Strip for Murder

by Richard S. Prather

  “Whoa, sweetheart. Don't get me wrong. And I believe you. Give me a little time to adjust. Why, I even know some voodoo experts, and yogis, and Democrats, and I like ‘most all of them. But I had to get used to them. OK?”

  She shook her head. “I suppose.”

  “Incidentally, who are Bob and Mary?”

  I suppose I should have tumbled, but Laurel was saying, “Sometimes you make me want to strangle you,” and I, remembering, said, “You darn near did, Laurel,” and then the conversation went in other directions.

  She stared at me, smiled slowly. “So I did. I had my chance, didn't I? You're impossible, Shell. Let's go get breakfast.”

  “No, thanks—and don't flip again. It's just that I never feel like breakfast till lunch. You go ahead. I want to make a call, anyway.”

  “At this hour?”

  That was right. It was only about an hour after dawn. I wanted to phone Mrs. Redstone, but it could wait for a little while longer. I'd meant to phone her from here last night, and ask her if she knew anything about Poupelle's gambling, or had heard any mention of Castle Norman, and a few other things, but last night I had been sidetracked.

  Laurel said, “You'd better eat something. You might have a big day ahead of you.”

  “I've got a big day behind me. But maybe you're right. I'll toy with a strip of bacon.”

  “Come on, I'll give you something that'll make you feel good.”

  “You already have. But I'm game. After this morning, I can stomach anything.”

  She said impishly, “Even me?”

  In mock shock I said, “Laurel!” but she had turned to go.

  I followed her to the right of the Council Building, past the pool, in which three women stood in four feet of water, appearing to hang there on marvelous water wings, and into the building, which turned out to be the dining room—cafeteria-style.

  I looked at the line of people getting their trays filled with food, all of them with their backs to me, and I said, “Laurel, I'm not sure I can go through with this.”

  There were a number of square tables filling the room, and she led me to one, told me to sit down, and said, “I'll bring you some good nourishing food. You just wait there.”

  I waited. I had the urge to get up and go about my business, but what does a detective do on a case at this time of morning? Besides, I was still weak. There were a number of things I meant to do today, and several places I meant to go, and maybe Laurel had been right about my needing some nourishment. I was pretty hungry, at that; ravenous for me. Come to think of it, I hadn't eaten any dinner last night, and during the night I'd used up all the calories from lunch.

  Laurel moved down the line, glancing over her shoulder at me every once in a while, and every time she did I was staring straight at her. In a group of fifty well-dressed people at a party, she would have stood out like a nudist; here, among nudists, there were not words to describe the sensation that was Laurel.

  She came back to the table balancing two trays, unloaded them, and then sat down across from me. She slid a bowl of some cereal in front of me. I shrugged, picked up a spoon, and had at it—for one bite.

  “What kind of slop is this?”

  “That's wheat germ.”

  “Germs?”

  “Wheat germ. The germ of wheat. It's what they take out of white bread so it won't spoil or keep you alive. Eat it. It's good for you.”

  “Haven't you got some white bread without germs? Or maybe some old typhoid bacillus?”

  “One's about as bad as the other. Eat it. It's got the whole B complex in it.”

  “Baby, I've got enough complexes already. Especially in this madhouse. I'll soon start foaming—”

  “I mean vitamins. Eat it.”

  She was stern. I looked at her, then grinned. “Yes, Mother.” But I ate it. Thought a lot of that girl.

  There was also a glass of milk at my plate, so I gulped half of it and roared. “What's that!”

  “Milk.”

  “Yeah. From a dead cow. Tell me true, now. What was that?”

  She giggled. “Milk. Oh, it's got a little brewer's yeast and lecithin and powdered skim milk and wheat germ in it, and—”

  “You mean it's poisoned?”

  “No, silly. Drink it.” She laughed, then sat smiling at me for a moment, “Shell, don't you want to be as strong as the rest of us?”

  I could feel my lip lifting. I sneered at her. And I downed that milk from a dead cow. It almost downed me. But I won and said proudly, “Look. I did it. I did it.”

  Well, there was more ugly stuff scattered around before me, but I was through. Laurel swept daintily through enough food to feed a regiment of Shell Scotts, then said, “Shall we go?”

  We went. During what Laurel laughingly referred to as breakfast, she had told me that the Council wanted to talk to me some more about the convention—which, I recalled, was supposed to get under way tomorrow. I said I'd be gone most, if not all, of the day and for her to see if she couldn't convince the Council she could brief me herself. I felt rather peculiar about that convention and my supposed part in it, since I was quite sure I wouldn't be around. But there was always a chance that the wires I'd sent and the phone calls I'd made, plus the intensive work the Los Angeles police were putting in on the Yates homicide, would bear fruit. If so, my job for Mrs. Redstone could well be wound up today, in which case I'd be on my own time. And, anyway, I'd worry about tomorrow when it came.

  There were no phones in the cabins, but Laurel reminded me of the phone in the Council Room. I told her I'd see her later and she gave me a resigned look, then went to her cabin. I found the phone in the empty Council Room, dialed Mrs. Redstone's number.

  It rang for quite a while. I was thinking I should have called even later, since Mrs. Redstone was probably sound asleep. But she impressed me as a pretty fine party, who would pretend to be glad I'd awakened her even if she felt like yanking out the phone, so I let it go on ringing. That's exactly what it did; it went on ringing. Nobody answered.

  That was funny, I thought. She'd hardly be out this early. Just in case I'd dialed the wrong number, I looked it up and carefully dialed it again, but there was still no answer. I hung up, then headed for my cabin. I knew there was probably no reason to hurry, but I ran anyway.

  About half an hour later I arrived at the Redstone house, fully dressed up to the Colt Special under my coat. The curving white gravel drive was empty now, and I drove past the spot where I'd clobbered Garlic and parked before the cement steps. The front door was open. I rang several times, then went on inside.

  I called a couple of times, but got no answer. I prowled around downstairs and then went up to the second floor.

  I found her in a bedroom, wearing a quilted robe and seated in an overstuffed chair. I had been right back there at the camp: There'd been no need to hurry. Mrs. Redstone was sound asleep.

  There was never a sounder sleep, never a more lasting or final sleep. She wouldn't wake up from this one. The vibrant, healthy, and in a way lovely Mrs. Redstone was dead, her skull quite shattered.

  Chapter Twelve

  For a minute or so I just looked at her, feeling sicker and more sorry than I'd ever felt before in the presence of death, with very few exceptions. I hadn't been close to Mrs. Redstone, I had hardly known her, but she had been, I thought, a rare kind of woman. Strong, firm, pleasant. Intelligent and graceful. And, hell, I'd enjoyed her. I'd liked her. Not to mention the fact that she'd hired me to do a job for her. While I'd been jumping around at Fairview she must have been lying here dead.

  Well, I'd finish the case for her, finish it for sure. And a hell of a lot of good that would do her now.

  I went to her finally, touched her skin, looked at her dead eyes. Rigor mortis was just starting; it had affected the head and neck, but hadn't spread farther. She'd been dead for hours. On the floor at her feet, as if it might have fallen from her hand to her lap and then to the carpet, was a small, gleaming .32 Smith and Wesson re
volver. Resting on a table to her left was a newspaper, still folded in the middle, the headlines spattered with brown stains and darker blobs.

  The headlines were a surprise, and for a moment they didn't make much sense. Then they did. “Society Beauty Discovered in Nudist Camp.” In smaller type at the head of a story covering the two right-hand columns was: “Daughter of Mrs. Ellen Redstone, Society Leader, Queen of Sunbathing Group.”

  I skimmed quickly through what I could see of the story without touching the paper, then spotted a phone, went to it, and dialed the complaint board at City Hall. I got put through to Samson in Homicide.

  “Shell?” he said. “What's the idea of bothering a man who's just got to work?”

  “Sam,” I said, “remember Mrs. Redstone, gal who called you a couple of nights back?”

  “Yeah. One you're working for, huh?”

  “I was. She's dead, Sam. Murdered in her home. I'm at the place now.”

  He swore, asked me some questions, then said, “What makes you think she was killed?”

  “A lot of things. It's set up to look like suicide, but it won't fit this one. Not for me it won't, anyway. It looks good, gun at her feet and all, but I can't buy it.” I described the scene. He hadn't seen the Clarion, which had printed the story Mrs. Redstone had supposedly read, but I heard him yell to somebody to grab a copy and bring it up.

  “Listen, Sam,” I said. “There's a good chance this ties into the Yates homicide. And now might be the right time to ask the brand-new son-in-law, Andon Poupelle, where he was all night. I think the two daughters inherit fifteen-plus millions, and that leaves Poupelle in the middle of plenty of cash.”

  “Right, Shell. Thanks.”

  “Can you run down that Clarion story?”

  “Yeah. Talk to Jim Hansen of the Wilshire Division when he gets out there. Call me back.” He hung up.

  I was careful where I put my feet as I walked back near Mrs. Redstone's body, bent over, and read the first part of the Clarion's article again. It was written in a flamboyant; lurid style that hinted at all sorts of dark and evil orgies. Sydney Laurel Redstone was named in the first line of the first paragraph, but I didn't see the name of the camp anywhere. I went downstairs and smoked a cigarette while I waited for the police cars and the dead wagon. I also thought quite a bit about Poupelle and Vera, Ed Norman and Paul Yates. And about Laurel, too.

  A radio car was the first to arrive, with no siren. Right behind it came two Homicide detectives and Lieutenant James Hansen in a black Chrysler. I led them all upstairs, described everything I'd done since my arrival.

  When the Homicide men and the crew from the crime lab got busy, Hansen took me out into the upstairs hall and said, “You were doing a job for her, Scott?”

  “That's right.” I gave him all I had that seemed important.

  He frowned and said, “Her daughter's in a nudist camp?”

  “Place called Fairview. Few miles out of town.”

  Hansen shrugged. “Looks to me like the old lady lamped that story and couldn't take it. She's big society stuff, you know. That kind of thing wouldn't ever die down. How come you don't see it that way, Scott?”

  “I told you, Hansen, Mrs. Redstone knew her daughter was there. And she wasn't the type to go off her rocker over this thing, anyway.”

  He shrugged. Then he leered. “No kidding, Scott,” he said. “This young daughter of hers is in a real nudist camp? Running around nekkid?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No kidding.”

  I wasn't angry with him for getting a small kick out of the idea. I didn't know Hansen well, but I liked him. He was efficient, honest, worked fourteen hours a day most days, and he'd seen more dead men and women then I ever would. Once they were dead, they were just corpses, another job. But Hansen's reaction made me more aware of what other reactions would be.

  He was a good cop, used to murders, and murders faked to look like suicide. And he didn't think this one had been phonied. He was mildly worried because it was such a big one, and mildly amused at the circumstances surrounding it. I remembered what I'd thought yesterday after that shot at me out at Fairview: that if I had been knocked off, the emphasis wouldn't have been on “murder,” but on “nudist camp.” For the first time I began to consider the possibility that I might even wind up alone in thinking Mrs. Redstone had been murdered.

  I said, “Give her a paraffin test, anyway.”

  “Sure,” he said. “We'll cover it six ways from the middle. You're really bugs on the idea she didn't do it, aren't you?” He paused. “That's right, you were working for the gal. What's the matter? Now she's dead, you feel—”

  “I don't feel anything. Just slip that paraffin glove on her and find out if she fired a gun.”

  He nodded. “Well, I guess we better talk to the daughter.”

  That was right, Laurel couldn't know about this yet. Nor, for that matter, would Vera. Except for me and the police, probably only the killer knew. I said, “Hansen, let me tell her.”

  He frowned and was silent for a while. Then he said, “Can't hurt. All right.”

  “OK if I phone her from here?”

  “Go ahead. Don't tell her what it's about.”

  “I'll just tell her I've got some bad news.”

  Mrs. Redstone's body was being carried downstairs to the dead wagon as we went back into the bedroom. Lieutenant Hansen said to the tall, gray-haired coroner's deputy, “When'd it happen?”

  The man stopped. “Around midnight, I'd say. Roughly—very roughly. Let you know more later, Jim.” He went out.

  Hansen stood near me as I dialed the number of the phone in Fairview's Council Room. A man answered.

  “Who's this?” I asked him.

  “Bob Brown. Who's calling?”

  “Scott. Don Scott.”

  “Ah, the energetic health director. What can I do for you?”

  “Put Laurel Redstone on the line, will you?”

  There was silence for a few minutes, then Laurel's soft voice said, “Mr. Scott?”

  “Yeah. Laurel, uh, anything new happen?”

  “No. You sound strange.”

  “Get into a ... different outfit, and meet me at the gate in about twenty minutes.” Hansen chuckled softly when I said “different outfit.”

  Laurel said slowly, “All right. What's the matter?”

  “I've got some bad news for you. Lousy news.”

  “What is it?”

  “I'll tell you when I see you. I'm coming out with some police officers. They'll probably want to talk to you too.”

  “Police? What is it? What is it?”

  “Can't tell you right now, Laurel. See you in a little while.”

  She said all right and we hung up.

  Hansen said, “Let's go.”

  Laurel was waiting outside the gate when Hansen, a detective sergeant, and I drove up in an official car. She looked fresh and young as a spring morning in a simple white dress, unadorned except for a brown belt. She was carrying a brown bag and wearing low-heeled shoes, and a worried expression was on her face. When the car stopped I got out and went over to her, Hansen following close behind me.

  She put her hand on my arm, looked beyond me to Hansen. “Shell, what's the matter? You sounded so—so grim on the phone.”

  I knew she'd had all the time since I'd phoned to get ready for what I was going to say, but I still couldn't come right out with it. I said, “Laurel, this gentleman is Detective Lieutenant Hansen, of Homicide.”

  “Homicide?” she said. “Why is he—”

  I swallowed. “Laurel, your mother is dead.”

  She looked blankly at me, then smiled slowly. “Stop it, Shell. This isn't a very good joke.”

  “It isn't a joke. It looked like suicide, but—anyway, she was shot. She's dead, Laurel. I found her body.”

  Her expression was still blank. “I don't believe it,” she said. “I won't believe it until ... I see her.”

  Hansen stepped forward then and began to talk to
Laurel. He told her it was just routine, and asked her if she'd been in camp all night. She said she had been and, yes, she could prove it. For most of the night, anyway. She looked at me then. She corroborated the fact that she and her sister, Vera, would inherit her mother's estate. But she still wasn't believing us when she got into the police car and we drove away.

  On the way into town I showed Laurel a copy of the Clarion, which Hansen had picked up, but it just bounced off her. I'd finished reading the story on the way to Fairview. We drove in silence.

  The L.A. county morgue is downstairs in the Hall of Justice. We parked in the Spring Street lot and Laurel, Hansen, and I went inside, leaving the sergeant at the wheel of the car. Inside the Hall of Justice we turned left, went past the door marked “Coroner,” and on down to the end of the hall. At our left was Room 106, our first stop, but before we went in I glanced to the right, down another short hall to the door marked “Viewing Room.” Mrs. Redstone's body would be in there now, beyond that door.

  In a minute or two Laurel had identified herself and we all walked toward the Viewing Room, one of the men from the Coroner's Office with us. It was quiet and I held Laurel's arm as we walked. Her muscles were stiff under my fingers and her face had a frozen, almost deathlike look.

  It was over in a few seconds, but it seemed like a year to me. It must have seemed longer to Laurel. We stepped into the small room and I turned Laurel gently to her left. Just behind the thick plate-glass window, resting on its four-wheeled table and covered with a chenille bedspread, was Mrs. Redstone's body.

  The spread hid the table, covered everything except the profile of that dead face. Hansen said in a quiet voice, “This is your mother, isn't it, Miss Redstone?”

  His voice was soft and gentle, but here in the small room and with that lifeless body only a yard from us, the words sounded hollow, and as brutal as a hammer against a coffin.

  “Why, yes,” Laurel said. “Yes.”