Sugar Shannon

by Lawrence Lariar

  Serena’s place blossomed with originality, warmth, and a sincere love of the arts. Her little office grabbed at me and held me mute with awe, enjoying the wonderful motion of the Sid Gordin metal sculpture that sat in the far corner alongside a delightful Klee drawing. The walls were a riot of good art and fine selectivity. A buckeye painting would have been as much at home here as a virgin at a stag party.

  “Get a load of the classy pictures,” whispered Gwen. “This broad is full of surprises.”

  “Your ignorance is showing,” I told her. “Better zip your lip.”

  “Recognize this?” Serena was pointing to a landscape, painted in the archaic Hudson River style, atmospheric glades and hills done with great skill. The technique and color were masterfully handled, painted with a misty glow. It seemed incredible that this picture could have been done by a man who later became one of the great abstractionists.

  “An antique style,” said Horace sagely.

  “George DeBeers painted it,” said Serena with pride. “That’s the way he worked when he came to me years ago, tired and hungry.”

  “Class,” gushed Gwen, putting her pert nose against the canvas as though preparing to smell the dew on the painted grass. “A job like this should be hung permanently in a prominent spot—as an answer to the fools who think modern painters can’t do the realistic stuff.”

  “George could paint any way he wanted to,” said Serena reminiscently. “I loved his abstracts. He was going to give me one, poor boy.”

  “When did he promise to deliver it?” I asked.

  “He didn’t promise.” Serena regarded me with a darkening eye. She had the ability to switch moods in an instant, her softness disappearing under a sudden change of heart. Her reactions were as obvious as a ripped nylon. “Why do you ask? Don’t you believe me?”

  “Just curious. He didn’t seem to be painting much recently, did he?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Who would?”

  “Magda Trent.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Maybe the other one,” said Serena. “Marianne Fry.”

  “He was close to Marianne?” Horace seemed suddenly alert, aware that he was about to hear fresh information about Marianne. His keen eyes studied Serena, who was lost in drowsy contemplation of her personal art gallery.

  “Close?” Serena brooded. “Close? When he walked in here with Marianne Fry on his arm it was kind of like a signal. Everybody in the place knew what it meant. Georgie only dated her when he was loaded with booze. For some reason: nobody could understand, he’d always pick Marianne for his drunken spells. They would sit in the corner like two high school lovers. She would burn her corny blue eyes into him and lean on her pretty elbows and shove her pretty jaw out at him and listen to him by the hour. Maybe he liked her because she was such a good listener. Who the hell knows? But Georgie must have considered her a real pal because he’d stay with her for hours at a time, just bending her ear.”

  “Didn’t he ever talk about Marianne to you?” I asked.

  “Poor Georgie,” she sighed. “He only talked art with me. I guess I wasn’t his type.”

  CHAPTER 9

  2:31 A.M. Saturday

  Magda Trent lived in an ancient mansion on a quiet street on the East side. The house had seen its heyday after the turn of the century, a rococo old lady, asleep and dreaming of its past. It had been converted into a series of apartments, seven of them to be exact, the tenants neatly named and catalogued on the tidy mailboxes in the dark front hall.

  “She’s up on the top floor,” said Gwen, yawning. “Why don’t we leave her for tomorrow morning when I have more energy?”

  “Because she’ll be police property before tomorrow morning,” I told her.

  “They can have her.”

  “After we finish with her.”

  “What’s the big rush with her?”

  “I think she’s the key,” I said. “From the way Serena described her love life, Magda will furnish us with the hottest copy. Did you see how Horace’s eyes lit up when Serena was talking about Magda? Horace is aware of Magda’s importance. He’ll be after her soon. Which is another reason why we’re here now.”

  The elevator was a tiny moving closet, grinding its mechanical stomach out to transport us to the top floor. There the door slid open with a quiet hiss and we minced across the floor to the large red door.

  We stood at the door, listening. From deep inside, the muted sounds of music. Bach, something for the piano and played with precise skill. When I let the big iron knocker drop it made a flat and empty noise, too suddenly loud.

  “Who’s there?” a voice asked from behind the door.

  “Life magazine,” said Gwen. “Here to do a picture story on you, Miss Trent.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Life never sleeps. We’re making a deadline on this story.”

  “Go away,” said the voice, brittle with annoyance. “Whoever you are. This is no time for cheap pranks.”

  “We’re not pranksters,” I said. “George DeBeers sent us up to see you.”

  “Your name?”

  “Sugar Shannon of The Star.”

  “A reporter?”

  “A feature writer. I’m on a story.”

  “What kind of a story?”

  “You’d make it easier for me if you opened the door,” I said with a touch of pique. “I’m not used to talking through keyholes.”

  “Come back in the morning, Miss Shannon.”

  “Impossible. Unless you want me to come back with the police.”

  “Police?” The sharp voice rose almost an octave. Behind it, another sound, a sibilant and whispering noise. Somebody else in the room with Magda. There was a long pause.

  Then a man’s voice asked: “Who did you say you were, alors?”

  “I am Sugar Shannon, alors,” I said.

  “And open the door, alors,” added Gwen. “I know you, Jacques Lambert. I’d know your voice through a clogged sewer pipe, you little French rascal, you.”

  “But this is fantastique,” said the man.

  And he was Jacques Lambert when the door opened.

  Magda stood at her modeling stand when we walked in. The room was tremendous, a giant studio in the old tradition, high-ceilinged and simply decorated. To the left, a north-light window. To the right, a bank of leaded panes that looked out over the street. Against the wall, Magda’s couch, an oversized affair done in pale gold with cute, odd-shaped pillows scattered here and there. It was an ideal sort of mattress for casual lounging or serious love making. From the disheveled look of the golden spread, it might have been used recently.

  Magda came away from her clay, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “You always work this late at night?” Gwen asked, examining the sculptured cat on the stand. It was a delightful animal, sleek and smooth and done with the classic simplicity of the Egyptians.

  “I work when I please,” said Magda.

  “A real artist, alors,” said Jacques, joining Gwen at the modeling stand. He marched around the piece and smacked his artistic lips at it. “This will win for you a prize, ma chérie,” he said with conviction. “When will it be finished for my gallery?”

  “Soon,” said Magda. She crossed the room to wash her hands in the tiny sink behind the screen. In motion, she had the grace and poise of a fashion model. Her figure would rock the boys. She had firm, nicely rigged hips. Her legs were long and slim and eye-catching in tight pants. She had pulled them snugly over her girlish frame and the cotton clung and caressed her in the right places. Bending over the sink she struck a charming pose. She was wearing a piquant silk blouse, airy and loose around the neck. When she leaned the blouse fell away, a below-eyelevel shot provocative enough to make a man’s eyes bounce.

  And Jacques Lambert’s eyes were
nibbling at her torso now. It was a hot night and his bald head shone with a slick sheen and he fingered his disheveled tie with a nervous hand. He was wearing his jacket, but it hung on him awkwardly, as though he might have squirmed quickly into his clothing when he heard our knock on Magda’s door. He mopped at his brow with a handkerchief and kept dropping the cloth to his lips in a strange and nervous gesture. Was he stabbing at lipstick marks left by Magda’s siren mouth? I cancelled the idea and searched his sly face for other highlights. My instincts moved me to examine him for the more important evidences of recent passion. His eyes! Were they fogged and yet eager after an emotional whack at Magda’s flesh?

  I caught him looking at her. The tableau seethed with throttled affection. Magda went calmly on with her hand washing. But Jacques stared at her with the innocent regard of a college boy in Marilyn Monroe’s boudoir.

  “I have met these ladies before, alors,” he said with an effort at lightness. “I have run into them at Serena’s. They were looking for George DeBeers, is that not correct?”

  “Correct,” I said. “But we have found George DeBeers.”

  “Ah, so? I am glad.”

  “Perhaps you will not be glad for long,” I said, and waited for Magda to place her derrière in the Spanish chair near her modeling stand. “Because George DeBeers is dead, you see.”

  “No!”

  Magda reacted as though stabbed. She went stiff and cold in the chair, her pretty face torn with real anguish and shock. In the next instant she buried her head in her hands and rocked with sorrow. “No, no, no, no,” she said, again and again. Jacques Lambert went to her side, his face ashen, his hands nervous and unsure as he sought to comfort her.

  “Incroyable,” he mumbled. “How did it happen?”

  I gave him a capsule report on George’s death, playing the story for horror. When I described the scene in George DeBeers’ studio, Magda shivered and moaned and her sorrow seemed suddenly at its peak. I watched her carefully, appraising the tableau for honesty. She came through to me as genuine. No actress on earth could have played the scene her way, her emotions converting her into a blubbering wreck, her face wet with tears, her eyes red-rimmed and soupy with grief.

  “She’s going to faint,” I said.

  “Chérie!” Jacques bounced to a small tabouret near the modeling stand and came bounding back with a bottle of liquor and a hooker. He fed her the bourbon and she allowed herself a few tentative sips and moved wearily to the couch where she buried her handsome head in a convenient pillow.

  “When did you see him last?” I asked Jacques Lambert.

  “Last?” he asked himself. “Perhaps a week ago, in my gallery.”

  “How did he seem to be?”

  “Seem? He seemed perfectly well, alors. Perfectly fine.”

  “Not worried?”

  “George was in good spirits.”

  “Not afraid?”

  “Not George,” said Lambert. “A strange question, ma petite. Of what would he be afraid?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “Nothing,” said Magda, sitting up, her face alive with fatigue. “I’ve never seen George afraid. Not of anything on earth.”

  “And you?” I asked. “When did you last see him, Magda?”

  “Late this afternoon,” she said quietly. “He was drunk.”

  “Was he up here?”

  “No. We met at a. bar. The Seven Brothers, down in the Village.”

  “How long were you with him?”

  “Not long. Perhaps half an hour. I detested George when he drank too much.”

  “You had a fight?”

  “We exchanged words,” she said. She had a shock of ebony hair done in an old-fashioned hair-do, a Trilby effect, cut to fall over her milk-white shoulders. She had an intriguing tic, a toss of her pretty head every once in a while, as though emphasizing the importance of certain statements with a physical exclamation point. “I told poor George that I didn’t want to see him again unless he’d stop drinking. It was a tired argument. George was hopelessly involved with alcohol.”

  “Really? Or did he drink only when he was unhappy?”

  “You seem to know him well,” said Magda with a toss of her head. “Perhaps you knew him better than I, Miss Shannon.”

  “I’m only suggesting that George wasn’t a dipso, Miss Trent.”

  “You could be right, depending upon your definition of a dipsomaniac.”

  “Not George,” said Jacques. “He drank perhaps to forget his troubles, that was all, alors.”

  “My theory exactly,” I said. “Then you admit George had troubles?”

  “Perhaps,” the Frenchman shrugged.

  “Did he ever suggest troubles to you in the recent past?”

  “Ridiculous. As I have told you, the last time I saw George he visited me in my gallery. We talked about his painting. We discussed a future show and he promised me many pictures, by the new year. Troubles? Are these troubles for a young and famous painter, ma chérie?”

  His flicking eyes were punctuating his monologue with quick little glances at Magda, as obvious as a slap in the face. He must have caught a sudden message from her because he shifted his conversational gears and faced me, with his face deadpan, the brittle smile gone; his eyes hard and purposeful. “But why am I telling you all of these things, ma petite? You are not, perhaps, working for the police?”

  “I am not, perhaps.”

  “Then what is your purpose?”

  “Murder,” I said. “I’m going to find out who murdered my friend George DeBeers. And I’m doing you a big favor, Jacques. I’m giving you a dress rehearsal for the sweaty question game you’re going to play with the police.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Lambert. “I have nothing to hide from the police.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “They’re clever boys. They can smell out a lie.”

  “I have not lied.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Have you made up your mind where you’ve been all evening?”

  “But of course. I was with Magda.”

  “Here?”

  “First in my gallery, to make arrangements for her show.”

  “What time was that?”

  “From seven to eight.”

  “And then?”

  “Magda and I came here,” he said, brushing Magda with his oily eyes. She did not catch the sudden caution in his glance. She was very busy bending over the coffee table to get herself a cigarette. When she lit it, her mannish hands were shaking dreadfully.

  “And you stayed here?” I asked.

  “But of course.”

  “You’re lying,” I said airily.

  “Why don’t you two girls get lost?” Magda said, on her feet and burning us with her surly eyes.

  “Relax, sister,” said Gwen. “You’re ruining my pencil sketch. I liked you bent over on the couch. You looked so natural.”

  “You little worm!”

  Magda leaped for Gwen’s sketchpad, clawing and punching. But she did not reckon with her versatile adversary. Gwen had been grabbed at by expert sketch-haters. Gwen knew how to duck and dodge. She stepped aside as Magda came at her, letting the enraged sculptress move in close. Then, when the dark-haired artist was within breathing distance, Gwen extended her facile foot. Magda tripped and went down in an unladylike pratfall, her pretty buttocks slapping the floorboards with a thumping whack that jerked her head around.

  Jacques bounded to her aid.

  “Leave me alone,” said Magda impatiently, brushing him back as she might wave off a marauding moth. She got to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster. She was the type who would never forget an indignity, a woman of violent temper. She towered over Gwen, letting her feel the full impact of her neurotic personality.
r />   “You two press maggots,” she hissed, “had better leave before I throw you out.”

  “My pleasure,” I smiled, letting her know that she didn’t frighten me. I turned to Jacques and allowed him the full eye treatment, regarding him in the way I stare at soured milk. “You,” I told him, “are in deep, dark trouble, Jacques, my lad. You’re going to find yourself in a small cell if you don’t amend the fairy tale you just told me.”

  “And that,” added Gwen, scowling at Magda, “goes double for you, muscle maiden.”

  We marched righteously out of the studio on that note. It was a short walk to the elevator and then a minute’s drop to the street floor.

  “The fresh air,” said Gwen, “smells good after that corny art pad. You think those two are having a sex fling?”

  “I think Jacques Lambert is a very surprising little man,” I said.

  “You think correctly. Look who’s behind us.”

  We had walked a half block away from Magda’s door. There was a man running our way, puffing and blowing as he skipped up the street. Jacques Lambert waved a pudgy arm as he advanced.

  “Get rolling, Gwen,” I said, before he reached us. “I want you to watch Magda’s door. Stay with her for a while. I’ll meet you back at the apartment later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Monsieur Lambert’s nook.”

  “Careful. He may want to show you his mezzotints.”

  “We’ll be much too busy for mezzotints.”

  “Be careful, anyhow,” said Gwen. “The French, they are a funny race.”

  CHAPTER 10

  3:09 A.M. Saturday

  The Jacques Lambert Gallery was located in the new uptown art belt on the east side, in and around Madison Avenue. The subtle real estate tides that govern such phenomena had swept many of the good Fifty-Seventh Street galleries north, where they were relocated in the high rent districts on elegant side-streets.