Lost Lady

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  I brought the conversation around to Iris; not pressing it too hard, trying to give an impression of casual, friendly interest.

  I didn’t learn anything that I hadn’t known before. Dorothy’s name crept into the conversation several times, but she took it in stride. She spoke of her sister gently and with deep affection, but she’d done that ever since I’d met her.

  Dorothy and Mrs. Klinger had raised her. She had never experienced anything but devotion and indulgence in her life. Her only touch of tragedy prior to Dorothy’s death had been the death of Mrs. Klinger. She admitted that there were times when she’d been ashamed of herself, times when she had known she was worrying Dorothy, and she had made tons of good resolutions, but somehow none of them ever worked. She had the frank, unafraid outlook of the very young about sex. I thought I had it, too, but hers was different from mine. In spite of army and police, there was something Mid-Victorian about me, or anyway, that’s how it sounded in contrast to her frankness. She made it very clear that she thought a platonic relationship between two young persons of opposite sex who happened to like each other was stuffy and outmoded. She smiled straight into my eyes and said I could take it from there, she had too much maidenly modesty to diagram it any more clearly. She used the actual words “maidenly modesty,” but she used them mockingly, as though they belonged only in the vocabulary of those who had been born in another generation, or who had achieved impotence.

  She discussed the two murders briefly but objectively. She was a continual surprise. No show of emotion, no display of grief, no indication that Dorothy’s death or Halliday’s had hurt. Yet I knew she was covering up. I had seen her when the wound was raw. I was seeing only the surface now, not the girl underneath.

  She boasted that she’d lived a free and untrammeled life. She’d been places and done things. She drank, but she wasn’t a lush; she gambled, but never went overboard; she liked excitement. She ran on and on, casually and impersonally, and all of a sudden she tossed a minor bombshell at me.

  “Vince Montero is in Vegas,” she said. “So is Dolores Laverne. I want to see them.”

  That was unexpected. I avoided answering immediately, killing time by lighting a cigarette.

  “About what?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  “Things.” That didn’t tell me much. “You know, Dean’s death really threw a monkey wrench into their machinery. I understand Vince has gone to work. Laverne is sticking with him.”

  I said, “I didn’t know you were acquainted with Montero.”

  “I’ve visited the place—the places—where he used to work. On the Strip. And I saw Dolores recently.” That was a puzzler. I asked why.

  “She wanted to borrow some money. She said she’d call it a loan and pay it back if she ever got hold of any, but I wasn’t to count on it. I let her have a thousand.”

  I couldn’t figure immediately whether that made no sense at all, or too much sense.

  Why should she lend money to the blatant woman who had been the mistress of her brother-in-law, the woman who, indirectly, had caused Dorothy Halliday so much grief? I tried to avoid the obvious answer, but there are some things you can’t avoid.

  It could be that she had given Dolores the money out of the goodness of her heart. Or maybe Dolores had put the bite on her. Maybe there had been some sort of deal. Maybe Dolores and/or Montero had done something for Iris Kent, or maybe they had some inside information about what Iris had done. I made a noncommittal comment, but the thing I laughingly call a brain was busy. If Iris had been a normal girl—the sort of girl I was accustomed to—I could have probably evaluated her words and actions. As it was, I couldn’t.

  She could be dumb and generous. She could be playing it awful cute. I wished that Marty Walsh were along so I could get his opinion.

  But for the first time the whole Las Vegas trip made a little sense. Not much, but a little.

  She could have made the trip alone. She could have had her talk with Montero and Dolores and never cut me in on it. But—and she was smart enough to have figured this —she might be tailed. Montero and Dolores would certainly be under some sort of surveillance. So it wouldn’t do to try to hide the contact. Bringing it out in the open this way—having as her guest and confidant one of the very best detectives working on the case—that could figure as a keen maneuver. Now I knew for sure that I was dealing with a girl who was in there punching all the time.

  Either that, or Iris Kent was stupid. Which was something I refused to admit.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The town of Baker, California, isn’t much: two or three service stations with air-cooled restaurants attached, oases where you can escape from the overwhelming heat in the middle of the desert. You can have lunch, you can refresh yourself, you can fill your gas tank, check your tires and oil and water, have your windshield cleaned, and start on that last ninety-mile stretch to Las Vegas.

  The thermometer must have been 110 when we hit the place. It’s the logical spot for relaxing, for getting away from the blistering heat long enough to grab a hunk of new vitality. I was all for sticking around a while, playing the juke box—that sort of thing.

  But Iris had been glancing at her watch as though time meant something. She said she wanted to get going, that she was due in Las Vegas at two o’clock.

  “Two o’clock?” I was surprised. “What’s the difference between two, three, four, or any other o’clock?”

  “I promised to get there in time for the wedding.”

  This dame could throw ‘em at you until you were dizzy.

  “What wedding?” I asked.

  “Dolores Laverne and Vince Montero.” Her eyes were big and wide and innocent. “Didn’t you know?”

  I felt a little smolder of anger deep down inside of me. Some way, somehow, I was being used. I was suddenly damn glad I’d come on this trip with official sanction.

  Dolores and Montero getting married. He’s been her pimp for a couple of years and now they’ve got to get married in a hurry.

  I knew what Marty would say to that one. Or what I would say. It didn’t have to be right, but it was one hell of a good guess. And the angle was this: A wife cannot be compelled to testify against her husband. In fact, in California, she isn’t even a competent witness.

  Any dope—even I—could take it from there. If someone is disinclined to testify, that would signify that her testimony must be important and damaging. Since she was marrying Vince, you couldn’t escape the thought that he’d be the lad who would be damaged by her testimony.

  So I figured I had a right to believe that Vince had done something and that Dolores Laverne knew about it. It could have been one murder, two murders, or something a good deal less important than either.

  I kept turning things over in my mind as we buzzed along the barren stretch between Baker and the beginning of Mountain Pass.

  Dolores Laverne: motive for killing Dorothy Halliday, excellent. She could have thought that Dean would inherit and that she’d then start rolling in mink as well as in the hay. She could have had notice that Dorothy had taken steps—or planned them—to break up her little left-handed arrangement with Dorothy’s husband. She could have engineered the thing, with or without the co-operation of Halliday himself, and Vince Montero could have done the actual killing. That fitted nine ways from the ace.

  But then you had to carry on to the Dean Halliday murder. Everything that made the killing of Dorothy justifiable made the murder of Dean Halliday silly. The motives were all backward. Since Dolores and Montero were a couple of Dean Halliday parasites, depending on him for necessities and luxuries, they’d want him alive, healthy, and happy. So if the murders were tied up—and I felt that they must be—I had to go farther afield for motive.

  And that brought me squarely up against the beautiful young girl in the car with me. It spelled Iris Kent in big, brilliant letters.

  Iris would benefit by Dorothy’s death, no matter what she claimed. Owning the estate w
as different from being dependent on her sister. It had to be. It wasn’t proof, it wouldn’t stand up in any court, but it was more than a vague idea.

  If Iris was the bad girl of the piece, she probably had needed help. Dolores and Montero could have furnished that assistance, or Montero could have been her instrument and Dolores merely have known the score. If they had got their hooks into Iris Kent, who now represented the big money, they might not want to be interfered with by Halliday. A second murder is never as difficult as the first one. So, exit Halliday.

  My theory was full of holes. But it did contain more than a germ of an idea. The one strong thing about it was this Montero-Laverne marriage, plus the fact that Iris knew all about it. That didn’t fit unless you conceded that the setup wasn’t kosher. The more I thought of what it might mean, the less enthusiastic I got about Miss Iris Kent.

  I debated keeping my yap shut, but it didn’t take me longer than a few seconds to decide that that would be unnatural. Iris had sprung this thing on me because she wanted me to ask questions. I knew she’d have the answers ready. So I did what I felt sure she expected me to do.

  I said, “And when did you start sliding down cellar doors with Dolores and Vince?”

  She laughed. “You don’t need to sound so shocked, Danny.”

  “I’m not shocked. Just surprised.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you that I was sorry for Dolores?”

  “It wouldn’t be easy.” Then I said, “When you first mentioned Dolores to me, it wasn’t with any deep affection. So why do you have to watch Vince Montero make an honest whore out of her?”

  “Are you trying to be crude, Danny, or is that how you are?”

  I said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t give me that routine. The Puritan-maiden act doesn’t fit you.”

  “I’m glad you found that out.”

  “Thanks. And let me hand you another slice of free advice. Don’t play cops for dumb. Maybe some of them are—maybe I’m the stupidest of all—but it’s a mistake to think we’re all that way.”

  “My, oh, my! Aren’t our feelings hurt!”

  “Nope. If I’m mad at anybody, it’s at myself for being a sucker. I might have known you’d have a hidden reason for inviting me on this trip.”

  “You think I dragged you up here just to see Dolores and Vince married?”

  “No-o. That doesn’t answer it all the way. I figure you wanted to come to be sure they were married; to see the ceremony if possible, or, if you missed it, to inspect the records personally. Also, you wanted me to know positively that they were.”

  Her face was flushed, whether with embarrassment or anger I didn’t know. After a long time she spoke, and her voice was more quiet, more reasonable.

  “Maybe I’m not really friendly with those two, Danny. Maybe I just want them to think I am. Maybe I’m playing Good Samaritan to get their guard down.”

  “Why?”

  “If they think I’m their friend, they might give me information I couldn’t get otherwise. Just living in the same city isn’t going to help. I’ve got to be close to them.”

  “Playing detective, huh?”

  “It could be,” she answered levelly. “I can’t see that you fellows have got very far. Let me explain something. I don’t care who killed Dean or why. I do care about my sister. I’m not satisfied with any of the motives I’ve managed to dream up. There’s something missing. You think it’s complicated. I don’t. I believe it’s simple. But nothing is simple unless you find the thing that makes it simple—like the one right move that a good magician makes in doing a trick. If you happen to catch that, the trick is easily understood. I think you’ve missed it. I know I have. I couldn’t guess who’s got the answer. Maybe Dean knew it, and told Dolores. She could have told Montero. Even Robert could have known it, whatever it was, though I can’t figure how or why. And, of course, I could have known. I can check myself out, but you can’t.”

  She drew a deep breath, paused long enough to light a cigarette, and then went on. “You’re not kidding me, Danny, any more than I’m kidding you. You like me as a suspect. I’ll diagram it if you want, but that would be wasting breath. I’ve made a play for you for two reasons: because I like you, and because you’ve got a trained mind and a fresh, impersonal approach. You might see things I could miss. But you haven’t. You’ve only seen the obvious. Shall I go on?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think I might have killed Dorothy—or had it done—because I knew I’d inherit. You don’t know the setup between us, so you’re entitled to think that. You wonder why I went on living in the house with Dean after my statement that I believed him guilty of Dorothy’s murder. You’ve even played around with the idea that he and I may have been having an affair. That fits in, in your mind, with my refusal—up to now—to marry a nice guy like Robert Bayless.

  “I know just how you’ve been figuring on Dolores and Montero. Maybe they worked for me. Maybe they’ve got their hooks into me now. Maybe I’m taking over their support.”

  She tossed the cigarette to the side of the road. Her eyes were fixed somewhere on the red-gold hills and on the incredibly cloudless sky.

  “For some damned reason, Danny O’Leary, I wanted you to know that I’m not stupid. That’s why I’ve talked this much. There’s the hope, if you can climb down off that high horse of righteous anger, that we might still find ourselves on the same team.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was more impressed than I cared to admit. This babe really wasn’t anybody’s dummy. She had hit a lot of nails right on the head. Trouble was I didn’t know yet how smart she was. I didn’t know whether I’d seen it all, or whether she’d been 90 per cent frank because she figured that by doing that I’d forget the missing 10 per cent.

  I was still thinking it over when she fired another question.

  “Before you found out about this Laverne-Montero marriage, why did you think I invited you to Las Vegas with me?”

  “You want a straight answer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought,” I said with deliberate brutality, “that I interested you, that I was something new in your varied sexual experience.”

  Silence hung between us for a moment, and then she broke it. “You’re partly right, Danny. But you don’t go all the way. I’m not inexperienced, but I’m not promiscuous, either. It could be that I liked you.”

  “Past tense?”

  “Present.”

  I said, “I don’t buy that one, either, Iris. On a long haul we don’t belong together and you know it.”

  “I don’t know anything, Danny. Not any more. And now I’d like to make a suggestion. Whether or not you believe it, my primary idea in coming up here with you was to have fun. How much fun depends on you. Would it be asking too much to suggest that you try to play it that way—that you try to forget, just for two or three days, all these bitter things we’ve said?”

  Her voice wasn’t quite steady. Suddenly I felt a wave of pity for the kid. Maybe she was bad all the way through. But there was the chance that she was a wild, yet decent kid; lonely as hell and reaching out for friendship in the only way she knew how to reach.

  If she was in the middle of this deal, to hell with her. But if she wasn’t, there was plenty I could be sorry for. I couldn’t figure where there was anything to lose by playing it her way.

  I said, “You win, Iris. You win because I like you. You win because perhaps I’m not as cold-blooded as you think. From now on—picnic.”

  She put her hand over mine and said, “Thanks, Danny.”

  Chapter Twenty

  We missed the finish of the ceremony by less than five minutes. Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Montero were standing at the doorway of the wedding chapel near the Last Frontier Hotel looking more bewildered than happy. A bored civil servant had just tied the marriage knot, four bored witnesses had just signed the book and been paid off, another wedding party was waiting impatiently to take the plunge.

  As Iris and
I left the car, she started laughing. She said wickedly, “Look at them. She’s been working at her trade for years. He’s been her pimp. Now that it’s legal, they’re as embarrassed as any other bride and groom. You know, Danny, I’ve got an idea.”

  I asked her what it was.

  “We’ll find out where they’re going to spend their wedding night. We’ll send them a telegram. We’ll say, ‘What’s new?’ “

  The bride and groom seemed delighted but not surprised to see Iris. They seemed less delighted, and definitely surprised, at glimpsing me.

  “O’Leary,” commented Dolores. “The L.A. cop.”

  “The nice one,” I amended.

  “That partner of yours is really a bastard.”

  “Not really,” I said. “You sounded off first.”

  Iris told Dolores that she looked lovely. She wasn’t so far wrong at that.

  Dolores Laverne Montero had plenty to look lovely with. She had dolled herself up in a light green outfit that fitted tighter than wallpaper and looked much better. Occasionally she looked dazedly at the new wedding ring on her left hand as though to say, “What are you doing here?” And yet, oddly enough, there was a certain shyness about her; a bridelike quality that is apparently inescapable.

  Vince looked awkward, too. He was wearing a new blue suit, a white shirt, a plain blue tie. His dark, thin face was still inscrutable, and his eyes told nothing, but he certainly wasn’t at ease. It could have been because he hadn’t expected a policeman to attend his wedding and he wasn’t sure where I figured, but more likely it was his own amazement at finding himself married.

  Iris stated that we’d be in Vegas for three or four days. She said we’d be staying at the Thunderbird, and that she wanted them to join us for a wedding dinner. Vince nodded and Dolores actually blushed and said that would be wonderful.