“Mind telling me your name?” Ross asked.
“Marion Vandeveldt,” she said. “It’s Dutch. What is it you want with me, Mr. Ross?”
“I’m trying to find out why Benny was killed. I’m working on my own, not with the police. You don’t have to talk with me.”
She reflected. “I don’t mind talking to you. I suppose the police know about Benny and me anyway, since you do.”
“Not yet,” Ross said. “But they will in a couple of hours. You’ll probably get a visit from a Lieutenant Redfern this afternoon.”
He studied the woman, wondering why a man with a wife as attractive as Helene Stoneman would pick such a plain mistress. While Marion Vandeveldt was pleasant-looking enough in a well-scrubbed spinstery sort of way, Ross could hardly visualize her making a man’s blood hammer in his veins.
He asked, “You live here alone, Miss Vandeveldt?”
“Yes. My folks have been dead for some years. It’s just as well. If they were still alive, this scandal would kill them.”
“Not necessarily,” Ross said. “How long have you known Benny?”
“About six weeks. He moved here from Chicago a full month before he went to work for you, you know. We met at an open-air concert at Fallon Park. Benny loved music as much as I do, but his wife wouldn’t go to concerts with him.”
Mutual interest in music, Ross thought, mentally recording one clue at least to the mystery of the bookkeeper straying.
He said, “Excuse me if this sounds unnecessarily personal, but Benny didn’t strike me as a Lothario. Yet he had a beautiful wife and an attractive mistress, both at least fifteen years younger than he. Just what was his attraction?”
Her expression became one of inward contemplation, as though searching for an answer herself. Presently she said, “Ever see him smile?”
Ross reflected. “I suppose. I don’t really recall.”
“He didn’t often,” the woman said. “There wasn’t much in his life to smile about. But when he did, he was a different person. His face grew young and sort of wistful, like a small boy looking at a red bicycle in a store window. It turned your heart over when he smiled. I doubt that any woman could have resisted Benny’s smile. Except his wife.”
“He wasn’t happy with her?”
“Would he have turned to a mistress if he had been?” she asked. “I’m no competition physically to a woman as beautiful as Helene Stoneman. I’ve seen her picture and I look in mirrors. He came to me for the things he couldn’t get at home. Companionship, and interest in the things he was interested in. Benny would never have looked at me if he’d had anything at home. Or even with nothing at home if his wife had at least been true physically. He felt justified in taking a mistress on the basis of what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
“His wife had a lover too?”
The woman gave a brittle laugh. “She chases everything in pants. Benny moved here from Chicago to break up the affair between Helene and his former boss.”
“Big John Quinnel?” Ross asked in surprise.
“I don’t know the Chicago employer’s name. But Benny said he thought the man was relieved when Benny decided to quit his job and move here. According to Benny, Helene always throws herself so hard at the men she picks, once the novelty wears off, she becomes a nuisance. She tries to envelope her lovers, wanting to monopolize their full attention twenty-four hours a clay, seven days a week. Benny said the affairs never last long, because the men begin to struggle away as soon as they learn what they’ve gotten into.”
“Why the devil did Benny put up with her?” Ross asked.
“He defended her by saying she was sick,” the woman said wearily. “He’d had her to a couple of psychiatrists who gave him a lot of high-sounding words about her man chasing being a compulsion she couldn’t resist, stemming from too early physical development and too much popularity with boys when she was very young. The psychiatrists’ explanation was that she was frantically grasping for a return of her teen-age popularity, so when men stopped chasing her after she married, she had to chase them.”
Ross said dubiously, “I still don’t understand why he put up with it.”
“Well, their entire married life wasn’t as bad as I’ve painted it. Benny told me that under psychiatric treatment she’d get better for a while and start acting like a normal wife. Then along would come a new man and the merry-go-round would start all over again. I’m surprised you escaped her. Mr. Ross, being Benny’s employer.”
“I never met her until yesterday,” Ross said.
A little ruefully he considered Helene’s three phone calls since they had met in the light of what he had just learned, and he looked into the future without much enthusiasm.
Ross had very little additional conversation with the woman, but he did manage to learn that she also owned a blue sedan, in this case a Chevrolet. As he drove back to the club, he wondered if it had even occurred to Marion Vandeveldt that she was a suspect in the case.
CHAPTER 10
At a quarter of four that afternoon Ross was just taking Sam Black’s report that the downstairs club was all set for business when the first customer arrived. It was Helene Stoneman.
Going directly to Ross, who stood talking to Sam Black near the bar, she gave him an expectant smile and asked. “Surprised to see me?”
In view of his talk with Marion Vandeveldt, Ross wasn’t.
Unsmilingly he said, “Hello, Helene. What do you want?”
“I knew you wouldn’t be busy so early. I thought you might buy me a drink.”
She looked at Sam Black, awaiting introduction. Deliberately Ross ignored the hint. Taking her by the arm, he led her toward the front door.
“I don’t mix business with pleasure, Helene,” he said. “And right now I’m working. I also don’t like to be chased. Go home and wait till I call you.”
He half expected her to leave without even replying, but instead she said in a small voice, “Didn’t last night mean anything to you?” Studying her, Ross decided without emotion to test just how hard she was to discourage.
“No more than a hundred other nights with a hundred other women,” he said with deliberate cruelty. “I’ll call you if I decide I want to see you again.”
And turning, he stalked toward the elevator.
A half hour later he was called to the phone.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry I upset you by coming to the club,” Helene’s voice said. “Are you still mad?”
Despite what Marion Vandeveldt had told him, Ross was astonished. “Are you apologizing because I was rude?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“Then don’t call me any more. If I want to see you, I’ll call you.”
“All right,” she said in a penitent voice. Then after a pause, “Would you like me to stop up to your apartment after the club closes to-night?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Ross said disagreeably, and hung up.
At seven, while Ross was having dinner downstairs, he was called to the phone again. It wasn’t Helene this time, however. It was Lieutenant Niles Redfern.
“Got somebody here who wants to talk to you,” the lieutenant said. “Mrs. Stoneman.”
Incredulously Ross wondered if the woman had resorted to police influence to get to him. “What the hell for?” he asked.
“She’s allowed one five-minute call,” Redfern said. “Instead of a lawyer, she wants you. Ballistics tagged a gun I found at her house as the murder weapon, and we have a witness who saw her shoot her husband. Want to talk to her?”
“Never mind,” Ross said. “I’ll be down and talk to you both.”
At headquarters Ross found Lieutenant Redfern in his office with a young redheaded woman the
lieutenant introduced as Renee Desiree. This was obviously a stage name, and after glancing at the woman’s figure, Ross guessed that her field was burlesque. She was tall, probably five-ten, with long, full-calved legs, a flat stomach, well-padded hips and an enormous torso. She wore a green knit dress under which there seemed to be nothing but skin, at least no brassiere, for her fine, upstanding breasts jiggled like molded Jell-O with every movement.
She must have been proud of both their size and their ability to hold themselves up without artificial support, for even seated she held herself in an erect, shoulders-back posture which thrust them out in front of her like twin battering rams.
“Miss Desiree’s the witness I mentioned over the phone,” Redfern explained. “She was coming from the Tailspin Cocktail Lounge right across the street from your place when Stoneman got it.”
Ross looked at the woman and she gave him a brilliant, white toothed smile.
“Why’d you wait so long to report what you’d seen?” he asked.
“I didn’t want to be involved in it if I didn’t have to,” she said glibly. “The notoriety, you know. I’m an actress, you see, and…” She let it drift off into a charming shrug which made Lieutenant Redfern’s eyes jump to her jiggling torso.
“Then why’d you report it at all?” Ross inquired.
She gave him another brilliant smile. “I hoped the police would catch the woman without my help. I gave them forty-eight hours, then decided I had to tell my story.”
Turning to the Lieutenant, Ross said, “Sam Black was outside seconds after the shots. He didn’t see anybody across the street.”
“I ducked back into the Tailspin,” Renee Desiree said quickly. “I didn’t want anybody to see me.”
Ross glanced at her, then back at the lieutenant. “You said something over the phone about a gun.” Reaching into a drawer, Redfern brought out a .38 revolver and laid it on the desk.
“Ran across it in one of Benny Stoneman’s dresser drawers while Mrs. Stoneman and I were going through his things,” he said. “Ballistics tagged it as the murder weapon.”
“What did Mrs. Stoneman have to say about it?”
“The gun, you mean?” Redfern shrugged. “Denied ever seeing it before. Says she’s certain her husband never owned a gun. But I wired Chicago at noon, and the gun’s registered up there in Benny Stoneman’s name.”
Ross reflected for a moment, then asked, “Doesn’t it strike you as silly for her to insist it isn’t Benny’s gun if she really thought it was? What would it get her?”
“Nothing. She’s just being contrary. Records don’t lie.”
“I’ll bet they did this time,” the gambler said. “Just as your witness here is lying.”
The woman’s gaze jerked at him angrily. Ross smiled at her. No one said anything for a few moments, Finally the lieutenant, in an obvious attempt to get Ross alone in order to have him explain his last remark, said, “You want to go back to the women’s section and talk to Mrs. Stoneman?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Ross said. “I already know everything I have to. This is a frame, Lieutenant. If you’d like to take a little ride, I’ll introduce you to the framer. If my hunch is right, you’ll have your killer in an hour. If it’s wrong, I’m not sticking my neck out for defamation of character. Take it or leave it.”
Because he couldn’t do anything else, the lieutenant decided to take it.
CHAPTER 11
Before the three of them left headquarters, Ross phoned Marion Vandeveldt using the public booth in the lobby because he didn’t want Redfern to hear the conversation.
When the woman answered the phone and the gambler had identified himself, he asked, “Were you in love with Benny, Miss Vandeveldt?”
“Of course,” she said. “Would I have been his mistress otherwise?”
“Willing to help trap his killer?”
“Certainly,” she said without hesitation. “I’ll do anything I can.”
For five minutes Ross explained what he wanted her to do, and why.
At the end of that time she said in a steady voice, “All right, Mr. Ross, if you think that’s the only way they can be brought to justice. I’m willing to tell the lie.”
“Turnabout’s fair play,” Ross said. “They told some pretty whopping lies in trying to frame Helene Stoneman. Got the suite number okay?”
“Seven-o-seven. And I’m to wait in the hall until you come out to get me.”
“You’ve got it right,” he said, and hung up.
They took Ross’s Lincoln instead of a police car, Ross, the lieutenant and Renee Desiree all three riding in front. Ross drove straight to the Park Plaza.
There was no conversation as they crossed the lobby to the bell captain’s desk, Ross leading the way and the lieutenant following with the red-haired woman.
The bell captain, a trim, middle-aged man with an alert expression, said, “Evening, Mr. Ross. Hello, Lieutenant.”
“Take a look at this woman,” Ross said without preliminaries. “Ever see her before?”
The bell captain had already looked her over thoroughly as she approached. He nodded without hesitation.
“She’s been in and out of seven-o-seven all week,” he said. “So have a million other women, but I couldn’t forget this one. Not with those…uh…she’s an exceptionally good-looking girl, and I couldn’t help noticing her.”
The redhead said icily, “What’s this supposed to prove? Any law against ladies attending parties in this hotel?”
Ross grinned at her. “It proves this. You’re one of Big John Quinnel’s girl friends. One among dozens. Now let’s go upstairs and see Big John.”
CHAPTER 12
The door to suite seven-o-seven was cautiously opened by the sunburned man with the missing earlobe. When he saw Clancy Ross his face turned startled and his right hand darted toward his armpit. Then he saw Lieutenant Redfern behind Ross, and froze in that position, his hand halfway out of sight.
“Little jumpy, aren’t you, Horton?” the gambler asked dryly.
Redfern pushed forward then, shoving the door wide open so that the bodyguard had to step back to avoid getting it in the face. As the lieutenant strode inside, Horton looked sullenly from him to Ross, then spotted Renee Desiree still standing in the hall, and his expression turned wary.
Ross motioned the girl in, pushed the door shut and pointed after the lieutenant, who had stopped in the center of the room and was looking inquiringly at the closed doors on either side.
“Where’s Quinnel?” he asked the bodyguard.
Horton crossed to the door on the left and discreetly knocked on the panel. Renee Desiree seated herself in an easy chair. Ross and the lieutenant remained standing.
A heavy voice from within the other room called, “What the hell you want?”
“Lieutenant Redfern’s here,” Horton called back. “With Clancy Ross and some dame.”
There was the sound of creaking bedsprings, a lengthy silence, then the door opened. Big John Quinnel came out buttoning his coat. Under it he hadn’t bothered to button his shirt and he wore no tie. His oily hair was mussed and there was a streak of lipstick on one check.
After surveying the trio of visitors silently, he turned and growled back into the bedroom, “Hurry it up and scram. Looks like I got business.” Another few moments passed before a vivid blonde with a body nearly as interesting as Renee Desiree’s came from the bedroom. Her hair was a little mussed too, but apparently she had taken time to put her makeup in order. As she came into the room she was pulling a fur coat on over a flaming red evening gown.
With an embarrassed glance around, the blonde went straight to the door, pulled it open and then looked back at Quinnel.
“Call you tomorrow,” the big man said heavily.
&n
bsp; As the door closed behind the blonde, Quinnel said to Larry Horton, “Get the other one out too.” The bodyguard crossed to the second door, opened it, looked in and crooked his finger. A lissome brunette, fully dressed including a fur coat, came out.
“Party’s over,” Horton said. The brunette didn’t look around embarrassedly as the blonde had. She walked out without a glance at anyone.
When the door had closed behind the second woman, Quinnel nodded to the lieutenant, barely flicked his eyes over Clancy Ross, then looked at the redhead without a sign of recognition.
“Pretty good act,” Ross commented. “But we already established downstairs that she’s been popping in and out of this place like a jack-in-the-box all week.”
The big man looked at the redhead again. “Has she?” he asked without interest. “So damn many dolls been in and out of here the past week, I wouldn’t recognize half of them.”
“You recognize this one,” Ross assured him. “She’s the one you paid to claim she saw Helene Stoneman shoot her husband.”
CHAPTER 13
Quinnel looked at the woman steadily and she said in an urgent voice, “He’s shooting at the moon, John. I didn’t even tell him I knew you. He got that from the bell captain.”
Without heat Quinnel said, “Clam up and stay that way.” Then he looked at Redfern. “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant? I don’t have to answer any questions by this tinhorn, but you got anything to ask, go ahead.”
Ross said, “I wasn’t planning on asking questions. Quinnel. I’m going to do all the talking.” He turned to the lieutenant. “Remember how Quinnel, his two bodyguards and three women all swore alibis for each other for the time of the shooting?”
Redfern nodded.
“This guy,” Ross said, pointing at Larry Morton, “walked out of the Rotunda not fifteen seconds ahead of Benny Stoneman. Sam Black can testify to that in court.”
Lieutenant Redfern scowled first at the sunburned man, then at Ross. “You waited a nice long time before dropping this bit of news.”
The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 24
