Murder in Luxury

by Hugh Pentecost

  I felt a little jolt of electricity run along my spine. "Eleanor Payson?" I asked.

  His smile vanished. The visible side of his face turned rock hard. "You psychic or something?" he asked.

  "Val mentioned her," I said, "but not you."

  "Did she mention what happened to Eleanor?"

  "Plane crash, a few months ago," I said. "It was one of a chain of disasters to people Valerie cares about—her husband and her friend in the space of a few months. She's developed the morbid notion that she's bad luck for people who get close to her."

  "She was trying to help Eleanor out of trouble," Derek said. "She was a good friend. It wasn't her fault that the landing gear on the plane malfunctioned, and that it crashed and burned when the pilot tried to land with his wheels up. Did Val tell you where Elly was going and why?"

  "Sketchy," I said. "She told me Eleanor was having some problems with her love life; Valerie had arranged a place for her to go, helped her with money, I gathered." It was up to Derek to fill out the sketch if he wanted to.

  "This happened to me just over three years ago," he said, after a pause. He brought his hands down on the metal arms of his wheelchair. His face, a muscle working along the line of his jaw, was turned toward the window again. "You know me! Old Joe Hopeless! I never got Elly to buy what I had to offer. I wanted her to marry me. I wanted her forever. I never got to first base. I wasn't even able to be a friend."

  I could tell it hurt him. "Another guy?" I asked.

  "Always another guy," he said, bitterly. "Always the same other guy. Would you believe, a married man, having an affair with a college girl? He never showed up where she was; she always went to him. The last time I saw her—would you believe it was the night this happened to me?—she was pregnant with his kid. She was determined to go through with it, to have the child, even though he wouldn't budge out of his marriage."

  "Nice guy," I said. "Who is he?"

  "I have no idea," Derek said. "If I did I just might kill him if I could get at him."

  "Valerie suggested Eleanor was trying to get away from this guy."

  "She died, keeping his identity a secret!" Derek said. "Wouldn't tell me. Didn't tell Val."

  "You know that from Valerie?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you've seen Valerie since the plane crash?"

  "No." He turned the rock-hard good side of his face to me. "The whole bloody thing is out of some kind of romantic horror novel," he said. "Did you know that Val went to Vassar using her mother's maiden name? Valerie Hanson, she called herself. None of her friends, nor I, knew that she was Jeb McCandless's daughter. Some crazy idea the old man had that all that money would produce some kind of unhappiness for her. I didn't know till a few months ago who she really was. The story came out in the papers when her husband died in that fire. I knew Dick Summers. It was a good marriage, with a few million bucks kept in hiding, for God's sake. I never saw her in that five years her marriage lasted. I have to admit I didn't even think about her. I had my own problem, a craving for Eleanor that never let up. But the night before Eleanor took off on that last plane trip she called me. She told me she'd run into Val, and that Val was helping her get away. She'd keep in touch, she promised."

  "You didn't see her before she left?"

  "Looking like this?" he said, angry, bitter.

  I waited for him to go on.

  "That night—that's what I call it, 'that night'—I went to see Eleanor. It was against the rules. I might interrupt her monster-man at his pleasure. But I'd called her on the phone, and she was suddenly in tears, and she told me she was pregnant, that her man didn't see that as a reason to change his pattern. I went down to Jane Street in the Village where she had an apartment. I pleaded with her to come away with me. I'd raise this other guy's child if she wanted to have it. I had the feeling she was being banged around by this bastard. But she wasn't having any. He was 'my man,' thick or thin, good or bad. I left her, walked a block toward the subway station, and—had my brains beaten out by some madman who obviously needed whatever money I had for a fix. Six months in a hospital and a nursing home; six months trying to get my life put together."

  "Were you robbed?"

  "Whatever I had. Fifteen or twenty bucks, a good wristwatch, wallet with credit cards and a driver's license."

  "You didn't connect what happened to you with Eleanor's monster-man?''

  "Oh, sure," he said, sounding suddenly tired. "But I had no idea who he is, was. I never told the police where I'd been. Said I'd gone to call on friends who were out."

  "Why?"

  "It could have gotten Eleanor in trouble with her man. I've spent the time since I got rolling again trying to identify him, but no dice. I've never found anyone who saw her with someone. Five, six years they were involved, but it was evidently so private, so hidden."

  "But Eleanor called you, told you Val was helping her get away?"

  He nodded. "She called me from time to time. Of course what had happened to me was in the papers, on the tube, everywhere. Once I suggested to her that it might have been her man who saw me coming out of her apartment and clobbered me. Not possible, she assured me. He was out of town 'on business' that night. She—she was listed among the casualties the morning after that plane crashed; she and the kid. She'd had a boy child. I.. .1 managed to locate Val and talked to her on the phone. She was, you might say, in shock. She offered to come and see me, but I...1 don't see people. There was nothing any of us could do—at least that mattered too much. Val took care of what are laughingly called 'the arrangements'—funeral for Elly and the baby boy. Elly had no family. Monster-man never surfaced." He drew a deep breath. "But you didn't come to see me to hear all this."

  "I don't know what I came to hear, Derek," I said. "The detective investigating these two killings, one in Valerie's apartment and the one last night at the Beaumont, has both barrels aimed at her. The man killed in her apartment two nights ago, Carl Rogers, was a drug peddler and a porno dealer. Willie Bloom-field, who was shot in her room at the Beaumont last night, was in the sex business, managed a massage parlor. Keegan—that's the cop in charge—thinks Valerie may be a drug addict, a sex-queer of some sort. Would you buy that!"

  "Oh, for Christ's sake!" Derek said.

  "We need to know all we can about her past to knock that theory in the head," I said. "Our Tucson cowboy—Spector his name is—used an unfortunate phrase about her. He said she was 'hot stuff.' Is that how you thought of her when you first saw her at Vassar?"

  He reached out, almost zombielike, for a package of cigarettes on his desk. He was looking back, remembering. He'd seen her first—what, eight, nine years ago?

  "It can be a kind of fascinating, clinical study—a man teaching in a girls' college," he said. "I didn't live in Poughkeepsie where the college is. I was a guest lecturer. I drove up from New York on a Wednesday morning, lectured to three classes that afternoon, spent that night in a motel, lectured again on Thursday morning, drove back to the city after lunch. I was part of the community just one night a week. That kind of schedule suggests the possibility of a series of one-night stands."

  "Is that how it was?"

  He shook his head. "My code of ethics is, God help me, a little closer to 1910 than 1970. There was something about those college girls, coming there as freshmen at sixteen, seventeen. They were like flowers, just opening up. Oh, I suppose some of them had been screwing around in high school. You ever hear the figures on high school pregnancies? Scare the hell out of you if you had a daughter of your own. Anyway, sex was a major sport for many of them, away from home restrictions for the first time. I could have had a different one every Wednesday night if I'd wanted. I was an old-fashioned prude, I guess. I wanted more than fun and games; I wanted it to matter."

  "Valerie could have been a Wednesday night gal?" I asked, trying to get him back on my course. "From what our Tucson cowboy says, I get the idea she was an old hand at it."

  "Your Tucson cowboy is full of it," De
rek said. He hesitated. "I haven't any right to tell you this, Mark, but if she's in trouble..."

  "She could be," I said.

  "One Wednesday afternoon, after my last lecture of the day, Valerie fell into step beside me as I walked across the campus to where my car was parked. It wasn't unusual for one of the students to join me, to discuss some point I'd just made in the lecture.

  "Td like to discuss something rather personal with you, Mr. Newton,' Val said to me that day. You notice she called me Mr. Newton. 'I'd be very pleased,' she said, 'if you'd like to make love to me.'"

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that," Derek said. "I have to tell you I was a little winded. I muttered something about being flattered, but... She broke in quickly, 'I have to tell you that it would be a first time for me, Mr. Newton. I understand that virgins aren't much fun the first time or two, but I'd try to learn quickly to please you.' I tried to think of some not unkind way to back off. I wasn't inclined to be an educator in that field, arid, anyway, I'd already seen the girl I really wanted."

  "Eleanor Payson?"

  He nodded. "I tried to tell Val how pleased I was to have been asked, thought of, but that I was committed in another direction. She was embarrassed, probably hurt. She was sorry to have been so bold, but she hadn't known any other way. That was it, Mark; all there was then, all there was ever. But if your cowboy thinks she was 'hot stuff,' having it with the boys in Tucson, he's wrong. She'd waited till then to choose just the right person and I slammed the door on her. After that summer vacation she came back to college, met Dick Summers, and that was that. She made a good choice. He was older by a few years, been through a war. He was a man, a good one. I have no idea what went on in her marriage, but it seems to have worked."

  "No kids," I said. "Five years and no kids; smalltown married couple where kids are the rule, not the exception."

  "I think they'd have had kids soon," Derek said. "Dick wanted to make it on his own, repay old Jeb McCandless for his help, before he took on new responsibilities. I think they were planning."

  "What about drugs?" I asked.

  "Oh, boy, Mark, I can't really answer that one. Those kids, a few years back, smoked pot the way my father used to smoke cornsilk. It was the smart thing to do. I have to think most of them tried it, anyway. But a big habit? A few went on, I suppose, to the really dangerous stuff. In the two years I knew Val at Vassar I never saw any signs that she was into anything like that. After Dick Summers came on the scene she just blossomed. It was pretty to see. I often regretted that I hadn't been the one to make it happen. You see, I never got what I wanted."

  "Could Keegan be right?" I asked. "After she was tragically widowed could she have blown her stack? Taken to drugs, promiscuous sex?"

  "I can't answer that, Mark," Derek said. "I haven't known her for the last five years. I can say there was never any gossip about her. If she's still the girl I knew back at Vassar I'd give you a prompt no. But is she still that girl today? I don't know, Mark. I just don't know."

  It was almost noon when I left Derek Newton and headed back for my home base. Chambrun had said something about someone else handling my routines while I went after "background," but whatever he'd had in mind had not involved the worlds of the press, the radio, and television. The lobby of the Beaumont was swarming with gentlemen and ladies from those worlds, frustrated and angry. They'd been treated to a "no comment" from Keegan, from Chambrun, and from my office. When I came in from the street they swarmed over me like buzzards after fresh meat!

  I could only give them square one. Yes, there had been a second murder. Yes, it bore a grim likeness to what happened on Tenth Street the night before. Yes, the lady was in Dr. Partridge's care and couldn't be interviewed. No, I couldn't tell them if Keegan had any leads. I had no intention of making the lieutenant's fancy dreams public. That was up to him.

  I noticed Eliot Stevens, the International Press man, loitering on the fringe of the demanding army. He is a sandy-haired guy, looking professional behind hornrimmed glasses. He and I were old friends, and I realized he was waiting to get at me alone. I gave him a "thumbs-up" sign and he read it correctly. He sauntered over toward the elevators and I knew I'd find him waiting for me in my second-floor office.

  When I finally got free of the outraged media I went into the private office behind the front desk and called Chambrun's office. Maggie Madison was still substituting for Ruysdale, and she told me Chambrun was in a session with the owners, who'd called an emergency meeting when the news of a murder within the Beaumont's sacred portals had broken. He couldn't be disturbed unless it was an emergency. I had nothing to tell him except that I had nothing to tell him.

  Not knowing what was going on in 1216 and not wanting to ring that room phone in case Valerie was still resting, I took a quick elevator trip. I was surprised to see just one obvious plainclothes cop sitting near the door of 1216. The floor maid's cleaning wagon was standing just outside the open door of the room. I told the cop who I was.

  "I heard there was an army up here," I said. "Just you?"

  He told me he was Sergeant Polansky, one of Kee-gan's crew. "The lady's gone out," he told me.

  "Gone out?"

  "She and her lawyers and two cops to guard them," Polansky said. "Brunch somewhere in the neighborhood. They went out by the service elevator to avoid the press. I'm just here to see that no one with no business there goes into the room while she's gone."

  "The maid's in there?"

  Polansky shrugged. "She had the right number of mops," he said.

  "When do you expect Mrs. Summers back?" I asked.

  He gave me a twisted little smile. "It could be quite a while," he said. "They're going to need to do a lot of planning. Keegan's going to nail that lady to the barn door. You can count on it."

  Keegan wasn't out to solve a crime, I thought. He meant to prove himself right, no matter who got hurt. There was a nagging little thought that went with that idea. Could he be right? Could tragedy have turned a nice girl into something unbelievable? My job I told myself, was to prove it hadn't. And yet that wasn't my job, really. My job was to see to it that Beaumont was damaged as little as possible by the hoopla of a murder. If in the process I could clear Valerie Summers and ride off into the sunset with a lovely lady in front of me on my saddle horn, fine.

  Eliot Stevens is a chain smoker, and there were already three cigarette butts in the ashtray on my desk when I finally got there. He didn't look like a man in a hurry.

  "I'm willing to wait for the story," he said. "My colleagues, to coin a phrase, may be satisfied with just any story."

  "I don't really have a story for you, Eliot," I said. "Nothing you don't already know. A drug peddler named Carl Rogers was shot to death in Mrs Summers' Tenth Street apartment night before last. Her lawyer brought her here as a safe place to stay. Last night a porno-sex peddler was shot to death in her room here. She claims she never laid eyes on either man before. Off the record, Keegan doesn't believe her."

  "It's Keegan's kind of case," Eliot said, his long legs stretched out in front of him, head tilted back as he blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling light.

  "How do you mean?"

  "Ambitious man," Eliot said. "Married to the assistant commissioner's daughter, headed for high places. You don't make a reputation on street-corner shoot-outs. He's got everything here: dope, sex, a beautiful rich lady, daughter of a famous corporate giant—names, scandal." Eliot smiled at me. "Someone might even write a book about it."

  I smiled back at him. "I'm making notes," I said.

  "He suspects Mrs. Summers?" Eliot asked.

  "Off the record. What makes you think he might?"

  "It's the way his mind would work," Eliot said. "Where the glamor lies, there lie headlines."

  "You sound as if you don't like him."

  "I don't, but I'll have to give you an honest evaluation. I've covered half a dozen cases of his. You noticed he's always dressed for the camera, right out of a cus
tom tailor's shop? Always thinking of the big story in which he'll be the key figure. But I have to tell you this, with some reluctance. If it doesn't pan out the way he wants it to, the way that will give him big headlines, he'll keep after it until he gets the real killer. His score on success is pretty fabulous. If your Mrs. Summers can survive his first attack, if it isn't the way he hopes it is, she can count on being cleared beyond any doubts, because Keegan will come up with the real killer. He's a bulldog."

  "So we just keep her breathing until he points some other way," I said.

  "If she's innocent," Eliot said. He crossed one leg over the other. "Is it sensible to assume that some gang of drug and sex peddlers would choose to select this lady's pad—pads, for God's sake—on two successive nights to commit murders? I mean, if she doesn't have any connection with them? The first time there might be any number of freak explanations. But the second time, they follow her to where she goes and stage a repeat performance. She's not connected with them? Even with his hunger for headlines Keegan would be a dummy not to follow that lead."

  I didn't say anything because I couldn't think of anything to say. I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that she wasn't a killer, certainly not last night when I'd been with her for five hours. But connected to the killer or killers in some fashion was something else again.

  "I might be some use to you, Mark, if you'll make a trade with me," Eliot said.

  "What kind of trade?"

  "Give me the inside on what develops here at the Beaumont and I, in return, will give you a hatful of information on the late Jeb McCandless."

  "Valerie's father?"

  "In person. He died about three years ago—1977. The masterminds who run my news service thought there might be a feature story on old Jeb. He had been a pirate, a power, a hidden force behind governments. He owned a piece of everything worth owning—transportations, communications, oil, coal, steel, pharmaceutical supplies. You name it, he had a piece of it. A big story on Jeb McCandless seemed obvious. I was assigned. I saw your lady just once, at the old man's funeral. She wouldn't talk then, and I never got to try later. Can you guess why?"