The April Robin Murders

by Craig Rice

  He put Pearl Durzy resolutely out of his mind, and along with her the ghosts, if they were ghosts, of Julien and Lois Lattimer. He thought of April Robin. But that had been so long ago—

  He thought of the rose garden she’d planted. Perhaps a small rosebush, properly packed for sending through the mail, would be the souvenir Detective Hendenfelder would like to send his niece in Milwaukee.

  Somehow, he would get tickets to a TV show for the man in the Hawaiian shirt.

  Somehow, he would arrange a studio tour for Mrs. Waldo Hibbing.

  Somehow, he would find Julien Lattimer’s body, for Adelle Lattimer.

  And Mr. Courtney Budlong had to be somewhere.

  Everything was going to be all right, it always had.

  He was beginning to sink pleasantly into that nap Handsome had recommended, beginning to dream of rosebushes whose buds opened out suddenly into the faces of April Robin, of Lois Lattimer, of Adelle Lattimer, even of Pearl Durzy as she must have looked, long ago. The rose-faces nodded to him warmly and amiably, the leaves on the rosebushes held themselves out to him and turned miraculously into dollar bills. Then his Uncle Herman’s face appeared through the smiling blooms, red-faced and cross, reminding him that he’d never get rich or famous or anything else if he didn’t get up and sweep out the store in the morning, and Uncle Herman’s hand reached out through the dollar-bill leaves and shook him rudely by the shoulder.

  Bingo sat upright, rubbing his eyes.

  It wasn’t Uncle Herman, it was Handsome. He smelled faintly of photographic chemicals, his good-looking face was pale, and his eyes were very bright.

  “Bingo,” he said, “I’m sorry I woke you up. But I’ve been making these pictures, and there’s one you got to see, right away.”

  Bingo yawned and said, “We don’t have to mail these out right now, do we?”

  “I made an enlargement of this one,” Handsome said. “Because I thought I saw what I was looking at, and then I wasn’t too sure, so I made an enlargement right away.”

  Bingo took the picture and gazed at it. It showed the pool of the Skylight Motel, with Mariposa DeLee posed gracefully against the loafer-lounge. It showed, also, most of the apartments in the background, including the one they had briefly inhabited.

  “A very nice picture,” Bingo said approvingly. “She ought to order a whole bunch of these. Maybe not such a large size, but—”

  “Bingo,” Handsome said, “just please look where I’m pointing. The window of the apartment over near the office. There’s somebody looking out of it. I wasn’t real sure until I enlarged it, but—”

  Bingo looked closely. It wasn’t what he’d expected to see, or even wanted to see.

  “It isn’t a very good picture of her,” Handsome said apologetically, “because of the light, and because it was through a pane of glass, but, Bingo, that’s Pearl Durzy.”

  fourteen

  Bingo said, “Well, I wonder what she was doing there!” He realized immediately it wasn’t the brightest remark of a lifetime, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

  “Well,” Handsome said, “maybe she had some business with Mrs. Mariposa DeLee.”

  “And left this house, for the first time in years, to go see Mrs. Mariposa DeLee, just after we’d come here and bought this house, I mean, practically bought this house, and then she came back here and somebody murdered her.” Bingo paused. “Maybe we’d better call up Perroni.”

  Handsome said, “If you think so, Bingo.” He said it a little limply.

  The partners exchanged a long and thoughtful look.

  “On second thought,” Bingo said, “maybe we ought to talk to Mrs. DeLee ourselves. After all, we have an excuse to visit. To deliver those pictures we made for a present for her.” Suddenly he stood up straight. “Excuse, nothing!” he said indignantly. “A lady who later got murdered in our house, for some reason was in her house, motel I mean, shortly before she got murdered, and she should consider herself lucky it’s just us, her friends, asking questions!”

  Handsome said meekly, “I’ll put the prints in an envelope. The ones we made for presents.”

  Suddenly everything seemed all wrong, unpleasantly and terribly wrong. There could be no possible link between Pearl Durzy, the April Robin mansion and Skylight Motel. There couldn’t be. And yet, there was the picture, and Pearl Durzy looking through the window.

  Perhaps everything could suddenly be all right. Perhaps the questions about Pearl Durzy could be answered in a hurry.

  He wasn’t reassuring himself one bit. He told himself there was no reason to be frightened. Then he told himself that maybe it would be better to call Perroni after all. Then he told himself that they didn’t want to get any more involved with the police than they were already. Then he told himself that it might be a good idea to get a good night’s sleep and worry about all this in the morning. Then he just wished, again, that he were back in New York.

  But there was still the April Robin mansion. He turned his head to look at it as Handsome drove down the driveway. And at least for the time being, it was as good as theirs.

  Going down Sunset he said suddenly, “Slow down, Handsome.” He spotted the map stand and said, “Stop a minute.”

  Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? Florence, who had the map stand, who’d been established there for so many years, who was an old friend of Courtney Budlong! She’d have the answer to who Courtney Budlong was, and where.

  He dodged traffic across the street, put on his most engaging smile and said, “Florence, where can I find Mr. Budlong? Your friend, Mr. Courtney Budlong?”

  She gave him a cold glare and said, “I don’t know any Mr. Budlong, and my name isn’t Florence. D’ya want to buy a map?”

  Bingo said, “We bought one, yesterday. Remember? Mr. Budlong was here talking to you. He brought it over to us. He said he was an old friend of yours.”

  She went on looking at him coldly. He went on desperately, describing Mr. Courtney Budlong. She not only looked cold, she looked blank. “He said he’d known you for years,” Bingo said. “He told us you knew everything about Hollywood and everybody in Hollywood—”

  The woman said, “My name’s Lillian. I’m from Kansas. I’ve been here six months and I don’t know anybody, and I run this stand on a concession. Yesterday there was a gent stopped by to pass the time of day. I never saw him before. He just walked up here and started to gab. You guys stopped and bought a map and he handed it to you and gave me the money. And if anything was wrong with that map, don’t blame me, blame the printer.”

  “There was nothing wrong with the map,” Bingo said. “And thank you very much.”

  He was grateful that Handsome didn’t ask any questions on the rest of the way to the Skylight Motel.

  Mariposa DeLee was deeply engaged in a fan magazine in the front office. She had on turquoise-blue ranch pants, a ruffled lemon-yellow blouse, and there was a turquoise-blue ribbon on her curled pony tail. She didn’t look a day over fifty. She put down the magazine when they came in, smoothed back her hair a little, smiled and said, “Well! Didn’t you boys like your house?”

  “Sure,” Bingo said. “We’re crazy about it. We’re crazy about you, too. So we brought you the pictures we made for you. The presents.”

  She reached for the envelope and looked happy.

  “There’s an enlargement in there,” Bingo said. He hoped his voice didn’t sound hoarse. “We made it special. Take a real, good close look at it.”

  She said, “Oh, I know I’ll like it!” and then her voice stopped suddenly. She was silent for a moment, and motionless. Then she looked at them.

  “Okay,” she said, and her voice was hard as nails, “did you take this on purpose?”

  “Believe me, lady,” Handsome said earnestly, “we didn’t know there was anybody there. We were just trying to take a nice picture of you by your swimming pool.”

  There was another brief silence. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “All r
ight, you got a picture of somebody looking out the window. I suppose you could retouch that out.”

  “That somebody has already been retouched out,” Bingo said. “Or don’t you read the newspapers?”

  Mariposa DeLee laid the picture down and said, “Yes. I read about it. And that’s all I know. What I read in the papers.”

  “She was here,” Bingo said. “She’d never left the house where she was caretaker, not in years. Yesterday she came here. And then she went back to the house, which we had just bought, and somebody murdered her.”

  Handsome said gently, “We didn’t think we ought to tell the police about this picture. Because you’re a friend of ours.”

  “So if maybe you’ll tell us why she was here,” Bingo said, “and looking out the window—”

  “She was here to see you,” Mariposa DeLee said, suddenly, wearily. “She saw you going around the house, talking about buying it. She knew you were going to get gypped, because she knew the house wasn’t for sale. She heard you say something about staying here, at the Skylight Motel, and she came here to warn you, that’s all.”

  “Then,” Bingo said, “why didn’t she come right out and talk to us, instead of hiding behind a window?”

  “Because—” Her voice stopped again.

  “The police would really be fascinated with this picture,” Bingo said. “But since we are old friends—”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Mariposa DeLee suddenly seemed to look much older, and much smaller. “All right, boys,” she said, “come inside and have some coffee.” She led the way into the apartment behind the office, nodded to the aged woman who sat with her crocheting, said, “Okay, Maude, you can beat it,” and switched on an electric percolator.

  She smiled wanly at Bingo and Handsome as the old woman trotted dutifully away, and said, “I know what you’re thinking, that’s no way to talk to your poor old mother. But if we’re going to be frank, we might as well be good and frank. She’s not my mother, and she’s not as old as she looks.” She reached for coffee cups. “Owning and running a place like this, with the kind of customers that show up from time to time, a girl needs a certain kind of window dressing, if you catch on. I got Maude from Central Casting, and she’s very happy with her job.”

  “Maybe you’d better let me pour the coffee,” Handsome said, in his gentlest voice.

  Mariposa DeLee looked at her hands, forced a smile and said, “Well, maybe I am a little nervous.”

  Half a cup of coffee and two puffs of a cigarette later, she said, “All right, in this world a certain number of people are going to get gypped. For those who can afford it, it’s sometimes a laugh. I came up in the world the tough way, and I’d rather be on the side of the ones who are doing the gypping. If I can do it in a nice way, and without hurting anybody, I mean. Someday, I’ll own a whole chain of motels.” She added, “I hope you boys know what I mean.”

  Bingo did. But he only said, “This Pearl Durzy—”

  “I’ll get to that,” she said. She took another gulp of coffee. “Hell, I looked at it this way. You boys are rich, you’ve got a big business, you can afford to lose a little dough. And Charlie said he had a nice little thing lined up, if the right people could be steered his way. So I steered you his way.”

  “Charlie?” Bingo said.

  “Charlie Browne. Browne with an ‘e.’ He’s been a friend of mine a long time.”

  “Plump little guy?” Handsome said. “Real gray hair and glasses, and dresses neat?”

  “And wears cuff links and a tie pin with ‘C.B.’?” Bingo prompted.

  “That’s him,” she said cheerfully. “I gave him those cuff links myself.” She looked at them sharply. “Now don’t misunderstand me, boys. Charlie was strictly a friend and a kind of business partner. No sentiment. He was, you could almost say, sort of related to me. We were friends way back when his wife died. And she was a sister-in-law of mine.” She poured a little more coffee. “Maybe I’m boring you.”

  “Go on about Charlie Browne,” Bingo said. “I can’t hear too much about him!” Or about Courtney Budlong, either, he thought.

  “Well,” Mariposa DeLee said, “this was a couple of years ago. I had a nice little place in Kimballsville. Where I started, as a matter of fact. Eight nice cabins, filling station and a little store. My sister-in-law, Miss DeLee, came out there. At least, I thought she was Miss DeLee, I didn’t know she was married. She didn’t have a lot of money, and she was real sick.”

  She sighed and said, “She was such a sweet little thing, I would have taken care of her even if she hadn’t been a sister-in-law. Then her husband—that’s Charlie Browne—got there, and he just took charge. He was so good to her. Why, he nursed her as if he’d been her mother, not her husband. And when she died, it like to have broken his heart.” She sighed again. “She was buried right there, right in Kimballsville.”

  There was a very brief pause. “Well?” Bingo said at last.

  “Well, we went on being friends, and he gave me a lot of good business advice, and helped me set up this place and the one I have out near Victorville. I mean, he’s a friend, a real friend.” Then suddenly she looked up, her eyes narrowed and she said, “I mean, I considered him a real friend. He told me he had a very nice thing set up, if I could steer just the right people to him, and like I told you, I figured you could afford to lose a little money and Charlie certainly needed it. So all I was to do was call him up and tell him you were going out on a tour of where the movie stars lived and that you’d stop along the way to pick up a map. I didn’t know what he had in mind until he came back here and told me about it.” A smile touched her lips. “It was a smart stunt, any way you look at it.” The smile faded. “He was going to give me two hundred dollars, which was no more than fair, considering. But just about then, this old woman turned up.”

  “Pearl Durzy,” Bingo said.

  Mariposa DeLee nodded. “I didn’t know what her name was. But she was mean. Mean, and sore! She’d come out here to warn you boys off that house deal, which of course she would’ve been too late to’ve done, and then she saw Charlie and she got almost wild. And just about then you came driving up to check out and pick up your things. Charlie said he’d handle everything, and he told me to go out and see you, which I did.”

  She drew a long breath. “She was right in here, in this apartment, all the time you were checking out, and taking pictures and everything. Charlie said something to her to calm her down, I don’t know what it was, but it worked. Because when I came back in, he said everything was fine, and she was going to go straight home, and there wouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “But there was,” Bingo said softly. “There was a little trouble.”

  “I don’t think Charlie Browne would’ve murdered her, or anybody,” Mariposa DeLee said, the friendliness gone from her eyes now. “He was too nice to his sick wife. But he never did give me my two hundred dollars.”

  A little matter of murder might not bother Mariposa DeLee, Bingo reflected, but not getting her cut of two thousand dollars would. He said, “If you’ll tell me where I can find him—”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know where he lives. The only phone number I had for him was a drugstore phone booth. But,” she said, “I’ll find him for you. I’ll get your money back for you, too. So don’t worry.”

  Find him, her eyes said, dead or alive.

  fifteen

  “Bingo,” Handsome said, halfway home, “how much of what that Mrs. DeLee told us do you believe?”

  Bingo sighed and was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I don’t know just why, but somehow I believe most of it.” He noticed they were passing the spot where the map saleswoman had been during the daylight hours, and scowled deeply. “Mr. Courtney Budlong,” he said, “I mean, Mr. Charlie Browne, said something to Pearl Durzy that made her calm down and go straight home. I wish I knew what it could’ve been.”

  “Maybe,” Handsome said diffidently, “he told her he
was going to give her two hundred dollars, too.”

  Bingo thought that over. He was beginning to have a feeling that their Mr. Courtney Budlong, Charlie Browne, not only wouldn’t give anybody the time of day, but even the day of the week. On the other hand, he could have, in what must have been an emergency, promised Pearl Durzy two hundred dollars or more. He could have promised that he’d bring it to her that evening. He could have put the whole thing on a basis of good fellowship, and mixed her a drink. He could—

  “I suppose he’d have had to murder that nice old lady,” Handsome said thoughtfully, “to keep her from telling us about everything.”

  “Stop reading my mind!” Bingo snapped. Then, sorry for his temper, he added, “Please.”

  Only the man who called himself Courtney Budlong would have had any reason to murder Pearl Durzy. Only he would have had reason to remove the note they’d left for her, telling her they wouldn’t need her any more.

  A few blocks later Handsome said thoughtfully, “I suppose we ought to tell the police. Mr. Hendenfelder, I mean.”

  Neither of them had the faintest idea of telling Perroni.

  “Later,” Bingo said firmly. “It’s been a long day.” He added, as an afterthought, “Anyway, Handsome, the police don’t know where he is. So they couldn’t very well arrest him for murder.”

  “No,” Handsome said. “Only, Bingo, they’re looking for him, anyhow. They might look for him a little harder.”