Murder by the Tale

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Mystery Anthologies & Collections; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

A perfect collection of short stories for Dell Shannon fans and mystery lovers everywhere, featuring eight cases of her popular Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, alongside six intriguing non-series tales. Mysteries include the case of an exasperated husband who may have murdered his nagging wife - but would he have killed his beloved pet as well? A young girl dies in an 'accident' when a parked truck slips its brakes and slams into the house where she's staying. And a nursing home resident suspects that old age is not the only thing eliminating his neighbours. 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: November 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Mendoza had just dealt the first hand round when the phone rang, and it was Hackett. “I suppose,” said Hackett, “you’d just
rung in the cold deck and were all set to go.”

“This isn’t funny,” said Mendoza. “What in hell do you want?”

“You, amigo. In the office, right now.”

“¡Fuera!” said Mendoza. “Unless the mayor’s been murdered or war declared, you can go to hell.”

“It’s out of hours for me too, chico—if a cop ever does keep regular hours. But I think you’d better take a look, Luis—it’s probably going to be what
they call a cause célèbre and somebody over the rank of sergeant ought to handle it. It’s Tommy Barron.”

“Murdered? ¡Por Dios! Then it could be somebody on the force did it—God knows he’s got enough crooks away from us to annoy any peace officer but good.”

“Not murdered, no. He’s being held for one. Galeano and Matt went out on it. It looks awful damn open and shut, and he’s got the thinnest story I ever heard. He asked for
you—not that I hadn’t decided to pass the buck myself, after Nick did to me—anyway, Barron’s sitting here bleating for Lieutenant Mendoza like a lost lamb for its mama.
Didn’t know you knew him.”

“I sat in with him at draw once,” said Mendoza. Barron, of course, was the lawyer you called in automatically if it was a serious charge on pretty good evidence—and you had the
money. Or if you were somebody important in show business wanting a divorce or custody of the last-but-one spouse’s kids. Nobody on the L.A.P.D., in uniform or out, liked Barron very much.
Barron, on a homicide charge? “How very appropriate,” said Mendoza. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” No good swearing. He apologized to the prosperous used-car
dealer, the T.V. producer, the restaurateur and the man-about-town, left them in possession of his apartment, his cards, and his liquor (purchased especially for them: Mendoza never drank over
cards), got out the new custom-built Facel-Vega and drove downtown to headquarters.

Sergeant Arthur Hackett met him outside his office. “It’s the damndest setup, Luis. Looks as if he’s got to be X, but would anybody with common sense do it that way?—let
alone a smart boy like Barron? Here’s this pro gambler, Jason Barker. Pro, on evidence collected. He was flush at the moment, by his room— Belvedere Arms Hotel on Wilshire.
Somehow he gets into a game at a middling exclusive beach club with Barron and some friends of Barron’s, and naturally they get took. So Barron—apparently—goes to see Barker at
the hotel two hours ago and shoots him bang-bang with an old Colt .45. Which naturally brings everybody on that floor out of their rooms like scalded cats, so there’s about a dozen can say
they saw Barron hightailing it out of Barker’s room. In fact, three men collared him on the run.”

“That,” said Mendoza, “sounds like any detective’s fond dream of an easy case, Arturo. I see what you mean. Just a little too easy. Are those all the relevant facts
you’ve got so far? Well, I’ll see him before I hear any more.”

Barron was sitting unhappily in Mendoza’s office, a big bald stout man in good clothes, if not quite as dapper as the fastidious Mendoza’s, or as expensive. For Mendoza, only
grandson of a longtime miser, was a very wealthy man indeed, and still a police lieutenant only (as he said) because he’d never cured himself of earning an honest living; and he saw no reason
he shouldn’t enjoy his money. Barron jumped up and babbled at him, and Mendoza cut him off. “Let’s just hear the story, Mr. Barron.”

What it came down to, shorn of protestations that of course Mendoza as an honest and sensible fellow could evaluate it as the obvious truth at once, was about what Hackett had said. Plus a few
nuances.

“How much did you lose to Barker?”

“Twelve hundred dollars. Now, obviously, Lieutenant—to be frank—none of us wanted publicity—” No, they wouldn’t: the others, a bank vice-president, a wealthy
local jeweler, a T.V. actor. Wouldn’t want to show as suckers.

“Where did you meet him?”

“Er—Trevor” (the actor) “met him somewhere, I’m not sure—it was Trevor introduced him. He seemed a very good fellow, and quite well-off. But after this one
evening of playing with him, well, we were sure he was crooked—I, er, remembered some of what you’d told me that time—”

Mendoza sighed. He had once sat in a game with Barron, indeed, and Barron was ripe for the taking. No card sense at all. Mendoza had mentioned to him, with purely altruistic motives, a few of
the more common devices of the pro cheat.

“—But no sense in making it open, charging him. We, er, agreed on that. As it happened, I—well, not that I couldn’t have written a check, but I thought cash preferable,
and I had given him an I.O.U. I went to his hotel this evening to pay the debt in cash, and inform him that all of us had spotted him for a pro and it’d be as well for him to clear
town.” Of course, exactly what a cautious lawyer would do: nothing on paper. “That was all. I never thought of such a thing as—Really, Lieutenant, why should I? Twelve
hundred dollars! I—”

Mendoza didn’t see it himself. Barron wasn’t a fool. Nor was he a dishonest lawyer: just damn smart at using the gimmicks and legal double-talk, and not particular about his clients.
First rule of the con men: never try to take anybody at his own game. A lot of very smart boys were very dumb when it concerned somebody else’s racket. “O.K., go on.”

“He’d just let me in, and I gave him the money and began to say all this, when the shot—I was really so startled, Lieutenant—he fell down, and I saw the blood, and then
the gun fell on the floor beyond him—it was thrown from the bedroom door, I saw it in the air! It was somebody in the bedroom shot him. No, the bedroom was dark. I realized at once what an,
er, invidious position I—Really, I was so startled and confused—”

“That you just bolted,” said Mendoza. A thin story indeed: yet very human. Even for a lawyer, who was also human (despite some contrary evidence) and subject to losing his head.
Barron had heard as thin stories from a lot of clients; and yes, he was a smart boy in the courtroom, but like most lawyers a sedentary man with small experience of real action.

He told Barron he’d look at the case personally, listened to some earnest and flattering gratitude, and saw him shepherded mournfully away. He collected Hackett and drove out to the
Belvedere Arms. Barker had been in the money all right. A suite, living room and bedroom: low elegant modern furniture, a couple of cryptic abstract watercolors and a big ornate gilt-framed mirror.
Mendoza straightened his tie absently, faced with the reflections of the slim dark dapper moustached man and the hulking sandy bulk of Hackett beside him.

“Here was where Barker fell.” Chalk outline in the middle of the carpet, feet toward the bedroom door. “He got it in the back, right through the spine.”

“Vaya,” said Mendoza. “Turned away for a minute, when a man was inferentially threatening him? Not what an experienced pro would do.”

“Pues sí,” said Hackett, who found Mendoza handy to practice his Spanish on. “But did he turn away? No telling how he fell. He might have had his back to the
bedroom door.”

Mendoza went into the bedroom. “Prints finished in here? O.K.,” and he switched on the light. A nice big bedroom, a walk-in closet. “Damn,” he said, eyeing the other
door. This suite was at the end of a wing, and there was an outside door in the opposite wall, to a cross hall.

Hackett read his mind accurately. “We’ll never make the charge stick,” he agreed. “It could be that somebody else got in that door and shot him from here. It
just could be.”

“They have house service? As I thought. I want the maid, if she’s still on duty.” Mendoza found the phone.

“The manager’s having kittens by the litter. This is a respectable place, so he says.”

“Money is not,” said Mendoza, “inevitably respectable. Al contrario.” He identified himself to the desk and issued polite commands.

“Some nice evidence of Barker’s profession scattered around. Half a dozen decks of readers, all the best money can buy—edge work and concave strippers. Me, I always figured it
as the hardest way to make a living there is. You got to have eyes like a hawk and a memory like God.”

“You do. Too early to say about the gun, I suppose, or these other three easy marks.”

“The gun, yes. They do float around. No telling, except that it’s kind of a museum piece—about 1880, I’d say. Must have a kick like an army mule, it—”

“Never mind the gun, just trace it if possible.” Mendoza wasn’t much interested in guns, never carried one unless necessary; he was forced as an efficient police officer to
take some notice of facts, but instinctively felt people to be more important.

“The other three, no, not too early. Under your stern training, boy? A little checking done already. They don’t seem to be hard up, they all paid off Barker in checks which’ve
been cleared, by all the evidence. You’ll have noticed that Barker was about to clear out.”

“Spare me the obvious comment.” One suitcase shut and locked, one open on the bed, nearly packed. “I take it the boys put everything back as it was for me. O.K. He was clearing
as soon as he had Barron’s twelve hundred. I’ve often thought,” added Mendoza, looking into the closet, peering under the bed, “how nice to be a detective in a detective
story. They get clues left for them, and they get mixed up in such bizarre plots—complex, you know—that there are inevitably only a couple of solutions, which any damned idiot could
arrive at—”

“If he wasn’t bein’ distracted by blondes and bullets.”

“As you say.” Mendoza got up, dusted himself off, resettled his tie and went to answer the door. The girl in the hall was a pretty one, even if she hadn’t any makeup on at all,
and was dressed in a white cotton uniform, flat-heeled shoes. About twenty-eight: dark hair pulled back to a prim bun, downcast eyes.

“You asked for the maid this floor, sir. I already told the police what I know. I mean, I don’t mind, sir, but I ought to be on duty.”

“I’m surprised to find you here at such an hour.” Mendoza, putting out his automatic charm with females, ushered her in, offered a chair, a cigarette; but she stood woodenly,
hands clasped, looking past him.

“Miss Agnes Williams,” said Hackett sotto voce.

“There’s a maid on duty up to eleven each floor, sir. Part of the service. We’re on a couple hours in the morning—more of us then, I mean—and then six to eleven.
There’s room service, and sometimes people want other things. Part of the service, sir.”

“I see. Well, now, just a few questions.” But he didn’t get much out of her. Yes, she’d done Mr. Barker’s room while he was here. No, she hadn’t talked much
with him; he wasn’t always there, of course. No, she hadn’t liked him; he was a bad man. “Bad?” said Mendoza. “Why do you think so, Miss Williams?”

“I don’t know—just something about his looks,” she said after hesitation.

“You come on duty at six, you said? Where were you when you heard the shot—you did hear it?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I was down at the end of the cross hall. I don’t know what time exactly, but—”

“Ten past six or thereabouts,” contributed Hackett, “by the other witnesses.”

“I was in the linen closet there. I looked back where it seemed to come from, but there wasn’t anybody there.”

“You didn’t see anyone come out the bedroom door of this suite?”

“Oh, no, sir. Besides, it’d be locked. . . . No, sir, the person renting it wouldn’t have a key. It’s a kind of service door but we don’t use it anymore.”

“Who would have a key?”

“I dunno, sir.”

Mendoza let her go. “I suppose you knew all that.”

“Nick had seen her, yes. You’re always so hot on getting things yourself.”

“You know me too well, Art.” Mendoza wandered over to the bed, prodded thoughtfully at the middling-expensive clothes in the suitcase. “What was on him?”

“Four thousand two hundred and thirty bucks in a money belt, forty-odd in his wallet, a little change, handkerchief, two diamond rings, lighter. No keys—he traveled light like all
that kind and kept his cash on him. Barron’s twelve hundred was still in his hand when he fell—sixty twenties. Come on, have a hunch, Luis. Look into your crystal ball.”

“Even Barron might lose his temper and pull such a damn fool stunt. He can afford the twelve hundred, sure, but it’s one thing losing it honest and another having it cheated out of
you. I’d like to know what those other three fellow-suckers were up to at ten past six.”

Hackett lit a cigarette and said, “We can go ask one of ’em right now. I’ve got Bert and Higgins out chasing up the others, but the actor—Trevor Forsythe—lives two
floors down, here. I expect that’s how come he met Barker in the first place.”

“You’re going out of the way to be helpful tonight,” said Mendoza, irritated.

“I had a date spoiled too. Not with a nice net profit out of an evening of draw, but with a blonde.”

“You’d do better to stick to poker,” said Mendoza, already on the way to the elevator. “Though you haven’t much finesse at either.”

“Not compared to the famous Mendoza,” admitted Hackett, “granted. Two-oh-four’s the apartment we want.”

“These damn fools. Sitting in a nice friendly game with the pleasant stranger met at a bar. Why do we bother to protect them?”

Trevor Forsythe, whose original name had probably been something very different, was at home, wrapped in a carefully flamboyant silk dressing gown. He was cordial, regretful, and nicely under
control: very sure, gentlemen, that all this would be straightened out and it would be shown that Mr. Barron had nothing whatever to do with it. After all, a man such as they suspected this Barker
to have been undoubtedly would have had enemies among his own underworld acquaintances.

“Quite possible,” agreed Mendoza.

“Can’t I offer you a drink?”

“Thanks very much,” said Mendoza absently, thereby surprising Hackett; and astonished him further by accepting and drinking a Scotch and water. Mendoza’s drink was rye and very
little of that; but he seemed mildly hypnotized by the mantel wall, on which was hung a fine collection of handguns. He gestured at it. “None of those missing, Mr. Forsythe?”

Forsythe turned a little pale and said with a forced laugh, “Good lord, no! They’re purely decorative—I—most of ’em presents, actually. Since I’ve been doing
this western thing, Law Man, you know . . . . A C-Colt Forty-five? I really couldn’t say, I’m afraid I—”

“Must be,” said Hackett, looking, “in any respectable wild West collection. That’s the gun, they tell me, that opened up the West. Yes, there’s one. I don’t
suppose there’d’ve been two?”

“Look,” said Forsythe, “what is this? I heard the story from the maid when I got in a few minutes ago, but I gathered Barron witnessed the
murder—that—well, I mean—”

“You mean,” said Mendoza, “that you were hoping like hell to stay clear of any publicity, whether Barron’s guilty or not.”

“Well, all right,” said Forsythe angrily, “take it that way. I’ve got a reputation to lose. You trying to make out I killed that damn pro crook for nine hundred
and fifty bucks?”

“I’d just like to know where you were,” said Mendoza, “at six or six-fifteen.”

“I was in the Copa bar,” said Forsythe instantly, “with my agent and his wife, and we went on to dinner. I’ll give you his name.”

“Thanks very much,” and Mendoza took it down and marched out with Hackett on his heels. They almost ran into the maid for this floor, who was passing with a stack of clean bedding.
She sidestepped them neatly. She was a pretty redhead, and Mendoza turned and looked after her.

“You’re supposed to be working,” said Hackett, “and besides I think you’ve got a redhead in your collection.”

“A much nicer one than that,” agreed Mendoza. “Something just—oh, well, let it go, it’ll come to me. This is wasting time. What did you haul me out for? This is
underlings’ work, checking out alibis and so on. All I’ve done is assure Barron of deluxe investigation. I don’t give a damn whether Barron shot him or not, but I can’t find
any clues to say yes or no until all the evidence is in. I’m going home. We’ll see what the boys turn up tomorrow.”

“With every reporter in L.A. breathing down our necks.”

“He’s too smart to run if we let him loose—with a leash on him. His reputation—”

“Like Forsythe,” and Hackett laughed. “That was funnier than any gag I ever heard on T.V. What?—oh, you wouldn’t get it, not bein’ so bourgeois to look at the
stuff. Brother, doesn’t the star of Law Man have a reputation to lose! He’s cast as a demon poker player, and to have it come out in the Times he got took by
a cheap pro—”

“Mmh. Probably just as handy with a Colt as he is with the cards in real life. We’ll send somebody to check that alibi. It’s only ten o’clock.”

At headquarters, he dispatched a man after Forsythe’s agent, set the night staff to copy the various statements taken, sent a note to Ballistics demanding data on the gun at the earliest
moment, and told Hackett to go back to his blonde. He went home himself, found the poker party still in possession, and in the next hour and a half took a net profit of a hundred and twelve
dollars. When they’d gone, he cut up fresh liver for the sleek Abyssinian feline personage who lived with him, the green-eyed Bast, let her out and in again, and had a bath. And he thought,
So, make it complicated: say Barron’s too smart for such a thing. Anybody can lose his head. If he didn’t, what do we have? Somebody in the bedroom who dissolved into thin air after the
shot was fired. ¡Vaya historia!

It wouldn’t, however, do Barron any harm to spend the night in jail. Or even longer, he thought; and Bast purred in agreement.

There was just something—if he could only think what it was—some little nuance which had struck him as somehow significant. It had something to do with that redhaired maid outside
Forsythe’s apartment. Oh, well, sleep on it . . .

Forsythe’s alibi checked out. The bank vice-president had been at home giving a dinner party. The jeweler had been entering a restaurant with his wife and mother-in-law.
There was, of course, something in what Forsythe said: pro boys like Barker had undesirable acquaintances.

The faithful Higgins, Dwyer, and Landers turned up a few of them by that next afternoon. A couple of casuals who followed the ponies, the proprietor of a professional gambling house outside city
limits, a small-time would-be pro not in miles of Barker’s class: Mendoza placed them all as they came before him. He concentrated on Edwards, the small-timer (much to Edwards’
uneasiness) because he seemed to have known Barker best. Which wasn’t saying much.

“I dint know him real good, Lieutenant—honest—you know, just from seeing him around places” (gambling places, he meant) “and maybe Santa Anita once. You
know how you just get talkin’, but I dint know him really. . . . No, I dunno anybody mighta had it in for him. Gee, a real pro, was he? I dint know that. Honest, I dint.” Which
was a lie. “He seemed O.K., you know, just seeing him around like I did. I guess if he was, maybe a lot of guys mighta had it in for him, knowing they’d got took. I figured, when I saw
the papers, it was a dame. I mean, it said about this big lawyer, but gee, a lawyer’d have more sense ’n to do it like that, like any cheap hood! Maybe not, I dunno. I never
sat in a game with Barker, I wouldn’t’ve had no reason—”

“Why’d you think it was a woman?” asked Mendoza.

“Well, see, he was an awful chaser, that I do know. Only thing he ever thought about outside o’ cards. You could tell by his talk—you know. Allus tellin’ about
all the dames he’d made—St. Louis, N’York, N’ Orleans, Chicago an’ points west like they say. He had ten stories about dames he’d laid for every town in
the country. I just figured maybe one caught up to him.”

“And that could be,” said Mendoza. He let Edwards go. The house proprietor said indifferently he’d never caught Barker cheating in his place; but anyway he hadn’t come
often. No, Barker would have angled for classier society groups where the stakes would be higher. Taken a nice little haul here, fifty-five hundred or so, and was moving on: voluntarily, as the
gambler’s restlessness urged him, or on the run from a threat? No saying.

So Barker had been a womanizer. Did that say anything?

Hackett came in and . . .