note away, stripped and showered and went into the bedroom.

I left the light off. Enough came from the bathroom for me to see the beef sandwich and carton of milk she had left for me. I was almost too tired to chew.

I made it into the sack just before I passed out. The last thing I remembered was the ripe smell of rum from the redhead’s side of the room.

A hand shaking my shoulder woke me up. I smelled freshly made coffee. I opened my eyes.

The redhead said, “It’s seven o’clock. You should be getting to the Jessup plant.”

She was trim and efficient looking in a lime-green suit. Her hair was neatly braided, her face carefully put on. She showed no signs of having drunk herself to sleep the night before. Just looking at her made me mad.

She said, “I got the car keys out of your pocket. ‘Bye now.”

I said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

She said, “Tucson. To see if there’s any reply to my San Francisco inquiry on Bonita and Gorman.”

I said, “While you’re there, check our answering service. Ask the girl if she has her record of any messages that were called in Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday morning.”

“Messages from whom?”

I said, “Maybe Turk called to check on Art or to find out about me. Somehow he learned I was coming in on that midnight plane. And Toby Jessup said she left a message with the answering service Wednesday morning. And maybe there were some other calls, checking up on us.”

“You’re still fishing,” the redhead said accusingly.

I said, “I may be. But today I’ve got some bait. Toby Jessup was nearly killed last night. A guy in a beat-up coupe came by with a silenced heater and nearly got her.”

The redhead stared wide-eyed at me. I said, “I took Toby home.” I gave her a rundown on what had happened and what Toby had told me.

She said thoughtfully, “That anonymous telephone message I got made a crack about my paying a big insurance claim. And Toby thinks there might be some kind of trouble with the trucks. There could be a connection.”

I said, “You’re sure you haven’t had any claims from Jessup lately?”

“The last one was about a year and a half ago,” she said. “There was a small fire in the old office.”

She headed for the door. “It’s your pup today, Jojo. And for heaven’s sake, use some sense. Remember to eat decently. And don’t go galloping around in the heat and wearing yourself out again. It isn’t very often we get a nice motel room like this together.”

I ignored that. I said, “If you find out anything important, ring me at Jessup. Use the same gag you did yesterday. Or were you sober enough to remember?”

She said acidly, “Drunk or sober, Miss Bascomb of West Coast Industrial Advisors never forgets.” She went out and closed the door gently.

I climbed from the bed and headed for the coffeepot. Somewhere the redhead had gotten doughnuts. I ate a half-dozen. Then I showered and shaved and put on a fresh white suit. I went out to find a taxi to take me to the Jessup plant.

• • •

The taxi dropped me at the Jessup office just before eight. I paid him off and hiked through the gates toward the office. I was almost there when I realized that a new car had been added to the line in the parking lot. It was a low-priced black sedan and it carried U.S. Government license plates. I didn’t think it belonged to an agricultural inspector.

I glanced toward the loading dock. A big semirig was drawn up there but no one was working it. A half-dozen reefer trucks were in line at the gas pumps but they weren’t being serviced. The men were standing around in small worried groups.

I went into the office. There wasn’t much work being done here either. The girls were clustered at one end of the room. I noticed that they kept looking toward the glass wall of the hallway. I looked too. I could see Toby Jessup through the open door of her office. Gorman and Healy stood beside her. A stranger in a light gray suit was talking to them. Another gray suit was rapping on Bonita’s door.

I didn’t have to ask anybody what was going on. The answer was obvious. Turk Thorne had been found.

I sat on a bench and lit a cigarette. I wondered just how much I should tell these government cops if they turned their big guns on me.

My cigarette was half smoked when the man in the gray suit left Toby Jessup’s office. Healy and Gorman trailed him out. Healy went toward his own office. Gorman came out of the hall and started past me for the side door that led to the loading dock.

He saw me and gave an abrupt nod. I said, “What gives with the government boys? One of your drivers caught smuggling tequila?”

Gorman’s hard blue eyes and outthrust jaw said he wasn’t in the mood for light chitchat. He was trying to look belligerent, but underneath I could see the fear working on him. Little runnels of sweat trickled down his neck into his open collar. The scar under his blond butch cut stood out whitely against his scalp.

He said, “You picked a bad day for your work, Brogan.”

I tried to generate the typical eager-beaver expression worn by today’s crop of ambitious young businessmen. I said, “All days are good ones for West Coast Industrial Advisors. Our job is coping with your problems.”

He made a strangling noise in his throat and walked away. I settled back on the bench and watched the gray suit and Toby coming toward me. They arrived. I stood up.

Toby said, “This is Mr. Brogan, the man I was telling you about, Mr. Farley.” Her chilly gray eyes flickered over me and then dropped away.

I stood waiting to find out what she had told him about me.

Farley said to me, “You just arrived last night?”

“That’s right,” I said. “I wasn’t due until today, but I like to get the job started. You know how it is. No use wasting time when there’s work to be done,” I added fatuously.

He made the same kind of sound Rod Gorman had. But he didn’t walk away. He said, “Is this your first trip here?”

I admitted it was. He said, “Then you didn’t know anyone here before yesterday?”

“No.” I managed to look puzzled. “Is there something wrong?”

Farley said, “Perhaps you had better tell him, Miss Jessup. He may want to save his efficiency for another day.” With that, he left us and headed for the door to the loading dock.

I said to Toby Jessup, “Shall we go into your office?”

Her expression said that she didn’t think much of the idea but she nodded. I followed her into her cubbyhole. She glanced back at the office, frowned at the girls, shut the door, and went around behind her desk.

I said, “Everything all right last night?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She was stiff and formal as usual, but today there was a difference. I had the feeling that her chilliness was forced, that she was using it to hide the worry I could see in the depths of her gray eyes.

I said, “What gives?”

She said slowly, “I wish I could be sure I did the right thing, telling that man you’re Mr. Brogan from San Francisco.”

I busied myself with another cigarette to hide my expression. “Why should he know who I am when no one else around here is supposed to?”

She said, “Because he’s from the Border Service. He came to ask us about Turk Thorne.”

I said blankly, “What about Turk Thorne? Did he get picked up for smuggling reefers?”

A reefer is something besides a marijuana cigarette to a trucking company. It’s a refrigeration rig. So I had made a funny. But Toby Jessup didn’t think much of it. She said, “Turk was in your office Tuesday night, wasn’t he? You know he made that mess in your office, don’t you?”