The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery

by Viola Brothers Shore

  Abraham came in with our coats. “Good night, Abraham,” the doctor said, “I enjoyed your dinner very much.”

  “Thank you, doc—I hope you all will come again—”

  I hope not…

  But I’ve been thinking I’d get a big kick out of having some kids playing around on the terrace and since we haven’t got any I imagine there are a lot of rickety ones around that might like to pick up a little sun. I’m going to put a bug in Alice’s ear the next time she goes down to that clinic.

  THE CASE OF KAREN SMITH

  In Reagan’s Department everybody is a Character except The Boys (Reagan’s Boys) and The Bums—the boys that Reagan’s Boys are after. This character in the lumpy, fur-lined coat blew in around 11:30 and Janicek tried to steer her to Missing Persons.

  “Unless your cousin was murdered, Madam, you’re in the wrong Department.”

  But she’d been to Missing Persons and they hadn’t taken any interest. “I thought you’d take an interest. She said you were a friend of hers. Karen Smith?”

  His eyebrows came together in a straight black line. He didn’t have so very many friends.

  “She look like you?” he asked doubtfully.

  “We both have the Smith eyes, but she’s younger and thinner with a lot of curly red hair.” Red hair. Something was trying to ring in the back of his mind—something tied in with cloudy gray-blue eyes—but he couldn’t picture red curls over that sunken upper lip. She was holding a creased sheet of Hotel Endicott stationery and he wondered automatically why a character with nice hands didn’t buy herself some store teeth and a girdle.

  Dear Cousin Em [said the neat, tight little writing]—

  Excuse me for not writing sooner but you said some day you were coming East and I would give anything for a talk, Em, as I have nobody else. Wally is away most of the time so I could put you up. Please let me know if you decide you can come East now.

  With love,

  Karen

  “You can see she was having some kind of trouble,” Emma Smith was saying, “and I’m her only relation outside of Cousin John down South, so I gave up my job—I can always get a housekeeping job.” She went on quickly, as if nobody had to worry about Emma Smith. “I wired her to meet the 9 o’clock Greyhound this morning, but she wasn’t there. And the Endicott Hotel don’t know any Mrs. Wally Smith.” He started to say something. “The wire wasn’t there, so she must have picked it up. Why didn’t she meet me or wire me—unless something happened to her?”

  There might be a million reasons, but he was beginning to take an interest. “She always wrote from the Endicott?”

  “It’s the only letter I got since she left Toledo back in 1940. She got a raw deal from a fellow there and she was ashamed to write—at least, that’s how she put it last year. I’d moved around a lot with people I worked for, but Wally had some business in Kansas City and she looked me up.”

  “How?” he asked, from force of habit.

  “Through Cousin John, he always keeps in touch.” During that visit the cousin from the East had mentioned her friend Janicek. “It’s a name that sticks in your mind.”

  Janicek scratched his square wooden jaw. “In what way? What’d she say?”

  “I can tell you her exact words. We were talking about her mother, my Aunt Carrie, all her life trying to make a gentleman out of Uncle Charlie and Karen said, ‘Wally’s a perfect gentleman, Em. But if I had a daughter I’d tell her not to worry so much if a man’s a gentleman, but more if a gentleman’s a man. Now my friend Janicek, there’s a man.’”

  The back of his neck felt warm as he bent over to pick up the phone book. “Her husband’s name is Smith too? Wally for Walter?”

  “Or Wallace maybe. He’s in real estate. Or insurance. Some kind of broker.” He put back the book and picking up her new straw suitcase, bundled her into his car. He had to tear uptown to see his sidekick who had a busted leg. On the way, he dropped her at Fernanda Freed’s. Fernanda was looking for a housekeeper and it might be a break for both. Later when he knocked off work, he would put in a little time on this character who blew into Kansas City in a new mink coat with a husband (same name) who didn’t come along to meet her family.

  “I’ll be in touch with you,” he promised Emma, “and meanwhile you could get in touch with Cousin John.”

  Fernanda Freed walked with him to the elevator. She had also begun to take an interest. “I’ll be away till Sunday, so she’ll have time to look around. What do you think happened to her cousin?”

  Janicek had no answers. Karen Smith, he puzzled, driving up to the Hospital. And he asked his sidekick, “Do you place any Karen Smith?” But Morrie didn’t, although they’d been teamed for years. “Gray-blue eyes, red hair—” And suddenly it all came back—the green sofa cushions and a low table with homemade apple-cake and a pair of worried gray-blue eyes under a copper mop. He had rung a doorbell on a routine deal and she had asked him to step in, and Janicek never turned down a cup of coffee. There was something homey about the place and about her green flowered housed dress and somehow two hours flew out the window. She said, “Mr. Smith is away a lot,” and he got the feeling she was starved for somebody to talk to, and had something she was dying to talk about—something tied in with the character in a glass frame on the piano.

  He hadn’t mentioned it to Morrie. But he couldn’t get her out of his mind and he thought he would drop in again and ask her out for chop suey. But then he thought, “Watch it, Yanny—don’t start something you can’t finish,” and now he couldn’t even remember the house where he had rung the doorbells. But it would come back.

  * * * *

  A clock opposite the Chelsea Apartments struck once for 12:30. In 7C a woman in a fur-trimmed cap with a fringe of red bang was on the phone, spelling out a wire to the Greyhound bus—“due from Kansas City at 9 P.M.…P.M.,” she repeated sharply, conscious of the Super listening in at the switchboard.

  Her eyes swept the rooms, the closet, the fireplace where she had burned papers, labels, and photographs; but they avoided what lay on the bed. She knew if she touched him he would feel cold. “I should be feeling something,” she thought, but there was only this tightness in her stomach, while a machine in her head ticked off the moves she had to make.

  Her brown fur coat lay folded over the black-and-white airplane bag. The homemade black bangs were in her purse, with strips of adhesive, ready to paste into her hat. And the horn specs and the keys to the vault she had just rented in Newark. The other keys would go down the incinerator. The laundry marks on his shirts could be traced, but by that time there would be no more Karen Smith. She got the idea from a book, thinking, “A person could disappear that way”—not thinking she would ever want to. Until she came back from Boston. But even while she was laying all her plans, she hadn’t really believed she was going through with it. Until Thursday night. Last night…

  He always phoned when he was coming to town but she’d heard his key in the lock. Her knees jelled and she barely managed to get behind the bathroom door. Waiting for his voice, she heard bureau drawers opening and asked, “What are you looking for?” Which was easier than saying Hello.

  He shut the drawer hastily, his eye avoiding hers in the mirror. He made no move to take her in his arms. “What were you doing in Boston—spying on me?” Something in her laughed and he went on angrily, “If you must know, that was my daughter Lila.” She steadied herself against the door. She had only caught a glimpse of the girl in the ermine wrap, and it was true his daughter was about that age. “I’m sorry I knocked you down but I couldn’t have a scene in front of Lila. Where shall we eat?”

  “You go to the Club—I don’t feel like dressing.” For seven years she had dressed however and whenever he wanted, and would have again if he had asked her. But he seemed glad to escape. She bolted the door after him and called a Syracuse telephone number. A voice told he
r Miss Lila was out of town. “Boston?” she asked breathlessly.

  “No, she’s in Nevada with her mother. Who is this?”

  Even if she had wanted to answer, she had no voice. The whole thing was sickeningly clear. His wife had finally gone to Reno but he was going to marry the girl who had come out of the night club on his arm. And what he had wanted from the bureau was the vault key.

  When he came back he said, “I’m turning in early.” So he could be over at the bank by nine, and empty the vault they had held jointly for five years. And then his lawyer would offer her a settlement—a small one, because there was no way to make a splash with it. She knew him so well.

  Always when he came back from a trip he was anxious to get her into bed. If he had only taken her in his arms, cared what became of her—

  “Fix me a drink,” he said. To get her out of the room so he could look for the keys. They were in a cup in the kitchen. The sleeping tablets were there too.

  When she came out of the bathroom, he was dead to the world. She took off his clothes, her fingers weakening at the feel of him, helpless, like a little boy. But when his hand slid intimately over her body, it was the first time she ever recoiled from his touch.

  He lay on his face, his arm tightening around her pillow. But it was not her body he was pressing to him, not her name his lips were mumbling. She bent down to catch the words. “Keys…hidakeys…breaker-goddamneck…”

  They were the last words he ever said…

  The hall was empty and she double-locked the door. No snooping Super could get in with the passkey. Wally and she often ran away for weekends. About Monday his office would start checking with Boston and Syracuse.

  When she stepped out of the self-service, the Super was mopping the foyer. “Not running away, Miz Smith?” She had an impulse to run past him, but he had picked up the black-and-white bag. “What about your cousin—want me to let her in?”

  “Do please—if she wants to use the apartment.” She even managed a smile as the taxi pulled out.

  On the Philadelphia Express she had a discussion with the conductor about mink coats. In the station she checked her bag and over-tipping the porter, asked where she could buy a good used car. At the Agency she priced a green Buick. “Like all redheads, I go for green,” she told the salesman, but hesitated at buying the first thing she saw. He assured her she could come back if anything went wrong. “I—I won’t be coming back this way,” she stammered, selecting a brilliant travel folder marked Mexico.

  When they began to look for Karen Smith, there would be a clear line to follow…

  Inside a pay cubicle she changed into a dark dress, pasting the black bangs into her hat. Her coat had a reversible lining and it hung from her shoulders, cloth side out. In horn-rim specs she was Mrs. Kate Selby, buying a ticket for Nashville, and she checked her bag through in that name. Sunday she would fly to Nashville and leave a further trail in the green dress. And that would be the last of Karen Smith…

  Funny how you could see your whole life go without regret. It didn’t seem like much of a life, looking back. And still, she hadn’t wanted anything different from what most other girls wanted—her own home and money in the bank and a man who was a gentleman. It was what she had hoped to find with Jerry. And again with Wally…

  She mustn’t think about Wally. Think of the home she would buy, some day, with the money lying in the vault in Newark. Think of Emma. That was going to be a real problem. Above all, think of being set in a new job when the hue and cry went up. She could count on at least a week before Wally’s office did anything so drastic as breaking down a door…

  * * * *

  But Saturday night Janicek remembered the house where he had rung the bells, and picking up Emma he drove her to The Chelsea, a modest apartment building on the West side. The Super was only too happy to tell about the Smiths; how Mrs. Smith hadn’t been herself all week, and that was probably why they went away; how she had wired the bus and left word for her cousin to use the apartment. “She must have mixed the time,” Emma sighed, and proceeded to print her new address in big, left-handed letters to leave in the mailbox.

  But Janicek asked the Super, “How do you mean, not herself?”

  Well, he meant last Sunday when she went away with her little square overnight bag looking—well, all upset. And Monday morning she was back, with her face all swollen and without her bag. And when he asked her, “Did you lose something?” she began to laugh. “I just thought it was something for seven years.” Which was a funny thing to say. And then there was the phone call from Mr. Smith’s office. That was funny too. When the Super told them Mr. Smith had left town, they hit the ceiling and said that was impossible because he had come to town especially to see his lawyer.

  Janicek asked if Smith had seemed upset when he left. And there was another funny thing. He hadn’t seen Mr. Smith go, although he’d been around all day.

  There were too many funny things. But the funniest was leaving word for Emma at The Chelsea after writing her from the Endicott. The Super was willing enough to open the door, but it was double-locked.

  You need more than a smell of fish to break down a door. But the Super’s ladder reached from the fire-escape rail to the Smith bedroom window. It was a drop of seven stories and Emma begged Janicek not to take a chance. But Janicek was used to taking chances when he started following his nose. Gripping the top of the open window, he poked his flash through the Venetian slats. And it picked up what was on the bed…

  The Medical Examiner said, “Strangled—some time Thursday night.” He would know more after the P.M. but the twisted bathrobe cord had done the trick. Nobody questioned who had twisted it. Emma Smith went to pieces and before the newspapers got her phone number, Janicek bundled her off to Fernanda Freed’s.

  When he looked in Sunday night, both women were having coffee. Reagan had dropped the case in his lap and the D.A.’s office was tickled to have Emma out of reach of reporters. They all agreed that Karen’s powder keg had exploded before her cousin arrived, and sooner or later she would try to get in touch with her.

  Janicek pulled up a chair and gave them the dope that would be in Monday’s papers. The long-distance call from 7C had been checked to the home of Walter St. John Schuyler, a Syracuse broker with additional offices in New York and Boston. A business associate had already identified the body. The wife and daughter were flying in from Reno.

  “Reno?” Fernanda never missed a trick. “Was he planning to marry somebody else?” They were working on that angle, the D.A. hoping it would supply the motive. Emma seemed stunned at the case shaping up against her cousin.

  “I wonder how she’s fixed for money?” Janicek asked innocently.

  Emma pushed back her chair. “If Karen killed Wally, she must have had good reasons. So don’t expect any help from me.” And she marched into her room behind the kitchen.

  “Emma’s nobody’s fool.” Fernanda was in her thirties, but her short hair, threaded with white, made her seem older than Janicek. “You’re hoping she’ll hear from Karen, but how would Karen know where to find her?”

  “Same way she found her in Kansas. Did she mention the whereabouts of this Cousin John?”

  “No, but finding a John Smith somewhere Down South should be duck soup for the Finest Force in the World.” She always poked fun at his job and he used to kid the stuff she wrote. “Detective” stories. Some amateur superduperman (who would never get a nose inside a real homicide) was forever copping off fresh prints that the dumb dicks couldn’t see—and that finally cleared some lily they had stuck on ice. But now he wasn’t kidding around. “Did she tell you anything?”

  “About Karen’s girlhood, but you’re not interested in what makes murderers, only in catching them.” Emma had told him Toledo, and they already had Karen’s Beauty Operator’s license out there. “Wouldn’t you rather pursue a Character named Smith?”


  “I met her once,” he said evenly.

  “Oh?” Fernanda’s eyebrow went up. “But that won’t stop you from baiting all the traps.”

  Why should it? Because Karen Smith had said, “My friend Janicek”? A murderer has no friends. Not in Reagan’s Department. “If Emma does say anything—” He had never seen Fernanda so broiled.

  “You have enough men to tail Emma when she leaves here. But this is her home now, and she regards me as her friend!”

  “If she hears from Karen, she’ll be an accessory.”

  “Spying on people for what they might do is more dangerous than letting one Karen Smith get away. Besides how do you know she hasn’t—” She broke off but he got it. From Friday noon to Saturday night Emma had been on her own, and he had advised her to get in touch with Cousin John. So when she tried to keep him from climbing the railing at The Chelsea she already knew. Well, at least he had her measure. She was in a sweet spot to tip off Karen to a lot of stuff. But that would keep them in touch with each other—

  Fernanda could suit herself. For him personally, there was no person named Karen Smith. Only X. Find Madame X.

  It was a top assignment. Murder with a sex angle rates big newspaper space, and the girl in Boston was Junior League. The D.A. was tickled with the stuff coming from Boston. By the time the Monday papers were screaming BROKER STRANGLED IN LOVE NEST, Boston had dug up a taxi which had taken Schuyler, together with a young lady in ermine, from a nightspot the previous Sunday. Schuyler had been waylaid by a redheaded woman in a brown fur coat (Yes, the driver guessed it was mink), and there had been a mix-up in the alley where Schuyler had brushed her off. The cabby thought maybe he had flattened her out—“If you were a man instead of a cop, you wouldn’t even try to find her,” Fernanda said, when she heard.