Lively Game of Death Read online

  I tried to bring up the subject once, but I didn’t get far. As far as Hilary’s concerned, her father said no because he was jealous of her “promising” detective abilities. But I met him once, under circumstances not connected with his daughter, and I doubt whether he’d be capable of such pettiness. To me, it’s hardly a mystery that a man might want to keep his little girl—as he might think of Hilary—out of a potentially seamy profession.

  Anyway, Hilary “got back” at him by entering the public relations field, an industry her old man regards with deepest loathing. He’s fairly well known, as I said, and I understand she occasionally sends clients to him asking for endorsements of various products-tissue, cheese dip, pest sprays—possibly on the theory that if she annoys him sufficiently, he may finally relent and take her into the business.

  Knowing what I do about Hilary’s past, I could understand her eagerness to pitch into the Trim-Tram spy case. Perhaps the same motive was behind her refusal to let me report Sid Goetz’s murder to the cops. With two mysteries to solve, I could well imagine the cerebral ecstasy she was experiencing. Of course, she claimed that she didn’t want to notify the police until we called Scott. “It’s our obligation,” she explained virtuously, but unconvincingly.

  “But Goetz is dead!” I unnecessarily reminded her.

  “And the client is still alive! That’s who we call.”

  Which was her attempt to sound like a PR lady.

  But despite these two apparent reasons for delaying the call to the officials, I was still disturbed. I kept asking myself what I really knew about Hilary, and the answer was: not much more than what was on the surface ... that slightly superior (hell, extremely superior) image she chooses to project.

  But underneath that? A central tension, coiled at her core, preventing her from being at ease with any man. But what was its raison d’être? I could guess, but I really didn’t know.

  More prosaically, but more to the point, I also didn’t know where Hilary had been the night before. She’d come home very late, long after I’d gone to bed. Another thing I knew: she sleeps with a pistol by her pillow. Does she keep it in her handbag when she’s awake? Would she really have used it on me that morning?

  Next point: Hilary recognized Goetz’s body. I recalled that she’d had a run-in with him, a hassle on behalf of a friend. What took place at that session? Did Goetz say anything especially inflammatory?

  Also: she hadn’t wanted to visit the Goetz showroom. But once there, Hilary evinced no surprise or shock at the sight of the corpse.

  Three smooth bits of wood in the clutch of a dead man. A trio of polished letter tiles from a popular word game, all of them hidden in the murdered man’s fist, evidently a desperate final message. ...

  Two of the wooden rectangles each bore letters of the alphabet stamped in black on one surface.

  On one tile was the letter H. The other held a Q.

  H ... Q ...

  I felt a little ill.

  I examined the third of the game pieces. It was a blank.

  Maybe Goetz had grabbed for another letter as he fell, but got hold of the blank by mistake. But I had a hunch the explanation wasn’t all that simple.

  “What are you doing out there? Come on in here a minute!”

  Hilary Quayle was standing in Goetz’s private office. I nodded that I would join her, then began walking across the room.

  The blank tile was a real puzzle. Until I could riddle its meaning, I decided to hold off a decision on the significance of the other two tiles as well.

  I made up my mind quickly. As I reached the small office, I stuck my hand inside my trousers pocket and left the three Scrabble pieces inside.

  In the office, Hilary had something to show me, but first I phoned Scott to ask him to meet us at the Goetz showroom as fast as possible. It was an annoying little task, because I didn’t want to tell him anything specific over the telephone. To make things worse, we had a lousy connection, and Scott found it a little hard to make out what I was telling him. But at last he caught the urgency of the appeal and promised to come immediately.

  I hung up in time to catch Hilary peering cautiously out of the main showroom door. Satisfied, she pulled it tightly shut and locked it.

  Rejoining me in the office, Hilary took the only available swivel seat and slumped wearily back. Her eyes sought mine.

  “Well,” she asked, “is he coming?”

  I nodded. “Now what do we do?”

  “Look around the room. What do you see?”

  I did as she said. It was a tiny chamber, hardly more than a convenient cubicle for maintaining essential business records; it seemed even smaller in contrast to the rest of the showroom. Oddly enough, the cramped office had two scratched rolltop desks jammed into it, back to back, though the one opposite Hilary’s chair was not in use—a thick cover of dust lay over it like a gray woolen comforter. Goetz’s desk should have been meticulously neat, but in spite of its late owner’s reputation for orderliness, the top was up, the drawers stuck partly out, and papers and memo books, order blanks and catalog sheets slopped from the drawers onto the ink-stained tan blotter below.

  I described it all to Hilary. She nodded, then called my attention to a box of cartridge shells sitting on the bottom of one of the jutting drawers. It, too, was partially ajar, and I could see the brassy ends of a few small shells inside.

  “He must have been shot with his own gun,” Hilary remarked.

  “Why?”

  “Do you see a gun anywhere in this room?”

  I said I didn’t.

  “Or outside in the showroom?”

  The answer was also negative.

  “Then the murderer must have taken Goetz’s gun,” she opined. “Certainly it’s impossible to tell whether it was actually the murder weapon at this juncture ... but it’s a reasonable assumption. So, unless something better presents itself, I’ll begin with that theory.”

  I pointed out that we could not even assume that there was a gun belonging to Goetz in the showroom. All we could be sure of was a box of shells; the gun could be at his home, or maybe Goetz had never gotten around to buying one; maybe he only collected cartridge shells.

  She paid no attention, other than to order me to shut up. Hilary thought out loud: “Now, if we assume that some person or persons unknown did away with Sid Goetz with his own weapon, then either it was done by someone intimately acquainted with him, or else the murder resulted from some kind of a struggle and might have been accidental.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “If the murderer sneaked into Goetz’s office and grabbed his gun, then it had to be somebody who knew where he kept the weapon. Figuring that it was in the same drawer as the ammunition, the pistol was in an out-of-the-way place where a chance thief would be unlikely to find it. But, on the other hand, if Goetz knew he was in danger, then he may have extracted the firearm at an earlier time last night. In that case, the restriction doesn’t hold, and the murderer could have been just about anybody.”

  She sat there, brow knitted, for about ten seconds. Then she nodded her head. “All right, assuming Goetz had the gun out, our second hypothesis—”

  I interrupted to ask why she had opted in favor of the second possibility, but she gestured impatiently, and I turned it off again.

  “Our second hypothesis, then, is that Goetz had the gun out for—what? Self-protection? Probably. Then we have to guess that he’d been threatened earlier, maybe even the same day. Anyway, he must have expected some kind of trouble to take place last night, or ...”

  She paused. Then a startled look crossed her face. She looked up at me again. “Do you notice,” she asked, “anything wrong? Right now?”

  I’ve heard of understatements, but that was the first time I’d ever been asked an underquestion. “Anything wrong?” I snapped. “Where do you want me to start, for chrissake? With Goetz with a bullet in his middle in the other room? Or the fact that we’re breaking the law by not notifying th
e law ... ? Or am I supposed to pick holes in your reasoning when I can’t follow it worth a damn?”

  For once, Hilary treated me like some kind of vaguely human species. “Look, you’ll just have to be patient with me,” she explained. “This is just more than I ever expected, getting two cases in one day. Or maybe it’s one, we’ll see. But, anyway, here I am on the spot with the chance to clear up a crime and—well ...” She shrugged, her candor—never a rich lode—petering out. “Damn it, I’m no good at apologies. Just let me muddle through this in my own way, all right?”

  It wasn’t all right, of course, but she managed some kind of a smile which enticed me into agreeing, at least for the time being. Then—because she hated asking for permission to do anything—Hilary snapped back to her old self.

  “All right,” she stated crisply, “since you’re too slow to notice, I’ll tell you what’s wrong—we’re alone. Why is the showroom empty?”

  “Because, in case you forgot, Goetz is dead.”

  “And what about his salesman?”

  That was what had been bothering me subliminally for the past several minutes! Where was Harry Whelan, the crack entertainer-cum-demonstrator who had once worked for Trim-Tram and was now a salesman for Goetz Sales? According to Scott Miranda, he’d talked with Whelan on the telephone only the night before, when he’d pumped him on particulars of the Goetz racer knock-off.

  “You’d better scout around,” Hilary advised me, “and see whether you can find him somewhere in the building.”

  “I’d better scout around? What are you going to be doing?”

  Hilary counted to herself for a few seconds. “In case it slipped your little mind, you are the employee and I give the orders. It’s none of your damn business, but I’m going to wait here for Scott. And make some charts, as long as I’m waiting. I want to clear up the spy problem fast, so I can—”

  “What makes you think the two situations are different?” I interrupted. “Tom Lasker—”

  “I already admitted that possibility. Since I have no hard-and-fast proof of when Goetz was shot, I can’t totally ignore the possibility that Lasker rushed over here and squelched him, to protect himself from being identified as the Trim-Tram spy.”

  “Then you think he is the spy.”

  “Very likely. But I want to work out all the details before I accuse him in front of Scott.”

  I walked slowly out of the room, thinking it over. At the door, I stopped before closing it behind me. “What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Nothing elaborate,” Hilary instructed. “Just step across the hall and check with the neighboring firms. See whether they know anything about visitors to Goetz Sales. Ask if they know where Whelan is. Anything you think they can tell us that may be important.”

  “Wait a minute,” I objected. “How the hell am I going to get into other showrooms when I’m wearing an exhibitor’s badge?”

  “You’ll figure something,” she shrugged, turning around and beginning to fish papers from a desk drawer.

  That didn’t thrill me, either: disturbing evidence at the scene of a crime. I decided I’d be less ulcerous on the other side of the door, so I made its acquaintance.

  9

  IN CASE IT SEEMS that my main concern at that moment was to play John Q. Public by phoning the cops, let me clarify my position: the only reason I was worried was that I didn’t want to end up with my name and face in the police log and the newspapers.

  The way I figured it, I could easily get slammed for obstructing justice, at the very least. And if those damned Scrabble tiles in my pocket meant anything as dire as I was dreading, I wasn’t sure that the charge might not turn into accessory after the fact.

  Under the circumstances, I didn’t want to leave Hilary alone in there too long, so my initial plan was just to check the very closest showrooms, which would be easy, because 1111 Broadway is not a wide building, and its corridors contain few enough offices. On top of that, the tenth floor had only recently been completed, and several of the spaces had not yet been rented. In the corridor Goetz Sales was in there were only two other firms: PeeJayCo., next door to Goetz Sales, and Bell’s Toys and Accessories, right across the hall.

  I later learned that Goetz and Bell used to have smaller showrooms in FAB, and had moved to 1111 about a year ago. PeeJayCo. was a recent addition to the tenth floor.

  I stepped down the hall to the latter firm, noting as I walked that buyer traffic was light on this floor, compared with 1111’s ninth level, where crowds streamed back and forth across the ligamentary bridge. When I reached the door of PeeJayCo., I was surprised to see the lights were off. Two companies not in business on Toy Fair morning? It must be a new kind of commercial disease, I thought.

  I tried the handle; it was locked. Peering in, I could see the length of the room—a single narrow corridor, maybe ten-by-thirty, with one long business table down the center with chairs around it; on the walls were shelves with a sparse assortment of toys and games competing for space with large signs claiming the firm to be the “youngest, most inventive supplier in the trade.” Though I have small claim to pass judgment on the merits of a new toy, I’m something of a strategy game nut and, from what I could see of the sample products in the dark office, the claims may have been justified. The ratio of games to toys was about three-to-one, so I could see where the owner’s sympathies lay.

  The only toy that held my attention was a racer, set apart on a pedestal in the middle of the long table. No, it bore absolutely no resemblance to Tricky Tires. But it was intriguing, because the printed poster standing next to it proclaimed the toy to be a unique automatic plaything that could run for long stretches of time on a flat surface in various patterns. The secret? A little metal programmed dowel that, when inserted into the toy’s fuel tank, fed any of a number of “run” circuits to the motor. Batteries not included.

  There wasn’t much point hanging around the locked room, so I ambled back the way I came to room 1005, Bell’s Toys and Accessories (“If it Sells, it’s Bell’s,” a slogan which I detested, was festooned around the door on bunting). The accessories were swimming-pool equipment; Bell dealt mostly in above-ground pools and their necessary adjuncts: ladders, filters, skimmers, purifying chemical, and so on. The toys referred to in the company name were outdoor inflatables—water toys, such as punch bags and floating air mats with comic-strip characters and other simplistic designs imprinted in primary colors on the exteriors.

  I got as far as the front desk, but the angular receptionist politely halted me when she saw the inappropriate badge on my lapel.

  “This is the way it is,” I lied to her, “I’m supposed to meet Sid Goetz and talk about the possibility of doing his PR, but I can’t get in his showroom. It’s not open.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she said, trying to ignore me with all the pleasantness in the world, “and I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “Look,” I asked, “can’t you give me an idea what this Goetz is like? Maybe I’m wasting my time waiting. Does he make it a habit of breaking his appointments?”

  The receptionist looked around a little anxiously at a rotund individual wearing a light blue-and-white-striped sports jacket over midnight-blue slacks. He was bustling around from client to client, patting backs and dropping hints to his salesmen, all of whom were attired identically to the portly itinerant. He appeared not to notice us, so the woman turned a livelier face back to me than she’d shown prior to turning away.

  “Sid Goetz,” she informed me, “is a vicious little man. If you ask me, you should stay away from him.”

  “How do you know he’s so bad?”

  “Secretaries hear things.”

  “Goetz has a secretary?”

  “Used to,” she said. “It’s been a long time since he’s been able to hire one. Word gets round.”

  “What kind of word?”

  “You know ... the sort a girl can’t trust for a minute!”

  I
eyed her dubiously. Dressed in an unfashionably long, high-cut black dress without ornament or filigree, she looked a little like a temperance lecturer; I placed her in her early fifties. Still, if she wanted to consider herself a “girl” who wouldn’t be safe around Goetz, it was her privilege; I’ve read enough Ibsen to know it doesn’t profit to mess around with life illusions.

  “Well,” I persisted, “what did you used to hear about Goetz? Does he have many enemies?”

  “Are you kidding? That man is the worst thief in the business! He steals designs, I understand ... everybody hates him!”

  “For instance?”

  “Well, there was a rumor that he and his wife are not too pally, if you know what I mean. And I’ve met that salesman of his, and believe me, he has no use for him, either. ...”

  “Salesman?”

  “Harry, I forget his name. Nice young man. Used to be an actor, so I hear.”

  I shook my head. “It sounds like Goetz is the last person I’d want to do business with. How about—”

  But I was interrupted at that point by the arrival of the roundish individual in the striped coat. Looming up suddenly, he darted a black look at his receptionist, then tried to grab me by the arm and propel me swiftly out of the room. I resisted, and he desisted.

  “Come on,” he snapped, pointing to the door. “Beat it! Out!”

  “I just wanted some information. Can you—”

  “I’ll just bet you want some information!” he snapped at me. “Who’re you working for?” Before I could reply, he swung on the woman, and told her off vehemently. “Don’t you know any better than to talk with somebody with an exhibitor’s badge on? My God, Amelia, you’ve been around here long enough, you ought to know that! Blue badge, you see it? If that is what he’s wearing, then he doesn’t belong!”