I moved into the bedroom, where the far wall was a circular arch of windows and the furnishings were as feminine and dainty as lace. The nightstands and dressing tables yielded a partly empty package of cigarettes, a few soft-cover books for end-of-the-evening relaxation, and a generous supply of cosmetics that looked expensive.
The closet door slid silently open under my touch.
My first guess spilled all its water instantly. Lura Thackery hadn’t run away.
She was crouched on the floor of the closet. With the removal of the supporting closet door, her thin form began to move. She rolled to one side, slowly at first like a streamer of delicate cloth floating downward. With a soft bumping of her shoulder, she came to rest half in and half out of the closet.
I dropped to one knee, touched her face, turned her head slightly.
Her neck was swollen almost out to her chin. Across the swelling lay a deep crease. The crease ran around her neck, all the way to the nape.
That’s where the ends of the loop of wire stuck out.
Twelve
“I know how you feel, Ed, but you can’t possibly blame yourself.” Homicide Lieutenant Steve Ivey was speaking while the tech men went about their grim job in Lura Thackery’s apartment.
“Who said anything about blame?” I asked.
“Nobody — but it’s in your face.”
“I was thinking,” I said, “of the little actions in life and the way they always spread out. Specifically, of McJunkin’s visit to my apartment and of my knife throw. This, today, might have never happened, if the throw had been a few inches different.”
“You did pretty well, Ed, considering the circumstances.”
“I thought I had hurt him. He went out of my building with the blade in him.”
“And he’s tough,” Ivey said. “We’ve checked every doctor in town. None has treated a knife wound in a man answering McJunkin’s description. He carried the knife away, and he pulled it out, and he plugged up the hole. It didn’t slow him down, Ed — not enough.”
Steve watched two ambulance men cross the room with Lura Thackery’s sheet-covered body on a stretcher between them.
“Death of the innocents,” Steve muttered. “Two girls who never hurt anybody, except themselves. Jean Putnam didn’t want to bring a suspicion into the open without having a private detective confirm it. Killed by her own sense of consideration for her fellow man, you might say. Lura Thackery — killed by her fear.”
Between the meat-wagon boys Lura Thackery went through the doorway, out of the apartment for the last time.
Ivey watched the stretcher until it was out of sight in the corridor. “Maybe her fear was too much bigger than her belief that you could help her, Ed. Maybe she got to thinking, after she called you, and made the wrong decision. Maybe she contacted McJunkin, begged him to leave her alone, and tipped him that the pressure was on her.”
“Could be,” I said.
“Or maybe,” Steve shrugged, “McJunkin simply found the opportunity today to carry out the intention that must have been in his mind from the start. Either way, Lura Thackery wrote the first line of her own obituary when she handed Jean Putnam’s diary over to McJunkin. She became a sheep marked for slaughter.”
Ivey took a final look around the tasteful little apartment. “From the prelim work here,” he said, “we’ve a good idea of how McJunkin did it. He probably came exuding friendliness and reassurance until he’d lulled the girl’s worst fears. Inside the apartment, when she least expected it, he clipped Lura Thackery on the chin — which accounts for the bruise the coroner found. While she was unconscious, McJunkin methodically helped himself to a wire coat hanger, wrapped it around her neck, twisted it tight. He stuffed her in the closet and left as quiet as he had come.”
“Now you hit the jackpot question,” I said.
“I know,” Ivey said grayly. “Where did he leave to? What was his destination?”
I kept trying to pull a mental lever on the jackpot as I drove toward Ybor City. I was bugged with a sense of frustration, a feeling that something, somewhere along the line, had escaped my conscious notice.
I crept into Ybor City, moving with the massed Gasparilla crowds and traffic.
In the heart of the Quarter, sidewalk stalls had been set up, gaily decorated. At these stalls señoritas in flowing skirts, drawstring blouses, and lace mantillas were ladling out bowls of free garbanzo soup. Swarms of turistas lapped up the soup and ogled the señoritas.
I was reminded of the fact of hunger. I stopped at a Spanish restaurant and stoked the engine with the first-rate fuel of crawfish sarapico. A balmy evening was stretching over the Gulf when I returned to the car, got in, and aimed it in the direction of the Señora Isabella hacienda.
The deceased doña’s castle was brilliant with light when I arrived. Many of the downstairs windows glittered, and paper lanterns had been strung over the courtyard.
At the outer edge of the courtyard two large outdoor grills had been set up. A suckling pig and chickens were turning on spits, attended by a fat chef. A willowy babe in a scanty excuse for a maid’s uniform was arranging glasses on a table that would serve for a bar near the fountain. In powder-blue dinner jacket and horn-rimmed glasses, a young man with a musical-instrument case in his hand had paused to gas with the barmaid.
She was laughing at something he’d said when I walked up. She gave me a cool glance, and the musician, lounging against the table, gave me a languid one.
“You delivering something for the party?” the girl asked.
“Nope. Mr. Sigmon or his daughter around?”
“I don’t believe they’ve come back yet. Just us people from the catering service.”
“And the combo leader.” The musician yawned. “I’ll wait,” I said.
There was traffic in and out of the house as the caterers made ready for the festivities. The musician ambled along as I went inside.
As we descended to the acreage of the living room, he lighted a cigarette with a suspicious smell. “Dig this pad, Pops!”
“It’s twenty-three skiddoo, son,” I said.
He laughed, gave me a second look. “Cool, Pops. Say, aren’t we acquainted?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ve seen you around. Ybor City. Or in the papers. Or,” he snickered, “with a face like that, in here.” He explained where “in here” was by waggling his cigarette.
His attention drifted. He was looking the room over.
“They’ll plant us there, by the piano, I guess. Acoustics lousy. But who makes with acoustic trouble, playing for a babe come into all her green? Tell me, Pops, is this Elena Sigmon married?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“You’re with it, man! Sure, why not?”
He drifted rather limply toward the piano. He dismissed me from his area of existence the second his back was toward me. The action was mutual. I’d dismissed him from mine by the time I went quietly from the room.
I was in a corridor with parquet flooring and an arched overhead. As the long porticoes facing the courtyard provided an outdoorsy connection between the three wings of the U-shaped house, I suspected that this hallway was an inside link from the living room to the adjacent wing.
The first door I passed was a stout oaken portal with a small crucifix attached at head height. I stopped, turned back, remembering that one word — “incense” — which Jean Putnam had spoken as she died.
I opened the door and gazed at the small private chapel where old Señora Isabella Sorolla y Batione had bent her aged kness and paid homage to her God.