Part 6 (1/2)
”As you wish,” replied Chan, thinking that here, indeed, was a fine specimen of a Woman's Lib leader born, perhaps, a decade or two too early. At the moment, Claudia was showing her age via the bags under her eyes and the heavy lines etched around her mouth.
”One thing more,” he said, ”if you can.”
”If I can,” she replied.
”I would like the address and phone number of the Heinemanns. I have yet to bore them with my questions.”
”Touche,” said the agent, rising from the couch with just a hint of a list to starboard.
While she went to her office to write down the information, Chan took the liberty of calling Gil Roberts, and was rewarded with the irritating buzz of a busy signal.
He hung up as Claudia returned bearing a piece of notepaper as well as a newly refilled highball. He said, ”May I continue to use the phone, Ms Haynes? Local calls only.”
”You may call Timbuktu if you wish,” she replied, handing him the paper with the Heinemann information. ”My phone bills, as an agent, are astronomical anyway.”
Chan dialed the Hollywood Detective Bureau, identified himself, inquired if there was still a patrolman on watch at the hilltop residence of Gil Roberts. Frowning, he hung up, dialed operator and asked for a cut-in on the busy Roberts line to be informed that it was off the hook.
For a long moment, Chan stood lost in thought while Claudia regarded him curiously. Then he dialed the number of the producer and his wife that Claudia had just given him. Rosina Heinemann's ear-piercing shrill uttered a loud h.e.l.lo in his left ear.
”Inspector Chan,” he told her. ”I apologize for such a late call but it is most important.”
”It's okay,” she said. ”Harold and I haven't been able to sleep since Mei T'ang was killed. What's on your mind, Inspector?”
He glanced at Claudia, saw that she was watching him and listening, narrow eyed. He said, ”I'd like to pay you a visit, please.”
”When?”
”Right now, if I may. Believe me, Mrs. Heinemann, but it is most important.”
”Well, I don't know,” said the producer's wife. ”It's awfully late.”
”Please forgive my insistence,” said Chan. ”It's urgent.”
She gave in, saying, ”Well, since Harold and I are still awake, I guess it's okay. But you'd better hurry. We just took a pill.”
”I'll be there directly, and thanks,” he said. ”Just stay awake till I get there.”
He hung up, turned to Claudia, said, ”How do I get there?”
She said, ”From here, the best route is to take Cahuenga to Berry Drive There's a short cut through the Outpost, but you'll never find it unless you've been there before.” She rose again, said, ”I'll get you a map.”
She brought a road map back with her, spreading it out on the coffee table. Using a ball-point, she traced the intricate convolutions of the hillroads that would take him to the desired address. Chan studied it, memorized its curves, then paused to look at a spot on the chart just south and west of the indicated address.
He said, ”I believe I'm confused. Is this where I must go?”
Claudia crowded close to him to look. Her scent a heavy jasmine, was unfamiliar to his nostrils. She redirected the pen to its previous spot, said, ”That's not where the Heinemanns live. That's Gil Roberts' house. It may look close but it's about a quarter mile straight up from Harold and Rosy's.”
”Sorry,” Chan said, masking the excitement that rose within him. ”I'd better get going.”
”You'll never find it if you can't read the map better than that, Inspector,” said Claudia, moving toward the door. ”I'll drive you there. I'll be ready in about ten minutes.”
She was back in less than five, wearing slacks and a grey sweater with an incongruous pastel mink stole slung over her shoulders. Chan, who had moved away from the telephone, regarded her with respect. He needed only one more piece in the puzzle to lock it up, and that piece could wait until morning.
Claudia said, pulling keys from the gold-mounted clutch-bag she was carrying, ”Let's put 'he show on the road, Inspector.”
XIII.
CLAUDIA HAYNES took off from the underground garage beneath the House of Wu like a skyrocket, spinning her tiny yellow Porsche around curves and up grades with a speed that would have had Chan's insides up in his throat had he not quickly sensed that the agent was one of those rare drivers of either s.e.x whose reflexes match her impulse for speed.
As they shot up the Outpost's corkscrews toward Mulholland Drive, Chan wondered if she were testing his nerve as; a strong willed woman seeking any means of a.s.serting her superiority - or was she pushed by some less obvious, less inner-directed motivation?
It was in part to discover this and other facets of Claudia Haynes that had prompted Chan so readily to accept her offer to be his chauffeur - plus the good and sufficient reason that she would probably get him to his destination much more rapidly than he could hope to do himself.
Chan also wondered if he would have arrived at the solution to the mystery of the strangling of Mei T'ang any more quickly if he had got around to talking to the Heinemanns earlier. Probably not, he decided... and there was still going to be a great deal to seek out and sort out once the strangler was safely under lock and key.
Merely thinking of those viselike fingers made his own throat ache where they had gripped it that afternoon. His brush with death had been closer than he liked to think about. Had the killer not been interrupted...
”Hold onto your hat, Charlie,” said Claudia as she half-skidded the sports car over what looked like the rim of eternity. ”Here we go again.”
They followed a staggering series of a.s.s-curves at what seemed to Chan like a ninety degree drop, so steep that with each swerve of the front wheels he feared the rear of the Porsche would leave the rough pavement to somersault them a.r.s.e over teakettle down the hill. Then, taking an abrupt left turn, Claudia powered the Porsche up to a briefer series of curves, swung right and skidded to a sudden halt on a well graded turnaround in front of a pair of bolted garage doors.
They were in a hillside recess, the night sky above them virtually shut out by the foliage of overhanging trees. Save for the faint glow of a distant street light - again, Chan thought, recalling the similar dim situation at Hiu Sai's deserted Santa Monica establishment - they were in a virtual enclosure of darkness.
The hillside rose to their left. To their right, barely visible stone steps led to a bal.u.s.traded terrace that ran the length of a house that seemed embedded in the hill itself. No light shone in any of the windows.
Claudia's finger closed, claw-like, on Chan's right bicep. In a stage whisper, she said, ”I don't like it. You just talked to them, didn't you?”
”I talked to Mrs. Heinemann,” said the detective inspector, his own voice low.
”Something must have happened,” said the agent.
”Maybe nothing has happened,” said Chan.
She stared at him in the darkness for a long moment, then whispered. ”I can do without riddles, thank you. I'm going to take a look.”
”You'd be wiser to wait here,” he said, but it was too late. Claudia had already slipped out of the car and was making her way toward the bal.u.s.trade that led to the front door of the house. From the fact that her footfalls were silent, he judged that she was wearing soft-soled slippers. Was it luck - or forethought? At the moment, Chan was not sure.
Three times already in this case, Chan had been caught with his guard down - once by the unseen a.s.sailant who had robbed him of the jeweled fly in Mei T'ang's bathroom, once by the strangler outside of Gil Roberts' hilltop house who had all but killed him, once by the Santa Monica police in Hiu Sai's workroom.
Three times was more than enough. He had no intention of being caught off-guard again...
The crux of the entire case, he was convinced, was the strange treasure of ancient Chinese jewels and jadecraft that had been stolen from the murdered actress' ”laboratory” and replaced with shoddy subst.i.tutes. Taken from the falling Republic of Nationalist China at the time of the Communist takeover, Mei T'ang had purchased the jewels honestly enough for an as yet unlisted sum of money.
The cultural representatives of the People's Republic currently in Los Angeles were willing to pay a large sum for their recovery and return to the land of their creation, according to his friend Hei Wei Chinn. They had virtually concluded a deal with whoever had managed the slow theft and replacement of the objets d'art.
Mei T'ang's poor eyesight, plus the screen-star vanity that forbade her wearing gla.s.ses for so long, had rendered both the theft and the subst.i.tution relatively simple for the thief. The murdered star had allowed no one in the treasure room - her ”laboratory” so called - save certain trusted individuals, and these only in her own presence. Otherwise, the bizarre chamber was kept under lock and key.