“So among all the people who might be connected in some way, who owned a Buick?”
He frowned. “I don’t know.”
I pointed to the stack from which he had taken the photo of Jergenson. “Who are these people?”
“Gus Ronden and friends, if you can call them that. I learned who most of them were in the weeks after Jack was attacked.”
He also showed me a couple of photos of Gus Ronden-including a set of mug shots. “I know you said his gun was in the Imperial, and was the one used to kill Jergenson. Was his gun found in the trunk, with his body?”
“No, under the front seat. It wasn’t used to kill Gus-the weapon that was used to kill him hasn’t been found.”
I started looking through the photos. “Some of these look as if they were taken with a telephoto lens.”
“Yes. Anytime I learned of anyone who had been known to hang around Gus Ronden, I tried to get a photo. Some photos I took myself, but the telephotos were ones I talked a former staff photographer into taking. There are some here that were given to me by friends of the subjects, or their families, because that was the only way to get a picture of them at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Ducanes weren’t the only ones who disappeared that night. A number of the people in these photos seemed to vanish from Las Piernas- although I think most of them left voluntarily and with money in their pockets.”
“Show me the ones you couldn’t find.”
He sorted a few out of the stack.
“Who made them disappear?” I asked as I looked through them.
“I can’t say with any certainty.”
I looked up. “But you have a guess.”
“Let’s just say that around this time, Mitch Yeager seemed to distance himself from some of his former friends. But I haven’t a shred of evidence to connect him to anything that went on that night. He himself wasn’t in town that weekend.”
I moved on to a photo of the yacht. “Do you think the Ducanes were ever out on the Sea Dreamer?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what you wrote was that the yacht was abandoned, but there was no sign of violence on it, right?”
“Right.”
I looked up. “So whoever attacked them-let’s call them the pirates- would have to overpower four adults. One with an infant. Okay, that’s possible, I suppose, assuming they came aboard with weapons. But the pirates would have to control the Sea Dreamer, and the Ducanes, and whatever boat the pirates returned to shore on. The pirates had to get the two elder Ducanes overboard, then take Katy and Todd and the baby with them on the getaway boat-no, that’s not right. The infant wasn’t with them. The baby was taken from the house by Ronden. Wait, how does Baby Max Ducane get from the house to the Buick?”
“Maybe Ronden met these pirates somewhere, after he left Todd and Katy’s house,” O’Connor guessed. “Katy and Todd might have been dead already.”
I frowned. “That seems so odd-kidnapping a child just to bury it in the trunk of a car with its parents?”
He shrugged. “Can’t argue with the fact that his remains were found there, and that before he was killed, he was home with the nurse.”
“Okay, so let’s look at what happened to the adults. Let’s say the pirates begin by sending Thelma and Barrett Ducane overboard, too far out to sea on a stormy night for them to swim safely ashore.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far.”
“Then they force Katy and Todd aboard the pirates’ boat. They abandon the Sea Dreamer.”
“So now we have better odds for the pirates, and the reason there’s no blood on the Sea Dreamer.”
“Right.”
“The sailor or sailors kill Katy and Todd, put them in the trunk of the Buick, and meet Ronden, who has killed the baby, and toss the baby’s body in the trunk with his dead parents.” I shuddered. “I think I’m glad Ronden got killed a long time ago.”
“Except that whoever planned all of this is still around.”
I went back to the photos and came across one of a young blonde with her arm around a much older man. She was a pretty woman, but there was a certain hardness in her face that kept her from being more than that.
“The woman who was at the party with the giant?”
“Yes. Betty Bradford. When I showed that photo to Jack, he recognized her as the blonde who put her paws on him just before he got knocked out by Jergenson. She hasn’t been seen by anyone since the night of Katy’s birthday party.”
“You think she’s dead?”
“She was Gus Ronden’s mistress, and she was obviously at the party to set Jack up for a beating or worse. Given what happened to Jergenson and Ronden, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she was dead, but I don’t know what became of her, Lew Hacker, or a couple of the others.”
“Who’s with her in this photo?”
“Her sugar daddy before Ronden. She must have been something, too. He’d call me every once in a while, wondering if I had learned what happened to her. He was crazy about her. The old fart even gave her a car.” A mischievous light came into his eyes. “Told me he had pink carpet installed on the floorboards because Betty here liked to wear pink underwear.”
I laughed, then suddenly sobered. “What kind of car did he buy her?”
He looked at his notes. “I don’t think he told me.” He frowned. “And stupidly, I didn’t ask.”
“Is Don Juan here still alive?”
O’Connor shook his head. “Died of a heart attack a few years after I met him.”
“Yesterday, when you were telling me about Gus Ronden, you said you went over to his house here in Las Piernas, right?”
“Yes.”
“His Imperial was gone-was there another car there, one that might have been hers?”
“No.”
“And you said Lew Hacker drove a Bel Air, right?”
He thumbed through his notes. “A turquoise and white Chevy Bel Air. It had been seen over at Gus Ronden’s place late that night-maybe sometime after the murders. Neither Hacker nor the car has been seen since then.”
I went toward the phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Calling Lefebvre.”
He didn’t stop me, but I could tell it was killing him not to. When Lefebvre answered, I said, “Phil, did you find any other bodies in the Buick?”
“Three not enough for you?”
“Plenty. Listen-was the carpet on the car’s floorboards pink?”
There was a long silence.
“Phil, you should have said, ‘What lunatic would have pink carpet in a car?’ or something like that, because you’ve just given me my answer.”
“Damn it to hell, if someone in the lab-”
“Not the lab’s fault. Listen, we know who owned that Buick before it was buried.”
O’Connor motioned me to shut up.
“We?” Lefebvre asked.
“O’Connor and I know,” I went on, picking up the phone and dodging O’Connor as he tried to hit the switch hook, “but the Express is going to have to be the first to tell the public who the owner is-understood?”
“And what if it’s not a good idea for the public to know that name just now?”
“Detective Lefebvre, do you want to read the name in tomorrow’s Express, or would you like it now?”
“I have a feeling that I am going to have to grant a favor to hear it.”
“Oh no. I’d just like our… spirit of openness and honesty to continue.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. All right.”
So I told him about Betty Bradford and her boyfriends. “If you hear from her or anyone who might know what became of her, you know where to reach me,” I added.
“I haven’t known you twenty-four hours, and already you are a nuisance.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I replied, and hung up.