Columbo: Grassy Knoll Read online

  “What might have been in the car that a robber would want?” asked Columbo.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t the slightest idea.” They went back inside the house. Alicia had accompanied Martha Zimmer into the living room, where the contents of a desk were strewn about the floor. The exquisite leather-topped desk had been splintered to force it open.

  Alicia sat staring at the mess. “What the devil could someone have wanted?” she asked, speaking to no one in particular.

  Martha Zimmer spoke. “Aside from this… The desk, the perp doesn’t seem to have gone into any other rooms.”

  “Yeah?” said Columbo.

  He squatted beside the desk. It was a handsome wooden desk, not an antique but an expensive piece of office furniture in dark wood. It was one of those desks with a lock in the center drawer, and when the center drawer was locked all the drawers were locked. The wedge end of a crowbar had been pried in between the top of the center drawer and the desktop, and the wood had been broken to defeat the lock. The small crowbar was lying on the floor.

  “Isn’t that odd?” said Columbo. “Why would a burglar leave his crowbar here? Anyway, Martha, did you ever know of a professional housebreaker to use a crowbar? They’ve got a special tool: thinner, not so long, easier to hide under a coat. Right?”

  “I guess I’ve investigated fifty housebreakings,” said Martha. “I’ve never seen a crowbar before.”

  “’Course… Is Mrs. Badilio able to talk to us?”

  “She’s pretty weepy,” said Martha. “But—” Mrs. Rosa Badilio, who had been within earshot in the kitchen, had overheard the conversation and now walked into the living room. “I can answer questions,” she said. Her voice was impaired by shock and weeping, but it was firm.

  “You don’t have to right now,” said Columbo. “I just need to ask one for now.”

  “I can answer any,” she said.

  Mrs. Badilio was a Hispanic who commanded English well but spoke with an accent. She was a woman of about forty, short and plump. Her black hair had been turned a sort of reddish brown by something she put on it.

  “All right. Why don’t you sit down there? Now, as I understand it, you found Mr. Drury.”

  “Yes, sir. I come to work at eight o’clock. My husband drives me here and comes back for me in the afternoon. Mr. Drury hardly ever is out of bed by that time, so I come in with my own card that works the alarm and the locks. I let myself in through the kitchen door. Because I let myself in with a card, the alarm does not go off. As soon as I am inside, I turn off the alarm. Always then I look in the garage to see if both cars are there, which tells me if Mr. Drury is at home. Sometimes he isn’t. I opened the door between the kitchen and the garage and I saw— You know what I Mrs. Badilio lowered her head and sobbed for a moment.

  Columbo stared at his cigar. It had gone out. He stuffed it in a pocket of his raincoat. “Mrs. Badilio, have you noticed anything that might tell us how the murderer got into the house? Any doors open? Any windows? Did you close any door or window?” Mrs. Badilio shook her head. “If any window had been open, the alarm would have gone off.”

  “Right. Okay, the desk was broken open with a crowbar, that one lying there. Do you think you ever saw that tool before?”

  The woman studied the crowbar for a moment, then said, “Mr. Drury kept a few tools hanging on a pegboard in the garage. I think he had a tool like that. That could be it.”

  Columbo marched through the kitchen and opened the door into the garage. He strode back to the living room. He nodded. “If he had a crowbar hanging out there, it’s missing.”

  “That’s probably it, then,” said Tim Edmonds. “The burglar used Paul’s own crowbar to break open the desk.”

  “Yeah… That could he have been lookin’ for in there?” asked Columbo.

  “Computer disks,” said Alicia.

  “How’s that?”

  “Computer disks. Paul kept all his information, about everything he was doing on the show, on computer disks. The big computer at the office has the equivalent of thousands of volumes of information stored in it. But he carried a laptop computer home with him. One of the little disks out of that computer could hold as much information as a four-hundred-page book. Sometimes he copied data from the main computer onto one of those little disks, so he could read the information at home.”

  “And you think he had some of those disks in one of the drawers there?”

  “I don’t know, but he might have. So whoever killed him might have wanted those disks,” she said.

  “What kinda stuff might have been on one of those disks?” asked Columbo.

  “Well… To give you an example,” said Tim, “tonight he was going to do a show about smoking and health. I don’t know if he had some special, damaging information he meant to disclose. You never knew for sure. He was very private about these things. You see, the secret of his success was the way he used information. He accumulated it, put it in his computer, and used a search program to pull out any fact he wanted.”

  “My, that’s fascinatin’. We sure could use one of those machines, couldn’t we, Martha? That’s the way our business is—all kinds of facts, little details, trying to remember them all, organize them, and make some kind of sense out of them. Sorry. I run on and on. Anyway, where is this laptop computer?”

  “It’s either in his office,” said Tim, “or was here and was stolen off this desk last night, or it’s in his C3r.

  “Mrs. Badilio,” said Columbo, “I need to know if anything else is missing. Any valuables. Have you looked around any?”

  “I looked at the silver,” she said. “It’s there. Other things… little television is okay. I can’t see that anything’s missing.”

  “We looked around the house,” said Martha. “No other theft is apparent.”

  Columbo nodded thoughtfully. He reached into his raincoat pocket, took out his cigar, stared at it, then returned it to the pocket. “‘Murder most foul,’” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Oh, uh, Shakespeare wrote that. That’s what this is. A case of premeditated murder, all planned in advance and carried out according to plan.”

  “Then you don’t think it’s possible,” said Tim, “that Paul simply surprised a burglar. After all, his ring and his watch were taken. And his billfold.”

  “That was done to make it look like a simple burglary,” said Columbo. “I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing was taken from the desk either, that the desk was broken open to make it look like the murderer came in the house lookin’ for something. Anyway… This is what they call murder by lyin’ in wait.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Tim.

  Columbo gestured, laying out the floor plan of the garage in his own imagination, even if no one else could see it. “Mr. Drury uses his controller to open the door, right? Probably he aims the controller through the glass of the sunroof and closes the door right away. He gets out of the car and walks up to the door between the garage and the kitchen, with his card in his hand. At this point he’s shot in the back of the head.”

  “But—”

  “The light came on when the door opener was triggered,” Columbo went on. “Forgive me, sir. I interrupted you.”

  “No. Go ahead,” said Tim. “This is interesting.”

  “The murderer was waitin’ in the garage. So why didn’t Mr. Drury see him when the door went up? Because he was hidin’ behind the Lamborghini. When the door came rumbling down again, making a lot of noise, he scurried across the back of the two cars and came around the left side of the Mercedes. Mr. Drury’s attention was all fixed on gettin’ the card into the slot. Maybe he’d had a little to drink and had to fix his attention hard on that. The murderer gets right up behind him and shoots him in the back of the head. Then, just to make sure, he shoots him a second time.”

  “And why wasn’t this a burglar, maybe somebody who’d seen Paul’s expensive jewelry?”

  “Because somebody got in with a plastic card
,” said Alicia. “Otherwise the alarm system would have gone off. Which makes suspects of everybody who knew him well enough to have had access to a card. It makes me a suspect, because I once had a card. That puts me in a very limited little group, doesn’t it, Lieutenant?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Not really. No matter how sophisticated a security system, a clever criminal can find a way to break it—steal a card, bribe somebody at the security company, and so on. On the other hand, I suppose I should say, yeah, you’re inside a very big circle of suspects. Everybody who worked with him and could have had business problems—”

  “Meaning me,” snapped Tim.

  Columbo shrugged. “No offense, sir. You see, what I gotta do is eliminate all the possibilities. All of ’em. If I don’t, somebody’ll say I didn’t investigate right. I mean, maybe you wouldn’t mind tellin’ me where you were last night.”

  “Alicia—that is, Mrs. Drury—and I had dinner at Cocina Roberto.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Columbo, scribbling a note. “Cocina… Roberto. Mexican place, huh? I bet they make good chili.”

  “I… don’t know. Lieutenant. I never ordered it.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, what time did you get there and what time did you leave?”

  “We got there a little after eleven-thirty and left a little after one.”

  Columbo made a note. “‘A little after eleven-thirty… ’ How long’s the drive from here to Cocina Roberto?”

  “I’d guess twenty minutes to half an hour.”

  “‘Twenty… ’ Okay, I don’t have to hold you folks up any longer. I’ll be stoppin’ by your office later.”

  * * *

  As Alicia and Tim walked down the driveway under a shared umbrella, Tim chuckled. “What a dolt! If we could have picked a detective to investigate this case, we couldn’t have done better than him.”

  “Did you see the body?” Alicia asked quietly. “It doesn’t look any different.”

  “You’re right about the detective. I checked to see if he had his shoes on the right feet.”

  “Uh, Mr. Edmonds! Mrs. Drury!”

  They looked around. The unkempt detective was trotting down the driveway after them, without an umbrella. By the time he caught up his face already gleamed with water.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I need to clear up one little point. Nothin’… Just one little thing.”

  “Certainly, Lieutenant,” said Tim with feigned patience.

  “Thank ya. Let’s see. The show went off the air at nine-thirty. Right? And you arrived at Cocina Roberto a little after eleven-thirty? Can you tell me where you were those two hours? Just one of those little things I’m supposed to get into my notes.” Tim glanced at Alicia. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “I guess we can count on you to be discreet, can’t we? The truth is, Mrs. Drury and I are… How shall we say?”

  “Say we’re in love, Tim,” said Alicia, tightening her arm around Tim’s waist. “Everyone knows, Lieutenant. It’s happened since the divorce, and everyone understands that, too.”

  “So we drove out to Blocker Beach,” said Tim. “You understand? For privacy… And we, uh… You understand.”

  “You, uh—”

  “Right. Okay?”

  “Sure. Okay. I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy. That fills everything in as far as you’re concerned, and I probably won’t have to ask you anything more.”

  Four

  1

  “You got a call waiting, Lieutenant,” said Dugan, the uniformed officer on the driveway, as soon as Columbo had watched Alicia and Tim drive away in a black Porsche.

  Columbo walked over to the black and white patrol car. He sat down inside and picked up the microphone. “You callin’ Columbo?”

  “Is this Lieutenant Columbo?” asked the dispatcher.

  “Yeah.”

  “Please call 555-2147. That’s 555-2147.”

  “Okay.”

  Back inside the house, Columbo went to the kitchen phone and punched in the number. “Attorneys Dunn and McCrory.”

  “Hi-ya. This is Lieutenant Columbo, Los Angeles Police. I had a message to call this number.”

  “Oh yes. Lieutenant. Mr. McCrory would like to speak with you. One moment, please.”

  Columbo pulled the cold cigar from his raincoat pocket and this time lit it, judging this would be the last time for it and he’d have to buy some cigars sometime this morning.

  “Lieutenant Columbo? This is Bill McCrory. Headquarters told me you are in charge of the investigation into the death of Paul Drury. I have a little piece of information that might be helpful.”

  “Information is the name of the game, sir. We’ll be grateful for anything ya got.”

  “Okay. Briefly, I was Paul’s lawyer—not on everything but on matters involving Paul Drury Productions. I heard of his death on my car radio as I was driving in this morning. When I got in the office, I checked the recorder I keep on a separate private line here. There was a phone message from Paul, asking me to call him first thing this morning. Okay? The important thing is, my phone recorder time-stamps all the messages. This one is time-stamped eleven forty-seven last night. The news story on the radio said the time of his death wasn’t clear. Well— He was alive at eleven forty-seven.”

  Columbo frowned and shifted his cigar to the left comer of his mouth. “That’s very helpful, sir. That’s very helpful.”

  “Paul Drury was not just a client. Lieutenant. He was a friend. If there’s anything I can do to help solve the mystery surrounding his death, please call on me.”

  “Could I do that? Would you mind if I came by your office?”

  “Why, not at all. When would you like to come?”

  “I’m just about finished here at the house. For now. Would it be inconvenient if I came by, say, in the next half hour?”

  “That will be fine. Lieutenant.”

  2

  Dunn & McCrory occupied offices on the top floor of a glass office cube on Wilshire Boulevard. When Columbo arrived there, the rain had stopped, and his plastic car cover was in the trunk. He stopped half a block away, ran into a newsstand, and bought a breast-pocket package of cigars. When he reached the reception room at Dunn & McCrory he was puffing contentedly on a fresh cigar.

  “You’re Lieutenant Columbo?” the secretary-receptionist asked skeptically.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, showing his badge. “Columbo, LAPD. Mr. McCrory is expecting me.”

  She took him into the office and introduced him.

  McCrory’s office was a veritable grove, decorated with a dozen big potted plants plus a fifty-five-gallon saltwater aquarium in which colorful fish swam in a jungle of white coral. The desk was kidney-shaped: glass top on glass pedestals.

  “Well, this is certainly a beautiful office y’ got here, sir,” said Columbo, looking around. “It must be restful to work in this kind of an atmosphere—I mean, with all the plants and the fish, just like bein’ outdoors, except it doesn’t rain in here.”

  “That’s exactly the point, Lieutenant,” said McCrory. “It reduces tension.”

  Columbo walked over to peer into the aquarium and did not see the skeptical shrug McCrory gave his secretary before she closed the office door. She returned the shrug, putting a finger to her upper breast to signal that she had seen the man’s badge, otherwise she would not have brought so tousled and eccentric a character into his office.

  “I wish Mrs. Columbo could see this aquarium. She loves this kinda stuff, but she can hardly keep a goldfish alive. Hasn’t got a green thumb for it, as you might say.”

  “Maybe it’s the cigar smoke, Lieutenant,” said McCrory.

  “Huh? Oh, sorry,” said Columbo, turning away from the tank and stepping toward a chair. “Y’ mean I shouldn’t blow smoke around the fish. I see your point. Well. I don’t want to take too much of your time.” Reluctantly, he crushed the fire out of the cigar, in a heavy glass ashtray, and shoved the still-warm butt into his raincoat pocket.

  M
cCrory was an apple-cheeked man with thinning blond hair. He wore a blue-and-white-checked jacket over a yellow golf shirt, with butter-yellow slacks. He didn’t look like a lawyer. That was explained by the photographs on his walls: of show-business personalities, who had autographed their portraits. He was a show-biz lawyer.

  “Let me play my phone-recorder tape for you,” he said. He stood and bent over the machine.

  Columbo leaned forward and watched as the lawyer pressed buttons and started the somewhat complex telephone-answering machine.

  “You see. Lieutenant, I keep a private line here in my office, so clients with something confidential on their minds can call me without even going through the receptionist or my secretary. Only a few people have the number. When I have a client in the office, I just turn down the volume on the thing, and it answers the phone and records the message without the client sitting across my desk hearing anything. It’s on twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. Here’s what I heard this morning—”

  The first voice from the machine was that of Paul Drury. “Hi. This is Paul. Make a point of calling me first thing in the ay-em, please. Kind of important.” Then a mechanical voice from the machine said, “This message received at… Eleven… Forty… Seven… a.m. Wednesday… June… Two."

  Columbo nodded. “And that was his voice, for sure?”

  “For sure,” said McCrory.

  “Well, that’s interestin’. The medical examiner’s preliminary finding is that Mr. Drury died before midnight. Eleven forty-seven. That cuts it pretty close.”

  McCrory shrugged. “The machine’s accurate. Lieutenant. At least it always has been.”

  “Look, I know those tapes have to be expensive. But would you mind letting me take that one… As evidence?”

  “Not at all.”

  As McCrory fumbled with the machine, finding the way to remove the incoming-messages tape, Columbo frowned and ran a hand through his hair. “Can you think of any reason why anyone would want Mr. Drury dead?” he asked.

  “Lots of people wanted Paul Drury dead,” said McCrory. “I’m quite sure he never blackmailed anybody, but he made public a lot of information certain people did not want made public.”