Death Was the Other Woman Read online

  “Dead,” she repeated. Her hand left her mouth and fluttered to her throat. She touched the small bones there, at the base of her neck. An unconscious gesture. She touched them carefully, one by one, as though for luck or perhaps for strength; I wouldn’t have bet money either way. “Please, Mr. Theroux,” she said at length. “Go on.”

  “Not much to tell really,” Dex said, not without sympathy. “I staked out the place on Lafayette Square, just as you asked. I intended to follow Dempsey, but he never came out. Near eleven o’clock last night, I thought it best to go and investigate. I found his—sorry, Miss Heppelwaite—I found his body in the bathtub. It looked to me like it might have been a professional job.”

  I liked this version of things. First of all, I liked how neatly I’d been left out of it. My reasons for liking it were probably different than Dex’s reasons for leaving me out, but I liked it just the same.

  Also, I appreciated how he actually managed to tell the truth, while at the same time avoiding any mention of the fact that he’d been asleep at a time when he should have been awake. The story didn’t suffer from the absence of these facts: the Heppelwaite broad got the information she needed, while Dex got to leave out the little detail of his complete incompetence.

  Rita herself looked gunshot when the news sunk in, as though someone had pulled a rug out from under her feet, as though the world had shifted. I watched her closely from behind my filing, and if she was acting, she should have won an award.

  When she started to cry, it took both Dex and me by surprise. Maybe we’d figured that her arrangement with Dempsey had a business core and that her heart wasn’t engaged or terribly involved. Her apparent grief put a lie to this. Dexter fished a white linen handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. I hoped it was a clean one, and not the hanky he’d used to wipe our fingerprints up the night before.

  “Did you … did you see anything?” she asked after a while.

  “Ma’am?” Dex said.

  She blew her nose then. Delicately. It sounded like a kitten sneezing. “Well, you were watching the house last night, weren’t you? I thought you might have seen something.”

  Dex shook his head. “It was over by the time I got there,” he told her. I noticed him run a hand over his smooth jaw. Probably no one but me would have spotted this as one of his tells: no one but me would have known he wasn’t quite telling the truth.

  He offered to return part of the retainer she’d given him the day before, but she waved the money away. I saw Dex’s eyes slide over to mine, and he sent me a self-satisfied wink. “See,” he seemed to be saying, “I tried to do the right thing. But it looks like you’ll get a paycheck after all.”

  I shrugged back at him imperceptibly, relieved but a little disturbed. If I was reading things right, Rita Heppelwaite’s meal ticket had just disappeared. Either she wasn’t thinking clearly or she really didn’t need the money, which struck me as odd in a way I found hard to put my finger on.

  “Thank you for your help, Mr. Theroux,” she sniffled, dabbing once again at her eyes. Then her shoulders heaved, and she was crying in earnest. Dex looked helpless, as men often do when faced with a woman’s tears. He looked as though he wished he could be anywhere else.

  “There, there, Miss Heppelwaite,” he said, kind of patting her shoulder as though hoping this might be comforting. It was odd seeing Dexter, usually so confident in any situation, not knowing quite what to do with himself. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do. …”

  “But you’ve been so helpful already,” she said, lifting tear-filled eyes up to his and batting them furiously. “I can’t imagine what I would have done without you.” He patted her reassuringly some more, but I wondered what—aside from patting her shoulders—she really thought he’d done.

  Before long she pulled herself together enough to take her leave.

  “Please, Miss Heppelwaite,” Dex said, as he walked her to the door. “As I said, if you think of anything at all…”

  “Thank you,” she sniffed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  When the door had closed behind her, I realized there were two things about the scene that had bothered me. Rita’s distress had seemed genuine, and the tears had looked real, but neither had left a mark on her beautiful face.

  There are women who can cry in that way: I’ve read about them in books. When I cry, the tears leave their mark. My eyes get puffy and rimmed with red, my nose runs, my skin gets all blotchy. When I cry, it’s not a pretty sight.

  Rita Heppelwaite had cried like a fictional beauty on the edge of a breakdown. She’d poured out her emotion and soaked in Dex’s sympathy. And when she’d left, none of it had marred her face in the slightest.

  The other thing that didn’t sit right had been her immediate reaction when Dex told her Dempsey was dead. She’d taken it all in and she’d cried—sure, she’d cried. But she hadn’t asked how her lover had died. I went back over Dex’s conversation with her in my mind, but no, he hadn’t mentioned the how, only the when and the where.

  “She took my handkerchief,” Dex noted bemusedly after she’d gone.

  A small price to pay to see the last of her, I thought but did not say. It wouldn’t have mattered, because I was wrong.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I WENT BACK TO MY BOOK. Dex went back to whatever demons he’d been chasing—or whatever drink he’d been nursing—before Rita Heppelwaite interrupted the rhythm of our day.

  The afternoon was endless. The day had gotten progressively warmer, and by midafternoon it felt like high summer, not the middle of fall. We were on the fifth floor, but even so, in the new heat you could smell the garbage ripening at street level. It seemed to roll itself up in the exhaust of a hundred motorcars and waft up to us in heat-soaked packages. I daydreamed about Angels Flight: about the little railcar lifting me out of the dirt and stink of downtown, to the cleaner air of residential Bunker Hill.

  At four o’clock I’d had enough. I decided to pack it in early. I’d long since put all the files back where they belonged and tidied my office and the waiting area. The day was almost done, and we’d had our bit of excitement with Rita’s visit. The phone hadn’t rung even once—not even the usual cadre of bill collectors—and I had a strong feeling it wasn’t going to. There didn’t seem to be any reason for me to hang around.

  I was just giving my desk a final tidy, intending to go in and say good-night to Dex before grabbing my purse and heading out the door, when we got our second unannounced visit of the day. It made me wonder why we even had a phone.

  I didn’t know the two men who came in the door, but I didn’t have to. I knew they were the law before either of them had even opened their mouths. One was tall and dark; the other, short and florid. Both had the buttoned-down but messy look that seems to be part of the training to wear a detective’s badge in Los Angeles these days. You had to wonder about it. Sometimes I think you could take a perfectly good, clean suit and drape it on a flatfoot, and he’d end up looking like he’d been wrung out.

  “We’re looking for Dexter J. Theroux,” the short florid one said. His big hands were working the hat he held so furiously that I worried it wouldn’t survive the encounter.

  “This is his office,” I said, stating the obvious. But I didn’t like the man’s tone, or the shifty way both of them had looked around the room when they entered. Like they were disappointed not to see something that wasn’t there.

  Short-and-Florid smiled at me. An insolent grin that held a touch of lechery. I didn’t like him. “I know that, sister,” he said. “It’s got his name on the door.” He pointed at the black-edged gold letters on the frosted glass in our front door.

  “So you can read,” I said, matching his tone. “Am I supposed to be impressed?” I had my orders with regard to police officers too. Dex had told me long ago: never tell cops anything. Never offer and never volunteer. When it’s time to tell a thing, you’ll know it, he’d said. But in casual questioning, give th
em nothing at all.

  The flatfoot didn’t like my answer; I could see that on his ugly little mug. He looked at me evenly, as though deciding on the best way to proceed.

  “All right then,” he said, “we’ll play it your way. Is he in?”

  “He is,” I said, rising. “I’ll announce you.”

  “Don’t bother.” The tall cop spoke for the first time, then pushed past me into Dex’s office. I peeked in behind them, partly to check on Dex’s condition, partly to see if he wanted me to hang around.

  “Sorry, Dex,” I called in. “They wouldn’t wait for me to see if you were free.”

  If Dex was upset, he wasn’t showing it. “It’s OK, Kitty,” he said, opening his desk drawer and pulling out a couple more glasses. I was probably the only one who would have heard the steel beneath his affable tone. “I haven’t seen O’Reilly and Houlahan for a while, have I, boys? They’ve just come for a visit, I guess.”

  “You guessed wrong, Theroux.” The short cop didn’t mince any words. “We’ve got a bit of a mystery down at the station.”

  “Yeah,” said the tall one, his voice as coarse as tires on gravel. “Someone told us about a corpse you’re supposed to have seen.”

  “Gentlemen, have a seat.” Dex settled himself more deeply into his chair, while he pulled the stopper out of his current bottle of whiskey—Canadian Club today, I saw. He splashed some of the amber liquid into his own glass, then poured a couple of fingers into each of the clean glasses he’d taken from his desk.

  “We’re on duty,” the tall one—O’Reilly—said, as he took a seat. Houlahan nodded his agreement, but pulled his glass closer while he sat down. Of this pair, I noted, Houlahan would be the easier to manage.

  “If you don’t need me, Boss …” I ventured, from the place by the door where I still stood.

  “Oh, thanks, Kitty. Yeah, we’re fine. Can you finish that typing before the day is through?”

  I looked straight at Dex, but I couldn’t speak my thoughts, and he didn’t meet my eyes. I wondered why anyone would need to impress these mooks, then realized it was possible Dex wanted me to hang around, just in case.

  I didn’t say anything, just nodded. As I went back into the outer office, I left the door ajar slightly, hoping to catch snippets of the conversation while I performed my typing show.

  “You were saying?” Dex’s voice was calm, assured and unaffected by whatever he’d been drinking.

  I rolled a clean sheet of paper into the typewriter and began hitting keys in a leisurely fashion, trying hard not to drown out the voices I could just make out from this distance.

  “We got a report…” It was O’Reilly. I recognized his gravelly voice. “You told someone you saw a stiff… up close and personal like.”

  “Ah,” said Dex. Silently I agreed. It was beginning to make sense.

  “That’s right,” Houlahan chimed in. “At a house on Lafayette Square. But when we got there to check it out, guess what we found?” There was malice in the man’s voice. At my desk, I braced myself for the worst, absently hitting a smattering of typewriter keys into the silence.

  “A stiff?” was Dex’s guess. From where I was sitting, it was a good one. It would have been my guess as well.

  “Guess again.” It was O’Reilly this time. From the sounds of him, he was chasing his words with a sip of his drink.

  “I’m all outta guesses, fellas. That was my single one.” I could imagine Dex leaned back at his desk, a studied look of bored patience on his face. But what would he be feeling inside?

  I didn’t get to find out because the shrill ring of the phone almost shot me out of my seat.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I PICKED UP THE TELEPHONE and choked out my standard greeting, hoping I didn’t sound as flustered as I felt. “Good afternoon, Dexter J. Theroux, private investigator, how may I help you?”

  “I’d like to make an appointment to see Mr. Theroux, please.” The voice was feminine and self-assured. In our business that was a combo that paid the bills.

  “Of course,” I said easily, as though I made appointments for Dex every minute of the day. “When were you thinking? I’ll see if I can adjust his schedule.” I pulled the vast wasteland of Dex’s empty appointment book toward me.

  “I’d like to see him as soon as possible.” It seemed to me that the self-assurance had slipped somewhat. “Would he have time for me tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Well,” I said, flipping through the empty pages noisily, “Mr. Theroux’s schedule tomorrow does look very tight.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed.

  “But I think I can squeeze you in at three p.m. You might have to wait until three fifteen. I’ll try to avoid that if possible though.” None of this was subterfuge for its own sake. I have discovered that clients are more willing to pay and pay well for a busy, in-demand detective than they are for a mook who spends most of his days looking at the world through the bottom of a glass and checking his eyelids for faulty weather stripping. I told myself it wasn’t exactly a lie, more like a teensy misdirection. And Marjorie had told me the day before that the stove had been acting up. We were going to need a new one or at least a repair. I had to do everything I could do to make sure Dex had cash on hand.

  “Three o’clock will be fine,” she said, sounding grateful. “Thank you.”

  I pushed a smile into my voice when I replied, “Oh, you’re welcome. Can I get your name, please?”

  “Lila Dempsey,” she said. “Mrs. Lila Dempsey.”

  Dempsey. The name hit home right away. I quickly weighed the possibility that this Lila was connected with the Dempsey we’d found in the tub on Lafayette Square. Then I weighed the possibility that she wasn’t. But even with all that weighing, I came up with nothing flat. Sometimes thinking about a thing doesn’t help at all. Sometimes you just have to wait and see.

  “Very good, Mrs. Dempsey. We’ll see you tomorrow.” While I replaced the receiver, I pushed all that weighing out of my head. I could still hear the voices coming out of Dex’s office. I hoped I hadn’t missed too much. I retuned my ears to the conversation, clattering a smattering of letters on the typewriter for good measure while I did so.

  “Listen, fellas,” Dex was saying. “I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at. You guys know me: I’m a law-abiding citizen. Believe me, if I’d seen a dead guy, your number is the first one I woulda called.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, Theroux,” said the gravelly voice, “the broad said you told her you went in the house and found Dempsey dead.”

  “I don’t know what tune she’s singing,” Dex said, sounding sure of himself, “but I didn’t hand her the sheet music.”

  “So let me get this straight.” It was the gravelly voice again. “You were not in Harrison Dempsey’s house on Lafayette Square last night?”

  “That’s right,” Dex responded, sounding confident. “Not last night and not ever. But I will tell you this …”

  The phone rang again. And I jumped again.

  “Good afternoon, Dexter J. Theroux, private investigator,” I chirped. “Can I help you?”

  “Hey, kiddo, you sound chipper.” It was Mustard.

  “Do I? I don’t mean to. I think I’m trying to sound like I’m not not chipper, if you follow.”

  “Not really,” he said, sounding comfortable, “but I can live with it.”

  “OK,” I said, deciding that I was OK with that. All I wanted to do now was get rid of Mustard so I could get back to my eavesdropping while there were still things left to hear. “Dex is in a meeting right now, Mustard. Can I get him to call you?”

  “A meeting, huh?” Mustard sounded as though he might play with the euphemism—get to the bottom of it—but then decided he had more pressing concerns. “Actually, Kitty, I called to talk to you.”

  “To me? What for?” I tried to hide my surprise, but it wasn’t easy. Mustard never had business with me.

  “You have a rooming house, don’t you?”
r />   “Well, kinda. Not exactly. Let’s just say I live in one. And the owners are good friends.”

  “Is there a room open?”

  “I’m not sure. Why, Mustard? You suddenly need a place to live?”

  “It’s not for me,” he said. “I’ve got a friend in a bit of a jam. It’s … well, it’s a long story. But she needs a place to stay. She can pay all right. But she needs a place in a hurry. You got something for her?”

  “Well, like I said Mustard, it’s not my place. I think we’ve got something open, but I can’t give the yes or no, you understand.”

  “Can you call and find out?”

  “No phone.” Lots of people in the Southland were getting phones right then. But phones cost money, something we didn’t have a lot of, so Marjorie had figured we could go without. It didn’t bother me any. I had the phone at the office I could use anytime, and with cash as scarce as it was, there were plenty of other things on which we could spend the little money we had. “I can check tonight and let you know tomorrow though.”

  “Sure, sure,” Mustard said, hiding his disappointment. I felt bad. Mustard had done a lot for me.

  “Listen, I can give you the address, and you can take your friend up there and check it out. See if there’s an opening. Maybe use my name if you think it’ll help.”

  Mustard sounded brighter at the suggestion. “Thanks, Kitty. But like I said, this friend is in a bit of a jam, and I’m tied up for the rest of the day. Can I send her over to you there at Dex’s? Then maybe the two of you can check things out, and I’ll swing by your place tonight. If it’s a no-go, I’ll take her with me … figure out something else.”

  I hesitated only because I had the feeling there was something larger at work here. That this might even be Mustard in action, fixing something. I reminded myself again that I owed him a thing or two and relented. He’d said if things didn’t work out, he’d come and get her later, so what could it hurt? “Sure,” I said, “send her by.”