Spring of Violence

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times Queer cases run in batches in Los Angeles and Lieutenant Luis Mendoza has a few of them on his books. There's the case of the man who is terrified of vampires and who comes to a violent end; there's the odd affair of the theft of tropical fish known as Regal Angels. Then, there's the sweet old lady who holds up banks. It's all in a day's work in this characteristic Dell Shannon thriller...

Release date: May 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Policewoman Wanda Larsen was the first one into the Robbery-Homicide office on this first Monday in March. If Policewoman Larsen ever heard any criticism of any LAPD officer,
her response was indignant and immediate; privately, however, she told herself that men were men, and the best of them would make messes for women to clean up.

The ashtray on Sergeant Higgins’ desk was overflowing; lately Rich Conway, on the night watch, had taken to smoking little brown cigarillos and the big glass tray was full of the butts.
Tom Landers, for a wonder, had emptied his ashtray; Schenke didn’t smoke and Galeano was trying to quit—he had left his ashtray littered with bits of foil from chocolate drops. Wanda
cleared everything away and dusted energetically. She had got to her own desk just inside the second communal office they’d acquired when Robbery and Homicide got merged a couple of months
ago, and was just taking the cover off her typewriter when Detective Shogart came in, with Sergeants Hackett and Higgins at his heels.

“Anything new gone down?” asked Hackett.

“I don’t think so—no reports,” said Wanda. Something new would probably show up today; the routine at Central Headquarters was seldom static. As of now they had the
hit-run, that heist job at a bar last Saturday night, the unidentified body dead of a probable O.D., a couple of cases ready to be stashed in Pending.

Sergeant Lake came in, said, “Morning,” and sat down at the switchboard. Glasser and Piggott drifted in together.

“I don’t know what to get Prudence for her birthday,” Piggott was saying. “It’s on Friday.”

“Girls always like cologne,” suggested Glasser. “Anything new gone down?”

It was Sergeant Palliser’s day off; he wouldn’t be in.

“Excuse me—”

Wanda looked up from her typewriter. Standing hesitantly in the doorway, just past the switchboard, was a youngish woman. She was very shabbily dressed in a sagging brown skirt, limp pale-blue
sweater, no stockings, ancient canvas shoes once white. She hadn’t any makeup on, and her skin looked gray; she had the beginning of a black eye and a cut on one cheek. She looked at Wanda
and the men, unsure and timid. “I didn’t know there’d be a lady here,” she said. “They told me downstairs to come up here.” She had a flat near-Southern
accent.

“Yes, what can we do for you?” asked Wanda. “Mrs.—”

“Easely,” she supplied. “I’m Lorna Easely. I got my neighbor lady, Mis’ Stevens, lookin’ out for the kids. She’s been awful good to me. I didn’t
tell her, and I didn’t say nothing to the kids, but I got to tell you how it was—he said he’d kill us all.” She looked at them piteously and the slow tears ran down her
cheeks.

Behind her Mendoza came in briskly, and stopped on hearing that. As usual he was dapper in gray Italian silk, snowy shirt and discreet dark tie. His hairline moustache was neat, and he was
carrying the inevitable black homburg.

“He said he’d kill the kids, see. They always bothered him, the noise and all. I put up with everything else from him—I didn’t know what else to do. And I never lived in
a big town before, we’re from Tennessee, we come out here last year. He’d bring his women home—trashy women—I got to fix dinner for ’em and all, and never a night but
he got drunk, less he didn’t have no money to. He’d beat me up before too, but when he said he’d kill the kids and me both—I just had to. I just had to. I waited till he was
passed out, an’ I got the big iron skillet and I hit him till I knew he was dead.”

Mendoza came up to her quietly. “Mrs. Easely,” said Wanda, getting up, a little bemused at the woman’s dull tone reciting facts, “this is Lieutenant Mendoza—if you
want to make a formal statement—”

“I want to do what’s right, ’s all. I knew it was wrong, but I had to do it account of the kids. I didn’t let them see—I took ’em out the back way to
Mis’ Stevens.”

Mendoza nodded his head at Hackett. “What’s the address, Mrs. Easely?” asked Wanda.

“Oh, it’s Park View—”

“So I’ll go look,” said Hackett, taking down the address.

“If you’ll come into my office—” Mendoza took her arm. But she turned blindly to Wanda.

“Please, could you come too? I—I’d like another woman—”

“Surely I’ll come.” Wanda didn’t add that she’d have come anyway, to take down the statement.

“People, people,” said Glasser.

“You’ve got a two-eleven out on Beverly,” said Sergeant Lake from the switchboard. “Something offbeat, what I got from the black-and-white answered the call. It’s a
pet shop or something.”

“A pet shop?” said Shogart.

“I’ll take it,” said Piggott. As he got up, Detective Jason Grace came in. His regular-featured chocolate-brown face wore a slightly worried expression.

“Sorry I’m late—we’ve been up with the baby, she’s running a little temperature.”

“They do that for nothing,” Shogart reassured him. As the father of nine he could be supposed to know.

In Mendoza’s office, Wanda started to take down Lorna Easely’s confession. In a way, this was an offbeat one too: a homicide coming to them rather than vice versa.

It was a shop called Scales ’n’ Fins, out on Beverly Boulevard. When they got there—Glasser had decided to come along—the black-and-white was gone, back
on patrol.

“We’re from headquarters,” said Piggott, pulling out the badge. “You’ve had a robbery here, we—”

“Oh, my God!” said the tall, bald old fellow hurrying up at the sight of them. “All my Regal Angels! All eight of them! I have a regular routine of feeding, and they’re
at the back on the left wall, so it wasn’t until I’d worked my way back there I noticed—All my Regal Angels! All of them!” He looked ready to weep.

“Er—what are they?” asked Piggott. This place was full of aquariums, big and little, sitting on long shelving on all sides of the store. All the aquariums were full of
fish.

“Oh, dear, of course you wouldn’t—I’m Dave Duff. I own this place. And if they had to steal anything, the Regal Angels are the last ones I’d have wanted—My
God, when I think of it—”

“What are they?” asked Glasser. “Fish? Somebody stole some fish?”

“Well, of course they’re fish,” said Duff. “Pterophyllum scalare, to be exact. Angel fish. The very newest developed color—and they’re all gone! And
damn it, the females are all ready to spawn! It’s a little tricky, the temperature’s got to be just right—and the feeding—”

“What are they worth?” asked Glasser. Piggot had wandered up the aisle in the middle of the store.

“Well, call it twenty-five bucks each,” said Duff mournfully.

Glasser suppressed an exclamation. “That much?” he said mildly. At least that made it more than petty theft: two hundred bucks. “You haven’t got an alarm system
here?”

“My God, Officer,” said Duff, “in a place like this? I know the crime rate’s up but it never occurred to me things’d get so bad robbers would come after tropical
fish! I haven’t looked at the door—”

“Well, we’d better,” said Glasser. “Hey, Matt?”

Piggott was standing in front of a large square aquarium, staring at the occupants. “Say, these are the prettiest little things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They’re
just like little rainbows.”

Duff came up. “You like my tetras? They are pretty—nice little fellows too. Kind of tricky to breed, but nice little fish.”

“I never saw such colors,” said Piggott. “I didn’t know fish came in such colors.”

“Some even prettier than these.”

“Look,” said Glasser, “let’s get with this, Matt.”

“Are they hard to keep?” asked Piggott. “I mean, people keep them at home?”

“Oh, sure—big hobby now, home aquariums. They kind of hook you, these little fellows. Hundreds of different kinds, most of ’em pretty. But hardly anything,” said Duff,
remembering his loss, “prettier than angels—”

“What do they look like?”

“There’s some there—ordinary angels, not like my Regals but the same shape, of course.”

Piggott stared at the indicated aquarium. The fish sailing serenely around in it were shaped rather like triangles, with a tall pointed fin above and what looked like streamlined antennae below.
They were about five inches long, and colored pale amber with distinct black vertical stripes. They were as graceful as swans. Piggott could see a hazy reflection of himself in the glass,
unremarkable, sandy, medium-sized Matt Piggott, and he said seriously, “It’s a funny thing, Mr. Duff. We’re supposed to be the noblest work of God, but He certainly made a lot of
things more beautiful, didn’t He?”

Duff laughed. “He sure did. But when I think how my Regal Angels—and all ready to spawn—”

“Hey, Matt. Over here.”

Reluctantly Piggott turned away from the angel fish. Glasser was squatting at the front door. “Break-in, all right—marks on the jamb, something metal I’d guess. Did you come in
this way, Mr. Duff?”

“No, I always come in the back—I park behind the store.”

“Well, he got in this way. Forced the door open with a jimmy or something, and broke the lock. Have you had any customers this morning?” Duff shook his head. “Well, they might
not have noticed anyway, the door just unlocked—you hadn’t come to unlock it yet?”

“I was late coming in—I wanted to get the feeding done first.”

“This is the damnedest thing,” said Glasser. “How could anybody steal fish? I mean, how would they—”

“Well, I suppose he’d have his own carrying cans,” said Duff. “And nets. And that’s another thing—changing them into different water can be very dangerous
sometimes—if whoever it is doesn’t know about— But it’s got to be an aquarist, doesn’t it? I just hope—”

“A what? Oh, you mean somebody who likes tropical fish? Knows about ’em. I’d say so,” said Glasser. “Somebody who couldn’t afford twenty-five bucks for one.
That still seems—”

“I suppose because they’re special, Henry,” said Piggott. He was wandering around again. “A lot here for half a dollar, seventy-five cents, a dollar.”

“That’s so,” said Duff. “As more are bred and the supply goes up, the price comes down, but right now these Regal Angels—”

“Well, I suppose we’d better have the lab print the door—and the tank they were in,” said Glasser. “He just might have left some latents, but it’s a million
to one he’ll be in anybody’s files even if he did. An aquarist, for God’s—”

“Oh, my!” said Piggott. “What kind are these, Mr. Duff?”

“Copeina arnoldi,” said Duff. “Characins. Lovely little things, aren’t they? Nice fish for a communal tank too, very peaceful little fellows.”

“I can’t get over all the colors,” said Piggott. “How much does an aquarium like this cost?”

“Well, I’ve got various sizes at different prices—”

Glasser had sought the phone to call the lab. When he came back he found Duff showing Piggott a new empty aquarium and talking about filters. “Look, Matt—”

“Well, I was just thinking, Henry, it’d be nice for Prudence’s birthday.”

Hackett and Higgins had gone over to the address on Park View to find their new corpse. It was a shabby street in a shabby neighborhood, and the house was old and ramshackle.
Mrs. Easely had said forlornly that the door was open. Inside, it was sparsely furnished and rather dirty. The corpse was on the bed in the front bedroom, a big hulk of a man, unshaven, with head
wounds that had bled copiously; the iron skillet lay beside him.

“Not much need for lab work,” said Hackett. They had called the lab nevertheless; she might recant on the statement. They tried the house next door and found Mrs. Stevens, a
comfortably fat middle-aged woman who let out a small scream when they introduced themselves, told her why they were there.

“For the Lord’s sake! She murdered— My Lord! She never said a word, just would I look to the children— Oh, that poor soul! And the poor children—”

There were, it seemed, seven kids, aged nine down to the baby.

They left Duke and Scarne out of the lab truck dusting and taking photographs, went back to the office and told Mendoza about it.

“I mean, talk about drastic,” said Hackett, lighting a cigarette. “Why didn’t she just leave him? Silly question, I suppose.”

“Human nature,” said Mendoza, “doesn’t seem to change, Art. She did tell us she has a set of parents. In Tennessee. So at least the kids won’t clutter up Juvenile
Hall for long. I wonder if the lab got anything on that heist on Saturday night.”

“Early to ask—you know the lab,” said Higgins. He and Hackett together dwarfed Mendoza’s office. “What I’m thinking about—”

“That was a very pro job,” said Mendoza meditatively. “In and out, quick and easy. And don’t tell me, I know how many experienced heist-men are on file and out of jail.
¿Pues y qué? What are you thinking about, George?”

“That hit-run.” Higgins looked angry. Well, awhile back Steve Dwyer had nearly been killed by a hit-run driver; but that hadn’t been all bad, considering that it had finally
stirred Higgins up to asking Mary Dwyer to marry him. These days, he was still getting used to his firsthand family, nearly-six-months-old Margaret Emily. “You know we’ll never get
him.” There had never been much hope of finding the driver who, last Friday afternoon, had killed ten-year-old Kevin McLeod, dead at the scene in the twisted tangle of his bicycle.

Mendoza’s phone buzzed and he picked it up. “I’ve got something for you, I think,” said Lieutenant Carey of Missing Persons. “No body, but from all I’ve got
on it I think the woman’s bound to be dead. And it’s a little mystery.”

“That sounds a little vague,” said Mendoza. “I don’t like your things, Carey—they’re always all up in the air. Unless there’s evidence of homicide
it’s nothing for us.”

“Well, I’d like you to hear the story, see what you think of it anyway.”

“¡Vaya al diablo!” said Mendoza resignedly. “All right, all right.”

“After all, you’re supposed to be the expert on homicide.”

Mendoza laughed. “For my sins? Well, I’ll listen to your story.”

“Say in about an hour. I’ll have some people with me.”

Mendoza put the phone down, and Grace poked his head in the door. “New two-eleven just in—apartment over on Miramar. Neighbor just walked in and found this old lady beaten up, place
ransacked. I’ve called the lab. If Virginia calls—”

“Somebody’ll take the message,” said Hackett. “Don’t fuss, the baby’ll be all right, Jase.”

“Well, you can’t help worrying,” said Higgins. “What about the Easely woman, paperwork all started?” The detectives from the old Homicide bureau had been much
gratified to find, when they got merged with Robbery, that they had acquired a secretary to type reports for them.

“Our efficient Wanda—initial report typed and warrant applied for. Murder two.”

“What do you bet it gets reduced to manslaughter?” said Hackett pessimistically.

“No bets,” said Mendoza sardonically. “It probably will. But I don’t think she’s all that dangerous, Art. I’d like to get those heisters. They didn’t
hesitate to take a shot at the bartender when he didn’t hand over as fast as they wanted. Which reminds me—” He picked up the phone. “Jimmy, get me the lab. . . . Did you
get a make on that slug you picked up at that bar Saturday night? . . . Oh. Oh? Thanks. . . . It was a Colt .45, an old one.”

“A big gun for a big man,” said Higgins. They had rather vague descriptions of the three heist-men from the customers and the bartender: all three Negro, all fairly big, one of them
with an Afro hair style, the other two with moustaches. And that was all they had, and all they were likely to get, unless and until those boys pulled off another job. Which was all too likely:
they’d only got about ninety bucks on that one. R. and I. had turned up names, of course, names picked by the computer fed those vague descriptions, and at the usual routine they were looking
for those men, picking them up for questioning when they were found. The bartender said he could make a positive identification.

Shogart had gone out on that, and Hackett and Higgins divided the latest names they had and went out on it too. At least it was nice weather, and the usual little March heat wave hadn’t
arrived yet.

“I wonder what Carey’s got?” said Hackett idly.

“Something up in the air, just like Luis said. Those M.P. reports usually are.”

As they went out they passed Piggott and Glass just coming in. Piggott was saying, “The prettiest little things I ever saw—like little rainbows. And those small size aquariums
aren’t too expensive, the five-gallon ones—”

“Those damned fish,” said Glasser.

When Lieutenant Carey came into Mendoza’s office at ten o’clock, he had two women with him. “Mrs. Eldon, Mrs. Donahue, Lieutenant Mendoza. Now I tell you,
we’ve got something funny here, Mendoza.”

“Funny isn’t the word for it,” said Mrs. Eldon. “I won’t say Mina couldn’t ’ve done such a thing, but to just disappear—” She was a woman at
least in her late seventies, a thin white-faced old woman in a worn black crepe dress. But her eyes were bright and her tone direct. “And what with one thing and another it’s been four
months about. She’d have written to Charlie, and she’d have let me know where she was, if she was able.”

“So let’s take it from the top,” said Carey. His round snub-nosed face looked serious. “We’re talking about Mrs. Mina Borchers, she’s eighty-six and a widow
with one son—he lives in Chicago. She lived with Mrs. Donahue here, on Bonnie Brae over by the park—”

“I’m sure we tried to please her,” said Mrs. Donahue agitatedly. She was about forty, a plain thin dark woman dressed untidily in a drab navy-blue suit. “She came to us
six years back when Mother was still alive—before I married Jack, you know. We don’t have a license, it’s not a regular rest home like, we just have two or three old folk with
us—that can’t look after a place of their own or cook for themselves any more, you know—we’ve got, I mean we had, Mrs. Borchers and Mr. Gadden and Mrs. Pruitt now, and I
will say, Mrs. Borchers could be kind of difficult to please, but we—”

“Mina’s a cantankerous old witch,” said Mrs. Eldon roundly. “And she always was. I’ve known her for nearly seventy years and I know that, make no bones about it.
But tell you the the truth, I’m sorry for her. My son says, why on earth bother with her, but she’d driven everybody away from her, I’m the only person knows her ever did go to
see her, just once in a while, be a little friendly. She nagged her husband into his grave thirty years ago, and her son only writes her a letter now and then out of duty—of course she
couldn’t abide the girl he married, and just as well he got transferred back east.” She sniffed. “You see, I nearly died last November—took bad the day before Thanksgiving,
and they never thought I’d live. Pneumonia it was, all that flu going around. And while I was getting better, I never gave a thought to Mina—she’d never bother to come see me. But
a week ago last Wednesday was her birthday, and as long as I’m back on my feet again I thought I’d just drop by and say hello. So my son drove me, and that’s when Mrs. Donahue
told me—”

“We don’t know where she went! Or why! I just can’t make it out, or Jack either!” Mrs. Donahue wrung her hands. “It was November— I don’t recall the
exact date, it was about two weeks before Thanksgiving, she just went off—and then—”

“Mmh.” Mendoza regarded them both from over his steepled hands. “She’s active? Get’s around all right?”

“Well, she’s got arthritis in one hip, but she can walk all right—not very far, I guess. She used to take the bus and go uptown a couple of times a week, maybe go to a
movie.”

“What was she living on—pension, Social Security?”

“Well, that’s one of the funny things,” said Carey. “She wasn’t getting either, and we can’t turn up a bank account for her either. Her husband died over
thirty years ago, and he wasn’t in any regular job, by all we can hear, and never paid into Social Security. And since then—”

“I can tell you this,” said Mrs. Eldon. “He was a gambler, that man. I wouldn’t doubt he might’ve left her pretty well-off. She nagged him about it, but he was a
gambler.”

Mendoza smiled. “And they die broke as a rule.”

“You should know,” said Carey.

“Well, he was a lucky one, I guess. I don’t mean cards and such, maybe that too, but what he said—we didn’t see so much of them then, just once in a while—like
land, and property. My husband always said there was something likable about the man, kind of hail-fellow-well-met if you know what I mean. I do know, he used to go off for spells and then come
back, and Mina—secretive she’s always been, she’d never say about that. But she’s never had to work, earn a living, since he died. All this time.”

Mendoza sat up. “Interesante,” he said. “But if she had money, what was she doing living down here?” He flashed an absent smile at the women. “Not to imply
you live in a slum, Mrs. Donahue.”

“That’s all right, sir, I know it’s not the fanciest part of town. But we own the house clear—that is, Mother did, she left it to me of course—and it’s too
big for just Jack and me. It seemed best just to go on like Mother and me had for all those years, with the old folks, it was a little money coming in and I’ve got used to doing it all since
Mother died. Mr. Gadden’s on the state pension, he gives it to us all but ten dollars a month, for room and board—and Mrs. Pruitt’s on the Social Security, she pays ninety a
month—and Mrs. Borchers was paying a hundred.”

Mendoza looked at Carey. “Not much of a take. But where did the hundred come from? How did she pay it, by check?”

“It was always cash, sir. And she could be sort of mean and always complaining, but I’d’ve thought if she was going to move she’d’ve told us. And we never knew
where she went—”

“It wasn’t till I came round asking,” said Mrs. Eldon, “that I heard about it, and it seemed funny. I wrote off to her son Charlie, thinking he’d know, you see. And
he wrote back that the couple letters he’d wrote her since then, they’d come back, and he was wondering about it too. He said, maybe go to the police about it. So I—”

“What about her belongings?” asked Mendoza. “She just went off—no car, no taxi?”

“That’s the funniest thing,” burst in Mrs. Donahue shrilly. “She went to the doctor that day—she went to him about every couple of months—and she
couldn’t get very near there on the bus, he’. . .