The April Robin Murders

by Craig Rice

  He realized right away that it didn’t sound convincing, it didn’t even sound intelligible.

  Hendenfelder said, “But with Mr. Lattimer’s signatures on those papers, he did have the right to sell the house—”

  “Julien Lattimer,” Perroni stated flatly, “is a murdered man. His wife killed him.”

  “My sister,” William Willis said, “did not kill anybody.”

  “You keep out of this,” Perroni said. He added, “Lois Lattimer would also have had reason to kill her. And to kill Chester Baxter.”

  Everything came to another standstill. Handsome cleared his throat and said, “Only, I keep thinking. Pearl Durzy could’ve been anybody. Like she could’ve been, for example, April Robin.” He added diffidently, “On account of, nobody seems to know who Pearl Durzy is. Was.” He paused and then said even more diffidently, “Fingerprints.”

  Perroni made a rude noise through his nose. “The Durzy woman evidently never had her prints made. The ones I got off her remains don’t match any other prints, anywhere.” Suddenly he relaxed a little, sat down on the arm of the davenport and said, “There just are no damned fingerprints anywhere. None of Mrs. Lois Lattimer. She didn’t drive a car much, and evidently when she did, she didn’t worry about a license. There aren’t any prints of Julien Lattimer, either.” He looked as though it were a personal affront to him.

  There was another long pause. William Willis rose, stretched, looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got a fifteen-foot boa constrictor that has to be fed right on the nose of nine. And it’s quite a drive to my place—” He looked challengingly at Perroni.

  “We know where to find you,” Perroni said sulkily.

  William Willis looked at Bingo meaningfully and said, “I’ll be in touch with you. Soon.”

  “Fine,” Bingo said heartily. “We’ll get some good pictures.”

  Handsome said, “That reminds me. Mr. Hendenfelder. You wanted a souvenir to send to your little niece in Milwaukee. Why not a nice picture of you taken in the rose garden?”

  Hendenfelder thought that was a wonderful idea. Handsome collected his camera and they followed William Willis into what was now sunlight.

  Left alone with Perroni, Bingo said, “Believe me. I’m only trying to help.”

  “You could have helped more if you’d stayed in New York,” Perroni said. “You guys come out here, you get into this house-buying mix-up, and all hell breaks loose. People get killed. I’ve been going along looking for Julien Lattimer’s body, and tracing Mrs. Lois Lattimer, and now, just where am I?” He lapsed into a melancholy silence.

  “We’d like to help find Mr. Lattimer’s body,” Bingo said, “and Mrs. Lois Lattimer.”

  Perroni gazed at him with mournful eyes and said, “Somehow I think my job would be easier if you didn’t help.”

  Bingo said earnestly, “Look, the real reason we got together with Chester Baxter to locate our Mr. Courtney Budlong wasn’t because of the money we’d lost. It was because, obviously, our Mr. Courtney Budlong was a lead to Mr. Julien Lattimer.”

  “I figured that out all by myself,” Perroni said sourly.

  “Mr. Julien Lattimer did sign that letter and that receipt,” Bingo said.

  “According to our top handwriting expert, he did,” Perroni said. “And when Clark Sellers says a signature is genuine, the signature is genuine.” He pulled his shoulders back in the gesture of one who will not concede the possibility of defeat. “But Julien Lattimer was murdered.” Perroni assumed the stance of a dedicated man.

  “Mrs. Lattimer,” Bingo said. “She’s got to be somewhere.”

  “That check in El Paso,” Perroni muttered. He wasn’t talking to Bingo now, nor to anyone, he was repeating something he’d said to himself over and over. “And the checks she passed here before she lit out. Those checks here were strictly phonies. She wrote them to herself, signed her dead husband’s name, endorsed them, and got away with it. Then, bang, she was gone. Reported in Acapulco, Kansas City, Toronto, hell, I can’t even name the places. Never the right babe, though. These small blondes all look alike. The check from El Paso, Lattimer’s signature was genuine. It was a check made out to Mrs. Lattimer by Julien Lattimer. Endorsed by her. Then she vanished. Where?” He glared at Bingo as though he might be hiding her in his pocket.

  “She’s somewhere in this town,” Perroni said. “And she’s a killer. Maybe gone a little bit nuts, ready to kill anybody.”

  Handsome and Hendenfelder returned before Bingo could say again that Julien Lattimer had been alive when he signed those papers.

  Hendenfelder was beaming. He said, “I bet those pictures turn out swell! I’ll do something for you someday.”

  Handsome said quickly, “You’ve done a lot already.”

  Perroni stood by the door for a moment, glancing around the room as though he was considering searching the house again. Then he said, through tight lips, “I’ll find his body. And I’ll find her. You’ll see!” and went out with Hendenfelder.

  Handsome looked anxiously at Bingo for a moment. Then he said, “I think there’s enough stuff left in the refrigerator to make us some breakfast—”

  “Throw it all out,” Bingo said hoarsely. “It belonged to Pearl Durzy. Right now, I can’t eat a dead woman’s food.”

  “Just as you say, Bingo,” Handsome said solicitously.

  “Right now, I can’t eat anything,” Bingo said. He sat perfectly still for a moment. “Handsome, we’ll go to Goody-Goody’s after a few minutes, and get ham and eggs and fried potatoes.” He wasn’t going to admit he was scared, not to Handsome, not even to himself.

  “Bingo,” Handsome said. “That Hendenfelder. He’s a very friendly person. He gave me the address of the Owl’s Roost. And the name of the bartender. And the names of some of the people who go there. He said the best time to drop in is around six or seven, after this bartender, his name is Matthew, comes on duty.”

  It would be so easy to pack their belongings, take what cash they still had on hand, and head for New York. Fast. Bingo counted to five and then said, “Not a bad suggestion. We’ll drop in there tonight.”

  The sun was streaming through the windows now, and this was a bright, brand-new, unused day.

  He rose from the davenport and said, “While you finish up the pictures, I’ll take a shower.” He scowled. “We’ve got to get some TV show tickets for that guy in the Hawaiian shirt, and a studio tour for Mrs. Hibbing.” A thought struck him. “And I’ve got to call up our lawyer, and Mr. Henkin, and Mr. Victor Budlong, and I should call Janesse Budlong and tell her how well the pictures turned out, and most important of all, I’ve got to call Mrs. Mariposa DeLee—” He yawned. “Maybe I’ll take a quick nap first—”

  He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the lumpy davenport. He heard Handsome’s footsteps going toward the improvised darkroom. He saw a dusty sunbeam high above him in the big room. He saw, in what began to be a dream, the body of little Chester Baxter, somewhere in some dark alley, his throat cut. Then he heard and saw nothing at all.

  nineteen

  It was an itchy and uneasy sleep, troubled by dreams he didn’t want to remember, and interrupted by thoughts he didn’t want to think.

  The unpleasant dreams were complicated ones, and in technicolor. In one of them Janesse Budlong appeared, wearing a brief, becoming and bright green bathing suit. She smiled and said, “Look, I’m not really Janesse Budlong, I’m Mariposa DeLee!” and suddenly there was Mariposa DeLee in a sequin-studded slack suit, confiding, “I’m really not Mariposa DeLee, you know, I’m Mrs. Waldo Hibbing.” Then Mrs. Waldo Hibbing, in a brightly printed chiffon dress and scuffed tennis shoes, said happily, “Please don’t tell anyone, but actually, I’m Lois Lattimer—” She faded into a vague and shadowy figure who whispered through a mist, “No one must ever know, but I’m Pearl Durzy—” and then the mist grew deeper, and a voice from somewhere breathed, “And all this time, I’ve been April Robin—”

  “Adelle Lattimer,”
a voice said suddenly, and Bingo sat up, wide awake. He realized instantly that it was no longer morning. He realized, too, that he was hungry. Very hungry. And there was a tantalizing odor of bacon and coffee in the air.

  The voice had been Handsome’s voice, and it went on apologetically, “I didn’t like to wake you up, Bingo, only I got to thinking about Adelle Lattimer—”

  He yawned, looked at his watch. “Gosh, I’ve slept the whole day away.” He blinked and stretched. “What about Adelle Lattimer?”

  “Well,” Handsome said worriedly, “it could be, she’s in danger. Account of, Chester Baxter being murdered.”

  “Slower, please,” Bingo said. “And maybe a little louder.”

  “I mean,” Handsome said, “account of her having also made a deal with Chester Baxter. Which possibly somebody might’ve known about. And if Chester Baxter was murdered by somebody who didn’t want him to find where Julien Lattimer is—”

  Bingo tried to sort that, and a lot of other things, out in his mind, which was still a little clouded over by the technicolor dream. He said at last, “Maybe we ought to warn her. Maybe we ought to call her up.” He paused. “But she must know about it already. Why, the whole day’s gone. The newspapers—”

  “Sure, Bingo,” Handsome said. “Only it seems like if she’d read about it in the newspapers, she’d’ve called to tell us.”

  “All right,” Bingo said. “We’ll call her. We’ll call a lot of people, too. Especially, Mariposa DeLee. Because of what William Willis told us last night.”

  He rose, stretched his aching muscles and went to the telephone.

  Adelle Lattimer was not in her little hat shop in Pacific Palisades. She had not been in all day. Her residence phone didn’t answer.

  A strange voice at the Skylight Motel said that Mariposa DeLee was out, and no one knew when she’d be back.

  Bingo went back to the couch, sat down and said, “We’ll try a little later.”

  Handsome came in with a tray. Bacon and eggs and hot buttered toast, and a pot of coffee. “I went to the store and bought things,” he said, “right after I came back from the post office.”

  Bingo paused in the act of stirring his coffee. “The post office? Why?”

  “To mail the pictures,” Handsome said. “There were a lot of them. Ninety-one cards came in today.”

  “Gosh!” Bingo said fervently. He began doing some mental arithmetic, paused and said, “But those cards—”

  “Well,” Handsome said, “I didn’t want to wake you up. But I’d printed up all those other pictures and mailed them out. So I went down to our office—” He paused.

  “That’s right,” Bingo said. “It’s our office. Go on.”

  “And there were ninety-one cards there. So I made them up and mailed them out. Including the man who wanted the TV tickets.”

  That brought up another problem, a minor but annoying one. “We got to do something about that.”

  “Oh, sure,” Handsome said. “I put a note in with his pictures. Where he’s to call for the tickets. They’ll be in his name.”

  Bingo looked up blankly, his mouth full of bacon.

  “The Red Skelton Show on CBS,” Handsome said, “and the Groucho Marx Show on NBC. And a couple of others. I hope he likes them.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Bingo said. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “How did you get the tickets—”

  “Why,” Handsome said, “I just called up the big TV studios and asked.”

  After a few minutes Bingo said, “Oh.”

  “And, Bingo,” Handsome said, “the nice old lady next door. That Mrs. Hibbing. She lived out here all this time and she never got to go through a movie studio. And she being such a friendly lady, and a next-door neighbor and everything, I didn’t think you’d mind if I fixed it up. For day after tomorrow. She was very pleased when I told her.”

  Bingo laid down his fork and said heavily, “I suppose you just called up a movie studio.”

  “Well,” Handsome said, “naturally.” He drew a long breath. “I remember Twentieth-Century Fox especially because I read an article once about how they paint the sky out there. The big background sky, I mean. How many men it takes to do it, and how they work, and—”

  “Never mind the sky,” Bingo said.

  Handsome looked a little hurt. “They were very nice and helpful,” he said. “After I explained that I was with the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America. And I gave him the number of our Beverly Hills office and explained it was only temporary until we could build our own building. A very nice and helpful lady arranged everything for Mrs. Hibbing.”

  He paused and looked anxious. “Did I do wrong, Bingo?”

  “No,” Bingo said, a little hoarsely. “No, Handsome, you did just fine.” He said it with all his heart.

  Handsome beamed and looked relieved. “And after postage stamps and some gasoline for the car, and the groceries, we cleared—”

  “Don’t bother me with details,” Bingo said. “We have things to do.” A seemingly endless number of them, and the big question was, which was to be done first.

  “When in doubt,” he told himself, “call your lawyer.” He drained the last of the coffee, went to the phone and called Arthur Schlee.

  Arthur Schlee said that he was terribly sorry, but he simply hadn’t had time to go into all the details of the very complex situation.

  “We understand,” Bingo said smoothly. “We know what it is to be busy. But I have something else, nothing to do with this case, and something immediate.” Think big, he told himself, and think big fast! “I—we—need a personal management contract drawn up just as quickly as possible. We have something just too good to let get away from us.”

  Arthur Schlee made them a little speech regarding personal management contracts, bringing in the detail of the laws against non-licensed agents, and the Thirteenth Amendment.

  “We understand all that,” Bingo said. “We just want a brief little personal management contract between a certain party and ourselves. No money changing hands except the customary one dollar given in good faith. We guarantee to star her in our first production. In return, she will not—” He paused on the verge of saying “run around in bathing suits” and said, “Will not pose for any photographs or discuss any picture roles.”

  “Within how long a period?” Arthur Schlee said.

  “Within a period of seven days,” Bingo said. “That’s how sure we are of immediate production.”

  “I see,” Arthur Schlee said. “And what is the name of the party?”

  “Janesse Budlong,” Bingo said. “Janesse with two esses.”

  Arthur Schlee seemed to be catching his breath. Finally he said, “How soon—?”

  “It’s a simple thing,” Bingo told him. “Have your secretary type it up, the customary number of copies”—he wondered how many that would be—“and rush it over here by messenger within the hour, with a notary.” He ignored the muttered protests on the other end of the line and said, “We’re from the East, Mr. Schlee, and we’re used to doing things fast. Fast, and big. Now can you get that over here right away? And incidentally, how much will your fee be on this?”

  This time Bingo had the impression that Arthur Schlee was counting on his fingers. Finally the lawyer said, “My dear young man, a friend of Leo Henkin’s is a friend of mine. I hope I may have the pleasure and privilege of representing you in your entire picture setup. Ordinarily, a contract like this might take days, and run into thousands. But under the circumstances—” He seemed to sigh. “I’ll rush it right over. And shall we say—two hundred and fifty?”

  “Not a bit too high,” Bingo said bravely, “but make it fast.” He hung up the receiver, turned to Handsome and said, “How much can we raise on the car, fast?”

  Handsome said, “Well—” He paused. “Maybe quicker, Bingo. Those two big cameras we got in New York.”

  “Look up a good hock shop,” Bingo said. “Near here
. And get over before they close.” He looked at Handsome. “I know what I’m doing, believe me.”

  “Sure,” Handsome said cheerfully. “You always have.”

  Bingo lit a cigarette, and then called Janesse Budlong. She said, before he could do more than identify himself, “I’m so sorry I ran away last night, but honest, I got scared and—”

  “Forgotten and forgiven,” Bingo said warmly. “To you, everything is forgiven. Because we’ve looked at the pictures of you.”

  There was a little gasp at the other end of the line. Not the gasp of the would-be model and/or actress who would go to any extremes for that one good break. It was the gasp of a very small child coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. “You mean, they’re—any good?”

  “So good,” Bingo said, “that right now our lawyer is drawing up a personal management contract and he’ll have it here within the hour. Now don’t be alarmed. It’s a very simple thing, obligates you to almost nothing, and even that for a very short time, and obligates us to star you in our first production.”

  Janesse Budlong said, “Oh!” It sounded like a prayer.

  “Can you be here within an hour?” Bingo asked. “Would you like a lawyer of your own, or your father, or anybody else along to approve the contract?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “No. I mean, I want Pa to know, he’ll be so pleased, but, well, what I mean is, I trust you guys. I’ll be there.” She giggled. “With clothes on.” She hung up.

  Bingo lit a new cigarette, glanced briefly at the afternoon paper Handsome had brought in and dropped on the coffee table. The murder of Chester Baxter was a small paragraph. There was no mention of his possible connections. A man identified as Chester Baxter had been found up an alley with his throat cut, that was all. He tossed the paper aside.

  He’d gone this far, he couldn’t stop now. Think big, he reminded himself, and go right on thinking big. He dialed Budlong and Dollinger and asked for Mr. Victor Budlong.