“The thing is this,” I said. “She accumulated a rather large amount of money, apparently from a five-hundred-dollar-a-month stipend. But we haven’t found anything to indicate where that money came from. I am hoping the bank might give us a lead. It could be a member of the family, a child, relative. Would it be possible for us to go over her accounts and see the checks that were deposited?”
The request made him nervous. He stroked his chin and cleared his throat.
“That is, of course, confidential. Do you have a court order…?” He said it tentatively, as though unsure of himself.
“I can get one but considering the nature of her sudden death and the very real prospect of the state stepping in to take over, I was hoping we could do this right away. Better than having the state boys trooping in here waving subpoenas in everybody’s face. They aren’t known for their manners.”
“I see.”
“All I want to do is go back through her records and see if there are any names, addresses, anything that we can follow up on. I’ll of course keep this all on the Q.T. An hour or two is all it should take.”
He thought about all of that for a minute or two. He seemed a little nervous about circumventing the court. I took out my badge and ID and laid them in front of him to reassure him. He perused them, then looked up sharply.
“Homicide division?” he said.
I gave him my most reassuring smile. “Just routine, Mr. Sutherland. Anytime there’s an unwitnessed death, we have to investigate. She was dead for almost twenty-four hours before her neighbor found her.”
“I see,” he said. He took off his glasses, folded them, and tapped them on his desk for a moment, then reached under the ridge of the desk and pressed a button.
A moment later, a handsome woman came in through a side door. She was tall, five-seven probably, late twenties, with ebony-black hair down to her shoulders, severe black eyebrows over gray eyes, and million-dollar legs sheathed in sheer silk, at least from the knee down. She was wearing a tailored, double-breasted charcoal-gray suit with a small diamond-and-ruby pin in the shape of a dolphin on her lapel, and an oyster-white, high-necked silk-and-lace blouse. She stood as straight as a Marine topkick. Pure elegance. She also had a million-dollar tennis tan like the boss.
“Millicent, this is Sergeant Bannion from the police department. Sergeant, this is our vice president, Millicent Harrington.”
“It’s Bannon, no i,” I said, taking her hand. She had a sturdy tennisplayer’s grip and a smile most women would kill for. I hadn’t been as close to a woman this aristocratic since I brushed against Katharine Hepburn at a premiere at Grauman’s a year or so ago. She was the star of the picture. I was picking up some after-hours change spotting dips for the manager of the theater.
Then my mind started working overtime. She had the same tan as Sutherland, her stockings cost more than my entire wardrobe, and the pin in her lapel spelled Tiffany. And a vice president. Sometimes I hate being a cop.
“I have some bad news,” Sutherland said. “Verna Wilensky is dead.”
Her reaction was immediate and profound. She gasped and pressed the fingers of one hand against her lips. Her eyes widened to the size of silver dollars and then began to tear up. She sat, keeping her knees locked together, and seemed to sag into her suit. Sutherland whipped the handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her.
“Sorry to be so abrupt,” he muttered, and sat back in his chair.
Her backbone stiffened again. “What happened?” she said after dabbing her eyes.
“She slipped in the bathtub and drowned,” I explained. “I’m sure it was painless. She was kayoed… knocked out instantly.”
“Poor Verna,” she said sorrowfully. “She had so much going for her. Then she loses Frank, now this.”
“She died intestate,” Sutherland said. “Sergeant Bannion is hoping we can find something in her file that will lead him to a relative or some legitimate kin. Would you help him, please? Whatever he needs.”
I didn’t bother to bring up the i he insisted on putting in my name.
“Of course,” she said, and laid Sutherland’s handkerchief on the corner of the desk.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, shaking his hand, and followed Miss Harrington into her office.
“You might want to open a window,” she said. “It’s a bit stuffy in here.”
I slid the window up and looked down in the parking lot behind the building. There were two cars near the back door, a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith and a yellow Pierce-Arrow convertible with leather seats the color of the sky on a clear day.
It completed the package, as did the office-right down to the pale yellow silk drapes and sky blue carpeting that tickled my ankles. Pretty cushy, I thought. A gorgeous woman, a million-dollar office, a Pierce-Arrow ragtop. Sutherland was keeping this lady in grand style.
I looked around at the paintings on the wall, the antique furniture, the Mueller radio built into the wall. On her desk there was an eight-by-ten photo mounted in a sterling silver frame with its back to me and an elegant, hand-painted pencil holder that looked like it could have been a gift from the King of England.
“This is very impressive,” I said.
She was smart, too, to go along with everything else. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and one corner of her mouth turned up in what was almost a sneer.
You blew it, I thought. She knows you’re on to her. Get back to business.
She picked up the handpiece of a white phone, dialed a couple of numbers, then, “Jane, bring me the Wilensky file, please… yes, everything.” She hung up.
“So, Sergeant Bannon, what exactly are you looking for?”
I decided to play it straight up.
“As you know, the state is going to get the estate if we can’t find a family member with a legitimate claim. Mrs. Wilensky had almost a hundred gra… a hundred thousand dollars in her savings account, most of which came from a, uh, stipend of some kind she got every month.”
Jane, a mousy young woman with dirty-blond hair, came in with a large accordion folder, put it on the corner of her desk, and left without a word.
“Five hundred dollars,” she said with a nod.
“I was hoping we can get a lead off the cashier’s checks. You do keep a record of them, don’t you?”
“No, bank checks go back to the issuing bank when they’re cashed. We do make photocopies, although I doubt it will be much help to you.”
“How come?”
“They were always cashier’s checks. No names, just the issuing bank.”
My disappointment was palpable.
“Can we look them over anyway?” I asked.
“All of them?”
“I’m sorry, I know you must be awfully busy, but sometimes the smallest thing…” I shrugged and let the sentence die.
“All the way back to the beginning?”
I nodded. “Nineteen twenty-four, I think.” I leaned down to get my briefcase and my jacket flopped open. As I sat up, I saw her eyes fixed on the Luger under my arm.
“Will it make you more comfortable if I put this in my pocket?”
“I’m sorry. I’m well accustomed to firearms, I’m a member of the Bel Air Skeet Club. I’ve just never seen a hidden weapon except in gangster movies.”
“It’s concealed.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s called a concealed weapon, not a hidden weapon.”
“Oh. Well, don’t put it in your pocket on my account.”
I opened the briefcase and showed her the contents. “These were in a lockbox at her house. Statements going back to the mid twenties. There was some other stuff, papers on the car and house, bill of sale for Frank Wilensky’s business. But no will and no birth certificate. Seems strange for someone that, uh…”
“Meticulous?”
“Yeah, meticulous.”
“So, you want to see the copies of the original checks and deposit slips.”
“Please.”
For the next hour or so, we went through checks and deposit slips and I made notes. When we were through, I had a list of all the cashier’s checks going back to the original $4,000 cash deposit. At one point my Parker pen ran out of ink and she loaned me a gold fountain pen with no trade name on it. I felt guilty just leaving my fingerprints on it.