Chapter 2
Nora had forgotten her bikini panties.
He found them while he dressed the next morning. The wadded, sheer under things were behind a chair where she'd tossed them in mindless desire last night.
Remembering put a tremor through him. The battering of his hangover intensified. He remembered working those panties down over her wriggling hips, the way she'd caught them, jerked them off and thrown them.
Though it hurt his face to do it, he smiled, thinking about the aloof Nora dressing and leaving here last night the smart, two-hundred-dollar original and nothing on under it.
Thinking about this, he felt better, more able to face the day ahead of him. Purposefully he kept old Sheram, the poisoning of the puppy, even the script changes, from his mind. It was as if life had abruptly shifted gears and he preferred to concentrate on the pleasant-the panties Nora left behind.
Dressed, he folded the panties and put them in his jacket pocket, thinking ahead to going into Nora's smartly elegant office and placing her panties on her desk blotter before her. It would be good to recall to Nora's mind some of the exciting delights he remembered from last night ...
Only it didn't work that way.
She came into his small cubicle at the advertising agency where he had his office. Duke & Thomson controlled one of the hottest TV series of the year, and he furnished many of the show's scripts, working at the agency rather than in the studio where the show rented space.
Nora liked to keep her firm grasp on everything connected with Duke & Thomson Advertising Agency, Los Angeles branch, accounts.
She carried the mimeoed copy of the script for "The Twenty Grand Murder." He recognized it without being told what it was.
Alan watched her approach across from his door. She seemed to absorb all light. Nice boobs, Alan thought, and told himself they were even lovelier bare. In his mind swirled a heated memory of that pink-creamed flesh, the bright nipples, the flat planes of her naked belly.
He wondered if she had on panties this morning.
He said, smiling, "Good morning."
Nora barely returned his greeting. He saw at once that the relationship was back where it had been between them: boss and vassal.
Alan exhaled heavily. He wasn't going to return those bikini panties to her, not here, not today.
She seemed to have put last night completely out of her mind. The fact that she'd been on her knees to him, that he had owned her body completely, that he had kneeled over her on that bed while she paid him deepest homage, that she had been unable to resist anything he wanted of her, had no meaning to her.
It was as if it never happened. Alan winced slightly. Maybe it never had. The whole world had gone screwy lately.
Nora tossed the script on his desk before him. "It won't do," she said. "As I told you last night." She said 'last night' without batting an eyelash, without revealing by tilt of arched brow or quiver of perfect lips that it had any meaning to her. "It won't wash. A man committing a murder for twenty-thousand dollars?"
"It's been done for less." Nora shook her smartly coiffured head. "Let's stand it in the window and see if it attracts flies," she said in the flat tone, completely impersonal, that she used when she would not be opposed. "Twenty thousand? Maybe that looks sizable to a TV script writer."
"It's more than I make in a year."
"Right now it is," Nora said. "You've been out of things."
Alan flinched. Nora didn't have to remind him that he had been out of things, that he'd still be out of them if Nora hadn't believed in him, and fought for him when the Duke & Thomson big brass could see only his record of drinking since Caroline's death.
"I don't want to fail you, Nora," he said in honest humility.
"Well, you are. The public isn't going to buy the murder, not the amount of money that motivated it, or the way it was done."
"It was a true case."
"That's the least essential point of all. You can't make people believe a man will commit murder for a lousy twenty grand with taxes what they are."
Alan stared across the desk at his incredibly lovely boss. Sure, Nora made three times twenty thousand a year, but not everybody who owned a TV set did.
"What do you think would be a fair amount?" He tried to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
"Why not a hundred grand? And why not just simply with a gun and not in a car over the side of a canyon?"
"A hundred thousand?" Alan felt helpless against her. "The guy he killed didn't have that kind of dough. The killer needed twenty grand to buy his way up in the world."
"A hundred grand would buy him even more, wouldn't it?" she challenged, watching him with unrelenting intensity.
"A hundred grand, Nora, and the world would have caved in on this guy. If he'd stolen that much he would never have gotten away with it. This thing's got to sound real and true."
She exhaled heavily. "I hope you won't be abstruse and artistic, friend." There was a deeper chill in Nora's voice. "Let's remember this is TV. Not art. You want to write art, okay. Not on my time. I want something the audience will believe. They won't swallow this."
Alan stood up. "Why can't you trust me, Nora? I know what I'm doing. The way it is, the story hangs together. Go ripping at the basement and the attic falls in."
"I trust you. I also know what I want. I don't want this particular story, told this way, when a few changes will charge it right up. Look, you give me good plots, action and bang. That's why I fought to get you in on this series. But I don't want something I can't believe. It bugs me. This script is full of holes. Either re-roof, doll, or get me a new story. I won't okay this one."
"Two days, Nora," Alan protested. "You okayed the outline."
"It smelled then, Alan. But I thought maybe you could give it a scent of roses. You didn't. Nobody would murder for twenty thousand, and if they did, they wouldn't stick around like your boy does. They'd try to run, to get away somewhere."
Alan felt weak against her. "Nora, I don't think you read it. You couldn't have read it. The murderer was going to stick there. He had to stay there. He was ambitious. The twenty grand would buy him what he wanted. It was his whole life, but he had to have the twenty grand."
Nora shook her head. "I'm out in the rain on this one, Alan. Cold. Wet. We don't want to part on a thing like this, do we?"
Alan jerked his head up. He stared at Nora. But it was like looking into icy-green, flat pools instead of her eyes. "Nora, you can't mean that."
Nora smiled suddenly and shrugged. "No. Of course not. But I want you to punch this up. My way. I'm the character you've got to please." She softened slightly. "You know how to please me, Alan. So let's see you do it in the daytime."
At six that night, Alan got tiredly off the bus at Island Groves. He should have bought a car, but he had hit bottom after Caroline's death, and though the Angelinos thought him queer, he delayed going in hock for a car until he had some sort of security which he certainly didn't have at the moment with Duke & Thomson.
He stared up at the gaudy sign: Island Groves Paradise for happy young marrieds.
It was all a mistake. He should never have tried to live out here in Island Groves with a dog and a housekeeper.
He walked into the miniature Spanish villa which was the offices of the Island Groves agent.
Tillinghast welcomed him warmly. The agent was a mound of circles: round pot belly, round shoulders, round head, a circle for a mouth and protuberant brown marbles for eyes.
"Everything happy, happy, happy?" Tillinghast asked.
"It's all fine, but I think you better put my place up for sale, Mr. Tillinghast. I know my equity isn't much, but it ought to bring me something."
"Oh, it will. It will. We've got lists of people wanting to come in out here. Won't have any trouble marketing your house. But I'm sorry to see you pull out. You going east? Changing jobs?"
"Think I'll sell the house, get an apartment down town. It was what I should have done." But there were two reasons why he'd bought this house out here when he latched on with Duke & Thomson: he'd wanted to start completely new, and he'd wanted someplace where Tippy would have room to bark.
Neither reason had any validity now. It was time he stopped fooling himself.
"I'll put it on the market," Tillinghast said. "If you're sure that's the way you want it."
He saw the police cars parked in front of his house as he rounded the corner of Summit Street. Instinct, the fact he'd been writing too many TV crime scripts, something clanged like high voltage warning systems inside his brain. He stopped walking.
He said, "Damn."
He stood undecided in the gray shadow of a new-foliaged eucalyptus. He looked around, chewing at his underlip. He let his briefcase rest against his leg.
It was almost six-thirty, almost dark, and there were lights glowing yellowly in most of the windows of the homes along Summit Street. like his, they were all newly built in a subdivision so recent the ink was still wet on the mortgages. Paradise for happy young marrieds. Bikes toppled discarded in drives, along the walks, against steps, skates lay like lethal anti-personnel mines in parkways, somebody had thrown a catcher's mitt on the grass. Kids were washing up, mothers were dealing out plates onto dining tables, fathers were skimming the newspapers. Everything normal, the way things went out here. But why cops in front of his house?
He stared at those black cars. His heartbeat increased, his stomach muscles tightened.
He turned and walked slowly back along the avenue toward the shopping center. Maybe if he stalled long enough, they'd go away.
The bulging briefcase bumped his leg. Far ahead, neon beckoned: Bar.
His mouth pulled sourly. That sign was like something from his past, bright and gaudy, laughing at him, calling him, knowing all the time he was coming back. As if he'd never escaped at all.
The roof of his mouth felt dry. He wanted a drink. Even knowing what it did to him, what it had done to him.
He scowled. When things go bad, they go all the way. When the devil gets on your tail, you can't run fast enough, and everybody knows what to do with the devil except him that's got him.
He remembered suddenly the way he had yelled at Sheram in the alley last night, threatening to have him arrested for killing Tippy.
Now he shook his head. He'd asked for it. Now Sheram had struck first, and the cops were waiting ...
It occurred to him that Caroline would have laughed to see him walking like this, making a big deal out of facing cops, a neighborhood squabble, even out of having a drink.
He shivered because he saw that Caroline would never have believed the things liquor had done to him, just as she'd have doubted he'd live out here alone.
Caroline had never known what could happen to him when the devil got him. She'd loved him and they'd married, been happy, and then she'd died suddenly. Maybe if she'd lived, he'd have gone on having a drink before dinner, getting high a couple of times a year, and he'd never have moved to Island Groves.
But Caroline was dead. They'd told her she could never have a baby. He'd bought Tippy for her because she needed something to love. Her death last year had blasted him to useless fragments.
He'd stopped working, stopped living, stopped shaving. He'd have stopped breathing but this was too easy. Six months of looking for the bottom of a bottle was a long time. He'd learned there was no bottom, no easy way to forget. And he'd hurt people in the depths of his despair. like Connice.
He paused outside the bar. He licked his tongue across his lips. He'd wanted a drink all day, after he and Nora had argued over that script.
He entered the lounge, saw a couple of men at the bar, a few unattached females, a bartender polishing glasses. He sat on a barstool with his case beside him.
"Why, hi there, Mr. Taylor."
Alan jerked his head up. He said, "Hi, Mr. Tillinghast."
The realtor smiled. "Got a lot on your mind, eh? Don't see you in here much. But I understand. Man doesn't put his lovely home on the market unless he has a lot on his mind."
"Yes." Alan drank a bourbon on the rocks.
"Lovely section out here," Tillinghast said.
"Garden spot of Southern California."
Alan tried to smile. He stared into his glass. Tillinghast's voice hacked at him, a kind of irritant. He was thinking he'd been a fool to come in here, letting the sight of cops give him an excuse to drink. He had work ahead of him tonight. The changes Nora wanted would mean a rewrite, with deadline less than two days ahead.
"Too bad you don't feel you can hold your place," the realtor said. "Prices going up. Few years, it'll bring triple what you paid."
Alan spilled a couple of drops of whiskey. He was aware that Tillinghast was watching narrowly. Alan got up. "See you, Mr. Tillinghast. I've a lot of work ahead of me."
Alan walked out, and this time hurried home in the gathering darkness. Settle with the cops, settle with Sheram, forget the whole matter. Tippy was dead. He had that script to rework. Only this was important.
He turned into his walk as though unaware of the two police cruisers. He kept walking until a man said, "Just a minute."
Alan stopped and turned. A tall, gray-haired man got out of the first cruiser. He crossed the parkway slowly, looking Alan over. "Your name Taylor? Alan Taylor?"
A squat, fat man got out of the cruiser and joined them. Alan saw that the second cruiser was empty.
"Around back," the squat man said. "Case you came in that way."
The tall man shook his head. "We'd lice to talk to you, Mr. Taylor." ' "What about?"
"About your neighbor." The detective glanced at a card in his hand. "Mr. Justin Sheram. You know him?"
"He lives across the alley. My dog dug in his yard. He poisoned the dog. We argued. I know I threatened to call the police, but I thought it over. Decided not to."
"You shoulda called us," the squat man said.
"Never mind, Renner," the tall cop said. "Why did you decide not to, Mr. Taylor?"
"It was a neighborhood hassle. I didn't want to get involved any further. Sorry to have caused you trouble. I'm not going to prefer any charges against
Mr. Sheram. I want to forget it."
"I'll bet you do," the squat man said.
"Looks like it won't be that easy, Mr. Taylor," the gray-haired detective said. "I'm Lt. Sevidge. County police. This is Sergeant Renner. We'd like for you to come across the alley with us to Mr. Sherarn's house. Okay?"
Alan said, "I'm busy. Why get involved with more arguments with the old man? Why can't we drop it?"
"Because Sheram is dead," Renner said. "Somebody shot him."
Alan stared first at Renner and then numbly moved his gaze to Sevidge. Their faces were cold. For the first time, despite all the murder scripts he'd written, he really knew how the cops looked at you when they talked murder.
"Shall we walk over there?" Sevidge said.
"What's it got to do with me?"
Renner's voice was sharp. "Go ahead. Play it dumb. This is what it's got to do with you. Sherarn's dead ... and we think you killed him."
Sherarn's body was sprawled out in the middle of his front room. A bullet had entered his brain through the back of his head. Sheram had been running away, scared. This was in the very tension in the way his body stiffened with rigor mortis.
The room was crowded with police, and the medical examiner. Sevidge and Renner stood on each side of Alan.
This house was new, like his own, but cluttered with old-fashioned furnishings.
"You about through?" Sevidge asked the room at large.
The fingerprint expert nodded. A photographer took a last angle shot of Sheram's body.
Sevidge spoke to the medic. "Any idea how long he's been dead?"
"Can't tell accurately until after the autopsy. Fd say he was killed some time before five a.m. this morning."
"Strange nobody missed him until this afternoon," Sevidge said.
A plainclothes detective said, "Nobody lived here with Sheram. He managed to quarrel with everybody in the nieghborhood. They wouldn't have found him when they did, but a delivery boy tried to collect for a package, looked through the window, and saw him."
Alan couldn't drag his gaze from the body of the man on the floor.
"Any prints?" Sevidge asked.
"Negative. The killer was pretty smart. Left no traces."
"How about outside?"
"We got one pretty good footprint where somebody stepped off the back step into the yard. The old man had the ground loosened, wet. The delivery boy left prints, but we located one that didn't belong to the kid. We made a good cast. We're checking it out"
"You figured the caliber of the murder gun yet."
"A .32."
"Every little bit helps," Renner said.
The police technicians prepared to leave. The medical examiner closed his kit and motioned to his assistants to remove the body.
Sevidge's voice clawed at Alan. "Anything you'd like to say, Mr. Taylor?"
Alan watched a newspaper reporter scribbling notes. He went sick. This was going to make all the newspapers. It was a mistake, but his name would be published. He sweated. Duke & Thomson would love that. They hadn't wanted to take a chance on him.
"You can make it a lot easier on all of us by cooperating," Renner said. "We can do this the hard way, Taylor. But I can tell you this. Make it tough on us, we make it tough on you."
Alan stared at the stout man. "I had no more reason for killing this man than you have."
"I don't know him," Renner said, shrugging. "But you knew him. You fought with him."
"We argued about his poisoning my dog. I wouldn't kill him over a thing like that."
Renner's voice mocked him. "But it does give you a reason, don't it?"
Sevidge said, "Renner may be jumping at conclusions, Mr. Taylor. But as he says, our preliminary investigations did cause us to wait for you. For instance, can you say where you were between three a.m. and five a.m. this morning?"
"I was at home. Asleep." Alan felt his heart sink. Sevidge and Renner exchanged knowing glances. He said, "Nobody was with me, so I can't prove I was there."
Sevidge's smile was cold as leftovers. "We'll let that go for now, Mr. Taylor. I just wanted to demonstrate to you that we did have reason to suspect you. Do you own a gun?"
"Yes."
"What caliber gun, Mr. Taylor?"
Alan hesitated, feeling his face growing hot. Caroline had been afraid of the dark in the weeks before her death. Alan had bought a gun. His voice sounded odd in his own ears. "A .32."
Renner snorted with a sharp intake of breath. Sevidge's face showed no reaction. Panic gripped at Alan.
Sevidge said, "Would you mind showing us the gun?"
"No. Of course not."
"Fine. No reason we can't clear up this whole business by getting answers to a few questions."
Rose Miner opened his front door for them. His housekeeper was dressed to leave, flowered hat on graying head, cheap coat buttoned about her opulent waist. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she sniffled. Obviously, cops had been questioning her.
She ignored the detectives. "I must talk to you, Mr. Taylor."
"In just a minute," Sevidge answered Rose before Alan could speak.
The stout woman trembled. Somebody had given her a bad time.
"Soon as I can, Mrs. Miner," Alan said.
"I'm late now, Mr. Taylor "
"We'll only take a moment of Mr. Taylor's time, Mrs. Miner," Sevidge said. He glanced at Alan. "Suppose you show us where your gun is, Mr. Taylor."
A third plainclothes detective joined them. He carried a wooden frame and in it was a quick-setting cast of a shoe print.
Alan said, "I keep the gun in my bedroom."
Alan had the disturbing sensation of walking through an alien place. He'd lived in this home five months, but suddenly it was strange, everything seemed unknown, unfamiliar.
They checked his bedroom. There wasn't a lot to see, double bed, dresser, mirror, typing table and his portable.
He went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. He kept collected trivia of his life there. Pictures, letters, programs from plays, and somewhere, his gun, wrapped in oily cloth.
He thrust papers aside, panic building in him. He tried to remember the last time he'd seen the gun. He couldn't remember. Had he moved it? He knew better. Once, weeks ago, he'd held it to get the heft and feel for a TV script. He remembered rewrapping the gun and replacing it in this drawer.
Renner was close against his side, peering over his shoulder.
Sevidge leaned against the foot of the bed, calmly watching.
Alan couldn't see the third detective, and he didn't want to turn around. His face was flushed, and he knew the panic would show in his eyes.
The gun was gone.