Appearances of Death

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Lieutenant Luis Mendoza celebrates his birthday with a more than usually exuberant outburst of murder and mayhem. What has happened to the abducted Nurse Bradley? What fiend could have tied up Lila Wescott and whipped her while she suffocated? And who can be trying to poison Mr and Mrs Beebe with arsenic? Mendoza puts his hunches to the test . . . 'A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times

Release date: May 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

IT WAS A QUARTER PAST MIDNIGHT ON THE LAST SUNDAY IN February, and raining steadily. The men on night watch at Robbery-Homicide,
LAPD, were feeling rather bored; they’d had only three calls since coming on shift. Expectably there’d been a heist, at a liquor store on Seventh, and that might tie up to another one:
let the day men sort it out. There’d been a freeway crash with two dead, and later on Traffic had come across an apparent felony hit-run on Broadway, a middle-aged white man with no I.D. on
him, so there hadn’t been much to do on that but call the morgue wagon.

They’d be glad to see the end of watch tonight.

“I wonder,” said Piggott through a yawn, “how Nick is doing with that girl. Funny, his falling for her all of a sudden.”

“Funny his falling at all,” said Bob Schenke. “Confirmed bachelor like they say.”

The third man on night watch, Shogart, didn’t offer any opinion; he was immersed in a western magazine. Shogart had been a holdover from the old Robbery office before it got merged with
Homicide, and still vaguely resented the change; he was a good deal older than any of the other detectives, with retirement coming up next year.

Piggott yawned again and abandoned the subject of Detective Galeano’s love life. The phone buzzed on Schenke’s desk, and he said resignedly, “You might know, nearly end of
shift. Robbery-Homicide, Schenke.”

“Traffic’s got something for you,” said the desk sergeant. “Central Receiving, the parking lot, probable robbery rape.”

“Well, a little change from the usual,” said Schenke. “Come on, Matt.” They collected their raincoats and started downstairs. It had been raining steadily since eight
o’clock, and showed no sign of letting up. They took Schenke’s car the thirty blocks up to Central Receiving Hospital.

There was a big parking lot on two sides of the building, and as Schenke turned into the nearest one they spotted the flashing roof-light on the black and white at the far end of the lot on the
other side; Schenke threaded his way between lines of cars round the back of the hospital and drew up beside the first squad car; a second was parked at an angle nearby. A man in uniform came up,
swinging a flashlight; the tall arc-lights all round the parking lot were dimmed by the heavy rain.

“What’ve you got?” Schenke opened his door. The bulky dripping figure raised the flashlight in a half salute. “Zimmerman?”

“Yes, sir.” The patrolman opened the rear door and climbed in, switching off his flash. “We’ve got the witness in the squad, you’ll want to talk to her. But she
couldn’t give us much to go on with—we’ve called the husband, he should at least give us a make on the car. She’s a Mrs. Nora Brinson, one of the nurses here. We got the
call at eleven thirty-two.”

“O.K.,” said Schenke. He and Piggott got out and ducked into the first squad car’s front seat. The second uniformed man, Bill Moss, was in the rear seat with a woman.

“These are the detectives, Mrs. Brinson. Mr. Piggott, Mr. Schenke. If you’ll just tell them the story—”

“Again? All over? But what are you doing? Why don’t you do something? I thought you’d do something right away—what are you doing? How many
times do I have to tell you before—”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Brinson,” said Schenke. “Just tell us what happened.”

She uttered a sound that was half sob, half snort. The little light from the ceiling bulb showed that she was a round-faced woman in her thirties, dark-haired; she had on a nurse’s white
uniform under a blue raincoat. “All right, all right! We were coming off shift at eleven, only we were both late—Joyce Bradley and I—I was late because I had to see the
superintendent about a patient, but I don’t know why she was. It was about a quarter past eleven, she caught up to me at the door and we came into the parking lot together. I was parked
farther up, in the last aisle, and she went up to her car with her keys out, and just as I got to mine and was unlocking it, I heard her scream, and I looked back just in time to see this man
attacking her—I don’t know where he came from, but he hit her and then he shoved her into the car and got in after her and gunned out of the lot—I heard her scream
again—”

“Which way?” asked Piggott.

“Onto Sixth, up toward Alvarado— But that was more than half an hour ago, and you haven’t done a thing! Not a thing! And heaven knows what—”

“This Joyce Bradley—a nurse here too?” asked Schenke.

“Yes, yes, yes. I don’t know her very well, she’s an R.N. in Surgery, I’m in Emergency—I told the other officer—but why aren’t you—”

“Can you give us any description of the man?”

“Heavens above, how?” she asked helplessly. “It was raining so hard—I had an umbrella up, and it was just a minute—he was bigger than her, I think lots bigger, dark
clothes, a hat—”

“You don’t know what her car is?”

“No, it’s a sedan but—”

A car came bucketing into the lot from Sixth Street and pulled up behind Schenke’s. “This’ll be the husband,” said Moss.

It was. Moss had called him, getting the number from the hospital desk. Zimmerman got him into the other squad car, and Schenke and Piggott transferred to talk to him in there. Dennis Bradley
was a good-looking young fellow, now distraught and frightened and belligerent; they had a time calming him down, but he was keeping his head and listened to reason.

“The car, yes, of course,” he said, “of course you couldn’t— It’s a Nova two-door, two years old, green. Yes, I know the plate number, I’ve got it
here”—fumbled in his billfold— “I’ve got a thing about keeping records—it’s 210-MQX, a blue and gold plate.”

“Thanks very much, sir, we’ll get that out right away.” Piggott went to relay it in; in thirty seconds there was an A.P.B. out on Joyce Bradley’s car. Everything else
Bradley told them was unimportant, but they let him ramble a little, listening politely. Joyce was twenty-eight, they had two children, her mother looked after them while she was at work, until he
got home; he was in Personnel at Bullock’s, they lived in West Hollywood, Norma Place; and nobody had any reason to hurt Joyce, she was a dedicated nurse, didn’t believe in mothers with
small children working away from home but she liked her job and on this shift it meant she could be with the kids most of the day at least. “One of these Goddamned hopped-up hoods,”
raged Bradley. “She wouldn’t have had more than a few dollars on her, she never—but these Goddamned hopheads running around—what the hell are you doing, aren’t you
doing anything to find—”

“All we can, Mr. Bradley,” said Schenke sadly. It probably wouldn’t be enough. Even with that plate number and the car’s description out to every squad car in town, it
wasn’t apt to be spotted immediately on a dark rainy night, before the hood had robbed and possibly raped Joyce Bradley. He might end up killing her. All they could do was hope the car got
spotted soon, but it wasn’t a good chance—unless he was high enough on something to crash it.

The Traffic men went back on tour. Schenke and Piggott wasted a little time in the hospital, asking questions; there was a remote possibility of some personal motive. The staff on duty in the
lobby was just waking up to what had happened, and asked excited questions back. Then, all they could do was hope the A.P.B. turned up the car. Piggott and Schenke went back to the office and
Schenke left a terse report for the day watch. Shogart had already left.

It was still raining on Monday morning when the day men drifted in: the two senior sergeants Hackett and Higgins, Conway, Glasser, Galeano, Landers—it was
Palliser’s day off. Mendoza had been early for once and was already at his desk, reading a report, looking dapper as always in silver-gray tweed. “Happy birthday,” said Hackett,
hoisting a hip on a corner of the desk.

Mendoza grunted. “Don’t remind me, Arturo. I’m feeling my age these days. So now we’re handed an abduction, and I’ll give you five to one it turns into a homicide.
We’ve also got a new body—the sergeant downstairs handed me the report as I came in—and it sounds a little offbeat.” He passed over Schenke’s report on the Bradley
woman, and Higgins read it over Hackett’s shoulder.

“No takers,” he said. “By the time anybody spots her car, she’ll be raped or dead, or both. Some damned hophead needing money for a fix, or just doing what comes
naturally. It also looks as if that same heister was busy last night—same description, and if we talk about offbeat—a heist man with a stammer, now there’s something.”

“What’s the new body?” asked Hackett disinterestedly.

Mendoza brushed his mustache back and forth absently. “Just by the Traffic report, it sounds a little—mmh, different, shall we say. I think I’ll go and look at it.” He
stood up and yanked down his cuffs. Hackett went with him, to escape the routine for an hour. The workload at Robbery-Homicide this last week was uninteresting: the usual heists, two unidentified
bodies, both dead of an overdose, the paper work on a suicide: murder of a small-time pusher probably by a client, which would probably end up in Pending, no leads on it at all.

They rode down in the elevator with Landers and Conway, who were heading for R. and I. to see what the computer might say about that heister. “What’s the interest in the new
body?” repeated Hackett as they ducked into the Ferrari out of the rain.

“Eso tiene gracia,” said Mendoza. “It just sounds offbeat.” He thrust the report at Hackett, switching on the ignition.

“Adams and Figueroa. In a phone booth—that is a little funny. Found six oh-five—just about as there was any light to see, I suppose. Elderly woman, no purse, no
I.D.—oh,” said Hackett, “I see. Diamond ring and wedding ring on her. Otherwise, an ordinary mugging.”

“Exactamente,” said Mendoza. At the morgue, the attendant was apologetic, pulling out the drawer.

“She was only brought in a couple of hours ago, and then we had the bodies from a freeway crash—we haven’t undressed her or tagged anything yet.”

The body was surprisingly undamaged; there was only one dully cyanotic bruise over the left eye. Mendoza touched it lightly with one long forefinger and said, “Skull fracture.”
She’d been a nice-looking woman; she didn’t look elderly to them, but the Traffic man was probably young and anybody past middle age would be elderly to him. She was a medium-sized
woman with a still-trim figure, silver-gray hair, regular features. Her face had been made up discreetly: traces left of pinkish lipstick, a touch of rouge, eyebrow pencil; her complexion was fair,
her skin good. Mendoza lifted the right arm: rigor hadn’t set in yet and it flexed at a touch as he turned the hand. “So there you are, Art,” he said interestedly. The diamond
ring wasn’t a headlight, but not all that modest either: a center stone somewhere near a carat, twelve or fifteen baguette side stones around it, in a yellow gold setting: and a plain wide
gold wedding band. Mendoza tried to move the first ring and found it was a snug fit: he tugged at it patiently, working it around, for several minutes before he got it off the finger.

“So that’s the answer,” said Hackett. “No mystery. He slugged her, grabbed her purse, tried to grab her rings, couldn’t get them off, panicked and ran with what he
had.”

“Es posible,” said Mendoza, “and then again maybe not. All I will say is, why should he have panicked, when a little more effort would have got them off? No
rigor—it was probably after midnight, and even at Figueroa and Adams there wouldn’t have been a crowd. A phone booth—she was calling somebody, or about to, when the
mugger—mmh, yes. And I’ll tell you something else, Art. All right, I’ll give you the rings”—he had just discovered that the wedding ring wouldn’t come off at
all—“but now I look at her, it’s even funnier. What the hell was she doing at Figueroa and Adams, after midnight, in the pouring rain?”

“A lot of people live around there,” said Hackett. “Some people don’t have private phones, Luis.”

“Now, really, Arturo, you’re supposed to be a trained detective,” said Mendoza. He squinted at the diamond ring. “That’s a nice stone—not a new ring, but it
wouldn’t have sold for peanuts even twenty years ago. More to the point, look at her clothes.” She’d been laid on the tray unceremoniously, and sometime in the next few hours the
attendants would undress her, fold the clothes away neatly tagged. Now her coat was bunched up under the body, her dress pulled up over her knees. Both were still soggily wet all down the left
side, dry on the other. “Look at that and deduce something else. It started to rain about eight o’clock. She hadn’t walked far in the rain or the coat would be wet all over. And
her hair isn’t wet. If you tell me she had an umbrella and the mugger took that and left the diamond—well, I know people do queer things, but all the same—and Art, her clothes
didn’t come from anywhere around Figueroa and Adams. At a guess I’d say Robinson’s, or somewhere comparable. Not the most expensive, but good quality, and not very old. She
wasn’t dressed to slip out to make a phone call—she dressed to go out somewhere. A restaurant, a show.” The dress was a black velvet sheath, severely cut with three-quarter
sleeves, a high neck: to Mendoza’s expert eye, it cried out for a long necklace, an important pendant. The coat was heavy black velveteen, long and full, with an attached hood.

“So that’s why her hair didn’t get wet,” said Hackett as Mendoza pulled that from beneath the body.

“Not altogether. It’d keep her dry on the dash from doorway to car, but not much longer.” Mendoza lifted the skirt delicately; she was wearing pantyhose. Her shoes were
tailored black leather pumps, looking new; the left one was still wet, the right one dry.

“I see what you mean,” said Hackett. “She was inside the booth when he hit her, and she fell with her left side mostly out the open door. I’ll take your word for the
clothes, you know more than I do about that. So what else do you deduce?”

“Nada,” said Mendoza. “Or just one thing. Let’s have a hard look for a block or two around that intersection, for a stalled car. It’s the first reason that
comes to mind for a woman like this to be there at such an hour, alone, in a phone booth. Otherwise, we wait for her to show up on a missing list somewhere. This one wasn’t alone and
friendless. She’d just had her hair set,” he added inconsequently, “and probably an expensive rinse. She had money enough to take care of herself—recent manicure, you
notice, the ladylike rose-pink polish—I’d lay you another bet she was wearing another ring on that hand, a necklace, earrings—no, her ears aren’t pierced, he could have
snatched those off with no trouble—and, of course, she had a handbag. Possibly also black velvet, or gold mesh—no, I don’t think so, a trifle too garish for such a discreet lady.
A well-bred lady, Art.”

“You’ve always had an imagination,” said Hackett.

“Use your own eyes. Funny,” said Mendoza. “Unless we find her stalled car—”

“You can set Traffic looking. In this downpour I’m not about to tramp six square blocks examining parked cars.”

“Mmh, yes, it would be parked, or Traffic’d have spotted it by now,” agreed Mendoza. “Died on her, and she coasted up to the curb—streets empty that time of
night—and she looked for the nearest phone booth to call for help. I know we tell women to stay in the locked car and wait for a squad to show, but who would, that time of night? Well,
we’ll see what shows up.” He stopped to give the attendant a receipt for the diamond ring, and sat examining it in the car again before switching on the engine.

Down in R. and I. Landers had argued that the computer could give them a lead. Conway said, “You just seize any chance to ogle your bride, is all. What the hell kind of
lead is a stammer?”

Landers smiled fondly at Phil, his cute frecklefaced blonde, and said they weren’t exactly newlyweds, married six months now, and the stammer was as likely as some leads they’d
worked. Phil looked doubtful but went away to see what the computer could offer.

The stammer had only just turned into a lead. The first time the stammer had been mentioned was last month, by the only witness to a heist at a drugstore on Alvarado. “He was a young
guy,” the pharmacist had said, “kind of thin, he had this wool cap pulled way down, I couldn’t say much about his face except he was a white man, but he kind of stuttered. Well,
stammered, if that’s what I mean. Like when he showed me the gun, he said, now wait, I’ll try to say exactly—he said, this is a—a—a s-s-stickup—like that, see?
Like he couldn’t hardly get it out.”

Which said nothing at the time; he might just have been nervous, pulling a heist—maybe a first one. Then last Friday night there’d been a heist at an all-night dairy store on Venice
Boulevard, and the two witnesses were excited but both said the same thing: the heister young, thin, and he’d stammered, could hardly get the words out, stickup, hand over the loot. They
wondered then, the same boy?—and now, here was last night’s heister also stammering, by Piggott’s report. This time, another drugstore and only one witness, the owner, who said a
young man, thin, wool cap pulled down, and the stammer: he called it a speech impediment. The loot hadn’t been spectacular: under thirty bucks on each job.

Phil came back and said, “Afraid we can’t help you. The only pedigree including a stammer is a pro burglar named Weaver, and he’s been in Folsom since last year.”

“Can we be sure about that?” said Conway cynically. “The way they get let out on P.A. after ninety days—”

“Well, I don’t think he’s your boy anyway,” said Phil. “You said, young. Weaver’s fifty-four.”

“So we go back and talk to the witnesses and try for a better description,” said Landers philosophically. “Thanks anyway, lady.”

“Chasing around in all this rain,” grumbled Conway.

“Don’t complain, Rich. Think how happy the farmers are after the long drought. I wonder if anything’s turned up on that nurse who got abducted. By Schenke’s report, the
only thing they had was the make on the car.”

“Traffic’ll be looking. She’s probably already dead,” said Conway gloomily.

“Just a little ray of sunshine.”

Higgins and Glasser had gone out. . .