by Gary K. Wolf
“I saw Dominick DeGreasy this morning,” I said. “He says that teakettle belonged to him and Rocco. He says it was their grandmother’s, and she left it to them when she died. He says that you stole it from out of their office. He says it’s very precious to him, and he’s willing to pay to get it back.”
The rabbit sent up a pair of speechless balloons, as flat, empty, and stark white as two pieces of bread popping out of a broken toaster. On his next try he did better. His words came out a mystified, translucent gray, but readable. “Dominick said that? About my teakettle? Absurd. I acquired the teakettle exactly the way I told you I did. And what would he want with it anyway?”
“I don’t know, but that teakettle is shaping up as a very important element in this case.” I finished off my bowl of stew and figured that, since the rabbit had gone through so much bother, I ought to be polite. “You got any more of this stuff?”
“Plenty. Let me get it for you.” He took my bowl and filled it to the brim with seconds.
“If you didn’t steal that teakettle from the DeGreasys, how did Dominick know you even had it?”
“I have no idea.”
“He ever come over to your place? Maybe see it there?”
“No, never.”
“You ever mention it to anybody?”
“Hardly. The subject of teakettles rarely comes up in conversation.”
“What about Jessica? She must have known you had it.”
“Of course she did. I used it every day.”
“So she could have told Rocco about it, or Dominick.”
“She could have, but why she would, I can’t imagine. Let me stress again, that was a perfectly common teakettle. There was absolutely nothing special about it.”
“Not to you, at least.” Still being polite, I got up and helped myself to a third bowl of stew. “You know anybody in the cartoon business with the initials SS?”
“Lots of people. Sad Sack. Stumpy Squirrel. Super Savage. Sarah Smile. The list goes on and on. Why?”
“Rocco had an appointment at his house last night with somebody with those initials. The appointment was for eleven o’clock, only an hour before he died. Any of the people you mentioned have a grudge against Rocco?”
“Well, he was hardly the sort of man likely to be selected mayor of ‘Toontown, but I don’t think any of the people I listed hated him enough to kill him.”
“How many of them did Rocco have under contract?”
“I don’t know exactly. Stumpy Squirrel and Super Savage, for sure. Probably more.”
I went back for one final dollop of stew, but the pot was empty. “What you got for dessert?” I said mostly in jest, but Roger immediately hopped up, went to the refrigerator, and brought out a Boston cream pie. He carved out a man-sized chunk and served it to me together with an excellent cup of freshly brewed coffee.
“What about the thirty-eight?” I asked five minutes later, the first time I had an empty mouth. “You have much luck tracing that?”
“Some.” Roger pulled out a notebook identical to mine and flipped it open. “The gun was reported stolen several months ago. That’s about it. I had no idea where to go next, so I didn’t pursue it any further.”
I took his notebook and wrote a few names and addresses into it. “Here’s a list of shady gun dealers. Start with them. See if they’ve heard anything. If the police have been nosing around, chances are one of these guys will know it.”
I dumped my dirty dishes into the sink. The ones that had been there when I left this morning had all been washed and stacked neatly on the drainboard. A regular ball of fire as a cook and housekeeper, this rabbit. I might be tempted to keep him around permanently if he did floors and windows, too. “Also follow up on the teakettle angle. Ask the studio’s prop man. See where he got it. Maybe, if we can trace it to its origins, we can figure out why DeGreasy wants it so badly. And check out every double S initialed ‘toon character in the DeGreasy stable. Find out if any of them had a recent beef with Rocco, and see where they were last night when Rocco died.”
“That’s a pretty heavy work load,” Roger griped.
“Hey, nobody said detective work was easy.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’ve got a few leads of my own to follow up.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me what they are? I thought we were partners in this case.”
“We are, but sometimes even partners have to keep their little secrets from one another. See you tonight,” I told him as I went out the door.
Chapter: •18•
Put a figurehead over the front door and a brace of smokestacks on the roof, and you could have sailed Rocco De-Greasy’s place across the North Atlantic. I made a quick count of the windows as I strolled up to the front door. I hit eighteen and still had two floors to go. I suppose there must have been a door bell, but I didn’t feel like spending half an hour searching for it among the geegaws carved around the entryway. I hammered the door with my fist instead, setting off a resounding echo inside.
The butler who opened the door must have come as an accessory to the house, since his face had the same smooth, pasty-white texture as the granite walls outside. When he saw me standing there on his front stoop, he crinkled up his nose the way a dowager would passing a garbage can. He offered to take my hat. I told him I didn’t trust him with it. He ushered me into a living room only slightly smaller than the tenement apartment where my mother had raised her four kids, told me madam would join me shortly, and retired.
Jessica came in, carrying one of those ‘toon cats that look like Felix and come in any color from chartreuse to candy apple. This one matched her violet eyes.
Jessica wore a clingy, pastel-green number. I would have expected someone with her sense of the dramatic to play the mourning role to the hilt and go with black. Of course the outfit she had on did cover her from ankle to shoulder, and maybe she considered that to be penance enough.
“Mr. Valiant,” she said with that seductive voice. She held out her hand a little too high to shake, a little too low to kiss, but just about the right height to pat my head if I bowed down before her. “A pleasure to see you again. Whatever can you be investigating now? I’m sure, being a detective, you know that your client is dead.”
I left her hand hanging there in midair and let her figure out what to to with it. “Dead or not, he paid me for three days’ work, and I mean to give him his money’s worth.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” she asked. She set her cat down on the floor. It proceeded to amuse itself by conjuring up some mental mice, which it stalked around the room.
I sat down on the sofa. Rocco had a humidor of expensive cigars set on the coffee table. I opened it and helped myself to a fistful, figuring Rocco didn’t need them anymore. I put one of them into my mouth, fired it up, and sucked it to life. “For starters, I aim to prove that Roger never killed Rocco.”
Instead of taking a chair, Jessica kicked off her shoes, sat on the floor at the end of the coffee table, and rested her head against the arm of the sofa not six inches from my knee. “You’ve got a long, uphill struggle there, Mister Valiant. From what the police tell me, it’s a straightforward case. Roger had a motive. And they found the murder weapon in his house. What have you got? New evidence? If so, it had better be pretty good.”
“No, no new evidence. Nothing except the basic belief that Roger didn’t have what it takes to kill somebody.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“My vast experience with human nature.”
She laughed softly. “All well and good, except remember we’re talking about a rabbit here.”
“It works pretty much the same way.”
“You’re the detective.” She reached into an alabaster box and pulled out a violet cigarette that also exactly matched her eyes. Some people just don’t know when to quit. She lit her colored coffin nail, set it into an ashtray, and promptly forgot about it. It smouldered into eternity sil
ently begging for one more touch from her gorgeous lips.
“So, just for laughs, let’s you and me assume Roger didn’t kill Rocco.”
“All right. I’ll play. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Roger didn’t kill Rocco. Where do we go from here?”
“We draw up a list of who else might have.”
“That would be a pretty long list. Half the civilized world, and at least that many aborigines.” She placed her hand on mine, and my heart went pitty-pat. Can you believe it? Pitty-pat. She should register those hands as deadly weapons. “Rocco was not a well-loved man,” she told me, “as I’m sure you’ve discovered already. His stars resented their ironclad contracts and the way he continually pushed them to the limits of their endurance.”
“So we’ve got everybody who worked for him. Who else? What about the financial end of it? Who’s going to inherit his estate?”
When she shook her head, her hair brushed across my fingertips and gave me the same tingle you get when somebody runs a feather across your stomach. “I don’t know for sure. Rocco and I never discussed the matter. I suppose the bulk of his estate will go to his son, Little Rock.”
“Tell me about him.”
She laughed again, but there wasn’t much mirth to it. “I think you could safely count him out as a suspect. Little Rock couldn’t kill a fly. He lacks the drive and sense of purpose necessary to plan it and bring it off.”
“That’s why we have second-degree murder, the unpremeditated variety. For people who are too lazy to plan ahead.”
She shrugged, and one side of her dress slipped down to reveal her shoulder.
“You know if Rocco had any recent business dealings with anyone with the initials SS?”
“SS? No, not that I can recall.”
“I found snapshots of some stolen artwork in Rocco’s office downtown. He ever mention anything about such stuff to you?”
“Not a word.”
I blew my next question at her across the red-hot tip of her dead lover’s fine cigar. “And where were you when Rocco died?”
Her eyes sparkled. Toons can do that with their eyes. Usually it comes across affected and ridiculous, but when she did it, it made me want to cuddle her and coo inanities into her ear. “I hope you don’t suspect me of killing him.”
“I haven’t knocked anybody off the suspect list yet.” She shrugged again. To my dismay, the other side of her dress held the line. “I went to a movie and then for a walk. I went alone, and no one saw me. I came home around twelve-thirty and found Rocco dead in his study. I immediately called the police. In practical terms I have no alibi. But I also have no motive.”
“You mind if I take a look at the scene of the crime?”
“The police already went over it.”
“The police have been known to miss things before.” Jessica standing up reminded me of a skyrocket heading for outer space, one long, straight line of fire and smoke. “Sure, go ahead. It’s just across the hall there.”
I went inside Rocco’s study. The place was filled, top to bottom, with shelves containing probably every comic book Rocco had ever produced. From what the cops had told me, after being shot, Rocco had fallen forward across his desk, though I didn’t see how he found room. He had enough doodads on top of the desk to stock a hundred novelty toy shops. Most of them were little plastic or rubber wind-up contraptions depicting the ‘toons in his stable. I found Roger Rabbit. I twisted his tail, set him down, and he hopped from one side of the desk top to the other. The toy appeared to be discolored. When I picked it up and examined it closely, I saw it had Rocco’s blood on its paws. Good thing I wasn’t much on mystical significance.
I poked through the desk’s drawers until I found Rocco’s checkbook. I opened it and examined the last few stubs. He had written three checks yesterday. The first two were for $10,000 each. The stubs indicated both had been paid to the mysterious SS. The third and last stub indicated a check to a downtown art dealer, the Hi Tone Gallery of Comic Art. I did some mental arithmetic and figured out that the amount of this check equaled the sum total of the prices marked on the stolen artwork photos I had found in Rocco’s office.
I poked around some more inside his desk, checked behind his pictures, rifled through about a hundred of his comics, and even looked under his rug. I was just about to give up when I struck pay dirt in the fireplace. A small scorched piece of comic-book negative stuck up through the grate. The negative contained an issue number but no title. I put the scrap into my notebook and rejoined Jessica in the living room.
“Find anything?” she asked. She held up a crystal decanter. I nodded, and she poured us each a double jigger.
“Nothing. I guess the police took away everything of any importance.”
“That it for the grilling then?”
“Not quite. We’ve still got another murder to go.” I demolished my drink and built myself a second. “Where were you when Roger died?”
She marched her delicate fingers around the edge of her glass. “Still walking the streets.”
“Not past Roger’s house by any chance?”
“Nowhere near.”
“You know Roger mentioned you in his last words.”
“So the police told me.”
“Any idea what he meant by it?”
“None.” She put her untouched drink down beside her untouched cigarette. If she kept up at this rate, pretty soon she wouldn’t have a vice left in the world and no idea how she got so pure. “I know you and the police both consider me a prime suspect in Roger’s murder,” she said, “but I’m not worried. Why should I be? I’m totally innocent.”
So said half the guys on death row, but I didn’t tell her that.
I fished around awhile longer, but came up with nothing new, so I got up to go.
On the way to the door, she moved in very close to me, so close I could feel her breath warming my throat when she turned her head to speak. “I’m rather sorry the interrogation’s over,” she said. “You fascinate me, Mister Valiant. I’ve never met a man quite like you. I hope you’ll come back and see me again—when you can stay a bit longer.” She flashed me a smile torchy enough to illuminate a midnight fertility dance.
I wanted to kid myself, but no dice. Granted, she had married a rabbit, and I had to be better than that, but no way could I ever picture myself a winner in this girl’s romantic sweepstakes. She wanted something else from me, I didn’t have to wait long to find out what.
“Since you’re going to keep pursuing this case anyway,” she purred, “there’s a favor you might be able to do for me.”
“Name it,” I said, surprised at how hard I found it to talk without gasping.
“During my marriage to Roger, the two of us once bought an antique at auction. I always had a special fondness for it. Roger told me to take it with me when I left, but I forgot it. I would like very much to retrieve it before the courts dispose of Roger’s personal belongings. I asked the police about it, but they told me there was no such object in the house. I wonder, if you should come across it during your investigation, could you see that I get it? It has a great deal of sentimental value to me.”
“What is this object?” I asked, although I already had a pretty fair idea what her answer would be.
“Nothing particularly valuable. An antique teakettle. Roger kept it on the stove in his kitchen.”
“Sounds simple enough. I’ll see what I can do.”
“I would appreciate it. A great deal.” To show me just how much a great deal could be, she kissed me full on the lips. She tasted of rose petals and honey. Her tongue caressed mine like a cool breeze on a steamy night.
She let me go and stepped back from me with a self-satisfied smile on her face that told me she thought she had my number.
And I have a hunch the lustful smirk on my face told her she was absolutely right.
Whatever that teakettle turned out to be, I knew who had first dibs on it in my book.
Chapter:
•19•
I went back to my office and let my bottom desk drawer buy me a drink.
On the other side of the wall, I could hear my next-door neighbor, an accountant with thick glasses, clickety-clacking his adding machine. I envied the guy. Must be nice to have a job where everything added up. Rarely see it in my line of work.
For instance, Jessica Rabbit could easily have had her pick of any human guy she wanted. Yet she ran off and married a nobody ‘toon rabbit. Why? To get his teakettle? Hardly seemed likely. She could have spent one night with him, or even just stroked his nose, and he’d have given her his teakettle plus his house and all his money to boot.
And what about that teakettle? What made it so important? Who had it,- and how did they get it?
I sank a well into my bottom drawer, and struck more bourbon.
I opened my closet door and flipped on the old black and white TV set I keep in there out of sight of clients.
There was a football game on I wanted to catch, the Rams against the Bears with the Rams trying something new, a ‘toon gorilla as linebacker. Nothing particularly unusual about that. Last statistics I saw, nearly seventy-five percent of all pro players were ‘toons. According to some people, it’s ruined the game, made it not so much football as barnyard brawling.
Anyway, what makes this new Rams player different is that she’s not only a ‘toon, she’s also a female, the first woman to break into the pros. A lot of sportswriters dismiss it as nothing but a desperate gimmick on the part of a bottom-division team, but I don’t know. I don’t see how you can call anybody a gimmick who’s eight feet tall, three hundred pounds, and can lift the back end of a car with her toes.
The game had barely gotten under way, and the new girl on the block had just thrown the Bears’ quarterback for a ten-yard loss, when Roger came in, floating two feet off the ground as usual. “What a hectic day I had,” he said. His words collapsed inside their balloon like so many beanbags. He took off his coat, walked to the open closet, hung it up, and shut the door on a football sailing toward a wide receiver all alone in the end zone.
