Cold Poison (12 page)

“Okay,” the Inspector said with some complacency. “So it fits. You better keep a close eye on the guy until I can get over there. How do I get to the studio from a phone booth in a drugstore on a side street in Burbank, huh?”

“Why—just a minute, Oscar. I can’t hear you; somebody’s shouting….” Her voice trailed away and was lost. Yet she hadn’t hung up and they hadn’t been cut off, because he could hear a faint tantalizing rumble of voices at the other end of the line.

“Hello? Hello-ello-ello?”

He waited there sweating in the tight little phone booth for the better part of a cigar, now and then at the request of the operator fishing another dime out of his pants’ pocket and losing it forever in the maw of the insatiable machine. At long, long last he heard a familiar voice at the other end. “Oscar?

“Yes,” he snapped back bitterly, “this is Oscar, the Forgotten Man, some dollar or so poorer than he was half an hour ago. What may I ask—?”

“You were asking me how to get from Burbank to the studio,” she said, in an odd tone. “Take a street car or a bus or walk; don’t bother with a taxi because there’s no hurry about your putting the handcuffs on Mr. Karas. He’s not even here; they just took him away in an ambulance, I believe dying or dead—”

“What in the name of holy St. Paul and Minneapolis—?” he gasped. “Not—not
again
?”

“Yes, again. Same method.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, it appears to be another use of poison ivy—more of ‘the weed of hell.’” She sniffed. “At least they say he showed all the symptoms. It does seem to be catching, doesn’t it?”

“But—but he fitted the description so well!”

“I’m very much afraid, Oscar, that Mr. Karas fits nothing at the moment except a short, extra-wide coffin.”

“But Lucy—”

“‘Lucy is dead and in her grave—’ and you might as well stay there and keep vigil over it for all the help you’re being in this case. Solve it for me today, didn’t you say? Excuse me, Oscar, I am wanted by a big man with a badge who is lurking in my doorway. Good-by.” And she hung up, very firmly.

“Some men’s whole delight is … to talk of a cock and bull over a pot.”

BURTON

T
HAT, AS THEY SAY
, tore the lid off.

A few minutes after Guy Fowler came rushing out of the music stage to announce that he had found Mr. Karas strangling to death in the men’s washroom, the big studio resembled nothing so much as an anthill stirred by a stick. At first, because of his wild look and disheveled hair, there were those who imagined that the part-time musician had been at Karas’ well-known bottle of
slivowitz
and was making it all up, but he managed to convince somebody who went to see—and then screamed for the ambulance.

Throughout the entire place, pens and pencils and brushes were tossed aside; screens went dark in the projection room; reels stopped reeling film through the sprockets of editorial; and the cutters’ scissors were still. The merry madcap laughter of Peter Penguin was some minutes later drowned out by the wolf-wail of police sirens. A black battered sedan swung in on screeching tires through the main auto gate of the studio and—with no hesitation at all—roared through the sacrosanct streets until it came to Cartoon Alley.

From it erupted a burly police detective in what Miss Hildegarde Withers would have called “plain clothes”—he himself called it “citizen dress” after the prevailing fashion in official circles—though there was certainly nothing plain about him. He wore lavender slacks and a Hawaiian shirt covered with hibiscus flowers, plus a cowboy belt.

But lavender slacks or no, in ten minutes he had set up a temporary inquisition in Karas’ office, backed by three blue-uniformed officers who had immediately set about herding into the main music stage everyone who could possibly know anything about the case and a great many who couldn’t. They milled there, like alarmed sheep. Finally herded into their musicians’ folding chairs, they eyed one another with a new dubiousness. There was strain in the air; there was also a faint note of embarrassment, for each one of them knew that in Hollywood’s four decades and more there had never been a proved case of murder or attempted murder inside a studio. And it had to happen
here
.

Sergeant Callan, a massive thumb-fingered man in the Hawaiian shirt, whose brick-red face attested that he had spent most of his career writing traffic tickets in the bright summer sunlight of the Valley, appeared suddenly in the inner office doorway when they were all gathered together, and essayed a brief speech, which was obviously not his
forte
. “Just keep your pants on, folks—” he began, and then remembered where he was.

He remembered that the studios, and this studio in particular, paid more into the local till in taxes than did almost any other industry. He remembered that half the people he knew worked in a studio or were married to or divorced from or at least friends with somebody who depended on the motion-picture industry and its ramifications for their livelihood. It might be best to go a bit slowly, Sergeant Callan thought, at least until he was a little surer of his ground.

“I mean, ladies and gents,” he continued, “that if you’ll be a bit more quiet and cooperative, we’ll get this over with fast and you can all go to lunch.” The sergeant tried—not too successfully—to be one of the boys. “Okay?”

Nobody said anything, though Sergeant Callan seemed to be waiting for applause, like the acrobats first on the vaudeville bill who come out and bow and wait and hope.

From where Miss Hildegarde Withers sat on the sidelines, nobody in the crowd seemed to be thinking about lunch, though it was well after twelve. She was watching them like the proverbial hawk, hoping for a clue; clues were scarce today. Her favorite suspects—and all the other suspects, too—were trying to be self-possessed.

She could see Rollo Bayles sitting in the back row, chewing surreptitiously on his nails. Joyce Reed, the flamboyant secretary who had once been married to the first victim of this particular murder cycle, was either crying into her handkerchief or hiding behind it—it was beyond the schoolteacher at the moment to tell which, but she made certain inner commitments to find out a little more about Joyce. Probably because—as everybody kept telling her—poison was a
woman’s
way.

“Truisms,” said the schoolteacher to herself. “And you can have them, for all of me.” Murders, she had observed, were not always committed nor solved according to the rules. They were usually solved by observation and deduction, by perseverance and a little blind luck. She could use some of that luck now.

She looked at Mr. Cushak, standing at the very opposite side of the room from his lush secretary; it was evidently beneath his dignity to sit down beside the employees. The man stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his lips pressed more tightly than ever together. Now and then he looked at his watch, possibly wondering about appointments missed and about the inevitably bad newspaper publicity the whole thing would entail. Perhaps he was wondering what he would say to the big boss in New York when he had to call him on long-distance and break the news. Cushak, for whatever reason, was not a happy man.

Miss Withers studied him carefully and admitted to herself that he stood low on the list of suspects. Even though there were sometimes hidden turmoils deep inside these prim, conventional men, not even her active imagination could picture him as a murderer; certainly not as a murderer who smoke-screened his act with this theatrical nonsense about death warnings in the shape of left-handed valentines. Though, of course, the combination of a rich successful executive with a Cadillac and a flamboyantly beautiful divorcée secretary to whose charms he was exposed every day might just possibly—She shook her head. Even if they were carrying on, why should either or both try to dispose of Larry Reed, the husband she had got rid of legally a long time ago—to say nothing of Mr. Karas? The truth must lie deeper down than that

Continuing her keen-eyed scanning of the principal figures in the case, she came to Tip Brown sitting with several other artist-writers in the middle row of chairs just behind a group of giggling little messenger girls. The others were engaged in whispered badinage with the young ladies, which was only natural under the circumstances. Tip’s pink round face was calm, but in his lips was a sodden, sagging cigarette that he had somehow forgotten to light. He was watching Janet Poole up front, a strange new frightened Jan. Miss Withers saw the girl turn and catch his eye and manage a smile that was a travesty of a smile, done with her soft, wide lips and with no eyes involved in it at all. Jan’s shoulders were slumped and her bright blond hair somehow had lost its sheen, as a tropical fish out of water loses its rainbow colors. At this moment Jan looked all of her twenty-eight years and more; the veneer was off and she looked something of the Polska peasant again. Guy Fowler sitting beside her, their shoulders touching, seemed somewhat calm and disinterested; perhaps somewhat pleased with himself, like a famous dramatic critic watching a poor play and planning what devastating things he was going to write about it.

And in the far corner sat Cassiday in his work-coveralls, smoking a blackened pipe and obviously enjoying the drama of it all. It was evident to Miss Withers that Cassiday’s attitude toward the studio people of this era was that of Talleyrand toward cats; anything that happened to them was much too good for them. The man was thinking, perhaps, of the great days he had known here within these walls and stages, the days of Laura La Plante and Norman Kerry and Vilma Banky—all gone forever.

From her seat on the sidelines, the schoolteacher watched and waited; watched the stirred anthill in which somewhere there was a scorpion. Well, to continue the analogy, she herself could perhaps be a spider—or could a spider spin a web in which to entangle a scorpion? Lost in a maze of questions to which she could put no immediate answer, she suddenly heard Sergeant Callan turn again to the assemblage—he had perhaps been keeping them waiting for psychological reasons—and say, “Okay. So first off, I want a statement from the one that found the body—I mean the victim.”

Janet Poole suddenly let go of Guy’s hand, automatically straightened his tie, and patted him encouragingly on the shoulder. He set his jaw and started to rise, then hesitated as he saw a wiry, grizzled little man, dressed in the conservative blue suit and black shoes of Manhattan, push his way briskly to the front and buttonhole the sergeant in charge. The officer scowled and started to give the newcomer a brush-off, and then caught a glimpse of the gold badge cupped in Inspector Oscar Piper’s right hand. There was a change in the atmosphere and then a quick exchange of whispers. Callan nodded and stepped aside, beckoning. The Inspector started inside, but at that point there came the quick patter of feet. Miss Withers appeared, as usual, out of nowhere.

“Wait, Oscar! Wait for me!” she cried.

Sergeant Callan turned back and looked at her doubtfully. Then he turned back to Piper. “This lady with you, Inspector?”

Oscar Piper, perhaps remembering certain remarks made over the telephone not too long ago, said quietly, “Not at the moment,” and went on inside, leaving the schoolteacher speechless with indignation. The door of the inner office closed firmly behind them, and as she reached for the knob a large uniformed policeman took her firmly by the arm and suggested that maybe she better go back and
siddown
.

He stood before the door, arms akimbo, and so she gave him a withering Withers’ look and went back and sat down, fuming.

Miss Withers was not one to wait quietly, ever. For a little while she tried to amuse herself and pass the time by playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo among the potential suspects, with few if any actual results, unfortunately. The schoolteacher began to get bored with sitting, after a while. There was only one policeman in the room; she waited until his back was turned and then drifted casually toward the exit, slipping out without the ghost of a sound. Something had to be done, and soon. From what she had seen of Sergeant Callan, and from what she knew about the Inspector, bless him, it wasn’t going to be done here and now. The roots of this thing ran deep down. She went quickly back to her office across the deserted studio street, and got on the telephone.

Meanwhile, inside what had once been Mr. Karas’ office, the professional amenities were over. Sergeant Callan was obviously enjoying one of the Inspector’s clear Havana
puros
, amid a cloud of blue smoke. “We don’t mind having a homicide expert from New York in this thing with us,” he was conceding. “Not that the case is actually homicide yet—this Karas guy hasn’t quite turned up his toes. I just called the hospital and they say he’s got a chance, though he’s still on the critical list. But I also got in touch with Spring Street, and they say there at downtown homicide that because of this they’re going to reopen the Larry Reed case; the house where he died is in their jurisdiction and not ours, you know.”

“I didn’t know, exactly,” Oscar Piper admitted. “Los Angeles and its boundaries and jurisdictions are a bit too much for a New Yorker—not to speak of some of its people.”

Callan scratched his head. “I guess I see what you mean, all right. You have to live out here—”

“God forbid!” said the Inspector.

“Okay. But seriously, I don’t get this stuff about poison ivy. I thought it was only supposed to be a nasty weed that makes people turn red if they handle it carelessly—you get an itch and little blisters, and you use brown soap and usually it goes away.” The sergeant paused. “No?”

“No, not entirely,” Piper said. “Quite right, however, in most cases. But we’re dealing with what seems to be an insidious concentrate of the stuff; it’s to poison ivy what TNT is to a firecracker. And I think personally that it’s been used for two murders, and three if this Karas guy dies. Let me give you a fast fill-in, sergeant. Four years ago last December twenty-fourth a Manhattan night-club dancer named Zelda Bard received a gift-wrapped bottle of rare old Napoleon brandy through the mails. Of course, we all know that all brandy bottled since 1890 is labeled Napoleon brandy, but she took it as a rare compliment. Zelda was a tall, exotic doll who got around considerably; I have a list here of her boy friends and it’s as long as your arm. She probably had a lot of others who aren’t on the list, as she didn’t keep books. From what we gathered at Centre Street she was mostly a teaser—none of them came home with her though she accepted diamond and emerald bracelets when indicated without a qualm. Anyway—the gift card had somehow been left out of the package, and her maid had stupidly put the wrappings down the incinerator before our men got there, so we hadn’t much to go on. But evidently after the lovely Zelda got home after her last performance that night, she made herself a couple of quick highballs from the gift bottle of brandy—and she was found dead in her bed next morning. I’ll show you the report of our chief medical examiner, Dr. Bloom, who found that she had been strangled to death but not by human hands. The mucous membranes of her nose and throat were terribly engorged, there was considerable lividity of the face, and her limbs were contorted. The final verdict was that she had died of an acute allergic reaction, caused by a heavy overdose of—” here the Inspector consulted his notebook—“of
toxicodendron radicans
or, in other words, of poison ivy.”