Homicide's Their Headache Read online

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  Homicide's Their Headache

  Carl G. Hodges

  This page formatted 2011 Blackmask Online.

  http://www.blackmask.com

  Thrilling Detective, August, 1948

  Private Detective Bill Starch has both eyes wide open—but he is led into a blind alley when he takes the trail of a mystery involving a butler and a millionaire. A novelette.

  CHAPTER I. NO CLIENT—NO BUCKS

  IT HAD been raining off and on since noon, and I was down in the dumps anyway. What Marge had told me when I hit Investigations, Inc. at two o'clock only riled me more.

  “Sugar,” I grunted at her, “what did old man Dilweg say?”

  I put down the collar of my trench coat and tried to shape my sloppy felt into looking like something besides a tired snap-brim. I lit a smoke and parked my six-foot frame on her desk edge.

  When I hit the States with my atabrined mug and a duffel full of dough, I tried to buy a dog tag and make it legal for her to fix my eggs and burn my toast every morning but she wouldn't say “Yes.” She still calls me “Mister” Starch. But it was worth twenty bucks a week just to have her around to look at. She's got about a million bucks worth of nice things hidden under about twenty-two ounces of clothes. And that little pug nose of hers is strictly out of this world.

  Right now I wasn't thinking too much about wedding marches and her particular style of architecture.

  “Mr. Starch,” she told me, “Mr. Dilweg seemed rather perturbed. He said that your services as a private detective weren't worth two hundred dollars a week and he didn't intend to pay the bill you sent.”

  “He's crazy,” I said. “He agreed to pay twenty-five bucks a day and expenses. Dilweg had me chasing all over the state trying to locate a guy by the name of Charles Bryce, Junior. I find Bryce doing a landscape job at Dilweg's own house under the name of Joe Briggs. What kind of a chump does Dilweg think I am? I'll get my two hundred bucks off him or I'll twist his head right off the end of his backbone.”

  Marge looked at me like she was worrying how long her twenty bucks a week would last.

  “Mr. Dilweg was a lawyer before he got to be an oil man and a millionaire,” she reminded. “Maybe you'd better go slow.”

  “Millionaires don't scare me,” I said. “I'm full of Starch. I'll go visit the old goat and I'll swipe two C's out of his wallet before the moths can bite me.”

  I slammed the door behind me as I boiled out of the office.

  I crossed the street in the slackening rain and stood under the awning of the First National until the two-fifteen Noble Street bus showed up. I stepped off the curb and went ankle deep in water in the gutter before I hit the bus step. I was peeved to start with, and wet socks squishing around in soggy shoes didn't help my well-known Irish any.

  If Elsberry Dilweg had been there then I'd have punched him silly. Just because he owned some oil wells and a couple million bucks he couldn't make a sap out of me. Not for two hundred bucks, he couldn't.

  BY THE time the bus reached the outskirts of Springdale and the intersection of the outer drive with 66, the rain had stopped and the sun was trying to break through the clouds. The gutters were running full and the wide expanse of sloping lawn that led up the hill to Dilweg's twenty-room mansion looked fresh and green.

  The old goat had his castle in a square block of ground, with the back of it facing north into raw, uncultivated timberland, separated from it by a high brick wall. I walked along the sidewalk on Noble, taking a gander over the low brick wall that hemmed the front of the estate.

  I was heading for the iron gate that straddled a gravel drive that led up the hill to the huge stone house when a shiny black car, with its chromium gleaming, and its spotless glass unmarked by the recent rain, pulled up at the curb ahead of me. A guy in a gray suit and a Homberg hat got out with a leather briefcase.

  He was a good-looking guy with a crisp gray mustache over a good-natured mouth. He was about fifty years old and he could have posed for an ad as a successful banker. He was just about my height and weight, but he had good clothes and knew how to wear them.

  He had an oval cigarette out and was flicking a pocket lighter. He was getting sparks but no flame. I handed him a paper pack of matches as I came up.

  “You must have got that thing from your old maid sister for Christmas,” I said. “They never work.”

  He smiled, and it was nice. “The sister or the lighter?” He lit his smoke and blew it out his aristocratic nostrils. “Thanks,” he said. “Going my way?”

  We turned in at the iron gate and walked up the gravel road, wet and white in the brightening sun.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I got a target for today. I'm going to lay down the law for old man Dilweg. He owes me two hundred bucks.”

  He laughed and his white teeth were nice, too. “I know just what you mean.” He put out his hand, friendly. “Roberts is my name— Carson W. Roberts. Mr. Dilweg doesn't owe me anything. In fact, he has been most generous to one of my pet projects.”

  I had the guy labeled then. “I've heard of you. You're director of some welfare project down in East St. Louis. Handicap Haven, Incorporated, or something like that. My name is Starch—Bill Starch. Private detective.”

  His eyes turned on me with interest, like he'd never seen a detective before in his life.

  “Why on earth would Mr. Dilweg hire a detective?”

  He was fishing, but I didn't run with the bait. When I take on a client I keep my trap shut about that client's business. I had a feeling that my profession was a shock to Roberts. I guess I just didn't fit in with his idea of a private dick.

  We didn't say any more, and in a few moments we were standing in front of the big white door on Dilweg's sprawling veranda. Roberts lifted the brass knocker—made like an oil well derrick—and let it drop. I could hear the sound echo in the corridor.

  We turned to look down over the hill to the west, where a little knot of men was gathered under a weeping willow tree with a lot of props around it.

  “Mr. Dilweg likes weeping willows,” Roberts volunteered. “He hired a landscape expert named Briggs to dig up that monster in his home town of East St. Louis and haul it forty miles to replant it here. He had to get a special permit from the State Highway Department so they could haul it here over Sixty-six. That shows he loves trees.”

  I grunted. “That shows,” I said, “it's nice to have a couple million bucks.” I was getting impatient. “Slug that knocker again, pal, or we'll grow beards before Richard opens the door.”

  He took hold of the knocker and the pressure swung the door open a little—the latch hadn't caught. Roberts pushed it open and went inside.

  “Come on,” he said. “It's all right.”

  I followed him inside and down a hall, about knee-deep in Oriental rugs.

  Roberts called, “Elkins!” and then “Mrs. Franner!”

  His yell wasn't loud, but his voice was the carrying kind.

  Nobody answered the call. The house was quiet.

  Roberts looked at me. “Funny both Elkins and Mrs. Franner are not downstairs.” He added, in explanation, “Elkins is a kind of butler-handyman. Mrs. Franner is a sort of housekeeper.”

  He walked through an arched doorway into a paneled room that was undoubtedly a study. Then he stopped. He turned back suddenly. His eyes stared wildly. His mouth gaped open. He made a lot of funny noises deep down in his throat.

  I saw IT, too.

  I bumped past Roberts in a hurry, and moved over the big Chinese rug, fast. I knelt in front of the desk. But there wasn't any need for haste.

  ELSBERRY DILWEG was as dead as he would ever be. His featherweight five-foot frame, in rough gray tweeds, was lying
face-up on the floor. His eyes were as prominent as white buttons on black shoes. His gray hair, what there was of it, made dead ear muffs on each side of his bald head.

  Both his hands were gripped in agony around the handles of a pair of long, slender paper shears buried in his heart. There wasn't much blood; only a quiet seepage marked his vest.

  I got up. “I saw my share of dead Nips on Guadal,” I said. “They hadn't been dead long. Dilweg ain't, either. We better take a gander around the joint. You take the upstairs. I'll take the downstairs.”

  Roberts' mouth was still hanging open. He had nothing but fear on that classic mug. He was frightened silly.

  “Snap out of it, bub,” I said. “The killer might still be in the house.”

  He pointed woodenly at the wall behind the desk. I turned to look. An oil painting had been moved sideward in the paneled wall and the door of a small safe yawned open. I jumped across Dilweg's body and stuck my hand in the safe. It was empty.

  “That don't prove anything,” I said. “There's a lot of papers on Dilweg's desk. Maybe he took the stuff out himself.”

  I heard a door close softly somewhere. Not far away. I jumped for the hall. A man's shadowy figure darted across e the opening at the north end of the hall.

  “The killer!” I screamed at Roberts, who had followed me. “Let's nab him!”

  The unknown was faster than a shadow. He moved like a cat. I skittered across the Orientals like a kitten on a tin roof, trying to keep my balance on the polished floor. I dived. My hands grabbed the unknown guy's jacket. He squirmed and gave me a straight-arm that made my tonsils bounce in my throat. And my feet slipped from under me and I hit the floor with a crash that made my teeth rattle.

  My quarry was out the side door and streaking down the east lawn like all the demons were after him. He took that low brick wall without breaking stride and vanished into the timber. He could have topped the record for the four-forty hurdles on any college cinders in the country.

  I had a little brown-colored metal ring in my hand that I'd torn off the shadow's jacket. A metal ring about an inch in diameter. I looked at Roberts.

  “Where was the guy hiding?”

  Roberts pointed, his face still green with fright.

  “There's a clothes closet under the stairway that leads to the second floor. Behind the closet is a door that leads down stairs to the garage.”

  I opened the closet door. A light clicked on automatically. The closet was empty, except for a cheap raincoat on a hanger and some hat boxes on a shelf. On the floor was a tiny blob of white stuff that felt like ground glass, and half of a light brown coat button. I gathered the stuff and put it in my handkerchief.

  Roberts was nearly tongue-tied with fright. “Where's Elkins?” he chattered. “Where's Mrs. Fanner? Are they dead, too?”

  I thought the guy was about ready to keel over, he was that green around the gills.

  “Take it easy, chum,” I said. “One corpse at a time is par for the course. There's nothing to suggest the killer was in the wholesale business.”

  “What are you going to do? You're a detective.”

  “Right now I'm gonna call the cops. Homicide's their headache, not mine. I'm only a private eye—with a client rubbed out—and me two hundred bucks poorer than I ought to be.”

  CHAPTER II. HOMICIDE TAKES OVER

  I CALLED Homicide at City Hall and told one of Fleming Morf's stooges that there was a little matter of a dead millionaire demanding their attention. Roberts sat on the edge of a chair while I was calling. He puffed on a cigarette and gawked nervously at everything in the room except Dilweg's body. I felt sorry for the guy. Sudden death was too much for him.

  “Let's take a look around the dump,” I said.

  He followed me like a lost dog. We went through everything upstairs and then repeated downstairs. Nobody was in any of the rooms, and it didn't look as if anybody had ransacked the joint for dough. Maybe the killer had got what he wanted in that safe in the study.

  We went downstairs to the garage. Roberts turned on a light somewhere. The garage was a concrete-floored room thirty feet square, with heavy wood-paneled walls. There wasn't a thing in the room except a black four-door peerless, license 408-284. No bench, no oil drums, no tools, no cabinets, no nothing.

  Raindrops still glistened on the black finish of the car, and the windshield was still smeary except where the twin windshield wipers had swept the rain away. I knew that sedan hadn't been there long. It had stopped raining only fifteen minutes ago, just before I'd gotten off the Noble bus.

  I got in the car and sat behind the wheel. I glanced in the rear-view mirror. I could see Roberts standing behind the car, lighting another cigarette. His hands were shaking. I hated to think how he would crack up when Detective-lieutenant Fleming Morf and his rubber hose boys started working on him.

  I got out and walked toward the bare wall in front of the car. When I got three or four feet away, I heard something click. A wide wooden panel slid sideward in the wall and there was a yawning black opening, paved with concrete, sloping gently downward.

  Roberts was at my shoulder. “That's a special driveway that goes under the house and comes out on the north side of the grounds,” he told me. “It allowed Mr. Dilweg to drive out of the grounds without backing. The door operates with an electric eye. You opened the door when you broke the circuit with your body. The outside garage doors operate the same way.”

  “Are millionaires too proud to back a car?” I asked.

  “I take it you've never met Mr. Dilweg in person,” Roberts said.

  “No. He hired me by telephone.” “He had a stiff neck. He couldn't turn his head without turning his whole body. It happened in an oil-well accident several years ago.”

  I heard footsteps on the hardwood upstairs and I felt sorry for Roberts.

  “Let's go up and face the inquisition, chum. Morf and his stooges are on the scene.”

  We went up quietly and walked to the study. I expected to see Morf and his muscle men, but what I saw was a guy kneeling by Dilweg's body. His eyes were staring. He was skinny and tall and neat in a brown suit and a brown hat, but he had on a black bow tie on a white shirt. His face was as pale as paper and his Adam's apple jumped in his throat when he saw us.

  He got up. “I just came back from the bank,” he stammered at Roberts. “I wasn't gone more than half an hour. Then—this. It was my fault—for leaving him alone.”

  I had an idea that this guy wasn't shedding any tears over Dilweg's demise.

  “We found your employer just a few a minutes ago, Elkins,” Roberts said. “Mr. Starch and I.” He introduced me to Dilweg's butler.

  I grunted at Elkins. I didn't like the waver in his eye and the oil in his voice. “What bank did you go to?” I asked him.

  “The First National.”

  I looked at my wrist-watch. “Come again. That bank closes at two-thirty.”

  “I just made it,” he said, “and I just got back on the Noble bus.”

  “Was Dilweg here when you left?”

  He hesitated for a long time, like a swimmer getting ready for cool-off. Then he made up his mind to answer.

  “No, sir. Mr. Dilweg was just driving in the south gate as I got on the bus to go to the bank.”

  “How'd you know it was Dilweg you saw?”

  His thin face got red. I couldn't tell whether he was angry or cagey.

  “I know the license number. Four-o-eight, two-eight-four. Then he said, emphatically, “It was Mr. Dilweg, all right.”

  “I'm only a private eye, Elkins,” I said, “but I've got a two-hundred-dollar stake in this murder. Is Joe Briggs still working for Dilweg?”

  “No, sir. Briggs has not been working here for several days.”

  “Fired?” “I don't know, sir.” “Was Briggs a visitor here today?”

  AGAIN that queer hesitation, like he was weighing his words on a scale of caution. “Briggs was here early this morning,” he said then, “but I reall
y don't know whether he wanted to see Mr. Dilweg or Mrs. Franner. Briggs said he'd return later.”

  This guy was cagey. He didn't throw in much information for free.

  “Did Briggs come back any time before you left for the bank?” I asked.

  “No, sir.”

  I had never seen Joe Briggs wearing eyeglasses, but a guy can never overlook anything in a murder case.

  “Did Briggs ever wear eye-glasses, Elkins?”

  Elkins said, “No, sir” emphatically, and one of my theories went out the window. Maybe the ground glass I'd found in the closet where the killer had been was an eye-glass lens, but if Briggs didn't wear glasses then he wasn't the guy that had scissored Dilweg to death. . . .

  Two of Morf's baggy-pants stooges came into the study first, like a vanguard. They acted like two-bit dicks act on hardwood floors and Oriental rugs.

  Detective-lieutenant Fleming Morf brought his cock-sure, overbearing fat swagger into the room like a calliope following the elephants. His round head was like a pool ball with ash-tray hair clipped short so that it stuck up like a curbing on his wrinkled street of forehead. His eyes were cold, and they got colder when he saw me. He grinned without humor at the stooges, who watched him.

  “The foul-ball is here,” he said.

  I patted my hands together. “Clap hands— here's the hero. Where's your rubber hose and your brass knucks, tough guy?”

  Morf ignored me. He looked at Dilweg's body like it was a piece of cold fish on a platter. He made a face at his stooges and they started to go over the joint like a vacuum cleaner. Then he looked at me.

  “Start talking,” he said.

  I told Morf all about finding the body. I told him all I knew about Carson Roberts and John Elkins and Joe Briggs and Mrs. Lilli Franner. I told him about the wet four-door sedan downstairs and about the guy Roberts and I had flushed out of the closet. I even gave him my handkerchief with the broken button and the ground glass I'd scooped off the closet floor. And I gave him the shiny metal ring I'd grabbed off the guy's jacket.

  He put the stuff in his pocket. “Why can't you cheap divorce dicks keep your paws off evidence in homicide cases?” he growled.