Tall, Dark and Deadly, page 17
I blinked as Hazel snapped her fingers under my face again. “Wake up. Am I getting through to you, Scott?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then relax. There’s music and a few more inches on the floor.” She stood up and wriggled her fingers.
We elbowed our way through and I got an arm around her. Hazel at a typewriter, with Mr. Gregg’s hieroglyphics in front of her eyes, was brisk, impersonal, and efficient. Hazel on a dance floor, with Senor Motonya’s music in her ears, was something else, animated, graceful, and inspired.
“Well,” she said, “you’re improving, Scott.”
“Naturally. I’ve been taking lessons.”
“Where?”
“The Andrew Norton Studios.”
“They’ve done a good job.”
We finished the dance and stayed on the floor for one more. This was a fast rhumba and it left us warm and breathless.
“Back to the table,” I said firmly. “We can’t dance like this without nourishment.”
But we did not reach our destination. There was a roadblock at the edge of the dance floor. Denise Howard stood in our path, fists on her hips and a murderous blue glare in her eyes. A Graflex camera with photoflash attachment hung around her neck. The salient features of her anatomy were sharply accentuated in a highly abbreviated costume.
She said in a voice gritty with anger, “You learn fast, don’t you, Mr. Astaire?”
Already a few people, sensing the tempest, had turned to look at us. Hazel lost her smile and stood beside me uncertainly.
“What’s the gag?” Denise said, not trying to keep her voice down.
“Gag?”
“The dancing lessons. Who do you think you’re kidding? I saw you on the dance floor just now.”
“Denise,” I said placatingly, “listen—”
“No. You listen. I don’t like anybody making a fool of me. You came to the studio for a reason. I want to know what it is.”
“Simmer down,” I said. “You’re liable to lose your job, making a scene with the customers.”
“What do I care?” Biting sarcasm in her voice. “You’ll get me a new job in television, won’t you? You’ll make me famous. In a pig’s neck, Mr. Jordan. You don’t know anybody in television. You’re a lawyer. I thought there was something familiar about you, and I checked your picture in one of the papers after you left.”
“What’s the trouble here?” A new voice had intruded. It was the captain of waiters.
“Nothing,” I told him. “Everything is fine. Miss Howard is an old friend of mine.”
“Like hell,” she said bitterly, her anger feeding itself, growing more intense.
The captain gave her a frozen look. “Leave the floor, Miss Howard.”
“Try and make me.”
“Easy does it,” I said soothingly. “Let’s not start a Donny-brook here. You want an explanation, Denise, and you’re entitled to one. Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”
She turned, carrying herself stiffly, jaw tight.
I squeezed Hazel’s arm reassuringly. “Be with you in a moment. Go back to the table.”
No demurrer from my girl. She simply turned and marched.
I went after Denise, back past the cloakroom, along a narrow hall and through a door down a flight of stairs to the basement. She was like a cat with its claws showing. I followed her into a small room where a thin youth was working at a bench over photographic paraphernalia and developing solutions. Negatives were drying on a line and floating in white enamel trays. He raised his voice complainingly.
“You’re not supposed to bring anybody in here, Denise. It’s-”
She cut him short with a peremptory gesture. “Outside, Irving. You need some air.”
“But I gotta finish that last batch. The boss will—”
“You heard me,” she snarled at him. “Bail out.”
“Look, sonny,” I told him, “this won’t take long. The floor show is about to begin and none of the customers are going to leave. You’ll be able to get those prints upstairs in plenty of time.” I helped him decide with a five-dollar bill.
When he was gone, Denise faced me, her eyes smoldering. “All right, I’m listening. What brought you to the studio?”
“I wanted to meet you, Denise. I wanted to look you over and size you up.”
“What for?”
“I was curious to know what kind of a girl could be hired to catch a man’s eye and involve him unwillingly in a romance. Not because she liked him, but for money, so his wife could be tipped off and misled into believing him unfaithful.”
It caught her by surprise and she moved back a step.
“I—what are you talking about?”
“You,” I said. “You and Vincent Mclver.”
She just stared at me, her lips parted, a little bewildered by our sudden change in positions.
“You know the man,” I said. “He’s been to your apartment several times. I followed him there myself last night, and so did a private detective hired by his wife. I have his report right here in my pocket and we know how long Mclver stayed.”
She pulled herself up defiantly. “So what? What if he did visit me? His wife is an invalid. You can’t expect a man—”
“Please.” I cut her short. “This was not a legitimate romance. You don’t care for Mclver. You probably don’t even like him. You made a deliberate and calculating pitch for the man and it was easy. He’s past his prime and it pleased his ego. But it didn’t mean a thing, especially to you. Because you were hired for the performance.”
Her throat was flushed, a pulse throbbing under the skin. The question was in her eyes but not on her tongue.
I answered it. “You were hired by Arnold Parish.”
She found her voice and tried to brazen it out. “I never heard of him.”
“It’s no use, Denise. If you keep lying you’ll only get yourself in deeper. We have all the facts. We know that Parish met you in a bar the other day. I was there myself and I saw you. What’s more, I have a letter in my pocket written to Mclver in Parish’s handwriting, but signed with your name. The letter was intercepted by Mclver’s wife, exactly as Parish planned. It was deliberately mailed to reach the house at a time he knew Mclver was going to be out of town.”
“I—I don’t believe it.”
I took the letter out and handed it to her. She scanned the words quickly and I detected a curious flicker in her eyes. I figured the letter would be confetti in about one second, so I snatched it back.
“Excuse me. I don’t mean to be rude, but we may need this for evidence.”
Her shoulders slumped and her mouth was sour with the taste of defeat. She shrugged resignedly.
“Listen to me, Denise,” I said quietly. “We have nothing against you. We don’t want to hurt you or get you involved. There’re a lot of things here that you don’t know anything about. One of them is murder.” She went pale. “If you tell me the truth now, I’ll try to keep you out of it. You’ll get every consideration.”
She thought it over, biting her lip. Then she moved her shoulders heavily and asked in a toneless voice, “What do you want to know?”
“Where you met Arnold Parish.”
“At the studio. Believe it or not, he came for dancing lessons. At least that’s what he said. Maybe he was looking for someone like me to do his dirty work. Anyway he gave me a couple of large tips and I was impressed. I went out with him a couple of times before he made that proposition about Mclver.”
“Promising you what?”
“He told me his wife would inherit a lot of money if he could break up Mclver’s marriage. He promised me two thousand dollars if I helped.”
“And you trusted him?”
“He gave me five hundred on account.”
“And how did you arrange to meet Mclver?”
“Arnold did that. He said Mclver was very vain and he wrote a fan letter in my name. He really laid it on, saying how much I liked Mclver’s books and how disappointed I was that he hadn’t written anything in such a long time. He wrote that some of the girls at the studio wanted to form a Mclver fan club and couldn’t I meet him sometime to discuss it. It got through all right, because two days later he showed up.”
She smiled faintly. “He was surprised when he saw me. I’d made a hit, I could tell, and he wanted to take me out. After that it was easy. I just kept praising his books and how he lapped it up. He really loved to hear how good he was.” Chalk one up for Arnold Parish. His selection of a confederate was near perfect. To a once famous author on the skids, adulation and flattery from Denise Howard would be a real hypo. Until he realized where this sort of thing could lead.
He was aware of Amy’s jealousy, her possessiveness, her inflexible attitude toward infidelity. And he wanted to break it off, sharp and quick.
“All right,” I said. “You got five hundred dollars and you earned it. Keep it and consider yourself lucky. Parish won’t try to get it back. He doesn’t want any publicity. Now I’m going to give you some advice. Gratis. Stay away from Mclver. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Go out now and take some pictures.”
Hazel was waiting at the table, working industriously over a steak. “I got hungry and I ordered.” She pointed her fork and swallowed. “One thing, it’s never dull going out with you. Tell me about the redhead.”
I knew from her expression that she couldn’t be sidetracked. So I explained and saw her face go from incredulity to anger. She shook her head heatedly. “You mean Arnold Parish pulled a trick like that in order to break up a marriage, just so he could inherit some money?”
“That’s right.”
“How low and contemptible can a man get?”
“Depends on the amount of money involved. Pretty low, I’d say.”
“But a scheme like that—why, it’s positively fiendish. Did Irene know?”
“She even helped.”
“They’re inhuman, both of them. I never heard of anything so despicable, trying to deprive Amy of what little happiness she had left.”
“How about Mclver?”
“All men are alike. You can’t blame Vincent. Just take a look at that redhead.”
“Quite a dish.”
“So you’re aware of it too.”
“Blind I’m not.”
“You will be, my friend, even if I have to perform the operation with my own fingernails.” She paused thoughtfully and frowned. “What if Arnold’s scheme hadn’t worked? What if Vincent refused the bait?”
I nodded. “Parish considered that too. He had other irons in the fire. Denise, I think, was only added insurance. There must have been quite a sum involved because he went to a lot of trouble to pry Mclver out of the picture.”
She watched me, waiting for me to continue.
“You see, it was Parish who started the whole mess. He probably suspected there was something offbeat about McIver’s divorce from Claire. So he made it his business to contact Milo, and when he got a look at the detective’s files and saw that snapshot of Claire and Banton, it confirmed his suspicion. I don’t know whether he bought it or stole it, but the fact remains that he sent it down to the district attorney with an explanation of its significance. That’s where he ran into some luck. It coincided with Lohman’s crusade and they started an investigation. And you know what happened after that.”
Hazel closed her mouth.
“Does your friend know about this?”
“What friend?”
“Lieutenant Nola. Shouldn’t he be informed?”
“He should indeed. Excuse me a moment.”
I remembered the phone booths alongside the cloakroom. I dialed Homicide West and got Sergeant Wienick on the phone. The lieutenant, he said, was out. In a matter-of-fact voice he added, “We got another one.”
“Another what?”
“Victim.”
I caught my breath. “Who?”
“Benedict Milo, the private eye in that divorce case. Somebody put a bullet through his head. I think the lieutenant wants to see you.” He rang off.
I stood in the booth, my head like a whirlpool, spinning with thoughts. I hung up very slowly. Hazel saw my face and stood up quickly as I approached. I gave her the news. She was silent for a moment.
“Oh, Scott, where is it going to end?”
“I have a pretty good idea,” I said quietly. “I want you to take a taxi and go home. Will you do that? Go home and wait for me?”
She swallowed, staring at me hard. “Be careful, Scott.”
“I’ll try.”
When her cab pulled away I stood back in the shadows, concentrating. So Benedict Milo was dead. The fact did not surprise me. Somebody was bound to write him off sooner or later.
He posed a threat to Arnold Parish if he talked. He posed a bigger threat to Strang. The lawyer could never know when a man like Milo would melt under heat.
There was no help for it. Hugo Ritter’s friends or not, I had to go back to my own apartment. It would be only a temporary stop. I had a gun hidden away there, a nine-millimeter Luger that I had taken from a German colonel during the war.
The case was approaching a climax and I didn’t want to make any more calls without being armed.
The moment I entered the lobby, someone stood up out of the shadows and I stiffened involuntarily. Then a light struck across her face. It was Laura Banton and I breathed easier.
“Laura,” I said. “What is it?”
Her eyes were veined and puffy and she was full of tension. “Can we go upstairs? I have something to show you. Something dreadful.”
XXV
The contents of a small chamois bag were spread out on the table. They held my gaze, a bracelet of twisted gold, and a pair of earrings. The earrings were distinctive, hand-wrought, two large lapis lazuli studding the tips, and I recognized them instantly with a shock.
“Where did you get these, Laura?”
“I found them in the glove compartment of Steve’s car.” Her voice was barely audible.
“When?”
“This afternoon. I had the day off and I wanted to drive up to the country. The police had given me an envelope with Steve’s belongings and the car keys were in it too. I knew where he kept it parked. It had been on the street for several days and the windshield was dirty. I looked in the glove compartment for a rag and this is what I found.” Her throat worked and she whispered painfully. “They were hers, weren’t they? Claire Mclver’s?”
“Yes,” I said.
No doubt whatever in my mind. The earrings had been plainly visible in that night-club picture of Claire and Nicholas Strang. The picture taken that same night she was killed.
Laura swallowed miserably. “I read in the papers that she’d been murdered and her jewels stolen.” Tears stung her eyes. “My own brother! How could Steve do such a thing?”
“You think he’s guilty of murder?”
She looked away. “He must be. Don’t you see? It all adds up—the jewels, that piece of cloth from her dress, even the time she was killed.”
“What about the time she was killed?”
“Thursday night. Steve’s day off. So he must have had the opportunity.” Her voice broke. “I’m glad Mother isn’t alive. The shame alone would have killed her.”
“What kind of car did Steve have?”
“A Lincoln convertible. You don’t have to raise your eyebrow. It was seven years old and it only cost a couple of hundred dollars. It belonged to the Mclvers. They were going to trade it in anyway, but they sold it to Steve instead.” I went to the cellarette and poured a stiff jolt of brandy and brought it back to her. “Drink this,” I said. “All of it.” She poured it down and coughed.
“Now go ahead and take that ride,” I told her. “Head upstate and get out of town. The change will do you good. Stay overnight in a motel somewhere.”
“I have to work tomorrow.”
“Forget your job. You can always find a new one. And don’t worry too much about Steve. Whatever he’s done I don’t think he’s guilty of murder.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“No, I mean it.”
After she left I allowed myself one drink. Then I put the bottle firmly away. I wanted a head that was quick and precise, and I might need the same kind of reflexes.
I took the Luger out of its hiding place. I found some shells and loaded a magazine and rammed it home. Then I jacked a bullet into the breech, just in case. I was putting the gun under my waistband when the telephone rang.
It was Vincent Mclver. “Jordan?” He sounded agitated. “Thank God you’re in. I’m worried sick, man. I got back here about an hour ago and found Amy gone. It’s crazy, absolutely incomprehensible. The maid said she packed a bag and left with Mrs. Parish. I phoned their apartment a dozen times, but nobody answers. Amy left no word, no note, nothing, and that’s not like her at all.”
“Why call me?”
“Because I searched her bedroom and found your number and address on her night table. Do you know what this is all about? Has she spoken to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Amy wants a divorce.”
“What?” His voice went up a full octave.
“You know about her jealousy, how she feels about infidelity. She claims you’ve been unfaithful.”
“Good Lord! Why?”
“A letter came while you were in Philadelphia. It was perfumed and Amy opened it.”
The news wrung an anguished groan out of his throat. “No! Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes. Her name was Denise Howard.”
“Listen, Jordan. That girl means nothing to me. Is Amy getting a divorce because of a letter?”
“Not entirely. The letter made her suspicious and she hired a private detective. Wait till you hear his name. Benedict Milo. The same bird you employed to shadow Claire. Ironic, is it not? He followed you to the Gracie Park Hotel and Amy knows how long you stayed there. When she got the report, that finished it. She called her niece and Irene Parish came and took her away.”
