The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 84

"Family dog?" I asked.

Mad Dog smiled at me and his clear blue eyes didn't blink. "Yes," he said. "Fact is, he was given to me by my mother when I moved out on my own."

"You can sit there and talk about dogs all you want," Dr. Varney said. "But I am definitely not going to let you get by with ..."

"Awoooo, awoooo," Mad Dog interrupted. "We're back again, discussing the thirty-year-old murder of industrialist Theodore Daken. You were saying, Dr. Varney?"

"Nothing, actually."

"We were getting to a description of what really happened in the murder room that night."

"What happened is public record," Rafferty said. "The verdict was in three decades ago. Case closed. Some of you guys like to play around with stuff like this, but you can't change history."

"Things do happen to make us doubt the accuracy of history books, however. Look at all the fuss over Columbus. Or the crusades. Or maybe a murder case that wasn't murder at all."

"What the devil's that mean?" Rafferty asked.

"This really is quite absurd," Gabriel Warren said flatly. "Why Victoria Douglas killed Theo Daken three decades ago is an intriguing question, but its answer will solve none of today's problems. We should be discussing the murders that take place every seven hours in this city, or the bank robberies that take place on an average of one every other day."

"That's what I thought we were here to talk about," Victor Newgate added.

"We can discuss crime in L.A. for the next year and not come up with any concrete answers," Mad Dog said. "But tonight, it's possible that we will actually be able to conclude what really happened to Theodore Daken. Isn't that worth an hour of your time?"

"You're going to solve the Daken murder?" Rafferty asked sneeringly.

"Actually, I was hoping to leave the solving to Mr. Bloodworth."

"Huh?" I replied. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mad Dog. But I'm not exactly Sherlock Holmes. I'm just a guy who plods from one point to another."

"Plod away, then."

"The world turns over a few times in thirty years, and its secrets get buried deeper and deeper. Too deep to uncover in an hour."

"Suppose we make it a little easier?" Mad Dog said.

I thought I knew where he was headed. I pointed at the empty chair at the table. "If Victoria Douglas were to come out of hiding and join us, that might make it easier."

The others didn't think much of that idea. They eyed the chair suspiciously. "She's still a wanted woman," Rafferty said. "And it'd be my duty to perform a citizen's arrest and send her back where she belongs."

"Don't worry," Mad Dog said. "The chair's not for her. Is it, Miss Thorp?"

We all turned to Landy expectantly. "Victoria Douglas is dead," she stated flatly. It was the first sentence she'd spoken since we all sat down and it more than made up for her silence. "She died of a heart attack nearly six months ago in the Northern California town of Yreka, where her neighbors knew her as Violet Dunn. Knew and loved her, I should add."

The others seemed to relax. Then Landy added, "But before she died, we had many long talks together."

"What kind of talks?" Gabriel Warren asked.

"Talks that I'm using in an article on Victoria Douglas for my magazine."

Dr. Varney exclaimed, "I told you about it, Gabriel. Someone phoned my office."

"N-n.o.body called me," Norman Daken said.

"You're on my list," Landy told him. "We're just starting the major research. I'll be calling each of you."

Warren stared at her appraisingly. Rafferty seemed amused. "So, honey, on these long talks you supposedly had," he asked, "did she happen to mention anything about the murder?"

Landy stared at him. "She told me that she killed Theodore Daken in self-defense. It was she who fell asleep that night. She was not used to alcohol and had had too much champagne. When she awoke, Daken was beside her on the bed in his underwear, trying to remove her clothes.

"She called out, but everyone else had gone. She tried to push him away and he slapped her across the face. Struggle seemed useless. He was a big, powerful man. Her hand found the statue somehow and she brought it down against his skull. Then she blacked out. She doesn't remember hitting him more than once."

"Doesn't remember? That's d.a.m.n convenient," Rafferty said. "No wonder she didn't try that yarn on us at the time."

"She might have," Mad Dog informed us, "if she'd taken the stand at her trial."

Newgate waved a dismissive hand. "She would have hurt her case immensely. It was my feeling that, in light of the grisly aspects of the situation, she was better off with an insanity plea. She could only have hurt that defense by taking the stand."

"She told me she did mention self-defense at her first parole hearing," Landy said.

"And, alas, as I feared, they didn't believe her," Newgate said. "I suppose that's what pushed her into making her initial escape."

"How did you come to be her lawyer, Newgate?" I asked.

He stared at me as if he didn't feel he had to waste his time responding. But we were on radio, so he replied, "I'd met her socially."

"You mean you'd dated her?" I asked.

"No. But, from time to time, I had lunch with her and ... other employees of Altadine. The firm I was working for did quite a lot of business with the company."

"Did Daken sit in on these lunches?" I asked.

"The old man? Hardly," Newgate replied with a smile. "He was the CEO. We were a few rungs down."

"Who else would be there?" Mad Dog wondered.

Newgate brushed the question away with an angry hand. "I don't really know. An a.s.sortment of people."

"Mr. Warren?" I asked.

"I was part of the crowd," Warren said. "Eager young execs and pretty women who worked for the company. Victoria Douglas included. There was nothing sinister about it. Nothing particularly significant, either."

"According to testimony from a woman named Joan Lapeer," Mad Dog said, "Miss Douglas had been Theodore Daken's girlfriend. Did she confirm that, Miss Thorp?"

"Victoria told me that Joan Lapeer had been Altadine's office manager before her. Theodore Daken fired the woman and hired Victoria. Joan Lapeer was so bitter that she spread the word that Daken had wanted to hire his girlfriend."

"Then there was no truth to it?"

"None," Landy said. "Victoria told me she'd only met Daken once or twice before she went to work for Altadine."

"Met him where?" I asked.

"Joan Lapeer was a very lazy, very incompetent worker," Gabriel Warren suddenly announced. Norman Daken looked up from the table at him, without expression.

"So she lied about Victoria Douglas's involvement with Theodore Daken," Mad Dog said.

"Miss Douglas said he asked her out a few times," Landy told us. "But she always refused."

"Because he was her boss?" Mad Dog asked.

"Or a fat slob, or ...?"

"Because she was involved with someone else," Landy said.

"Who?"

Landy shook her head. "She wouldn't name him. She said it was the one oath she would never break."

"She used the word, 'oath'?" I asked.

"Precisely."

"Is he our mystery guest?" I asked Mad Dog, indicating the empty chair.

"No," he said, turning toward Greg in the booth. "But this might be a good time to cut to a commercial." He nodded, let out one of his wails and Greg responded to the cue with a spot announcement for a holiday lawn fertilizer, "The perfect gift for the gardener around your home."

"How much longer are you going to hold us here against our will?" Warren demanded.

"The old clock on the wall says another nineteen minutes."

"This is going to turn into a very expensive hour," Warren said.

"Why don't you just make your point," lawyer Newgate said to our host, "and be done with it? Why must we put up with all this cat-and-mouse routine?"

"That's how radio works," Mad Dog replied. "We have to build to a conclusion." He leaned toward me. "Are you willing to give us a wrap-up, Mr. Bloodworth, of what you think happened that night?"

"I wouldn't want to go on record with any heavy speculation. You don't seem to care about these litigious bozos, but I personally would just as soon stay clear of courtrooms."

"No need to mention any names," he said. "Just give us ..."

He paused, some sixth sense informing him that the commercial had ended and he was about to go back on the air. He let out a howl and said, "Welcome back to the doghouse. Private Detective Leo Bloodworth is about to give us his version of what happened back at that hotel thirty years ago."

"Well," I said. "I'll take Victoria Douglas's word for it that she acted in self-defense. That would explain her battered condition. But if the guy attacked her and she repelled him, why wouldn't she just stay there and call the cops?"

"Because she panicked?" Landy speculated.

"When you panic, you run away. But Rafferty and his detectives tell us she didn't do that. Their scenario has her hanging around the suite and finally taking the body with her when she left. Why would she do that?"

"The dame was crazy." Rafferty was almost beside himself.

I replied, "She's just killed a man. She's confused. She decides to take the dead guy with her? n.o.body's that crazy. Wouldn't it have been much more natural for her to just run away? Probably down the service stairs?"

"That's your trouble, Bloodworth," Rafferty said. "You refuse to believe what your eyes tell you. You saw her with the stiff ... ah, the poor guy's body."

"That was later. What I think is that she ran away to the one person she trusted-the guy she was in love with. She told him what had happened in the hotel suite. He told her he'd help her, but she had to promise to keep him out of it, no matter what.

"They went back to the hotel in her car, parking it near the service exit. Maybe they went up together. Maybe he told her to stay in the car. He, or the both of 'em got Daken's body down in the service elevator. They put it in the back of Victoria Douglas's car. By then, she was in no condition to drive. So the boyfriend drove to the alley off Wils.h.i.+re. And here's where it gets a little foggy. For some reason the boyfriend ran out on her and left her to face the music all alone. And true to her promise, her 'oath,' she refused to name him. Even though it made her look like a crazy woman."

"Wait a minute, Bloodworth," Rafferty bl.u.s.tered. "If it didn't make sense for her to move the body, why did he decide to do it?"

"Because there would be less scandal if Daken were found beaten to death in an alley wearing a Santa Claus suit than if he turned up dead in a hotel room in his skivvies."

"You're saying that Theodore Daken was moved to salvage his reputation?" Mad Dog asked.

"And that of his company's," I said. "I a.s.sume Douglas's boyfriend was an executive at Altadine ..."

"Why?" Mad Dog asked.

"That's one way Victoria Douglas would have met Daken once or twice before he hired her. It's also how she would have known about the job opening. For all we know, the boyfriend could have closed the deal with Daken for her to come aboard. Anyway, he was the one who was trying to downplay any scandal."

"Only it didn't work," Mad Dog said.

"And I bet the guy next in line to the presidency, Gabriel Warren, had quite a job on his hands keeping Altadine's investors high on the company." I looked at him.

"You're right about one thing," he said. "It would have been quite a lot easier if Theo's death had been minus the sordid details. But as bad as it got, I managed."

"I'll bet you did," I said.

"Wait a minute!" Landy interrupted. "This was a company Christmas party. If Victoria's lover had been an Altadine exec, would he have just gone off, leaving his girlfriend pa.s.sed out and easy prey for Daken?"

"I think the guy left the party early, before she was in any danger," I said, looking at Warren.

"Would you care to take a guess at the name of Victoria Douglas's lover, Mr. Bloodworth?" Mad Dog asked.

I continued staring at Gabriel Warren. "Like I said, somebody who left the party early. Somebody who wanted to squelch the scandal. But when that didn't happen, he was shrewd enough to know when to cut and run. Somebody smooth and savvy and well-connected enough to know how to push enough b.u.t.tons, once Victoria Douglas was on the spot, to keep himself clear of the fallout."

"How would he do that?" Mad Dog asked. Warren glared at me.

"By pressuring a high-ranking police officer to disregard a few facts that didn't jibe with the official story of how Daken died. By getting a defense lawyer to plead his client insane and keep her off the stand, just to make sure his name didn't come up in testimony. By convincing a judge to bend a few rules. All to keep one of America's great corporations flying high. Because, surely, if one more guy at the top of Altadine had got caught by that tar baby, the company might never have recovered."

"You're not going to name him?" Mad Dog asked.

"He knows who he is," I said, nodding at Warren.

I was hoping to get the guy to do something. Like snarl. Or show his fangs. When he didn't, I said, "It just occurred to me that maybe Victoria Douglas didn't really kill Theodore Daken at all. She told Miss Thorp that she didn't remember hitting him more than once. Suppose that wasn't enough to do the job, though she thought it was. Suppose the boyfriend went up to that hotel room, saw Daken on the bed sleeping off that nonfatal whack and picked up the statue and finished the job, wiping the weapon clean. Then he had an even stronger reason for wanting Victoria Douglas to keep quiet about his partic.i.p.ation in the removal of the body. What do you think, Warren?"

"You're making a big mistake," he hissed. I shrugged.

"This may be the perfect time to bring in our mystery guest," Mad Dog said. And almost at once, the door opened and a wizened old man entered. He looked like he was a hundred-and-one, his khaki pants flapping against his legs, his bright red windbreaker hanging on his bony frame. A plaid cap with a pom-pom covered his bald pate at a jaunty angle.