Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I asked her, “Did anybody connected with Mamzel's know this Zoe Avilla?”

  She shook her head. “I haven't found anybody who has ever heard of her.” We had walked down the hall to the pair of plain doors in the wall beyond which were the soft sounds of movement and feminine conversation which I'd earlier heard. There we stopped, Lita's hand on the doorknob. She went on, “Of course, everything's all up in the air. None of us really knows what's happening, but there's a chance one of the girls knew the dead woman and is just afraid to mention it.” She paused. “If there's anything else you wanted to ask me, better do it now.” She smiled. “When we go into the Contouring Room, it may get a little hectic.”

  “We're ... going in there?”

  “Yes. Oh, it's all right. Nobody's nude or anything.”

  “Nobody's nude or anything,” I repeated.

  “The ten Mamzel girls wear white leotards, like mine, so they'll stand out, and all the clients wear black ones.”

  “It sounds very ... well, colorful.” I cleared my throat. “You might fill me in some more on the people I'm going to see after I leave here—Gedder and Felicca, and the rest.”

  “Well, I don't know anything special about them.” She went on to tell me essentially what Lawrance had said. “Ad, in particular, is a brilliant man,” she continued. “He's developed what I think will be a positively wonderful advertising campaign to follow tomorrow's TV reception at Mr. Adair's estate. And, of course, everybody knows about Horatio Adair's work.”

  “I may be a little thick, but I haven't yet figured out what a fashion designer has to do with your publicity campaign.”

  “Oh, it's not just publicity,” she laughed, “although Mr. Adair's name certainly does have publicity value. You see, Mamzel's has grown a lot in the last two years, and now we're branching out into new fields. In addition to the three new shops we're opening Monday, we're soon going to offer for sale a line of Mamzel's products—perfume, jewelry, clothing, all of which will bear the Mamzel name.”

  “I see. And Mr. Adair is designing the clothing?”

  “Yes. Lounging pajamas and a negligee. These will be modeled by my girls. Also he's executing a design especially for me, an evening gown.”

  Executing was the right word, I thought. When Horatio Adair got through with a design, he had killed it for sure. He was, I had heard, a terrible-tempered little man. A model had once tripped on an Adair design at a private showing, tearing the train of a gown he'd fashioned, and in addition to abusing and humiliating the girl before all those present, he had taken steps to see that she never worked as a model again. Maybe he fed the birds when nobody was looking, or gave anonymously to orphanages, but until I knew it for sure I would consider him one of the most petty and vengeful humans I'd heard of.

  I'd heard something else about the man, too. I said, “This Horatio Adair, Lita. He, uh ... well, he doesn't fool around much with girls, does he?”

  “I think that's just part of the act. He does put on quite a show of being a creative genius, you know.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It's just that ... never mind. It's not important.”

  “Since this is a murder case, it might be that anything about Horatio is important.”

  “Well,” she hesitated, then went on, “he and I were alone in the Tower Room—a room he works in—at his home one night two or three weeks ago, so that he could make some sketches and get measurements for some designs, and it seemed that his designs were on me.”

  “He make a pass?” I said bluntly.

  She nodded. “In a kind of feeble way, but he sure did. I...” she hesitated again. “I laughed at him. I shouldn't have, I know, and I was dreadfully sorry right afterward, but it was too late. He was furious.”

  “From what I've heard about the little man, he carries a grudge forever. He may even make everything two sizes too small just for meanness. You don't know anything about Toby, huh?”

  “Only what Lawrance told me. I haven't met the man. What's he like?”

  “Mean, angry, fat, ugly, deadly, and other negative adjectives. A thorough crook. He's head of a local gang of criminals and almost never goes anyplace without his two hoodlum bodyguards—sort of a head with two hoods.”

  “I not only haven't met him, but I'm sure I don't want to meet him.”

  I grinned at her. “I'll protect you from Toby.”

  She smiled. “You think I need protection from him?”

  “You need protection from men.”

  Lita laughed musically. “Who'll protect me from you, then?”

  While I was trying to figure out just what she might have meant by that, she went on, “I'll give you the quick, guided tour now, Shell. You must have met Didi already.”

  “I have.”

  “I'll introduce you to the other girls who work here. You should know more about the operation, anyway, since you're practically one of the family now.”

  “One of the family, huh?” I grinned at her. “Not, I hope, like a brother.”

  She deliberately looked me over from my white hair to the big cordovans on my feet, and then back to my face again, and said, “You wouldn't even be like a brother to a sister.”

  Then she turned the doorknob and noise from the room beyond swelled in almost giddy fashion and fluttered at my eardrums. She didn't say anything, but her lips were twisted in a half smile and she glanced at me from the corners of her eyes. Then she said, “Come on Shell. The tour starts.”

  Lita went into the room and I followed her. She shut the door behind us, but I wasn't watching her. This was the first split instant during which I had not been watching her intently, so that should give you a rough idea of the wild and nearly impossible vista presented to me. A weaker man than I might have turned and run. But I'm strong; especially when all I have to face is women.

  And that's what I was facing. Women.

  There were about a hundred of them, in leotards. Black leotards were all over the place, and here and there was a flash of white, practically all of it in motion. This is really too much, I said to myself. I've been through quite enough already. What with Didi, and Lita Korrel, and driving through Freeway Traffic this morning, these tired and battered old nerves of mine have had it. I just won't look, I won't look.

  But you know it: I looked.

  We were in a huge low-ceilinged room that must have been a good 100 feet square, which would mean the room had an area of about 10,000 square feet, and I would estimate offhand that in those 10,000 square feet there were at least 1,000,000,000 square feet of women. Let me tell you. I've seen more women, in more sizes and shapes and poses, than is really good for a man. I have never been a guy to look in the other direction—if a babe says, “Don't peek,” my eyes automatically spring open wide. What it all boils down to is that I like to look at women.

  But enough is enough.

  Out there in front of me were all kinds of tomatoes, from green to overripe, in all sizes and shapes, and they were in so many postures and poses and angles and contortions, and doing so many strange things in so many directions that they gave the impression of having just had a large bomb go off in their midst. It was a great mass of babes that seemed to be exploding. The predominant color was the color of female flesh—which makes a great deal of sense, since it was female flesh—and the rest was the black and white of leotards.

  And those women in leotards were bending, wiggling, jumping, squirming, wobbling, flapping, flopping, bouncing, groaning, shrieking, giggling, and everything but dying. They lifted weights, they pulled on elastic ropes, they raised bars over their heads and stood close to machines that seemed to be attacking them. It was like a dream. That is, like one of my dreams.

  Then I felt gentle fingers on my arm. Lita ... ah, yes ... the lovely Lita. She was leading me even deeper into the maw of it all, into the waving, bouncing, giddy, unbelievable core of it. As we walked, she was saying, “You see, Shell, one of our slogans is: ‘No Mamzel's graduate we
ars a girdle!’ and here in this room we make the boast good.”

  “Looks pretty good, all right,” I said weakly.

  “The Mamzel girls you'll meet this morning are naturally graduates of the course.”

  “Naturally. Ah ... maybe you'd better not show them to me all at once. I'll be seeing Roy Toby later today, and I'll need the strength I'm losing.”

  “Oh, Shell!” She chuckled softly, then added, “There's Yama.”

  Yama was apparently one of what I was coming to think of as The Ten, and she wore a wispy white leotard similar to Lita's. She was bent slightly forward, facing away from me, and to put it bluntly, Yama had a seat, so sweet, so fine, so gay, so jaunty, that it appeared never to have been sat upon. You would almost think that it had gone through the Mamzel course all by itself. I just kept on looking until Lita called the woman and Yama straightened up and turned around. Then she walked over to us. She was smiling.

  “This is Yama, one of my ten girls,” Lita said. “Yama, this is Shell Scott.”

  I beamed upon her.

  Lita said, “Shell is a detective, Yama. He's going to help us.”

  Yama beamed back at me. “Oh, good,” she said. “And if you need any help helping us, tell me. I'll be glad to help.” Then she frowned delicately and looked at Lita. “Help us what?”

  “The investigation that the police came here about this morning, dear. Mr. Scott will probably be here quite a lot. Asking questions and all. I just wanted to tell you to give him all the assistance you can.”

  Looking at me, the little lovely with the unsat-on seat said softly, “You didn't have to tell me, Lita. My assistance is entirely at his disposal.”

  Lita's fingers were on my arm again then, gently hauling me away, and it was probably a good thing. I wandered about in a kind of daze, as Lita led me through rows and tons of babes, introducing me first to one and then to another of the Mamzel Girls. Most of it will always be wrapped in a sort of black-and-white haze in my mind, but it was certainly true that in little more than half an hour I had seen more beauty of feminine face and flesh and form than I had ever before encountered in any week. Just meeting Lita Korrel herself, and Didi, would have made that true. But in addition I had been nearly overwhelmed by all ten of the Mamzel Girls: Yama, April, Misty, Yvonne, Lois, Elaine, Frances, Cecile, Pepper, and Corky.

  I showed all of them, and Lita and Lawrance and Didi too, the morgue photo of Zoe Avilla. Nobody had heard of her—at least no one admitted knowing her. Finally Lita and I were in the hall outside the big exercise room in which I had garnered so many memories.

  She said, “That took a little longer than I thought it would, Shell. And I have to meet several clients who are just starting the course this morning.”

  “And I'd better get out into the male-and-female world and talk to some of the males for a change.”

  “I did have several other things I wanted to discuss with you. Perhaps ... perhaps later today, after we close up the shop, we could get together for an hour or so.”

  “That sounds wonderful. An hour, or two, or three, or four —”

  She laughed. “You sound so eager.”

  “That's because I'm so eager. Shall we say Ciro's? Mocambo? Beverly Hilton? The —”

  “Oh, nothing so fancy, Shell.”

  “Then my place, perhaps? There's certainly nothing very fancy about —”

  “Why not my place?”

  “Why not?”

  “Say seven-thirty?”

  “Swell.”

  “Bye, then, Shell. See you tonight.” She told me where she lived, then walked on down to her office and went inside.

  It took a while for it to penetrate that I could look forward all day to seeing the lovely Lita tonight. But it penetrated, and it was a very nice event to look forward to. Assuming, of course, that I lived till tonight. And I did want to live.

  As I walked out into the front reception room, Didi said, “Hi,” and waved, and I waved back and we smiled happily at each other. She still looked very good. And after what I had just been through, that was saying a lot for Didi.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Art Gedder's photographic studio was about half a mile farther up Sunset Boulevard. It was one of those places which have, out in front next to the street, enormous blown-up photographs of budding stars and starlets, or those who have already flowered, and occasionally even of one who has gone to seed.

  Gedder was a short, thin guy. I'd phoned him before coming out, so he was ready for my questions, and said that the police had already talked to him. They'd showed him a morgue photo of Zoe Avilla and it had turned out to be a customer of his who'd given him the name Susan Roeder. She'd had Gedder do a portrait of her, and had later come by for the proofs, but had never picked up the final prints. That seemed odd enough but she had also talked to Gedder a lot about Mamzel's.

  I said to him, “How'd she happen to bring that up?”

  “I'm doing the publicity pix for Mamzel's, and I did a glamour shot of Miss Korrel that was so good I wanted to print it on people. Put a big blowup of it out front. This Roeder—or Avilla—gal asked me who the beautiful woman was. I explained, and she wanted to know all about Mamzel's. He shrugged. “So I told her.”

  “Did she seem more than ordinarily curious?”

  “Looking back, I'd say she was. Real curious. And it's a funny thing, but some of the questions she asked made me think she already knew quite a bit about Mamzel's. It's just an impression. Anyhow, I remember telling her that Horatio Adair was doing fashions, Felicca a statue of Miss Korrel, and about the Ad Agency handling the account.”

  After another minute I asked him if he had an extra copy of the pictures he'd made of the woman. He left the room and came back with a four-by-five print which he handed to me. In this one, she looked a lot better than in the morgue picture. This was in color. Zoe Avilla—or Susan Roeder—had brown eyes and dark brown hair and an almost appealing smile on her heavy lips. In the portrait, shadows softened the sharp hard lines of her nose and jaw. I thanked Gedder for his time and the info, and took off to see Horatio Adair.

  Horatio Adair was a man unloved by males, and little loved by females. In my opinion he was a well-publicized fraud with no talent but with a great deal of gall. His estate here in Hollywood was world famous, a fashion center, and Horatio's pronouncements, which issued from it several times each year, were awaited with bated breath by women all over the world. If Horatio had said that women should wear all their clothes back to front, ninety percent of them would have done it instantly, and sneered at the ten percent who didn't. He never had gone quite that far, however; only too far.

  He raised and lowered hemlines, necklines, and waistlines. He toyed with bosoms and bustles. He pooched here, riffled there, and ruffled someplace else. The main thing was to change styles enough so that everybody would have to buy new clothes or be old hat. He was the Napoleon of Fashion, but his battles were won by surrender, not by force of arms or ideas—he won victory after victory merely by announcing that war had begun. And he made a million dollars a year.

  On the way to Horatio's half-million-dollar estate I stopped and phoned his number. What seemed to be a male secretary answered through his nose and haughtily informed me that under no circumstances could I see Horatio Adair. It was remarkable how quickly he changed his tone and mind when I mentioned “murder” and “police.” Even though I was just a private detective, there was a possibility, under the circumstances, that I could see the great man himself. I drove on out....

  A metal gate barred the entrance to the Adair estate. It was a huge thing, barring a narrow drive leading off at right angles from the main road, but I almost drove past it, so thick was the growth around it. The gate wasn't locked, but I had to stop and open it before driving through; I left it open, planning to close it on my way back.

  The house was at the end of the long, winding road that curved through tall shade trees and dense undergrowth almost as thickly packed as any jungle. I
could see only a few yards off the drive, then a wall of shrubs and trees, limbs and leaves and bushes, blocked any further view. But at intervals along that private road, and especially near the house, splashes of color marked beds and plantings of rhododendron, hibiscus, blue lobelia, cannas and gardenias, plus literally thousands of banana trees and Birds of Paradise.

  The house was big, massive, looming up from a clearing in the surrounding Southern-California jungle. I parked and walked to the ten-foot-high double doors, pressed a button that sounded chimes inside.

  The guy who opened the door looked like a man who would have the hearty voice I'd just been listening to on the phone. He was tall, thin, thin-featured, thin-lipped, and his expression of combined distaste and resignation indicated that he smelled something obnoxious and that it was his nose. But he looked at me as if I were the something obnoxious.

  “I'm Shell Scott,” I said.

  “Ye-es. I had guessed. You might as well come in.” Life would go on, but his day was shot.

  I walked into a spacious hall, and he said, “I'm Willis. I should like to know more about this police matter.”

  “I think I'd better tell it to Mr. Adair. Where is he?”

  Willis nodded toward a pair of doors directly ahead of us, but he was still undecided. “I ... he is creating. Creating a new design. We really shouldn't disturb him.” Willis thought about it for almost a minute. “Is there any reason to believe that Mr. Adair is ... well, in any real trouble?”

  “Only with the men of America.”

  He thought about that, too, for a while, then sniffed. “Oh, very well. Perhaps it would be best if you spoke with him.”

  He led me to the double doors, opened them, and we stepped inside. He gently closed the doors behind us, and it took a little while for me to realize that I thus became one of the few mortals outside of Horatio Adair's immediate circle to see him experiencing the ecstasies of creation.

  The room we were in was high-ceilinged, big and draughty. Windows lined the far wall and woven tapestries hung from the wall on my left. The right wall was bare. In the room were four male wisps in business suits, one in a yellow robe, and one nude male wisp. No, it wasn't a nude male, but a thin female, and she wasn't even nude. As my eyes took in the tableau I noted that she wore brassiere and pants, but there really didn't seem much excuse for either of them.