“No, it didn’t surprise me, Lieutenant. As you say, I worked for Mr. Falcone for a long time, and I knew him well. At times — too often, in fact — he did things that earned him enemies. Apparently this time he did it once too often, and made an enemy who was able to strike back.” She shrugged enigmatically. “And did.”
“I see. You know, of course — from the newspapers — that the evidence indicates that a woman was involved in his death?”
Mrs. Messer smiled almost condescendingly.
“It’s quite evident, Lieutenant, that you’ve heard of my quarrel with Mr. Falcone, and are drawing some rather far-fetched conclusions from it. Are you asking me if I killed him?”
Reardon nodded complacently, not at all put out by her question. “Or, of course, if you paid someone else to have him killed.”
Mrs. Messer crossed her well-formed legs in ladylike fashion, straightening out her skirt and smoothing the creases carefully. She folded her small hands on her knee and leaned forward a bit. Her voice was quiet and musical.
“Lieutenant, if you are as familiar with the story of my quarrel with Mr. Falcone as you think you are, then you know he did something to me that was quite unforgivable. If you wish the truth, I’m very happy that he’s dead, although I feel merely falling fifteen stories was scarcely punishment enough for him.” Her face was expressionless. “However, I and my daughter suffered enough at Mr. Falcone’s hands. I wouldn’t give that dreadful man the satisfaction — even dead — to see me get into trouble over him.”
“Still,” Reardon said in a tone that merely asked for reasonable consideration, “I’d like to know where you were the night before last — Wednesday — around eleven o’clock at night. Just for the record, you understand.”
“Of course.” Her light gray eyes widened in a smile; in anyone younger it might have been coquettish. “Actually, I was with my daughter.”
Reardon also smiled, the polite smile of companionship. “And that, of course, was going to be my next question. Your daughter — by the way, what’s her name?”
“Marianne. Marianne Bradley. It was my maiden name.”
“And Marianne, I suppose, was with you.” His smile widened, asking to be taken into Mrs. Messer’s confidence. “Now, Marianne wouldn’t just happen to be a rather tall girl, would she, with long brown hair, and a rather well-developed body? With a rather husky voice?”
“She’s tall,” Mrs. Messer agreed readily. She sounded as if she were merely voicing a normal mother’s pride in her offspring. “And her hair is long, or at least longish. I don’t know that I’d call it brown, exactly, but I suppose that would depend to a degree on your definition of ‘brown’.” She paused, frowning, trying to recall the rest of the description. “Oh yes. Yes, she’s well built. After all,” she added, smiling at him brightly, “she’s almost twenty.”
“And she drinks Gremlin’s Grampas?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I asked, what does she drink?”
“Oh, Marianne doesn’t drink at all.” She sounded more amused than shocked at the idea. “Drinking for young people now is about the same as smoking — not the in thing, you know. No, it wasn’t drinking that got her into her trouble with Pete. It was gambling.” She leaned forward, her voice confidential. “And you know, I never had the faintest idea! And then she tried to borrow money—”
“I’ve heard all about it.” Reardon’s stiff smile disappeared. “All right, Lily! Fun’s fun, but yours is about at an end. Where were you Wednesday night at eleven o’clock? And where was your daughter?” He snorted. “And don’t try to tell me ‘together’ or we’re apt to finish this session at the Hall of Justice!”
There was unbridled spite behind the tight smile of the faintly lined face. The veneer of utter respectability was beginning to crack; the tension had been great.
“You really want to know, Lieutenant? All right, I’ll tell you — with pleasure. We were at the Carmelite convent in San Jose. I spent the night at the Holiday Inn there, and my daughter stayed at the convent. At eleven o’clock, I think, we were with a Sister Bernadette.” She leaned back. “Anyway, you can check.”
Reardon kept his voice even, his face straight, hiding his disappointment. And yet, it really wasn’t disappointment. I knew beforehand she’d be clean, he said to himself; she wouldn’t have opened the door without a warrant, not this dame with her experience, despite that Whistler’s Mother’s act, not if she was really afraid of the police. I should have grabbed those nine-to-thirteen odds I was offering before. Nonetheless, he plowed on; there was little else to do to justify the steep climb up that hill.
“Were there any other sisters there with you, or were you just with this Sister Bernadette?”
There was even less attempt to hide the sneer in her voice now.
“Sister Bernadette is the mother superior of the convent. Of course there were other nuns there, as well! Or do you think the mother superior of a convent would send them all downtown for a beer while she fixed up an alibi for a murderer?”
Reardon skipped it. The one thing he didn’t feel like doing was getting involved in a religious argument. “What were you doing there?”
“Trying to get them to take Marianne back.” For the first time the sweetness was gone from the cultured voice. “We had to tell the sister the truth — about the gambling, and Pete and everything, and it was no fun, believe me—”
“About you, too?”
The tiny jaw hardened. “No. But about Marianne.”
“What made you decide to go down there at that late hour?”
“Because I sat here and tried to talk some sense into that kid’s thick head for hours and hours, and when I finally got her to agree to give the convent another chance, I didn’t waste any time. I called them and talked to the sister right then. I said I wanted to get Marianne back there before she changed her mind, and I thought it would be better—”
“To be sixty miles away from San Francisco and the Cranston Hotel when Pete Falcone went out the window?”
There were several moments of silence during which Reardon stared at the metamorphosis of a sweet old lady turning into a madame of a pleasure palace with years of experience dealing with non-payers, louts, weirdos and, of course, police. He could not have known, of course, that Lily Messer’s patience was on a par with his own.
“Listen, copper,” Mrs. Messer said at last, and the final pretense of gentility had been wiped away completely. Her voice was no longer modulated or cultured, and her eye and face were equally hard. “Listen and listen good, and try to get it straight! Like you said yourself, I was sixty miles away when that son of a bitch died, and so was my daughter, and you can check with the convent and take their word for it, or shove it, for all I care! And the next time you come visiting, you better bring a warrant, for luck if for nothing else, because you’ll get a load of buckshot if you try to fool with those doors without one, and you can write book on it! Understand?”
“Speaking of those doors again,” Reardon said easily, happy that the masquerade was over at last, “why the need for all the protection?” He raised a hand. “I know they were here before you, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the fact that apparently you feel you need protection. It can’t be from the cops, since you let us in.”
“Of course it can’t be from the cops!” Mrs. Messer rolled her eyes in supplication. “Dumbhead!”
“Then who?”
Mrs. Messer sighed hopelessly. “I could tell you to drop dead,” she said unfeelingly, “but you’re so goddam stupid you’d probably do it, and the bright sergeant here would take me in for manslaughter, or something. If you have any brains, you’d know why all the protection. Somebody knocked off Pete. Pete had friends. Some of his friends might just be as dumb as you and figure because I had a fight with him, I killed him. So—” She shrugged.