Lost Lady

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  “Maybe he wasn’t kidding. Maybe he did kill Halliday.”

  “Don’t be absurd. I know he didn’t.”

  “That’s what he said about you.”

  “Neither of us did. I guess we both thought it was a good idea. But I know I didn’t do it, and I know Robert never would. I don’t mean that he wouldn’t kill a man who was in the act of making things rough for me, but he wouldn’t kill in cold blood.”

  “Would you?”

  “Oh, hell! Danny, you know I would. But I didn’t. Why keep squeezing the idea so hard? With a houseful of people like Dean’s guests downstairs—Dolores Laverne and all her no-good friends—why don’t you ask some other people the same question? Why concentrate on Robert and me?”

  “Routine,” I said. “Now suppose you take a guess at something—only because your guess would be better than mine. Do you connect Halliday’s death with that of your sister?”

  “Of course.” The question apparently surprised her. “I’d think it had to be that way.” Another little smile touched her fleetingly. “So I’m clearing myself and Robert, too. Either of us might well have been willing to do things to Dean. Neither of us wanted anything to happen to Dorothy.”

  “You inherited a fortune at her death, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t even get angry. “What difference did that make? I had more than I could ever spend anyway. No, Danny, that doesn’t figure as a motive. It works the other way, really.”

  My mind flashed back to Chuck Morrison’s theory that Iris might have been having an affair with Halliday. But with Halliday dead, that theory collapsed. Love for Halliday fitted one theory; hatred of him fitted the other. It couldn’t have been both ways.

  I asked a lot more questions. She gave me the impression of answering frankly, but I couldn’t be sure.

  She didn’t know anything about what might have happened between Dolores and Halliday at the party. She hadn’t seen Vince Montero. As far as she knew, the servants hadn’t been at home during the party.

  She already knew that the pistol with which Dorothy had been killed had showed up in its normal place, and that the ballistics test, while not too perfect because of the condition of the lethal bullet, was still accurate enough to mark that as the murder weapon. She said it didn’t make much sense to her: the killer putting the pistol back without cleaning it or replacing the empty shell with a new cartridge. Unless (and she came up with this on her own) somebody had been trying to make it look as though someone else had done it.

  As for Halliday’s death, she was willing to hazard an idea: that whoever killed him hadn’t been too concerned about whether or not he was caught—not at first, that is; that after Halliday had been shot, and there was no immediate outcry, the killer would naturally try to protect himself.

  “Or herself,” I amended.

  “Yes. Or herself.”

  I said there was something else I had to ask. I asked whether Dean Halliday had ever made a pass at her. She gave me an odd look and said he hadn’t.

  “Knowing you and knowing Halliday,” I said, “that’s a little hard to understand. He had plenty of chances.”

  Faint spots of color appeared in her cheeks. She said, “Listen, Danny. You’re nice. I like you. I could like you even more if you gave me a chance. But even you can get out of line. Suggesting that there might have been something between me and Dean is going too far. Let’s don’t play that way.”

  I backed away, not because I was satisfied, but because I felt certain I wouldn’t get anywhere.

  I suggested that she let Bayless take her to a hotel as soon as Marty Walsh had finished his questioning. To my surprise, she agreed. I had half expected her to be stubborn about it, to insist that she’d stay right where she was.

  I got up and said I was going downstairs. She came very close to me and said she loved to watch me when I was working. She said I looked handsome and efficient. She gave me a lot more malarkey and she sealed it with a kiss. It was one hell of a kiss, too. It made the one she’d given me that first day in the playhouse seem an amateur effort. Then, quite calmly, she disengaged herself, got some cold cream and cleansing tissue, and wiped the lipstick off. It was all very calmly done—except for the kiss itself—and she shoved me toward the door.

  “Remember, Danny,” she said, “there’s more where that came from.”

  There was a mirror in the hall, over a little table. I inspected myself to make sure all the lipstick was gone. I wouldn’t want to be kidded, and telling the truth about how it happened would sound ridiculous, too. All the way downstairs I wondered about it.

  I’m average—no more, no less. I’ve had a little luck with women, but it’s always been the result of hard work. With this dame, it looked as though I had to protect myself at all times. It didn’t balance, didn’t come out even. I wasn’t that good, no matter how much I wanted to flatter myself. There had to be a reason for it, and I couldn’t believe that it was exclusively my masculine charm.

  I reported to Marty Walsh and Bert Lane. I told them I hadn’t got anything but a lot of double talk. You could take it apart word by word, I said, and make something of it, or you could forget the whole thing. They said they’d had the same sort of no luck. Some of the drunks were sobering up, some were getting drunker. In a general way, they all seemed to know that their host had come into some money unexpectedly, and was celebrating. “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “We hang around until we get twice as confused,” Marty said. “Then we go down to the station and have a few words with Vince Montero. He was picked up on the Strip about an hour ago.”

  This was going to be another one of those long, hard nights. We did what we could at the house, knowing that there was always more to be done. Marty then turned over a lot of the remaining routine to some of the other dicks, and he and Bert Lane and I went back to the station.

  Montero was there, trying to look inscrutable and not succeeding.

  He didn’t resist interrogation. And he didn’t help, either. Nor did he pretend not to know that Halliday had been murdered. He said he heard it on the radio.

  Lane checked on that. The news had leaked through to the papers and it had hit a local news broadcast, so Vince’s story could have been true or he might have known before the item was broadcast. What he had hoped to do was to tease him into admitting he knew something he wasn’t supposed to know. That idea went the way of lots of other good ideas. Right down the chute.

  He had a fair alibi; not good, not bad. One of those things you could check on and find out he was telling the truth. At the same time there were lots of gaps in it, any one of them long enough to have enabled him to drop in at the house on Valleycrest Drive, do his stuff, and return to the Strip.

  He said Dean Halliday and Dolores Laverne had had a couple of battles, and that Halliday had warned her he was going to toss her back into the gutter and she had threatened to leave him for another moneybag who had propositioned her. I asked him how come she was at Halliday’s party, and he had an answer for that, too.

  He said Dolores had telephoned Halliday that afternoon and that there had been a big reconciliation scene over the telephone. He said Dolores had promised that she’d ditch Montero and the unspecified moneybag and play house with Halliday exclusively. Marty admitted that that checked with Dolores’ story, which didn’t actually mean anything except that it checked.

  “Who’s the guy who propositioned her?” Marty asked.

  “There ain’t no such guy. She just told Halliday that to scare him. It worked, too.”

  “What were you doing on the Strip all that time, Vince?” ‘

  ““Looking for a job. Dice.”

  “Find one?”

  “Hell, no. The heat’s really on. No games running. I got one offer, though.”

  “Where?”

  “Las Vegas. I told the guy no. Later, I heard about what happened to Halliday. I figure now I’d like to take that job.”

  “What changed you?” />
  “Dolores ain’t got her meal ticket no more. I gotta work. O.K. I should go to Vegas?”

  Marty thought it over for a moment. Then he said it’d be all right, but Vince was to let him know when he went and where he was working. He wasn’t to lam out from there. He reminded Vince they already had his mug and prints, so if he did decide to skip, they wouldn’t have much trouble picking him up, and they’d be real mad.

  That was all we got out of Mr. Montero. Marty took down some data such as where he was living and his telephone number, and let him go.

  “I never saw such a case,” he said gloomily. “Every goddamn suspect has got a million reasons for not killing Halliday. They hate his guts, but he’s more valuable alive than dead.” He leaned his chair back against the wall, put his feet on the desk, and sighed. “Circles,” he said. “That’s what I’m walking in, circles. How about you, Danny?”

  “Same circles.”

  Marty said, “I don’t know what will happen next, but I bet we don’t like it.”

  I felt as though we’d reached the end of something rather than the beginning. Halliday hadn’t figured to get killed. He’d been our prime suspect. Now he wasn’t anything but a trip for the meat wagon.

  “We’ll keep on digging,” stated Marty. “But I’ll tell you right now, I’m ready for any surprise.”

  I said I was, too, only I put it stronger. I said nothing could surprise me.

  I was wrong. Something not only could, but something did.

  It didn’t happen for a week, but when it did happen, you could have knocked me down with a crowbar.

  I got a telephone call from Iris Kent. She said she needed a break. Things at home were getting her down.

  She wanted to go to Las Vegas and raise some hell. She wanted someone to go with her—as her guest.

  She wanted me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  That was one for the book. I’m assigned to a murder case, special detail. Out of all the confusion I’ve held onto one perfectly good suspect. Then that suspect, Miss Iris Kent, plans a jolly trip to Las Vegas. She invites me to be her traveling companion. All expenses paid.

  It had been one of those weeks: inquest, funeral, checking and double-checking on everybody who had attended the Halliday party, digging for motives, pulling packages on the guests who had records and poring over them, talks with the Halliday lawyer, talks with the bank, talks with just about everybody in Los Angeles who could talk. Results: nothing.

  I took Iris’ proposition to Marty Walsh. He called my skipper, Captain James, and we had a four-way conference downtown, the fourth member being the chief of detectives. There wasn’t any kidding about it, just a grim attempt to find out whether it meant anything, and if so, what. The Chief said, “Obviously you know her better than we do, Danny. What’s your reaction?”

  “With a girl like that,” I said, “it could be anything. So far, she’s the only suspect I can tie to. Marty goes along with me on that. She’s been making a sort of play for me, but what with one thing and another it hasn’t gone any farther than that. Maybe she thinks it’s time it did. Maybe she thinks that a hunk of romance would put me on her team.”

  “Or perhaps,” suggested Captain James, “she’s just got ants in her pants.”

  “I’m not the only ant paste around this town, Skipper. It couldn’t be just that.”

  Marty said, “You can’t tell about these nymphos.”

  I said, “She’s no nympho. I’ll guarantee that. This is a chance to get close to her—and I don’t mean that the way it sounds. She’s bound to have an angle, or she wouldn’t have picked me. If she’s in the middle of this thing, and I’ve got a hunch she is, then I wouldn’t like that kind of trip with her. If she’s clean, then I’d love the trip, but I wouldn’t want everybody on the department to know about it.”

  They batted the ball around for a few minutes and finally the Chief said he thought it’d be a good idea for me to go.

  “How far?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Danny O’Leary,” he said, with mock sternness, “you know the rules of this department. It’s our job to apprehend criminals. All rules are flexible. Once you cross the line, you’ll be in another state. In other words, from then on it’s not official. You’ll be on your own. That’s as definite as I intend to be.”

  Marty volunteered that Vince Montero was in Las Vegas, and that he had reason to believe Dolores Laverne had gone to join him there. He’d been wondering whether Iris’ sudden yen for Nevada might be tied up with them. It was something I might look into.

  I didn’t know just how to take all this. But there was one thing I said I’d like to do if they didn’t absolutely forbid it: I wanted to have a talk with Robert Bayless before I went. I wanted him to know the score.

  “Why?” asked the Chief.

  “Because he’s a good joe. He’s in love with the girl. He knows she plays, but-ah, hell, Chief, it’s difficult to explain, but that’s the way I feel.”

  They debated that angle and then told me to go ahead and have my talk with Bayless. When I said good-by, the Chief smiled at me and said, “So long, Galahad.”

  I had the talk with Bayless. I was embarrassed, and so was he. You go to a lad and you tell him you’ve been invited to go on a cozy trip with the girl he’s in love with. You ask him whether it’s all right with him.

  He didn’t answer right away. But when he did, I liked the way he handled it.

  “I’ve never kidded myself about Iris,” he said. “I know most of what’s wrong about her, and I also know all the things that are right and fine. I think you could easily prove to be the friend she needs. Maybe you’ll be good for her. Go ahead. And good luck.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chuck Morrison got up at six o’clock to prepare and serve my breakfast. Even at that hour of the morning-even when I knew he needed sleep so he could work all day and then study half the night-Chuck was in high good humor.

  At seven, Iris was supposed to pick me up in front of my apartment for the trip to Las Vegas. I didn’t kid myself that she’d be on time, but Chuck hadn’t taken any chances.He rousted me out bed, shoved me into a shower, put out clean clothes for me, and then, as I walked into our little dining alcove, he started playing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March on a four-bit harmonica.

  The damn fool had got hold of some rice, which he had spilled around my plate. He had an old shoe, tied with pink ribbon, hanging from the back of my chair. I gave him a poke in the ribs and told him off. I said, “You know damned well it ain’t gonna be that way, Chuck.”

  He shrugged, grinned, and instantly shifted his music from the Wedding March to “Just a Gigolo.” Six-thirty in the morning, and he’s in that kind of humor. You can’t beat a guy like that. I don’t know what it would have been like to have a brother, but if I’d had one I couldn’t have felt half as close to him as I did to Chuck.

  The breakfast tasted good, but the coffee tasted even better. That, plus the cold shower I’d had, rubbed the last of the sleep out of my eyes.

  Through the window I could see the cloudless sky. It was the first week in June—one of those days that only Los Angeles can have. Ten minutes to seven an auto horn sounded outside the window: two longs and a short. I said I’d be damned, and Chuck shoved me toward the door. “Behold,” he said, “the bridegroom goeth. Have fun, pal. Come back with your dress shield or on it.”

  Iris was sitting behind the wheel of her snappy Buick convertible. It was a long, low, sleek ‘51 Roadmaster job, dark green and polished bright. The top was down, which is all that justifies a convertible. Of course, we’d put it up when the sun got hotter, but right now it was perfect.

  She tossed me a single key on a key ring and told me to open the trunk compartment and stow my suitcase. Then she told me to keep the key. I clambered in beside her. She looked young and beautiful and gay, as though she hadn’t a care in the world; as though nothing evil ever had entered her life or her mind.

  There wasn’t any
question that she was making a picnic of this. What it was all about I hadn’t yet determined. I knew I’d follow her lead, that I’d keep eyes and ears open. But the way she was acting, all I could gather was that we were off on a few days of fun. There was nothing furtive in her manner, no indication that she had an ulterior motive, nothing to suggest anything immoral or clandestine.

  She handled the car expertly but fast. I reminded her that there were such things as traffic laws, but she only laughed. When we hit the highway she really stepped on it. I don’t know how fast we were going, but I had the impression that we passed a couple of jet planes.

  You couldn’t hear the motor, just the rush of the wind. She had her hat off and her hair was blowing in spite of some sort of ribbon thing she’d tied around it. Her lips were parted, her eyes focused on the road. She was humming gaily. She was having herself one hell of a time.

  She was taking the short cut. Main highway to the place where it forked left to Palmdale. That’s where we left it. We were on a narrow, smooth road now; a road without much traffic. I asked her to stop for a moment, and when she did I got out of the car. I walked around to her side and slid in under the wheel. I shoved her over as far as she would go—which wasn’t very far—and took over.

  “What’s the big idea, Danny?”

  “Self-preservation. Somewhere up the road here, between Little Rock and Pearblossom, there are two double right-angle curves. Hit those at the speed you were going and our trip is over before it starts.”

  She giggled and said she loved masterful men. She had her left thigh pressed tight against my right one, which didn’t make driving any easier but lots more fun.

  I’d never driven a car so beautifully tuned as this one. I was hitting fifty when I still thought the speedometer needle should be showing thirty. We got to the S curves, both of them, and negotiated them safely. From there on to Victorville we both relaxed.

  We talked, but it wasn’t about police investigation or murder or anything like that. She asked a lot of questions about me: how old I was, where I’d been born, what I’d done during the war, whether I was in the reserve, how I liked being a policeman, did I have any parents or sisters or brothers, how many girls I had, did I gamble, had I ever stayed at the Thunderbird in Vegas, and if not, did I have a favorite place there. The funny part of it was that she seemed interested in the answers.