Elementary, My Dear Groucho

by Ron Goulart

  “Also how important Erika Klein is to the Nazis,” I added. “Do they want her dead, too? Could be she’s the real target and they were just warming up on Denker.”

  “I don’t much care for the lady—if she were a little heftier, she could be playing a leading role in something by Wagner—but I’ll go talk to her tomorrow.”

  “She may be grieving.”

  “All the grief she felt for Denker she probably got over about an hour or less after she heard the fellow was defunct.”

  I know somebody in publicity out at Mammoth, a leftover from my L.A. Times days,” I said, making another note in my legal tablet. “I’ll see what background stuff I can dig up on both of them.”

  “Be helpful if we can get a look at the autopsy report, too,” said Groucho, taking the dead cigar out of his mouth so he could drink some of his coffee. “Sergeant Norment seemed moderately cordial toward you, Rollo. Can you get a copy of that and maybe his report on the murder?”

  Poking my tongue into my cheek, I considered the ceiling beams for a few silent seconds. “Jack Norment’s not a bad guy, but I’m not sure how cooperative he’s likely to be,” I answered finally. “With Ravenshaw holding press conferences, Norment may think we’re all doing this for the publicity.”

  “We are,” reminded Groucho. “Be that as it may, I intend to do a thorough job—so see what you can pry out of him.”

  Jane rocked slowly in the chair. “It would be helpful to find out what Ravenshaw’s up to. Do you think he’s actually going to try a real investigation—or was that plain and simple baloney?”

  “It’s difficult to predict what a showboat like Ravenshaw is going to do. Any ideas, Frank?”

  “I can also talk to my Mammoth publicity contact about Ravenshaw’s plans. M. J. McLeod owes me a couple favors.”

  “Notice how he uses initials,” Jane told Groucho. “That’s so I won’t realize he’s talking about Mary Jane McLeod, with whom he once carried on a torrid romance.”

  “Tepid romance,” I corrected. “Four years ago that was, long before you and I ever met. And the whole dull thing only lasted six and a half weeks.”

  “Notice that he doesn’t mention that five of those six and a half weeks were spent in a motel in Caliente with the venetian blinds tight shut the whole darn time.”

  “Children, children,” cautioned Groucho. “As someone who’s always trod the straight and narrow path, especially when it passed anywhere near a house of ill repute, I don’t like to hear references to salacious conduct on the part of my disciples.” He drank just about all his coffee. “Now then, let’s review what we’ve got on our list thus far.” He held up his left hand, fingers spread wide, and ticked them off with his unlit cigar as he spoke. “Frank talks to the tempestuous M. J. McLewd—”

  “That’s McLeod, and don’t believe a word Jane says.”

  “Frank learns from this blameless candidate for sainthood all he can about Felix Denker and his missus, Erika Klein,” resumed Groucho. “He also worms news of Miles Ravenshaw’s plans out of her. In his spare time, he contacts Sergeant Norment and acquires the Denker autopsy report and anything else he can slip under his coat. I need a good pencil sharpener, by the way. Meanwhile, I’ll pay a condolence visit to the Widow Erika and find out what she thinks happened to her spouse. It also might not be a bad notion to drop in on Professor Ernst Hoffman for a wee chat.”

  “I met him once at your office,” I said. “He’s active in several anti-fascist organizations, isn’t he?”

  “That’s Ernie, yes,” said Groucho. “He also knew Denker and Erika in the Old Country—and he’s kept in touch with them since they all came to America.”

  “He’s the guy who teaches at Altadena Community College?”

  “Yep, he’s been in their German literature department ever since he got here from Berlin,” said Groucho. “Ernie’s specialty is Goethe. In fact, he and I have been meaning to write a philosophical cowboy yarn to be called Goethe ’Long Little Dogie. But, law me, we just can’t ever seem to find the time.”

  “Groan,” observed Jane.

  “I could’ve added that we’re also contemplating a Civil War epic to be known as Faustus with the Mostest. Be thankful I spared you that.”

  I leaned forward, picking up my cup. “We should find out what we can about Marsha Tederow, too.”

  “Who’s she?” asked Jane.

  “She was an assistant art director on The Valley of Fear,” I explained. “She was killed in an automobile accident just a few days before Denker got shot.”

  “Two people connected with the same movie,” said Jane. “That does sound a mite suspicious.”

  Groucho asked me, “Think you can get a look at the accident report?”

  “Norment might help. If not, I can talk to somebody on the L.A. Times. I’ll also see what they’ve got in the morgue files on Marsha Tederow’s accident—and on her.”

  “Right, since we already know she was one of the lasses Denker was entangled with,” said Groucho.

  “You should also check and see how well Miles Ravenshaw knew her,” suggested Jane.

  “Right you are,” said Groucho approvingly. “It might be we have nothing more than a nice simple love triangle here. Or, on the other hand, it might be that some Martians left over from Orson Welles’s Halloween party invaded Mammoth and shot him. At his point, children, we don’t actually know a damn thing.”

  “You know that you and Frank make a great team and you’ve cleared up a couple of tough murder cases over the past year,” Jane said to him. “You’re likely to do it again with this one. So don’t look so hangdog.”

  “The reason I look so hangdog, my dear, is that they hanged my dog just before I drove over here. I warned him they wouldn’t put up with cattle rustling in Beverly Hills, but he paid me no mind.” He got to his feet, curtsied, and walked over to her. Bending, he kissed the top of her head. “I appreciate, though, your vote of confidence, as does every red-blooded Eagle Scout in this great land of ours. If I had any need to locate an eagle, I’d join the scouts myself. But for now, let me just state for the record—and the record we’re alluding to is the Boswell Sisters’ version of “Flat Foot Floogie”—let me state for the record, I say, that you deserve all the honors that this great state of ours has heaped upon you by naming you the Daughter of the Regiment, the Girl of the Golden West, and the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Although why Frank allows you to fool around with all those oafish fraternity boys is beyond me. It’s also beyond Pasadena, and if we’re going to reach there before daybreak, we’ve going to have to use those little electric prods on all the sled dogs.” He kissed the top of her head once more before returning to his chair.

  I started to set the legal pad aside, then stopped. “Four,” I said.

  “This is an odd time to be playing golf,” observed Groucho.

  “I just remembered the four Denker scribbled on that copy of The Strand.”

  “Ah, yes, the Clue of the Dying Message.”

  “A four? You didn’t mention that either, Frank.”

  “May not mean a damn thing, but it looked like Denker dipped his finger in his own blood and started to write something on the cover of a magazine that was on the table next to the chair he died in.”

  “What sort of four?” She came over to sit close beside me on the sofa.

  “Open-topped-style four.” I drew it on the pad.

  Frowning, Jane took my fountain pen from me. “This is a trick Rod Tommerlin taught me when I was working on Hillbilly Willy with him,” she explained. “We did a sequence last year where some Nazi spies snuck into Weedville, Willy’s hometown.” She added three lines to the number four and converted it into a swastika. “It’s a surefire and easy way to draw a perfect swastika.”

  “If we knew that Denker used a similar method to construct his Nazi insignias,” said Groucho, who’d come over to the table to watch what Jane was doing, “we’d have something.”

  “What would we have
?”

  My wife said, “Maybe that he was trying to say that a Nazi had shot him.”

  “I don’t know, Jane,” I said slowly. “It’s sure a possibility, I guess. But maybe the guy was only drawing a four—maybe, though I hope not, in his last moments his bloody hand twitched and scrawled something that vaguely resembles a four.”

  “Don’t be so hangdog, Franklin,” warned Groucho. “At this stage, we need every clue we can get and I think it’s darned nice of your long-suffering missus to provide us with such a jolly handsome one.” He stood up, stretched. “We’re going to have to dig into the Nazi angle anyway and this gives us one more reason to do that.”

  I stood up, too. “It’s nice being back in the detective business, Groucho,” I told him.

  “I haven’t been this overjoyed, Rollo,” he confided, “since I was runner-up in the Miss America contest back in 1926.”

  Seven

  With a bundle of newspapers under my arm, I paused in the open doorway of Jane’s studio. “Busy?” I inquired.

  “Shouldn’t you be shouting ‘Wuxtry wuxtry’?” She set her pen on the taboret, capped the bottle of India ink, and smiled at me. “Find out anything new in those newspaper stories about the Felix Denker murder?”

  I’d driven over to the outdoor newsstand on Bayside Boulevard earlier in the morning and picked up early editions of all the Los Angeles–area newspapers they had. After spending more than an hour going over them and taking notes, I left the sofa and went in to share my findings with my wife.

  Jane was wearing a candy-stripe blouse and dark skirt and she had her auburn hair tied back with a twist of green ribbon. “Give me the important stuff first,” she requested. “How many times did they mention you?”

  “Hey, the L.A. Times also mentions you.” I deposited my bundle atop a filing cabinet and located the Times. “Here it is … . ‘Groucho Marx will be assisted by Frank Denby, a screenwriter who’s married to popular cartoonist Jane Danner, creator of the hit comic strip Hollywood Molly (see page 23).’ Actually, Jane, you got more space than I did.”

  “That’s because they run my strip. But you did get promoted to screenwriter.”

  “It’s only that screenwriter sounds better than unemployed radio writer.”

  Jane eyed me. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken down those No Sulking signs.”

  “What I miss more are the spittoons.” I moved closer to her. “My guess about when Denker was killed was pretty close. The police estimate he died sometime between eight and ten Monday night.”

  “And the weapon?”

  “A thirty-two Smith and Wesson revolver, which hasn’t turned up so far.” I glanced at the daily strip she’d been inking. “Looks great.”

  “Less flattery and more gory details,” she requested, leaning and kissing me on the cheek.

  I returned the kiss, then took a step back. “Okay, one of the stories mentions that Denker owned a thirty-two Smith and Wesson and that the police haven’t been able to find it at his home or in his office at Mammoth.”

  “So he might’ve been shot with his own gun?”

  “Might’ve, sure.”

  Jane asked, “And what, at long last, does your pal Sergeant Norment have to say about the mysterious Clair Rickson?”

  “Not a damned thing.”

  “Nada?”

  “Exactly—she isn’t mentioned in any of the accounts,” I told her. “I tried to phone Clair a few minutes ago and her answering service says she’s sick and won’t be returning any calls today.”

  “Think they’ve got her in the pokey?”

  “I’ll attempt to find out.”

  “Did Norment announce that they have any suspects?”

  “All he’s told the press is that they have several good leads that he’s not ready to discuss,” I answered. “Dan Bockman’s story claims the cops are looking for an electrician who was fired from Mammoth a week back after a row with Denker on the set of The Valley of Fear. No name given, but this lad is supposedly a German who goes along with all Hitler’s Aryan theories.”

  “Does that sound plausible to you?”

  “Only if you can explain why Denker would let a guy who swore he’d get even for getting canned close enough to shoot him—and maybe with his own damn gun.”

  “There wasn’t, you said, any sign of a fight—Denker didn’t tussle with his killer. Try to stop him?”

  “Nope, and the medical report confirms that.”

  “That could mean a friendly killer.”

  “Yeah, somebody he knew and probably even trusted.”

  “Where was his wife when he got shot?”

  “That’s in Norm Lenzer’s story,” I said, nodding back at my collection of newspapers. “Erika Klein left the Mammoth studios, checked out at the main gate, at a quarter after six that night. Didn’t sign in again until nine-thirty the next morning.”

  “There goes the domestic motive.”

  “Unless she hired somebody to knock her husband off.”

  Jane said, “‘His, Felix, you don’t know me, but I’m the thug your missus hired to shoot you. All in the family, as it were, so there’s no reason to put up a struggle.’ Nope, not very believable.”

  “Well, there are a lot of ways to get somebody to sit still while you assassinate him,” I said. “But it is sort of unlikely that it was a hired gunman.”

  “What does Norment say about the number four that Denker scrawled on the magazine cover?”

  “Not a hell of a lot. According to Bockman’s story, the Burbank police don’t attach too much importance to the alleged dying message,” I told her.”That, however, could just be a cover-up on Norment’s part.”

  Jane pushed back from her drawing board, stretched by reaching both arms high. “Do they link Marsha Tederow with Denker?”

  “Not yet, although a couple of stories talk about a possible Sherlock Holmes jinx. You know two people associated with the movie die violent deaths within a week.” I crossed over to sit in her wicker armchair. “I dug up a few articles about her auto accident out of our pile of old newspapers in the washroom. Small back-page items.”

  “Marsha Tederow wasn’t famous.”

  “Her Chevy coupe skidded on a rain-slick stretch of Mulholland Drive. Car went clean off the road and into a gully,” I said. “It exploded, caught fire, and she was pretty badly burned.”

  “Hell of a way to die.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It didn’t strike the police as anything but an accident. But maybe they’ll look into it again because of the tie-in with Denker.”

  “You and Groucho got mentioned in most of the stories about Denker’s murder?”

  “Overlooking what really happened, all the stories credit him with discovering the body,” I said. “And there are separate stories in most papers about the challenge.” I selected a paper off my stack and turned to page three. “‘Groucho Marx Versus Sherlock Holmes’ is the headline on this one. Others are variations. Even though they admit that Groucho and I have been successful at solving a few murder cases, they treat this whole business as sort of a joke. Maybe that’s because Miles Ravenshaw is involved.”

  “I think you guys are a terrific team,” said my wife, “but you have to admit that Groucho is a very difficult person to take seriously, Frank.”

  “Yeah, you’re—”

  The phone on her taboret rang. Jane answered, listened for a moment, wrinkled her nose, and handed me the phone. “Sergeant Norment himself.”

  “Morning, Jack,” I said into the mouthpiece.

  “It’s come to my attention, Frank, that you’ve been trying to contact me.”

  “I imagine you’ve heard that Groucho Marx and I would like to look into the Denker murder,” I began. “I was hoping I could get a copy of the autopsy report and maybe see the photos taken at—”

  “You’re no longer working for the Los Angeles Times, correct?”

  “No, Jack, but this—”

  “Even if you were still an a
ccredited newspaperman, Frank, and not a glamorous screenwriter, I wouldn’t be obliged to share confidential police information with you.”

  “You did, though, let me look at stuff like that when I—”

  “And Groucho Marx is an actor who paints on a mustache and chases blondes in lowbrow movies, isn’t he? That’s the Groucho Marx you’re in partnership with?”

  “It’s not the Groucho Marx who’s the dean of the law school at USC, no. The thing is—”

  “You are also the pair who got Sergeant Branner of the Bayside police sent up for murder, aren’t you?”

  “C’mon, Jack, he was crooked. You sure aren’t, so why—”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Frank,” he cut in, sounding as though he was smiling his joyless smile again. “I’m somewhat busy, but I did want to deliver a short lecture to you. I’d be obliged if you’d pass the gist of it on to Groucho Marx.” He coughed. “I’m in charge of finding out who killed Felix Denker. I’m doing that because it’s my job, not as a cheap stunt to promote a movie script or a second-rate detective film I’m starring in. Since I know you, Frank, I won’t throw you or Groucho out of any place I run into you unless you get too much underfoot and in my way. I’ll even give you a cordial hello if we chance to meet, but I sure as the devil am not going to cooperate with you or with Groucho Marx or with some half-baked actor who goes around saying ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’ You want any information on the case, read the papers. Good-bye.”

  As I handed Jane the handset to be hung up, she said, “You did a lot more listening than talking.”

  “That’s usually the way it is with sermons.” I gave her a summary of what Sergeant Norment had conveyed to me. “You think maybe he’s right? With the Peg McMorrow case we had some personal reasons for poking around—Groucho had known the girl and he was certain she didn’t commit suicide. And with the Dr. Denninger mess we both believed that Frances London couldn’t have murdered him. This time, though, there isn’t any reason like those to get mixed up with the killing.”

  “You two have proven you’re good at solving mysteries,” she reminded me. “Somebody killed Denker and that somebody is still running loose. There’s nothing wrong with tracking down a killer—even if you weren’t a close pal of the victim.”