Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 07 Read online

  “Maybe it was spur of the moment,” Melchen said.

  “Yeah,” said Barker. “He saw the lights on here at Westbourne, driving by, pulled in and had it out with the old man.”

  “What,” I said, “and just happened to have a blowtorch in his pocket? I saw the crime scene, gentlemen. Sloppy as it is, murders don’t come much more premeditated.”

  They both looked at me blankly, the way a dog might.

  “Of course,” I said, “he may have been killed elsewhere and moved here.”

  “What makes you say that?” Barker asked.

  “The direction of the dried blood on his face. He was on his belly when he was shot.”

  That made both of them smirk; Barker looked up smugly at Melchen, who was rocking on his heels like a fat top.

  “Did I make a joke?” I asked.

  Barker laughed soundlessly. “He wasn’t shot at all.”

  “He was killed with a blunt instrument,” Melchen said.

  “According to who?”

  “According,” Baker said pointedly, “to Dr. Quackenbush.”

  “Didn’t Groucho Marx play him?”

  “Someday, boy,” Melchen said, in his molasses-mouth manner, shaking a finger, “you’re going to pay for that smart-ass mouth.”

  “Deliver the bill anytime, fat man.”

  Barker held Melchen back with an arm.

  I don’t know why I was needling them, except to see if my initial reading of them as a couple of thick-headed strong-arm types was right. It was—although Barker was clearly the brains. So to speak.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m out of line. We’re all here for the same reason: to help find Sir Harry’s killer. Right?”

  “Right,” Barker said. But Melchen was still fuming.

  “Let me ask you—you fellas have seen the body, haven’t you?”

  They looked at each other dumbly. In both senses of the word.

  “It was moved before we got here,” Barker said, vaguely defensive. “It’s at Bahamas General for a post-mortem, then it’s being flown to Maine later tonight.”

  “Maine,” I said. “What, for the funeral?”

  Barker nodded.

  “Well, have a look at those head wounds yourself. I think the old boy was shot.”

  Footsteps interrupted us, and I turned to see Colonel Lindop silhouetted in the doorway.

  “Gentlemen,” he said stiffly, addressing the Miami dicks, “the Governor is here. He would like a word with you.”

  They scurried out of there. I followed, taking my time; Lindop was standing just outside the billiards room as I exited. I looked at him and raised my eyebrows and he shook his head in quiet disgust.

  Down the hall, near the front door, by the scorched stairway, the former King of England—sad-eyed, almost slight, dressed in white, like a dapper ice-cream man—was conferring with the Miami cops. A hush had fallen across a hallway crowded with police and various hangers-on; everyone stood around watching breathlessly, respectfully.

  I supposed I should have felt impressed. But it wasn’t like he was Capone or anything.

  What was most impressive, to me at least, was the way the Duke was treating these Miami roughnecks like old friends, shaking their hands, even placing a gentle hand on Melchen’s shoulder at one point.

  Despite the now-hushed hallway, I couldn’t make out anything of their low-pitched conversation. The Duke looked toward the stairs, gestured, and he and the American cops went upstairs, to check out the crime scene. Next to me, Colonel Lindop—who had not been asked along—watched them go, his face etched with the hollow hurt of a spurned suitor.

  “Mr. Heller?” a musical voice said.

  Down near the kitchen, there she was: Marjorie Bristol. She wore the same light blue dress as before, or an identical one; perhaps it was a maid’s uniform. I went to her.

  In the kitchen, white cops in khaki and businessman types milled, while a heavyset colored woman in a bandanna kept busy at a counter, preparing small sandwiches.

  “It’s a tragedy, Mr. Heller,” Miss Bristol said. The whites of her lovely dark eyes were filigreed red. “Sir Harry, he was a fine man.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Bristol. Were you here when it happened?”

  “No. I left around ten, after I set Sir Harry’s nightclothes out on his bed….” She cupped her mouth; just the thought of his bed was jarring. “Then I…tuck in the mosquito nettin’, and spray the room for bugs.”

  “Do you live here? Are there servants’ quarters…?”

  “I live alone in a cottage…” She pointed. “…’tween the country club and here. Close enough that when Mr. Christie cry out, this mornin’, I could hear. And I came runnin’…but there was no helpin’ Sir Harry.”

  “You didn’t see anything last night…”

  “No. The storm was high. So much noise from the sea. I didn’t hear or see a thing. Are you goin’ to stay and find out who did this?”

  “Well…no. Why did you think I would?”

  Her reddened eyes widened. “You’re a detective. You worked for Sir Harry.”

  “I’d like to help, Miss Bristol, but the people in charge of the investigation wouldn’t want my help, even if I were to offer it.”

  “Well, you should try!”

  “No…I’m sorry.”

  “You’re goin’ back to America, then?”

  “Yes. As soon as they let me. But I won’t soon forget meeting you, Miss Bristol.”

  She was pouting, a little; she wasn’t happy that I wasn’t going to stay and crack the murder case. I had disappointed her—which is something I do sooner or later with most every woman in my life, but usually not this early on.

  “Why should you remember me?” she asked.

  I put a finger under her chin, raised it so she’d look at me. “Because I want to.”

  The hallway, which had gotten noisy again, fell into another hush, which meant the Duke was returning from the murder room. Edward was coming down the stairs, with the detectives trailing him like schoolboys hanging on their master’s every precious word; at the bottom he paused, to shake hands with them again, and then turned to go. Several aides-de-camp fell in place behind him, replacing Barker and Melchen.

  But just as he reached the door, de Marigny—making his second impressive entrance at Westbourne today—swept in, accompanied by a white, khakied cop.

  The moment that followed is one I’ll remember to my dying day. Why? Because it was so goddamned odd….

  The Duke froze, like a man confronted with a ghost, and de Marigny stopped in his tracks, too, and looked at the Duke curiously, the way you might pause to view a car wreck as you drove by.

  Then the Duke’s expression turned hard and frankly contemptuous, and he moved swiftly on, and outside, his retinue following.

  De Marigny, his wide lips hanging open, lending this man of obvious intelligence a remarkably stupid expression, gazed numbly toward where the Duke had exited. Then he sneered, and seemed both irritated and confused.

  Was there something personal between these two?

  The two Miami cops moved in on the casually dressed Count like he was Dillinger and they were the FBI; of course, nobody did any shooting.

  But Melchen did place his hand on de Marigny’s arm and announce, “I’m Captain Melchen of the Miami Police Department—here at the Governor’s request. Would you mind answerin’ a few questions?”

  “Certainly not,” de Marigny said suavely, withdrawing his arm from Melchen’s grasp.

  They trooped him past me on their way to the billiards room, where they could subject him to dim lighting and dimmer questioning. Just before they went in, Barker motioned to me.

  He seemed conciliatory. “You mind stepping inside with us?”

  Melchen was already in the billiards room, showing de Marigny to the card table.

  “I guess I don’t mind. What for?”

  “I want you to see if what the Count says tallies with what you observed yesterday. Okay?�
��

  “Okay.”

  I positioned myself in the darkness, with a mounted moose head or some other damn thing with antlers looking over my shoulder.

  At first they treated him almost politely. They played standard good cop/bad cop, with the pudgy Melchen, surprisingly, taking the ingratiating, friendly role. They questioned him about his movements last night, and his every answer—and despite his thick French accent, his English was impeccable—fit the facts as I knew them.

  Barker came over to me. He whispered, “How’s all that tally?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “He’s a cunning son of a bitch.”

  “Most gigolos are.”

  Barker went back to the table and withdrew a magnifying glass from his pocket and set it down with a clunk. Great—now we were playing Sherlock Holmes.

  “You don’t object if we have a look at your hands, do you?” Barker asked, casually snide.

  “My hands? No. Go ahead.”

  Barker took each of the Count’s hands, one at a time, and examined them carefully under the magnifying glass, like a palm reader with bad eyesight.

  Then, without asking, he shifted to de Marigny’s face—specifically, his beard. Melchen turned the table lamp up so it would bathe their subject with light. Conducting a scientific examination in the dark was challenging, you know.

  Barker turned and glanced at me, his face smug and tight. Then he looked at de Marigny and said, “The hairs on your hands and beard are singed.”

  Even now, the house had a scorched smell. The significance of Barker’s discovery needed no explanation.

  “Can you account for that?” Barker asked.

  De Marigny shrugged. For once his confidence seemed shaken.

  Then he pointed a finger at them and said, “Remember—I told you I was plucking chickens yesterday over a boiling drum.”

  The cops said nothing.

  “Also,” the Count said, “I smoke cigarettes and cigars…the dampness in Nassau requires frequent relighting. Oh! And I had the barber singe my beard, recently!”

  The cops looked at each other skeptically.

  “He also burned himself lighting a hurricane lamp,” I said. “Entertaining in his garden last night.”

  Barker frowned at me. Melchen just looked confused.

  “Yes, that’s right!” de Marigny said. And then he said to me, “How did you know that?”

  I didn’t answer. He didn’t know who the hell I was, and I saw no reason to tell him.

  “We’re going to clip hairs from your head, beard and arms,” Barker said to his suspect. “Any objection?”

  “No,” de Marigny shrugged. “Shall I take off my shirt?”

  “Yes,” Barker said. “But speaking of shirts…we want to see the clothes you were wearing last night.”

  “I have no idea what clothes I was wearing last night.”

  “Come on!” Melchen sneered.

  “Really! I have an interchangeable wardrobe of white-and cream-colored silk and linen shirts. I think I remember what sport jacket I wore…and the slacks…but not the shirt. What the hell, gentlemen—go to my house, inspect my laundry if you like!”

  “We’ll just take you up on that,” Melchen said nastily.

  Barker rose and came over to me. He gave me a foul look. “That’s all, Heller.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and went out.

  I tried to find Marjorie Bristol, to say goodbye, but she didn’t seem to be around. So I looked up Lindop, who was in the hallway, amidst an ever-increasing, milling crowd; what a way to run an investigation.

  “Can I go, Colonel? Watching those Keystone Kops play in the dark gives me a migraine.”

  He smiled faintly. “You’ll need to give the Attorney General a deposition before you leave Nassau.”

  “I figured as much, but I meant, right now….”

  He touched the brim of his pith helmet, in a tipping-of-the-hat gesture. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Heller, you’re free to go. But frankly, I don’t seem to be in charge.”

  He had a point; but I found the Bahamian bobbies who’d brought me here and told them they were supposed to take me back to the hotel.

  And they did.

  Hell—maybe I was in charge….

  Palms rustled gently in the sultry night breeze. The sky was a clear dark blue, aglitter with stars, like handfuls of diamonds carelessly scattered on a taut satin sheet; the sliver of silver moon hung like a sideways, Cheshire-cat smile. Ice clinked in fruit-bedecked cocktail glasses while the wind whispered warm tropical kisses. It might have been an idyllic evening in the Bahamas, only I was in Coral Gables, Florida, seated at a table for two in the outdoor dance patio of the Miami Biltmore, where Ina Mae Hutton and her “all-girl” Melodears were playing a bouncy instrumental version of “Pistol Packin’ Mama.”

  Up under the red-and-white stage canopy, Ina Mae, a pretty blonde in a slinky red gown, was swinging a mean baton. She and her musicians were indeed “all-girl,” though many of the formerly all-male bands these days had women sprinkled throughout, particularly in the string sections.

  I wondered if Miss Hutton, and tonight’s headline act, might be a little hep for this somewhat over-the-hill crowd. The audience on this perfect Florida Saturday night was mostly middle-aged and older, although a few sailors on leave with their girls were mixed in, so some wild, throw-her-over-the-shoulder jitterbugging was going on here and there, challenging even the pulchritudinous Melodears for public attention.

  Maybe it was the man shortage, or maybe it was just money, but there were a number of older men with younger women here this starlit night, and one such couple—seated ringside—particularly caught my eye. The redhead was petite and pretty and twentyish, slimly attractive in a green gown; twice her age, her well-dressed sugar daddy had close-set eyes, a lined face, a weak chin and a tan from God. He was also small, almost as small as she was.

  A fairly ordinary businessman type, he wouldn’t have caught my eye, despite the dame, if it hadn’t been for the burly bookends seated on either side of them: bodyguards. Was this nondescript little businessman connected? Probably. This was Florida, after all. No shortage of oranges, bathing beauties or mobsters.

  Once the Al Dexter tune had abated, and the applause, Ina Mae spoke over a timpani roll, introducing the featured performer of the evening.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the little lady who made so many fans with her own famous fans, first at the Chicago World’s Fair, and more recently, the San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition on Treasure Island…direct from her command performance before the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Nassau…Miss Sally Rand!”

  To the big-band strains of “Clair de Lune,” she slipped from behind the stage out onto the dance floor, fluttering the enormous pink ostrich plumes, her steps mincing, her smile sweet, blond curls shimmering to bare shoulders, a pink flower in her hair. Applause greeted her, and she acknowledged it with a shy smile, as she began her graceful dance. She moved like the ballerina she was, granting fleeting glimpses of white flesh (no body stocking for Helen, not even at forty) to tommy-gun bursts of enthusiastic clapping. Her pirouettes, as she stood poised on the toes of her high-heeled pumps, saw her caressing the feather fans, like a lover; she seemed lost in a trance, as if unaware anyone was watching.

  Of course, they were—many of the men with that agape expression that gets them kicked under the table. Although Sally Rand was, as she’d said, respectable now; a show-business legend, an American institution, her sweet, naughty, only slightly erotic performance pleasing even the ladies.

  I’d seen her many times—this, as well as her equally famed bubble dance; she alternated them, doing several shows an evening, although wartime curfew and liquor-sale restrictions had the show closing at midnight, after the required playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I never tired of watching her, though, and she never seemed to tire of being watched—she had that uncanny star ability to make each audience feel she was performing so
mething unique and just for them, something no one else had ever seen.

  The performance lasted a mere eight minutes, but when she lifted her fans high in her famed Winged Victory pose, breasts high and bare, lifting a leg coyly to keep one small secret—one she had, happily, shared with me many a time—the Biltmore crowd, over-the-hill or not, went wild.

  She covered herself with her fans and took several bows, giving the delighted audience the sort of warm, intimate smile that would make them remember this evening. Then she fluttered coyly out, making herself the center of a sandwich of the two plumes as she did. Intentionally comical, it got a nice laugh that eased any lingering sexual tension.

  I sipped my rum and Coke and waited for Helen; this had been her last show of the evening. Tomorrow, or maybe Monday, I would head back for Chicago. What the hell, I could afford to lay back and loaf a little: I’d just hauled eleven thousand bucks ashore, for my little Nassau sojourn.

  Actually, I really only worked one day, but several more had got eaten up by questioning and such. I had given my deposition to the Attorney General himself, in one of those pink colonial buildings off Rawson Square.

  Attorney General Eric Hallinan was a long-faced, long-nosed, dour Britisher with a tiny mustache and eyes that mingled boredom and distaste, even as he thanked me for my cooperation.

  “You’ll be asked to return for the trial, of course,” he told me, “at the expense of the Bahamian government.”

  “What trial?”

  “Alfred de Marigny’s,” Hallinan said, quietly smiling, as if savoring the words.

  It seemed the Count had been arrested, on the say-so of the two Miami dicks. Their investigation had lasted less than two days—I wondered if they had anything on him, besides a few singed hairs and me placing him near the scene of the crime.

  Helen had done me the courtesy of sticking around through all this, and even talked me into doing some Bahamas-style sight-seeing, including taking a glass-bottomed boat ride to view those Botanical Gardens Miss Bristol had recommended. Watching a bunch of exotic-looking fish swim around amidst exotic-looking coral may not have been my cup of chowder, but it beat hell out of staring at the walls of my room at the British Colonial.