Collins hung up and slumped back in his chair. More information. It must mean something. What? He went back to the list. Nathan Wingate’s car was a ’62 Dodge. According to the clerk at Bain’s Sporting Goods, the car Steve Ricks had driven was a Ford Galaxie, new or almost new. Someone had used Nathan Wingate’s plates, or more likely had faked a set of plates, which was simple enough to do, by one of several processes. Numbers and letters could be trimmed from old plates and appliquéd on enameled metal. With two sets of stolen plates the letter clusters or the number clusters might be cut out and interchanged. In any event, one point was clear: the ranger at the gate had made no mistake after all. A car, presumably the white Ford, with license plates LKK-3220, had entered General Grant Park on June 10. On June 12 Steve Ricks had driven this car into Christy’s Service Station in Fresno. On this same day, June 12, Ricks had taken his own old car into the park. Why had he not driven the grander Ford?
Perhaps the owner had wanted his car back, reflected Collins. Or with the transmission threatening to go out, Steve might have considered his own car a safer bet. Possibilities — possibilities of all kinds — but none pointing in the same direction.
Beyond all reasonable doubt the deaths of Earl Genneman and Steve Ricks were linked, and the linkage appeared to be through Red Kershaw. All of which turned the focus of attention back upon Kershaw and his ex-wife, Molly Wilkerson.
What happened next had happened to Collins before — with such peculiar consistency, in fact, that Collins, a hard-headed man, was almost persuaded to telepathy.
The telephone rang: Captain Bigelow was on the other end. His voice was terse.
“Get up to San Jose, fast. The Wilkerson woman is dead.”
Chapter 11
With Lieutenant Loveridge of the San Jose Police Department, Collins searched Molly Wilkerson’s house at 5992 South Jefferson. The Wilkerson woman had been a saver. There were photographs, restaurant menus, match-box covers, letters, receipts, dance programs dating back to junior high school, check stubs and canceled checks, marriage certificates and divorce decrees, sufficient to fill several cartons.
Collins gave the accumulation no more than a perfunctory glance. “What we want won’t be here,” he told Loveridge, a personable young man with china-blue eyes and a bristling mustache.
“Hard to say till we look,” replied Loveridge breezily.
Collins made no reply. He had formed no high opinion of Loveridge’s competence, and he suspected that the young lieutenant held similar sentiments toward him.
He went to look behind a cuckoo clock and found only blank wall, then turned to meet Loveridge’s quizzical stare. In a measured voice Collins said, “If she were blackmailing someone — which seems probable — she wouldn’t leave her evidence just anywhere. She might even have been running a bluff.”
Loveridge shrugged. “There’s no evidence that this case and the Genneman-Ricks case are related.
Mrs. Wilkerson might have been killed by a mugger or a deviate.”
“It’s possible,” said Collins dryly, “but not very. Molly was bitter when she couldn’t nick Kershaw — until she found out we were interested in who took Kershaw home. I’m betting she tried to cash in once too often.”
“It may work out that way,” said Loveridge indulgently. “But I’d like to see some evidence. So far we’re working on sheer speculation.”
Collins sought the kitchen. He looked here and there — among the notes on the bulletin board, into the percolator, the sugar bowl. Then he went into the bedroom to watch Loveridge rummaging through Molly’s bureau drawers. “What puzzles me,” said Collins, “is that she was willing to come back alone to this house. No matter how stupidly careless she was, no matter how much she despised whomever she was blackmailing, she’d simply have to be a little nervous!”
“In my mind,” said Loveridge, “this is a strong point against the blackmail theory.”
“Let’s go talk to the baby-sitter. What’s her name? Rosemary.”
Rosemary Gait was fifteen years old, a chunky little blond girl with a round face and earnest brown eyes who already had given up hopes of beauty. She lived in a small white house a hundred yards down South Jefferson, and she was excited with horror at what had happened to Molly Wilkerson.
Collins took charge of the interrogation; Loveridge stood to the side, hands behind his back, watching with indulgence. Rosemary’s mother, a heavy woman with a putty-colored face, sat impassively on a couch.
“We’re trying to find who did this terrible thing to Mrs. Wilkerson,” said Collins. “We hope you can help us.”
“I’ll try,” said Rosemary tremulously. “I don’t know very much about it.”
Mrs. Gait licked her lips with a big gray tongue. “What happened to her?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“She left the cabaret a little past two in the morning, and went back to the lot where the employees leave their cars. The next morning a janitor found her. She’d been hit from behind with something like a hammer, then shoved into her car.”
“That’s awful,” said Mrs. Gait. Rosemary’s face quivered. “I knew she was a flighty woman,” Mrs. Gait went on. “I didn’t like my girl working for her, but the money came in handy, and she was a kind of a lesson to Rosemary. I used to tell her, ‘Just do your work and don’t pay any attention to that woman’s bad habits.’”
“Such as what?”
“Oh — drinking, smoking, carrying on. Many times I offered to take the children to church Sunday, but she’d have nothing to do with it. Rosemary, find the swatter and kill that big fly.”
Conversation came to a halt until Rosemary had dispatched the fly. The slaying relaxed her, and her face showed less strain.
“Did Mrs. Wilkerson ever say she was afraid of any particular man?”
“Not to me,” said Rosemary.
“Ha,” said her mother. “Her afraid of a man would be a sight to behold.”
“Did she ever give you a paper, or an envelope, something like that, to keep for her?”
Rosemary shook her head. “She wouldn’t do that. She hardly knew I was there.”
“Did you hear her talking on the phone yesterday, or did she say anything unusual?”
“Well, she seemed kind of excited. Like she was going somewhere special.” Rosemary’s eyes widened as she considered the relevance of her remark. She said timidly, “She did talk on the phone to somebody yesterday.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was a man?”
Rosemary considered. “I can’t say for sure. I thought it was a man because she doesn’t know any women. Just her sister.”
“That would be Mrs. Donald Beachey, in Santa Clara?” This was information which had been elicited by the city police.
“Yes. That’s where she’s been staying the past two nights.”
Collins resisted the temptation to glance at Lieutenant Loveridge. “I suppose the children are with Mrs. Beachey?”
“Yes, sir. Anyway, I don’t think it was her sister she was talking to. She’s got a special way of talking to Mrs. Beachey, kind of snarly and friendly at the same time, like when she’s talking to one of her exes.”
“Her what?”
“Her ex-husbands. She’s been married five times, and she used to say she was ready for five more.”
“Rosemary,” chided her mother. “I told you never to listen when the woman talked about things like that.”
“I didn’t listen. I just heard.”
“As I understand it,” said Collins, “Mrs. Wilkerson spent the last two nights with Mrs. Beachey, but came here during the day?”