Lost Lady Read online

  “I know what I’ve heard. Nowadays, the fact that a person drives a Cadillac doesn’t mean he’s rich.” I picked out a cigarette and handed her one. She took it without asking what the brand was. She clicked her little gold lighter and did the honors for both of us. She was standing very close, and there was a fragrance that was slightly more than haunting. I took a second deep breath and went back t
  “What else?” I asked.

  “He’s been raising hell recently trying to get more money.” She took a deep breath and said, “Dean’s keeping a girl.”

  “So?”

  “A girl named Dolores Laverne. She’s quite a dish. I could name you a couple of movie actresses who could play the part. You’d know what I meant.”

  “I get the idea.”

  “Apparently she’s expensive, and Dean’s been hounding Dorothy for more money. He could even be in love with this Dolores, provided he’s capable of being in love with anybody except himself.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “Now you are kidding.”

  “He makes your sister unhappy?”

  “Yes.”

  “You love Mrs. Halliday?”

  Her expression grew gentle, beautiful in an entirely different way. She said, “I know only two completely good people, Danny. One of them is Dorothy.”

  “And the other?”

  “A man named Robert Bayless. You wouldn’t know him. He’s in love with me, and I wish I were lucky enough and sensible enough to be in love with him.”

  She stopped talking and let it hang there between us. I’d stumbled into a vein of unexpected sentiment and gentleness, and somehow I liked it that way.

  I said, “You’ve talked interestingly, Miss Kent, but you haven’t really told me anything. Everything you say could be true, and probably is, but it doesn’t make your handsome brother-in-law a murderer. It doesn’t even justify your thinking that he is. People have a habit of doing unexpected things. Your sister will probably turn up right as rain tomorrow—maybe tonight.”

  “She won’t. I know it.”

  “You can’t know anything like that.” I didn’t think she was being very intelligent about this. Good idea, maybe, but nothing to tie it to. I apologized in advance for what I was going to ask and then asked it: “If your sister’s home life isn’t happy, why couldn’t she have met someone on the outside she could be happy with?”

  She stared at me for a moment. Then she got down off the desk and took one step closer to me. She said, in a hard, tight voice, “You goddamn dirty louse, to think anything like that!”

  She used the profanity without straining, used it as naturally as a man would use it under stress of great emotion.

  “Look, Miss Kent,” I said, “I merely asked a logical question. If it involved someone who wasn’t so close to you, you’d realize it was logical. So your answer is that the idea is unthinkable. You’re probably right. But it still wasn’t a question that shouldn’t have been asked, not if we’re talking about something as serious as the possibility of murder.”

  She walked to the window and stood staring out across the roofs of little one-story buildings toward the brilliance that marked the corner of Hollywood and Vine, about six blocks away. After a few moments she turned slowly and once again she had altered her personality. The venom was gone, the too ready profanity, the fury. She said, “I apologize. But I hadn’t ever thought of my sister in any way like that. If you knew her, you’d realize why it hit me so hard.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe we both sounded off. I didn’t mean to be tactless. My advice to you, however, is to sit steady. I believe you’ll find you’ve been worried about nothing. Mrs. Halliday will turn up fit as a fiddle.”

  “There’s nothing you can do beyond that?”

  “Lieutenant Lane is handling it. Every cop, every radio car will be alerted to be on the lookout for her. You say she was driving her own car. The license number will be broadcast. You’ll be surprised how quickly we’ll come up with something. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “You’ve got me scared. I’m not really a goddamn dirty louse, you know.”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless she wanted to drop out of the picture for a while. Take that any way you like. Things such as you’re thinking about don’t just happen to people. Not often, anyway, and not young, healthy folks like Mrs. Halliday.”

  She drew a deep breath and said she guessed I was right. She said she’d been brooding over it all day, sitting at home calling friends and in between times waiting for the telephone to ring or for her sister to come in. That, she explained, was why the outrageous hunch grew in her so that it didn’t seem at all out of line. Then, all of a sudden, she did another quick change. This girl was about as unpredictable as a ball of quicksilver.

  “You like to swim?” she asked.

  “Sure. I love it.”

  “We’ve got a pool. How would you like to try it out?”

  I didn’t get it. I must have looked pretty dopey because she picked up where she’d left off.

  “How about coming to the house for a swim tomorrow, plus lunch afterward? What time are you due at work?”

  “Four o’clock,” I told her. “And I’d love it.”

  She gave me the address on Valleycrest Drive. “We’ll probably have the place to ourselves,” she told me. “Prettypuss usually goes out as soon as he finishes breakfast—provided he’s home for breakfast.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “Noon on the sharp.”

  “We’ll have fun.” She stepped away and eyed me up and down, deliberately, insolently. “You’re cute,” she stated. “Real cute. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Married?”

  “Nope.”

  “Engaged?”

  “Nope.”

  “I like blonds. You’re blond.”

  “So I’ve heard. Also, so you’ll have it all down straight, I’m five-eleven. I weigh a hundred and eighty-five pounds. I have no bad habits aside from the ones I like, and just what should give you the idea of entertaining me at a swimming party?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “I like you.”

  “Not that fast, you couldn’t. Cute as I am, I’m not dynamite. Or is this just some new sort of thrill for a gal who’s had everything else?”

  “Could be,” she admitted. “I don’t know yet.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “We’ll have fun, Danny,” she said. “See if we don’t.”

  “How much fun?” I knew that was reaching pretty far, but I wanted to see how she’d react. I didn’t understand this whole business. She was blowing too hot and too cold too quickly.

  “More than you might think,” she answered steadily. “I’ve been around.”

  Those eyes again. I thought I knew what they were saying, but I wasn’t sure. Anyway, what could I lose?

  A guy like me, he’s bound to wonder what makes a girl like Iris Kent tick. I was mug enough to be flattered and sensible enough to realize that there was more to it than met the naked eye.

  The whole business was screwy. Even with the little I knew, there were too many questions that hadn’t been answered, too many jigsaw pieces that didn’t fit: this talk about murder, the bitterness against her brother-in-law, the blind devotion to her missing sister, her implied invitation to play house if I’d come up and see her sometime.

  There are occasions in the life of a young working policeman when business and pleasure combine. There isn’t any rule in the manual against enjoying yourself, especially if it’s in the line of duty.

  Chapter Three

  Iris gave me her unlisted telephone number and we sauntered back up the hall to the detectives’ room. I had caught a glimpse of Dean Halliday in the record bureau where one of the girls was typing his report.

  It was eleven o’clock now. The boys all gave me the eye and viewed Iris appreciatively. A couple of them passed a few kidding remarks with her, and it w
as just one big happy family until Dean Halliday showed up and suggested that they shove off. Everybody said thanks to everybody else and they walked downstairs together, Iris looking trim and tiny beside Halliday’s tall, athletic figure.

  We watched them get into a car parked on De Longpre: a Cad convertible, of course. Nothing less than that could fit the opulence they both exuded. And the minute they drove off, the boys started in on me.

  Kidding. You know. How did I make out? Was she as hot as she looked? Carl Lindstrom, my working partner, said, “I suppose you’ve got her all dated up, eh, Danny?”

  I shrugged.

  “If there’s any of it left over when you finish, I’d like a piece.”

  Elsie Barker wanted to know what we’d been talking about all that time. “Business,” I said.

  Elsie made a skeptical comment. “When you seeing her again?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” They thought they were ribbing me, so I ribbed right back. “At her house. She’s got a swimming pool and I’m going in it.”

  “You kidding?”

  “Nope.”

  Carl Lindstrom volunteered to lend me his camera, said he’d like a snapshot of that in a bathing suit. We kept on tossing the ball back and forth, enjoying ourselves and getting rough, but not too rough. Bert Lane, the lieutenant, had been leaning back in his chair watching me through those sharp gray eyes of his.

  “You leveling, Danny?” he asked suddenly.

  “Sure. Tomorrow at noon, she said. I’ll be there with trunks on.”

  “What’s it all about?” That was Lane again. That guy was superhuman. If there was something beneath the surface, he was the man to see it. “I know it’ll be fun. I even know What you’ve got on your mind. But what is she thinking about?”

  “I don’t get you, Lieutenant.”

  “I’ll diagram it, then, Danny. You ain’t repulsive, but you’re no prize, either. Far as I’ve heard, you ain’t celebrated for getting to first base in your own league. So what happens tonight? The neatest trick of the week walks in, inspects a roomful of guys all better-looking than you—except maybe me, but I’m old—and picks you out to make a play for. There’s an angle here, and I’m trying to figure it, but it doesn’t figure.”

  I looked around at the other men. Some were grinning, some were serious. I said, “I was just going to touch on that, Bert. It’ll figure even less when I tell you what she wanted to discuss with me.”

  I started talking. The cops who had been grinning became as serious as the others. This puzzled them, and, to a professional dick, a puzzle is something to be solved. No one interrupted, and when I finished they waited for Bert Lane to comment.

  “It stinks on ice,” he stated.

  Elsie Barker took a cigar out of his mouth and fired a question. “How’d she act? Psycho?”

  “No-o.” I thought back on what had happened, trying to hand it to them straight. “She wasn’t the same for two minutes consecutively, and when I suggested that maybe her sister might be shacking up with some guy, she really lit on me.”

  “Why?” That was Lane again. “Was it because the idea was unthinkable for her or because she thought maybe it might be true?”

  “I don’t know. Honest, I don’t. I can think either way. That’s the main reason I accepted her invitation for tomorrow.”

  “Hah!” Carl Lindstrom, my partner, broke in.

  “You got a dirty mind, Carl.”

  Lane was still wrestling with the problem. “Her sister has a date at ten o’clock at night or thereabouts. Handsome hubby wasn’t home—hadn’t even been home for dinner. That would seem to put him out of the picture. The date was away from home, Dean Halliday probably didn’t know anything about it, and Mrs. Halliday didn’t offer to pick up her sister later. Told her to get a ride home. Sounds as though, right at that moment, she didn’t expect to be home early. What does that sound like, Danny?”

  “Same old thing,” I said. “But if you had heard what Iris called me …”

  “She’d have called you the same thing sooner or later,” interjected Lindstrom. “Soon as she got to know you better.”

  “Let’s cut the kidding,” suggested Lieutenant Lane. “This thing slices easy or it slices hard, according. If Mrs. Halliday was out grabbing a bit of fun she couldn’t get at home, it’s simple. If it was something else … What did the girl say about her brother-in-law, Danny?”

  “That he was a louse. That he was mooching on his wife and keeping a dame named Dolores Laverne with the money she gave him.”

  “Let’s say,” went on the Lieutenant, “that Dean Halliday is a sonofabitch in spades. If that’s true, and if Mrs. Halliday is all that Iris says, why does she keep on living with him? Divorce ain’t so hard to get in California, and Las Vegas is just three hundred miles away.”

  Elsie Barker broke in. “Maybe the missus doesn’t know he’s keeping this broad.”

  I said, “I got the idea Iris believes she does know.”

  “But there apparently wasn’t any quarrel yesterday-nothing especially out of line, that is. So if she knew, she’d been knowing for some time. Why the walkout last night? Unless she’d been salving her conscience about this little affair she might be having—you know, justifying herself because her hubby was stepping out, too. What’s more, there’s another angle. A normal, healthy adult disappears, and the first thing you think about is an accident. Auto smashup, anything like that. But Iris Kent doesn’t seem concerned about that. She’s got to pick Danny O’Leary as a confidant, she’s got to plant the idea that Mrs. Halliday has been murdered. Why? People don’t just think about murder.”

  “I told her that,” I said. “She said something about having a hunch.”

  “Nuts! Not from what she told you, she didn’t have a hunch. From something else, maybe, but not from that.”

  Sergeant Ehrlich, who’d been taking it all in and saying nothing, leaned forward to put in his two cents’ worth. “Looks to me,” he said, “like if something’s happened, this cutie knows damned good and well it’s happened. It looks as though she was building up Dean Halliday as suspect number one.”

  “Why?”

  Lane answered that. He said, “Get this, Danny. If Mrs. Halliday turns up slightly slaughtered, your little gal friend is a better suspect than Halliday. Take my advice, feller, and when you’re chasing her around the pool tomorrow, do a lot of listening and a minimum of talking. Could be she figures you as a pipe line into the Detective Bureau—figures she can soften you up to the point where she’ll know what we’re thinking down here.”

  “You think I ought to pass it up?”

  “Definitely not. I don’t believe anybody’s been murdered, or likely to be. But something might turn up, and if it does, there wouldn’t be a bit of harm in having a guy from this office already planted on the inside. If I was you, I’d string right along with her. Just agree—don’t argue. Try to find out what she’s got on her mind.”

  “He’ll try that, all right,” broke in Lindstrom.

  “And if and when Mrs. Halliday turns up, remind hubby to notify us.” He turned his attention to Sergeant Gram. “You used to work vice,” he said. “Ever get a rumble on this Dolores Laverne?”

  Gram shook his head. “Not that I remember. But the name rings a bell.”

  “I’ve heard of her,” offered Bill Moncrief. “Mob gal. Good-looking as hell. The lay of the land.” He turned to the telephone and started dialing Records. A few minutes later he hung up the phone. “No record on Laverne. Could be she’s spending her life fulfilling her biological functions only.”

  Two more detectives drifted in, the first of the morning watch, which was on duty from midnight until 8 a.m. We all stretched and decided to call it a night. As we left the building Carl Lindstrom gave me a poke in the gut, not too easy, either. “Go home and get your beauty sleep, Lover Boy,” he advised. “You’ll need a lot of charm and virility tomorrow.”


  I drove to my little apartment just off Wilshire Boulevard. All the way home I was thinking about Iris Kent, and not from a police angle. My thoughts were in curves. I put the car in the garage and let myself in the apartment. Chuck Morrison was in the living room, studying.

  Chuck shares the apartment with me. He’s a well-built, quiet guy I met in the Army. He thinks I’m crazy, and maybe he’s right, but he likes me. I’ll guarantee I like him.

  A fellow doesn’t have many friends like Chuck. He could be serious and he could kid. When I first met him during basic training in 1942, I figured he’d be a washout. But I was wrong. We soldiered together through a lot of good times and a lot of bad times, and after V-J Day we just naturally set up housekeeping in what they call a single, which means a big bedroom with two beds, a small living room, a bath, and a tiny kitchen.

  Chuck was ambitious. He worked for the Department of Power and Light and was studying law nights at U.S.C. under the G.I. Bill of Rights. It was taking him a long time to get his LL.B. because he couldn’t give it full time, but he was on the ball every minute and I knew that sooner or later he’d be Charles D. Morrison, Attorney at Law, and he’d have at least one client, who would be named Daniel Aloysius O’Leary.

  He put down the casebook he’d been studying, fired up a cigarette, and passed his hand across a pair of tired eyes. He said, “Hiya, keed,” and I said, “Hiya,” and then, “You’re hitting the books too hard, Chuck.”

  “It’s a grind,” he admitted.

  “What you need is to get out and raise hell once in a while. Get rid of the tension. You only got so many years to live—why waste all of ‘em?”

  “Gotta go places, Danny. One of these days I’ll be admitted to the bar. But that means a lot of work first.”

  I told him he ought to have a job like mine where business and pleasure could be combined. I told him about Iris Kent—just the girl, that is, leaving off her crazy accusations against her brother-in-law about a murder that I was sure hadn’t even happened and wasn’t likely to—and about how I was going swimming in her private pool the next day. I explained that I wasn’t at home in high society and asked him how to behave.