Felony File Page 9

  Hoffman had made a very precise job of it. The fourteen-year-old boy had been shot, probably in his sleep; he was in bed in a back bedroom. Muriel Hollman had also been shot in bed, in the master bedroom. Bill Hoffman was sprawled across her body, and his Police Positive was still in his right hand.

  There wasn't any suicide note anywhere, but on the coffee table in the living room was a brown manila envelope carefully addressed by hand to Mrs. Catherine Robsen.

  "I think we'd better call the lieutenant," said Piggott.

  FIVE

  IT DISRUPTED THE ROUTINE SLIGHTLY.

  Wednesday was Hackett's day off, but he came in. He and Mendoza got to the Ptobsen house not much after nine o'clock; they wanted to get to her before the press did, and the press would be on this early today. Nobody at LAPD would have relayed the news, but there had been neighbors out last night, people who had heard the shots, looked out to see the squad.

  Cathy Robsen listened to them numbly, only once putting a hand to her eyes. "He was insane," she said. "It drove him insane. He'd been so proud of Larry. I'd only seen Muriel once since— And he wouldn't let her call me.

  "There was a bottle of sleeping tablets on the bathroom counter, empty. It looked as if he'd got her to take them—maybe in a bedtime drink—so she was knocked out when he shot the boy first."

  "Yes," she said. "I suppose they'd both—been needing sleeping tablets lately. Poor Mike." She looked at the manila envelope on the coffee table.

  Bill Hoffman had made a neat and careful holograph will, leaving everything he owned to Cathy Robsen.

  "I don't want their things," she had said to it sadly.

  There wasn't much to say to her. "There'll be an inquest—just the formality. You needn't appear. And we'd just as soon you didn't talk to the press."

  "I've no intention of doing that. The sooner everybody can forget all this the better."

  Mendoza nodded at the envelope. "You'd better take that to a lawyer—he's named one as executor. A holograph will is legal in California?

  She just nodded. "And, oh, God, the children," she said. "They'd hear, of course, even if I didn't tell them. Better to tell them. They're fifteen and thirteen—old enough to understand, don't you think`?"

  "Is there any relative at all?" asked Hackett. "Somebody will have to make arrangements?

  "Neither of them had any family." She looked at the will. "You said, a lawyer mentioned there. Could I ask him to take care of that, I wonder." And after a silence, "Bill was insane, you know. He might have wanted to die himself—since it happened—but unless he'd been insane he'd never have killed Muriel and Mike too."

  On the doorstep, Hackett said a little savagely, "And I wonder if this is going to help Larry acquire any more maturity." Some helpful soul over at the jail, where he was awaiting transport to Susanville, would be sure to see he got a Times with the story—probably on the front page.

  * * *

  Galeano kicked that around with the other men some: the hell of a thing, but they had cases on hand to work. This Reynolds thing was wild; and the Avon connection, he realized after what Wanda had told him, was doubly wild. But you had to clear the extraneous out of the way, tie up loose ends as you went; and it had entered in.

  The address for Avon Sales Products was on Los Feliz in Hollywood. He got there about nine-thirty; it was one of the newer, violently modernistic apartment buildings. The woman who answered the door was fortyish, fat, unexpectedly businesslike: Mrs. Agnes Winniger. She was both horrified and highly amused at his story. "I wouldn't think," she said, "it was really one of our representatives, you know."

  "But the point came up, and I have to check, you can see that."

  "Oh, I suppose so. Good heavens, the things that happen—" She was, it appeared, the district supervisor for Avon for the whole area. He was rather staggered to learn that there were some hundreds of Avon ladies in Los Angeles alone. But, she explained, they covered the areas close to their own homes. She could check the nearest representatives to the Twenty-seventh Street address.

  There were two possibles, a Mrs. Burns, a Mrs. Polk. Thirtieth Street and Brighton Avenue. Galeano drove back downtown and tried Thirtieth Street first. Mrs. Burns was a tiny black woman, highly indignant at being approached by police. When she finally answered questions, she told him that on Monday morning at eleven-thirty she had been at her daughter's apartment in Leimert Park babysitting her grandchildren, and three people in the next apartment could tell him so. And when it came to police coming down on respectable decent people and nosing into private lives, all she could say—Galeano thanked her hastily and got away.

  Mrs. Polk, at a single house on Brighton Avenue, was more cooperative, if indignant that the fair name of Avon had got into a murder case. "I saw that in the paper—what an awful thing! That poor young woman—and it said she had a little girl too." She had, she said, been at home all Monday morning, doing laundry and ironing. She was a tall, heavy woman, medium black, with large hands and muscular arms. Of course the thing was ridiculous, but it had to be cleared away. He called, and Melinda Corey was home. Mrs. Polk put on a coat and they drove down to Twenty-seventh, and Melinda said, "No, that's not the woman."

  "I should think not," said Mrs. Polk genially. "Walking in and shooting people." She was quite grateful to Galeano for the chance of seeing the murder house and meeting the victim's sister. Galeano drove her home again.

  * * *

  Mendoza and Higgins landed at Federico's on North Broadway for lunch, and ran into Landers, Conway and Palliser. They did a little talking about the Hoffmans, and then Mendoza heard about the interesting discovery Landers and Conway had made at Bullock's. Palliser was enthusiastic about it.

  "And that," said Mendoza, "is interesting all right. With a little unobtrusive snooping and some native intelligence, anybody could have acquired that supposed inside information. Possibly. But—" he leaned back in his chair and emitted twin streams of smoke from his nostrils— "it sounds a little casual, for the cool professional way the job was done." He grinned at Conway. "Sure, you might drop into any bar below Fourth and pick up a few men ready to do a little hired strong-arm work the wrong side of the law, but ten to one they'd be fairly unintelligent louts. The boys who pulled this one were pros—quick, cool, efficient, every move planned. I've got a hunch, Tom, that your hunch is wrong. And ditto for Rich's. You might possibly have guessed right as to how the information was collected, but for my money these jokers are the same gang who pulled the jobs in Philly and Pittsburgh. And there's no line on them at all." He swallowed the last of his coffee and put out his cigarette. "Whereas I hope some poking around on Marion Stromberg may yield some fruitful ideas. Come on, George, let's do some productive work for a change."

  Marion Stromberg's address book gave them places to start asking questions. Mrs. Caldwell had recalled a Jean and a Paula, said to be close friends; Mendoza and Higgins started out with Mrs. Jean Grant at a handsome house on a quiet street in West Hollywood. Mrs. Grant was very much the same type and age as Marion Stromberg: well groomed, intelligent. She was startled and shocked to hear about Marion. "My God," she said. "Oh, that's dreadful, to think of her—" Mendoza hadn't gone into details. "Why, she was a year younger than I am. It makes you think—" But she was no fool, and when he began to ask questions she asked some herself. "It wasn't natural, a heart attack or something, when you're asking about— What's all this about, anyway?"

  Higgins, who along with Hackett considered that the boss had a tortuous mind and tended to complicate things unnecessarily, said bluntly, "She was banged on the head and died of it, Mrs. Grant. Last Friday night. We'd like to find out how it happened."

  "Oh, my God. Marion. Marion of all people. That's incredible."

  "Why?" asked Mendoza. "Why of all people, Mrs. Grant?"

  She made a helpless gesture. "Marion was so—retiring. Quiet. She didn't go out much. She was careful. I mean, if she was driving at night the doors were locked, and she'd never have
let a stranger in the house—anything I like that."

  "We don't know a great deal about her," said Mendoza. "We're trying to piece together what might have happened."

  "Well, anything I can tell you, but the last time I talked to her was last—I mean, a week ago last Monday."

  "How long had you known her? You considered yourself a close friend?"

  "Yes—" she hesitated. "I suppose Paula Ogden and I were about her closest friends. We'd known the Strombergs for, oh, twenty-five years—my husband's an optometrist too, we met first at some association dinners. When Fred was alive it was a little different—they used to go out more, to the theater, to restaurants—but they weren't ever awfully social. Of course she missed him terribly, it left her so alone. He had a heart attack in his office, died instantly. But you said, she was just found in the street—I can't imagine what—"

  Mendoza asked more questions, and a picture began to emerge. Jean Grant, Paula Ogden (whose husband was a teacher at U.C.L.A.), a couple of other women, had occasionally met for lunch, shopping; visited each other's homes casually. In other days, the couples had entertained each other, and other people, at dinner parties now and then— "But nobody does entertain much now, the way we used to—" And since Marion's husband had died, she didn't have people in, except casually. All the other women had families, grown children, concerns and interests in life to keep their days full. "Oh, she did miss Fred. Never having children, it either drives you apart or makes a marriage closer. But what I can't understand is how she happened to be alone somewhere at night. The only place she went at night was the Arcadia."

  "And what," asked Mendoza, "is the Arcadia?"

  She gave a sharp sigh. She was a dark woman, rather too thin, and at the moment looked her full age. "I know it was very noble and good of her—I expect more people ought to do something like that—but those places give me the creeps. The convalescent homes. Old people sitting around waiting to die. You see, her mother was there—for a couple of years before she died. It was then Marion got interested. She said so many of the old people in places like that hadn't any families, or sometimes the families never came to visit them, and they just waste away from lack of attention. The nurses haven't time for anything but the necessities. I gather there are a few people, from religious groups I suppose, go visiting those homes like that—Marion had been doing it ever since her mother was there. Going in a couple of nights a week, getting the old people playing card games, or having a special little party if there was a good rerun on TV, or just to talk to them—she said it was pathetic, how so many of them just needed to talk, be listened to sympathetically. She kept on going there even after her mother died."

  "I see. Where is it?"

  "Out on Vermont somewhere. It was good of her," said Jean Grant listlessly.

  They saw Paula Ogden at an older house in Santa Monica, and she was the same general type, if blonde and flightier. She'd known Marion forever, they'd been in high school together, she said. She couldn't believe it, about Marion. She asked a spate of questions Mendoza parried, and was led on to elaborate the picture. Of course Marion had been lost without Fred, but she'd seemed to have settled down and been happy enough. Jean had always said Marion should have done something with her life, she'd been smart at school, and she'd had a job at Lockheed during the war, that was just after she and Fred were married and he was overseas. But Fred didn't approve of wives working, even when it turned out there wouldn't be any children. They'd always lived a very quiet life; for one thing he was what was called saving, they didn't spend much money, it was only the last few years before he died, maybe when his investments were doing well, that Marion had had really nice clothes, begun to buy things for the house. And of course Paula wouldn't know what to do without her two darling poodles, she always had dogs though she couldn't abide cats. But Fred didn't like animals in the house; they never had any pets.

  She told them about the Arcadia and how really unselfish and wonderful of Marion it was, to be so kind to the old people, but after the times she'd gone to see her aunt in one of those places she couldn't have borne it, but then she'd never been good with sick people.

  "She must have been on her way home from there, and somebody got into her car to rob her—or maybe somebody was hiding in her car when she came out. That could happen, couldn't it? To think of Marion getting killed like that—but the awful things that happen every day—"

  The last time she had talked to her was on the phone, Friday morning. Just to chat. Marion had said she might go out to dinner, even if it was raining. "She did pretty often, it's not much fun alone, but she said it was such a nuisance cooking for just herself, and she liked a nice restaurant?

  "Did she say where she might go?"

  "No, but probably the Brown Derby or the London Grill, she liked those."

  They came out to the Ferrari, and Mendoza lit a cigarette—the Ogden house had been devoid of ashtrays—and stared at the Santa Monica foothills dark against a gray sky. It was another cold overcast day. "Do you pick up any nuances, George? Those two women were about her closest friends. They're sorry, they're incredulous at her getting murdered, but we don't get the floods of tears."

  "She doesn't seem to have been a very—intimate kind of woman," said Higgins. "Sort of colorless. Reserved?"

  "Mmh. Possibly kept at the level of the dutiful meek hausfrau by the masterful Fred. Well, let's go and see if she was cheering up the old people on Friday night."

  As they turned onto Santa Monica Boulevard, Higgins said, "I can't say I buy the idea that anybody jumped into her car. And on Vermont, heading for home, she'd be traveling on a well-lighted main drag, until she turned on Franklin, and that's pretty well traveled too. As for the other idea, anybody with any sense locks a car, leaving it somewhere after dark."

  "Conforme." Mendoza stopped at the first public phone booth and consulted the Hollywood book for the address. It wasn't very far down Vermont, just below Sunset. It occupied almost an entire block: a low, tan, stucco building with venetian blinds at every window.

  In the long narrow lobby tiled in imitation white brick, there was a counter with a frosted glass window closed across it, a hall running away to the right. In a wheelchair near the door a very old man sat slumped over the linen band binding him to the chair; he was shaking with palsy. The place was silent as a tomb; nobody seemed to be around. Mendoza rapped on the window; it half—opened and a fat woman in a white uniform said, "Sorry, the office is closed."

  Mendoza displayed the badge and economically stated their business. "Oh, my goodness!" said the woman—nurse, aide, office girl?—and her red cheeks got redder. "Mrs. Stromberg! For heaven's sake! Why, she was just here on Thursday! Oh, wait till I get Miss Dowling—just a minute—" The window shut with a bang.

  A couple of minutes later she reappeared from the corridor leading up to the right. "I just buzzed her—she'll be right down. I can't believe it, poor Mrs. Stromberg, the police coming—"

  "You knew her well?"

  "Well, she'd been coming two nights a week for nearly seven years, most of us on this shift knew her, of course. Like Miss Betzinger and the Good Samaritans, only they don't always come on the same nights. Some of the R.N.'s didn't like it, thought it was a nuisance, but— Oh, Miss Dowling! Would you believe it, Mrs. Stromberg's dead—murdered!—and the police are here about it!"

  Miss Dowling was a big angular woman in a white uniform with a cap perched low on her bulging forehead. Conspicuous on her left breast was her little gold RN. badge. She had sandy-red hair and a broad cheerful face. just now it looked astonished. "Murdered!" she said.

  "Last Friday night," said Mendoza.

  "For the Lord's sweet sake! I will be eternally damned," said Miss Dowling. "That sweet little woman. What was it, a burglar?"

  "We don't know. Was she here on Friday night, do you know?"

  "No, she was not. To tell you the truth, we were wondering what happened to her last night—she was always here Tuesdays and Thu
rsdays right on the dot, about six-thirty. And I'm not one of the R.N.'s who didn't like these people coming," she added good-humoredly. "Here, let's sit down—I'm on my feet enough as it is."

  There was a vinyl-upholstered banquette built on two sides of the lobby; they sat down there and she brought out a package of cigarettes from her breast pocket, bent to Higgins' lighter. "You look like a cop all right," she observed briefly, "if he doesn't." She might have been thirty or sixty, energetic and self-confident. "You know, a good many of these poor old souls—and ninety percent of the patients in any place like this are the old people—are put down as senile because they've lost any interest in life. I could tell you—people here whose families never come near them, think they're half dead and won't know the difference. Well, they do. It'd surprise you what a change it makes in them when someone drops in to play a little card game with them, bring a special treat, home-made cookies or fudge—just to talk to them, listen to them. The L.V.N.'s are run off their feet, haven't time to give them any personal attention. They perk right up, look forward to these people coming in—and damned few people do come, you know, realize the need is there. Write the old folk off, they're no good to anybody anymore, shut 'em away and forget 'em. But a patient's a patient as long as there's a heartbeat." She twinkled at Mendoza. "Some of us appreciate the ones who care and do take the trouble. But what in God's name is this about Mrs. Stromberg?"

  "If she wasn't here Friday night— These other people you mentioned. She was friendly with them? Who are they?"

  "Oh, yes. They've all been coming for years. Mrs. Stromberg the longest—we had her mother, Mrs. Wallace, here for two years before she died—she was a nice old lady. Miss Retzinge's mother has been here nearly five years, she's quite helpless with arthritis but her mind's still sharp—and Miss Retzinger's got interested in some of the other patients. The Reverend Whitlow and his Good Samaritans—" she uttered a short laugh—"well, the man means well, and it doesn't seem to make much difference to the old dears who's listening or being sympathetic, so long as it's somebody. He has his own church, some nondenominational one, the Holy Shepherd it's called, and some of the church people call themselves the Good Samaritans, visiting the sick, you know."