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  He was kidding me about that when the phone rang. I remember I looked at my watch as Marty reached for the phone. It was just a few minutes before midnight.

  The call was from a radio patrol car. They had found a woman screaming and running down the road. At first they thought she was drunk or psycho, but it didn’t work out that way. She was just terrified.

  She said somebody had been killed. A man named Dean Halliday. She said it had happened during a party at the big house on Valleycrest Drive.

  Marty was sweating by the time he finished relaying the message to me. I was already diving for the door. We got into a car and started for Los Feliz. Another car followed us. Two radio cars were there when we arrived. The big house was ablaze with light. There were a lot of people inside. We parked at the curb, the driveway being jammed with cars, and en route we met Robert Bayless.

  He’d always impressed me as a calm and self-possessed young man. But now he was sizzling.

  “The sonofabitch,” he was saying. “The dirty, lousy sonofabitch.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Dean Halliday. He got what was coming to him. Imagine him throwing a wild party here in this house within a week of his wife’s death.”

  “Who did it?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Bayless was so angry that he wasn’t himself at all. “You’ve got a beautiful gang to choose from. Wait till you see what’s inside: every hoodlum, every tart, every cheap tawdry character in Hollywood. Halliday’s idea of a celebration.”

  A shrill sound came from Los Feliz Boulevard, then a screeching of tires as a car rounded a corner too fast. That, I figured, would be Bert Lane. It was. But before he got there, Bayless had grabbed Marty’s arm.

  “Look,” he said, “can’t we get Iris out of here? This is one too much for her. She’ll crack up sure.”

  Marty and I shot a quick glance at each other. We were both remembering our conversation earlier that night about Iris and Halliday.

  “She’s taking it hard?” I asked.

  “Of course she’s taking it hard. To walk into a brawl like this after what happened last week, to find her sister’s house turned into a brothel, to see her brother-in-law acting as genial host to a crowd of cheap, rotten hustlers. Can’t we get her away from here, Danny?”

  I was sorry for him. He was plenty upset, plenty angry. If things were as he told them, he couldn’t be blamed.

  Just then Bert Lane’s car, its red light blinking and siren still howling, whirled into the driveway. The street outside was packed with neighbors—genuinely interested or morbidly curious. Other cars, attracted by the excitement, were jamming traffic on Valleycrest. The press cars started arriving. Same old routine, but keyed higher.

  “If we can’t take her out,” Bayless insisted, “can’t I call a nurse or a friend to stay with her? She needs help.”

  I looked questioningly at Marty, but he was already busy briefing Bert on what we knew. The two radio-car men who had been there first supplied more details. We could hear noises from inside the house. The radio was blaring good old New Orleans jazz. Somebody had forgotten to turn it off, or else nobody gave a damn. A woman was having herself a fit of hysterics and a man was telling her she’d better quiet down or he’d slap her silly.

  We went inside. Bayless had prepared us for something, but not for this. The living room was a mess. Food on silver trays, drinks in glasses, in bottles, and spilled on the floor. The huge, handsome center rug rolled back for dancing. Flashy floozies and their dapper, drunken boy friends.

  I saw Dolores Laverne. She was yowling, taking it big. hamming it up. Maybe she’d been the one with the hysterics.

  One of the cops told us that Halliday was upstairs in his room. He’d been shot through the head with a rifle. The rifle was on the floor. It had apparently come from the glass case in the sitting room of the master suite. It could have been fired by anybody. You wouldn’t have to be a crack shot to hit the bull’s-eye from that distance. The radio had been going top tilt downstairs when the thing happened, or when they thought it happened. Nobody heard the shot, or at least they said they hadn’t heard it.

  No one knew how long Halliday had been upstairs. Not even Dolores Laverne. This was all coming to us secondhand from the uniform cop.

  This was really a party. Half the crowd had sobered up a little, shocked by the fact that their host had been murdered. The other half were too far gone to know or care.

  Things were taking shape. Dolores Laverne present. God knew where Vince Montero was. Iris, who had been out on a dinner date with Robert Bayless and who had not known about the party, walking into the middle of it. Iris upstairs in her room, right across the hall from the room in which Dean Halliday’s body was lying. People rambling all over the house, making themselves at home.

  Marty Walsh and Bert Lane took over. They were crisp and efficient. A guard was stationed in front and another at the back. No one was to enter without an O.K. from Walsh and nobody at all was to leave. Marty, Bert Lane, and I, as the ones most familiar with things, were to do the questioning.

  Coroner had been called, crime lab was on the way. All the tenseness, all the excitement of a murder. But this one had a flavor all its own. I could see Bayless’ point: Halliday had overreached himself this night. Celebrating his inheritance, of course. That I understood. It was his timing that was incredible.

  Bert Lane and Marty Walsh were mulling over the prospects with the bitterness of guys long on the job. I was standing by, saying nothing.

  “Look at that outfit.” It was Bert Lane speaking, his gray eyes narrowed as he regarded the brawling guests. “There probably ain’t a man or a woman there who wouldn’t be afraid to talk frankly to the cops about anything. They’re the goddamnedest bunch of bastards I’ve ever seen in a decent house.” He gave a big sigh.

  “But we still got it to do, Marty. Let’s go.”

  They detailed two teams to interrogate the lesser fry, the ones who hadn’t been too mixed up in the deal prior to Halliday’s murder. They were to concentrate on how the party started, any byplay that may have been observed during the evening between the dead man and Dolores Laverne or anyone else. They were also to pick up what they could about what had happened when Iris barged in on the party with Robert Bayless.

  Walsh went to the telephone, stationed me at the extension to be certain one of the smart guests didn’t listen in, and asked that a wail be sent out to pick up Vince Montero. If a radio car or beat man got him, he was to be told nothing. He was to be held for questioning by one of us.

  We got Robert Bayless’ story first. He’d had a date with Iris, which wasn’t unusual. She had seemed much her old self during most of the evening. She had made no comment about any party preparations she had noticed at home before starting out, and the evening had been pleasant enough without being hilarious.

  “Was there any particularly personal conversation between you and Iris?” I asked.

  He flushed and said, “Only the usual.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I asked her again to marry me. She said she probably would, but not now. I pressed the point, which I don’t usually do. I said I didn’t like her being in the house alone with Halliday. She said she couldn’t see that that made any difference. I said it seemed to make plenty of difference. I said I thought things had changed drastically since Dorothy—well, you know what I mean. She still said no. That is, it wasn’t a definite no, but it wasn’t yes, either.”

  I said, “Were you jealous of her being in the house with Halliday?”

  “Good God, no!” He looked at me in surprise. “That is, I wasn’t jealous in the way I think you mean. I merely thought the situation was unhealthy. I thought there was trouble implicit in it.”

  “How much trouble?”

  He gave me a reproving look. He said, “You know better than that, O’Leary. You’re trying to make me say Iris was planning to kill Halliday—something like that. Well, it doesn’t shape up that way. I
know why she doesn’t want to move or why she didn’t kick him out of the house right away. It’s because she doesn’t want him to think he’s that important. It’s also—perhaps—because she had the idea that Halliday was mixed up in her sister’s death.”

  “Does she still think so?”

  “I don’t know what she thinks. I saw her only once after I brought her home tonight.”

  “What do you think?”

  He considered that one carefully. “I’ve got no right to think, Danny. But I’ll say this: Until tonight I had thought Halliday might be in the middle. Now I think different.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody killed him. Why, I don’t know. But it could be that whoever killed him also killed Dorothy.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “Of course it doesn’t. Nothing has to be any way. Halliday was the sort of man who would have been a popular target. Lots of people didn’t like him. Lots of these people are drunk. No one knows exactly when the shooting occurred. They had the radio tuned way up, and there was lots of other noise. The sound of the shot was drowned out.”

  “That’s what they say. The kind of people in yonder wouldn’t admit they knew anything. All they want is out.”

  He said, “I was here, Danny. I didn’t hear the shot.” He gave us the rest of the story then, simply and concisely.

  It seemed he had brought Iris home about ten-thirty or so. The house had been a bedlam. He’d brought Iris in and she’d thrown a wingding when she saw that it was a party. She figured right away what it was: Dean Halliday celebrating his inheritance. She had a brief scene with Halliday and told him what she thought. Bayless hadn’t heard the words, but he admitted that Iris was good and mad.

  Then, it seemed, she had gone up to her suite. He had followed and suggested that she leave the house. She refused. She said, and he quoted, “I’ll be damned if I’ll be run out of my own home by a louse like that.”

  She sent Bayless home. But, according to his story, he didn’t go. He hung around, keeping an eye on things, worrying about Iris. He said the whole brannigan nauseated him. He wouldn’t have dreamed of anything so out of line, even from Dean Halliday.

  “You said you saw Iris again. When?”

  “After about thirty or forty minutes, I made one more effort to get her out of there. No soap.”

  “What was her emotional state then?” “She was still angry, but she had herself under better control.”

  She had sent him downstairs again, begging him to go home. She had promised to take a Seconal to ensure a decent night’s rest.

  “But you didn’t go home?”

  “No. I had no intention of leaving until the party was over. I hung around in the hallway downstairs and walked around the grounds, just in case. People I’d never seen before brought me drinks. I didn’t take them. I’m not a drinker.”

  “And then?”

  “I hadn’t seen Halliday downstairs for quite some time. This Laverne woman went upstairs to hunt for him. She went to his rooms and found him. She started yelling. Everybody who wasn’t too drunk rushed upstairs.”

  “What did you do?”

  “As soon as I found out what had happened, I went up to Iris’ room. She hadn’t undressed. I found her standing by her open door, talking to a woman I didn’t know.”

  “Was she much upset?”

  “Naturally.”

  “What did she say—to you, that is?” Again he flushed. Then he said,

  “Nothing. She didn’t say a word.”

  Bert Lane broke in. “Now, listen, Bayless, that’s not reasonable. A murder had just been committed across the hall from her. You showed up, her one real friend. She had to say something.”

  “She didn’t, though.”

  “You’re sticking to that?”

  “I’m not sticking to anything, Lieutenant. I’m telling the truth.”

  “You’re lying,” countered Lane. “But you’re doing it like a gentleman.”

  He went into a huddle with Marty Walsh. They decided to send me upstairs—alone—to talk to Iris. I didn’t appreciate their confidence. Crazy as Iris was, I liked her.

  She wasn’t in my league, and if she’d been mine I’d have wanted to pin her ears back. I’d never have been as tolerant or as understanding as Robert Bayless.

  Marty and Bert were going to have a little chat with Dolores. Just before we separated, they had a few more words with Bayless.

  Marty said, “You were around, Bayless. You didn’t like what was happening. You’re in love with Iris. You stuck around because you were afraid to leave her alone. You made a second trip upstairs.” Marty threw his next question swiftly. “Did you kill Dean Halliday?”

  Bayless took his time about answering. Then, surprisingly enough, he said, “It’s possible.”

  “You’re not denying it?”

  “No. I could have been upstairs when it happened. I knew where they kept the guns and the cartridges. I know how to handle a rifle. I hated the whole setup. I wanted to protect Iris. Yes, I could have killed him.”

  “Did you?”

  “I’m not answering that.”

  Bert Lane broke in. “If you didn’t,” he said gently, “you’re making it worse for Iris.”

  “How?”

  “By attempting to divert suspicion to yourself, you’re throwing it in her direction. She had opportunity and motive.”

  “What motive?”

  “Resentment at what Halliday was doing. The fact that she has made no secret of her hatred.”

  “Iris had nothing to do with it,” he said stubbornly.

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Perhaps I can.”

  “Aw, hell, feller. You ain’t gonna get away with it. You’re doing yourself and Iris no good at all.”

  “I know she had nothing to do with his death. About me, you can believe anything you want.”

  The two lieutenants looked at each other, shrugged hopelessly, and motioned to me to get on about my business. As I mounted the stairway, they were still talking to Bayless.

  I paid no attention to what was happening in the room where the body of Dean Halliday was lying. I took a quick look inside and found things just about as I imagined they would be, except his face was more of a mess than I had expected. Whoever had fired the shot hadn’t taken much chance of missing.

  The technical boys were on the job. Well, they had that sector under control, so I walked across the hall and rapped on the door of Iris’ sitting room. I heard her call, “Who is it?” and I said it was Danny O’Leary.

  I heard her unlock the door. She opened it, and I stepped inside. She closed it again and would have locked it, but I stopped her. I explained there wasn’t any sense keeping it locked, especially when I was there.

  She was still dressed in a street outfit. She looked lovely —which she always did—but she also looked terrible.

  For perhaps fifteen seconds, she stared at me. Then her body started to sag and her eyes to blink.

  All of a sudden she threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around my neck. The floodgates opened wide.

  She clung to me tightly. I could feel her body quivering against mine. Under other circumstances I would have reacted. This time I didn’t. I was too damned sorry for her.

  She kept it up for five, ten minutes. And all she said during that time was, “Oh, Dannydannydannydan-ny …”

  It didn’t make sense. Hell, I hardly knew the girl.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was a long time before she quieted down, and when she did, it wasn’t gradual. All of a sudden she turned it off. One minute she was having bush-league hysterics and the next minute she was under control. She asked for a cigarette and I lighted one for her. She sat down on the edge of her bed and motioned me to sit beside her. I pulled up a chair and sat opposite. She smiled, ever so slightly, and asked why I was being so coy. I told her I wasn’t—that I was supposed to be working. When I asked what had happened
during the evening, she seemed to have some trouble getting started, but once she got rolling she went right along.

  In all particulars her story agreed with that of Robert Bayless. She said that when they got back home and she saw the party in progress and sensed the enormity of it, she blew her cork.

  “You were sore at Halliday?”

  “I was madder than I’ve ever before been in my life.” There was no lightness in her manner now. “I could have killed him.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.” She let that hang for a moment, and then she amplified it. “I just never thought of it.”

  “Did you hear the shot that killed him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”

  “Is that evasion or uncertainty?”

  “Uncertainty. I was too mad for sounds to register.”

  “The sound of a rifle shot from right across the hall would have been considerable, Iris.”

  “Those are heavy doors, mine and his. Anyway, I don’t remember a shot.”

  “What happened when Bayless came upstairs the second time?”

  “He begged me to leave here.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t going to be run out of my own home.”

  “That doesn’t make too much sense. You could have left. You could have started machinery in motion tomorrow to get Halliday out.”

  “What I do,” she said, “usually doesn’t make sense.”

  “What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why you don’t marry Robert Bayless.”

  “I don’t understand it either. I hope that if and when I do marry him, I’ll understand my hesitation even less. He’s all I’ve got left.”

  I said, deliberately, “He thinks we suspect you of killing Halliday. He’s preparing to take the rap for you. To confess, if necessary.”

  The smile that touched her lips was soft and sweet—the sort of smile I’d never seen on her face before except once or twice when she had mentioned her sister. “He would,” she said.