A Few Minutes Past Midnight Read online

  “The boys are fine,” he said. “Ruth isn’t doing all that great. The doctors aren’t sure what it is this time. They’re working on it. Lucy and the boys would like to see you. So would Ruth. Don’t ask me why. That ends family news. State your business and leave.”

  I took out the list of names and handed it across to him. He took it and looked at it and then at me.

  “Fascinating,” he said. “Who are they?”

  “I think the first five were killed by a man named Howard Sawyer,” I said. “I think he’s planning to kill the next four.”

  Phil didn’t look impressed.

  “I think he moves in with them, takes what they have, and gets rid of them.”

  He still didn’t look impressed. I didn’t mention Charlie Chaplin.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Sixth woman on the list, Fiona Sullivan. She’s engaged to Sawyer, but he’s among the missing.”

  “You working for her?” Phil asked.

  “I’d like to keep her and the others alive,” I said.

  “You’re a saint, Tobias,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “What’s really going on?”

  “Just check on those five at the top,” I said. “See if they’re alive. See if there’s a connection. Okay, I’m working for someone else this Sawyer may want to kill.”

  “May?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  Someone in the squad room went wild with hiccuping laughter. Phil looked toward the door. Crime wasn’t funny. He was trying to place the laugh. Was it one of his men? He turned back to the list I had given him.

  “You know how long it would take to do this?” he asked calmly. “That’s assuming your ladies are dead and were residents of Los Angeles County?”

  I shook my head “no.”

  “If we’re lucky, a few hours or days. If we’re not so lucky, weeks. If they’re not dead, maybe years. And what if they’re not from around here? You want me to check with every police department in forty-eight states? The F.B.I.? And what do I say? My brother gave me this list of names. He thinks they were murdered. Five minutes are up.”

  “No they aren’t,” I said, looking at my watch.

  “How the hell would you know? I’ll keep the list, have someone check homicide files. Superficial. I’m not giving this more than an hour of time for a uniform.”

  “Thanks,” I said getting up. “I’ll stop by the house next Sunday, see Ruth and the kids.”

  “Make it Saturday,” he said. “I’ll be home Sunday.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He put my list aside and picked up the stapled report again. Laughter again from the squad room. Phil took a deep breath, looked at me and then at the door. I left.

  Phil was mellowing. As recently as a year ago, I could have reasonably predicted that he would blow up at something I said and throw the nearest heavy item on his desk at me, or even get up and toss me against a wall. But maybe I was mellowing, too. I hadn’t said anything that I knew would provoke him. It felt like a truce, with his wife Ruth—thin, pale white—between us, a hand on each of our chests, keeping us apart.

  The laughter in the squad room was still audible as I left. It came from a big balding cop talking to a short dark man in his thirties. The suspect had a baffled look on his face. He couldn’t figure out what he was saying that was making the cop red-faced and teary-eyed with laughter.

  Some things are funny to cops that aren’t funny to anyone else. And then there’s my brother.

  I found a small restaurant not far from the station, went wild and ordered the fifty-cent breakfast (eggs, hash browns, toast, and coffee) and ate while I read the Times.

  We were winning the war. Slowly, we were winning. The Red Army had jus taken Cherkasy, the last Nazi stronghold on the Dnieper River.

  Meanwhile, back at home a sixty-nine-year-old L.A. real-estate dealer had walked into his doctor’s office and shot a fifty-four-year-old surgeon twice, killing him. Then the patient had pointed the gun into his own mouth and pulled the trigger. According to the doctor’s secretary, the surgeon had removed one of the killer’s kidneys. The old man had been convinced the wrong kidney had been removed.

  And Amos Alonzo Stagg, now eighty-one and the head football coach at the College of the Pacific, had been named Coach of the Year in the New York World-Telegram’s annual poll. Stagg had now been coaching for fifty-three years, forty-two of them at the University of Chicago.

  When I finished my toast and paid my bill, I called Fiona Sullivan’s number from a phone near the cashier. Two rings and then an answer.

  “Sullivan,” she answered.

  “Peters,” I countered. “Everything quiet?”

  “Mr. Wherthman is a scholar with excellent taste,” she said, a compliment given to those who share one’s taste or are assumed to.

  “Great,” I said. “Nothing from Sawyer?”

  “No,” she said. “Wait. Mr. Wherthman would like to speak to you.”

  There was a pause and Gunther came on.

  “Toby,” he said. “I have made a discovery.”

  “You like Schubert.”

  “No,” he said, “In Mr. Howard Sawyer’s room, a small folder, very small, under the lining of the drawer, under some shirts and sox that needed mending. Actually Miss Sullivan found it while we searched. In the folder are newspaper clippings, five of them, each one dealing with a woman whose name appears on the list you have. All five are dead.”

  “What do the clippings say?”

  “Very odd,” Gunther said. “Very odd. One woman fell down a flight of stairs in her own home in Santa Monica. Another in Oxnard was the victim of a hit-and-run driver who was never apprehended. The third in San Diego was a suicide.”

  “Suicide? How?”

  “Poison,” he said. “The kind is not specified in the article. The fourth woman who lived in Chicago had a heart attack and the fifth, the fifth was robbed and murdered in New York City.”

  “Any links?”

  “All of the women were over the age of fifty-five. All were widowed or had never married. The oldest, the heart attack one, was eighty years old. There is no time pattern I can determine. All of these deaths occurred in the past two years. The dates are written in pencil on each clipping. Shall I read them to you?”

  I told him to go ahead, and I wrote the names of each woman, the location, the cause of death, and the date of the article in my notebook.

  “He might come back for Fiona Sullivan,” I said.

  “I am aware of this,” he said, with a note of determination in his voice.

  “Can you stick it out for a while?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks, Gunther. I’ll rescue you as soon as I can.”

  “I will look forward to that moment.”

  I hung up and called Phil.

  “The first five women on the list I gave you are definitely dead. I’ve got the cities they were in and the date of death within a day or two.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  I read the list to him slowly so he could copy it.

  “I’ll check when I get a chance,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “The next name on the list, after Fiona Sullivan, is Elsie Pultman. He might be going after her.”

  “Might be,” Phil said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Check out eleven ongoing felony investigations, meet with the new captain, have lunch, do paperwork. I’ll give your information to Josephson. He’ll check your list. When I know something I’ll let you know.”

  He hung up.

  I went to the phone books, not expecting to get lucky, but I found an E. Pultman listed in Venice. It was worth a try.

  The cashier gave me a dollar in change, and I called the Venice number, though given the far-flung locations of the five dead women, I could have been more than three thousand miles off.

  The phone rang five times before a woman answered, “Hello.”r />
  She didn’t sound young.

  “Elsie Pultman?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Toby Peters. I’m looking for a man named Howard Sawyer.”

  Long pause and then, “What makes you think I would know anything about a Howard Sawyer?”

  “I’ve got to get in touch with him,” I said. “I’m an insurance adjuster. Our company, United Federal National Life Insurance, has a check for Mr. Sawyer in the amount of twenty-two thousand dollars and forty cents. We’ve been trying to deliver it to him for almost a year.”

  “Life insurance?”

  “His uncle Harold Huber,” I said. “If we fail to deliver it within the year, the money will go to Mr. Huber’s great niece Cecile in Kansas City. That’s Kansas City, Missouri.”

  The pause was even longer this time and her voice more cautious.

  “What makes you think I know where this Mr. Sawyer might be?”

  It was a damn good question.

  “Your name was in a letter Mr. Sawyer sent to his uncle a short time ago. Obviously, Mr. Sawyer was unaware that his uncle had passed away. Mr. Sawyer had no return address on the letter. We’ve been searching all over the country for the right Elsie Pultman for several months.”

  “What did this Mr. Sawyer say about me in this letter?”

  “He wrote glowingly,” I said.

  “Send the check to me and if I ever meet a Mr. Sawyer I’ll give it to him.”

  “Can’t do that,” I said sadly. “Company policy. I have to deliver it directly into the hands of Mr. Sawyer and he has to sign for it.”

  “I have never heard of a Howard Sawyer,” she insisted.

  “Well, I’m in from Baltimore,” I said. “I can stop by your home today and leave information for Mr. Sawyer on how he can contact our local office for his check, that is, if you ever run into him or he contacts you.”

  “I have errands and I don’t know any Mr. Sawyer,” she said.

  “I can be there in less than an hour,” I said. “Mr. Sawyer doesn’t happen to be there now?”

  “No. Not now. Not ever.”

  She hung up.

  I copied her address in my notebook and went out in the drizzle. It was a straight run down Wilshire Boulevard to Venice.

  I listened to the Roy Acuff show. Roy sang “Lonesome Me” and “Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddles” and told me to try sweet delicious Meadow Gold butter. “I’ll tell ’bout a butter you just can’t beat,” Roy sang. “The very best butter you can eat. It’s Meadow, Meadow, Meadow, Meadow Gold.”

  The show ended, and, as I approached Venice, I listened to a few minutes of Big Sister. The rain was coming down harder. I turned off the radio. I knew something about Venice. Actually, I knew a lot about Venice. Los Angeles history fascinates me partly because so much of southern California, including Venice, was created by con men and eccentrics.

  Venice was the brainchild of a world class eccentric named Abbot Kinney. A New Jersey native born in 1850, Kinney served in the U.S. Grant administration. When he left government, Kinney began to manufacture cigarettes. He made millions. Probably addicted to his own product, Kinney developed asthma. To restore his health he moved to southern California.

  He fit in beautifully and soon had a reputation as a supporter of odd causes, one of which was the writer Helen Hunt Jackson, author of Ramona, which treated the plight of former mission Indians.

  But Kinney’s vision was big, very big. In 1885 he bought land just south of Santa Monica. He named it Ocean Park and built a resort. Five years later he began work on Venice-of-America. He built a cottage-style development with houses placed along canals and transportation provided by gondolas with little arched bridges crossing the canals. In his desire to duplicate the culture of the original Venice, he screened prospective residents. He had no trouble importing gondoliers, but he had a hell of a time finding buyers who met his expectations. So, he dropped his expectations, but word was getting out that tidal action was flooding the canals.

  The experiment was a failure. “Kinney’s Folly.” Venice went into bankruptcy. The dejected Kinney tried to turn Venice into an amusement park. He built roller-coasters like The Race Thru the Clouds, miniature trains, hot dogs, cotton candy, Hughes Ice Cream Pavilion, and fun houses.

  Venice’s Grand Canal was filled with concrete and the gondoliers sent back to Italy. Kinney’s dream was dead, but Venice lives on. I’d been here as a kid and remembered coming once with my father on the Pacific Electric train and getting off to the noise and crowds at the edge of the Grand Lagoon. We stayed until nighttime to watch the fireworks over the bathing lake and I fell asleep on the ride back to Glendale.

  I turned off of Wilshire at eleventh and went south finding my way to Appleby Street where Elsie Pultman’s house was in the middle of a row of Victorian-style two-story homes. Hers stood out. It was three stories high, wood, with turrets that made it look like pictures illustrating Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables.

  I parked and walked up to the door leaving my raincoat in the car. It wasn’t raining in Venice. I straightened my shirt, adjusted my belt, brushed back my hair, and knocked.

  “Who is it?” came the voice I had heard over the telephone.

  “Toby Peters,” I said brightly. “I talked to you on the phone less than an hour ago.”

  She opened the door and looked me over. She was well into her seventies and doing her best to hide the truth. She was thin, arms wrinkled, too much makeup, hair dyed blonde. The result of her efforts was to make her look even older than she probably was.

  “May I come in?” I said.

  “Where is your briefcase?” she asked. “You’re an insurance man. Where is your briefcase?”

  “In the car,” I said, looking back.

  She followed my eyes. The only thing she saw was my Crosley at the curb. She wasn’t impressed.

  “Let me see the check,” she said.

  “I can only give it to Mr. Sawyer,” I said, with what I hoped was a plea for understanding.

  “I’m not asking you for it,” she said. “I’m telling you I want to see it.”

  It was the moment of truth.

  “Miss Pultman,” I said. “It is Miss not Mrs.?”

  “Miss,” she said. “I was married briefly in my youth, but I … that is none of your concern.”

  “Howard Sawyer?” I asked.

  “Who is this Howard Sawyer?” she said.

  “He could be using a different name.”

  She started to close the door.

  “Your life is in danger,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your life is in danger,” I said. “I think your Howard Sawyer has killed five women and is probably planning to kill you.”

  “You’re not an insurance agent,” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  “You are a lunatic,” she said, fear in her eyes.

  “If I could just talk to you for …” I said.

  She answered me by slamming the door.

  “I’m calling the police,” she said.

  I could do without the Venice police. There wasn’t much to back up my story, not yet. I’d wind up having to call my brother, who would not be happy.

  “Don’t be alone with Sawyer,” I called through the closed door. “Or any other thin man about forty and my height.”

  There was no answer. I went back to the Crosley, climbed in, and sat watching the house, trying to decide what to do. I decided. I went to a public phone booth on Venice beach and called Fiona Sullivan’s.

  “Peters,” I said when she answered. Music was playing in the background. “Can I talk to Gunther?”

  “You may,” she said. “I know you can, but if you’re asking my permission, you may.”

  “You were a schoolteacher,” I guessed.

  “I was briefly, a long time ago before I discovered that my talent lay in a different direction. Here is Mr. Wherthman.”

  “Gunther?”

 
; “Toby, everything is quiet here except Mrs. Sullivan and the Victrola.”

  “Can you talk Mrs. Sullivan into getting out of town for a while?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “Is it imperative?”

  “I think it’s a good idea. Take the eight o’clock train to San Francisco at Union Station.”

  I knew Gunther was familiar with the train. It was the one he took every month to visit Gwen.

  “Then,” I said, “call Jeremy. See if he can take a few days off. If he can’t, call Shelly, tell him to go with you. Sneak out, Gunther. Sawyer may be watching the house. Don’t let her leave any notes besides one saying she’ll be gone for a few days. I’ll call Chaplin. We’ll meet you at the station.”

  “Shall I purchase the five tickets?”

  “Please. I’ll give you the money when I see you at the station.”

  “It will be done,” Gunther said.

  I hung up and called Mrs. Plaut’s. When she finally answered, I shouted, “Mrs. Plaut. It’s Toby Peters. I have to talk to Mr. Voodoo.”

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  I screamed my message into the phone.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Why? I found a book he was looking for. I want to know if I should buy it for him.”

  “What book?”

  “How to Win Friends and Influence People” I said.

  “I’ll get him.”

  A few moments later Chaplin said, “Peters?”

  “Listen, the guy who came to your door, who threw the knife at you, I think he’s killed five women.”

  “Distressing,” he said.

  “To say the least.”

  “Are these women all single, older, living alone?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I see,” he said. “Yes. Our damp night visitor is doing what the character I’m writing my screenplay about is doing. He found out about it somehow and is afraid I’m doing research on him. And I am to assume from this that the Fiona Sullivan I was to stay away from is to be his next victim.”

  “I’ve got her covered,” I said. “On a train out of Union Station for San Francisco at eight. Two friends are going with her. But I think I should get you on that train too and out of town for a while. Meanwhile, there’s another woman on our man’s list. She won’t listen to me.”