Dolls Are Deadly (4 page)

“You’re not sure about that. You took an awful chance.” Shayne grinned. “What’s the ‘something else’ you mentioned that happened?”

“There’s a woman here waiting to see you. That’s why I couldn’t close the office at a decent hour.” Lucy lowered her voice. “She says she’s going to wait to see you if it takes all night. She’s been here about an hour and she’s so fidgety she’s about to jump out of her clothes. You’d better hurry.”

“I’ll wait till she jumps. Is she young and beautiful?”

“She is young and beautiful,” Lucy said frostily, “and she is very scared, and I don’t blame her. If you don’t want somebody else to be murdered, you’d better get on over here. Because she’s got one of those little dolls too.”

Shayne left the phone booth and went out to his car, driving west as fast as the law allowed, pondering the circumstances which had brought two frightened people to his office today with voodoo dolls. Was this a new fad, like chain letters?

He discarded the idea distastefully as he recalled the graying face of Henny Henlein. The taking of human life, even a depraved life like Henlein’s, wasn’t to be regarded lightly.

It was a little after six when he strode into the anteroom of his third-floor office where Lucy sat typing. Through the partially opened door into the next room he could see a woman sitting in the chair beside his desk.

Lucy looked up reproachfully.

“Don’t frown, angel. It makes wrinkles.”

“Then hurry up,” she whispered. “That woman’s half crazy. I put her in your office because it made me jittery just to look at her.”

“Who is she?”

“Somebody named Clarissa Milford.
Mrs.
Clarissa Milford.”

“And you say she got one of the voodoo dolls?”

Lucy nodded.

Shayne looked through the door again. “She’s quite a doll herself.”

“She was when she came in. Waiting for you has aged her.”

Shayne grinned and roughed her hair playfully with a big hand as he walked past her to his office.

He closed the door only partially and looked at Clarissa Milford. Lucy hadn’t exaggerated. This was about the most upset woman he had ever seen. When she left home she had probably looked neat—she was wearing a trim blue suit with a ruff of white lace at her throat and she carried white gloves. But since then she had apparently been pulling at herself. Wisps of honey-blond hair hung from the bun at her neck. Her lipstick, except for a thin rim at the outer edge, had been eaten off. The red nail polish on all but the last two fingers of her left hand was flaked unevenly, and she was chewing on one of them when he came in. She wore a plain gold wedding ring.

She looked up at Shayne with a kind of wild expectancy. She had a small, straight nose, clear blue eyes and creamy skin. When she was not under strain, she must have had the statuesque chic of a model.

“Relax, Mrs. Milford.” Shayne walked over to his desk. “We won’t get anywhere until you do.”

She folded her hands tightly in her lap. “I’ll try.” Her voice was tense. “But things have been happening so fast. Only last week my nephew, Jimsey Thain, was killed by a hit-and-run driver.”

The words came out in a rush. “He was only twelve,” she continued breathlessly, “and he was close to us—like our own. It was my car that killed him.” She swallowed hard and reached in her purse for a handkerchief. Her hand was trembling.

“Your car?” he repeated incredulously.

“Oh, I didn’t do it. I wasn’t driving. My car had been parked in front and I never left the house. It must have been stolen—by teenagers maybe.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. Everyone blames everything on teenagers these days. It could have been anybody, I guess. The car was found abandoned just a short way from where Jimsey’s body was found. You must have read about it in the papers. It was only last week—”

“Nobody saw the accident?”

“No. The section isn’t heavily settled. Whoever did it could have walked away easily without being seen.”

“Mrs. Milford,” Shayne said gently, “this isn’t really what you came to see me about, is it?”

“No.” She waited to get her voice under control. “On top of everything else, this morning I got this.” She opened her purse again, took out a small doll and laid it carefully on a corner of the desk.

The redhead picked it up. It was identical to the ones Henlein had shown him a few hours earlier and, like one of them, had a black-headed pin protruding from its chest.

He laid it down, wrinkled his heavy red brows and tugged his left earlobe. What possible connection could there be between a small-time gangster and this extraordinarily pretty housewife? Could two people with such widely separated backgrounds have a common enemy? It did not, on the surface, seem reasonable. Yet the fact that Henny Henlein had been killed after receiving the dolls took this case out of the realm of fantasy and reasonless fear and put it starkly in the world of reality where fear was justified.

There was one difference between this doll and the ones Henlein had received. Glued to the black yarn hair was a yellow strand which might have come from Mrs. Milford’s own head.

“Do you think this is yours?” He fingered the hair.

“No. The texture’s different and it’s straight. Mine has a slight wave when it’s not pulled tight. And the color’s a little off. Look.” She picked up the doll and held it next to her head. The yellow strand was noticeably lighter and did not have the same golden tinge.

“Then we don’t have to start figuring who might have had an opportunity to get a strand of your hair.” Shayne leaned back in his swivel chair, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and extended it to her.

He lit both hers and his own, then asked, “Do you think someone believes
you
ran over your nephew, and sent you the doll to frighten you?”

She shuddered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. No, I don’t see why anyone would think that.”

“How was the doll sent?”

“It wasn’t. It was left. On the kitchen table while I was out. We live in the country and seldom lock our doors.”

“You have no neighbors?”

“Only my sister and brother-in-law, Mabel and Percy Thain, Jimsey’s parents. They live in a house that’s a twin to ours about an acre away. But they were out too. The same place my husband and I were.”

“Where was that?”

She hesitated, seeming a little embarrassed. “At a séance.”

“At Madame Swoboda’s?”

“Yes.” She puffed at her cigarette nervously. “How did you know?”

“It’s the one getting the best play right now. Do you attend many séances, Mrs. Milford?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “It’s not that I believe in them—though I suppose I do a little or why would I be so terrified at having received the doll?”

Recalling what had happened to Henny Henlein, Shayne knew she had reason to be afraid.

“I guess it’s the idea,” she continued unsteadily, “that someone
wants
to kill me that upsets me. That anyone could hate me that much.”

“It would upset anyone. Now think hard. Do you have any idea who might want to kill you?”

Shayne had expected a bewildered and positive denial. He was surprised when she said, “Yes.”

“Who is it?”

“It might be—Madame Swoboda.”

“Why should she want to kill you?”

“Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she’s only trying to frighten me. But she does hate me.”

“Why? And why do you attend her séances then?”

“Because of my husband,” she said sadly. “Because he wants me to—or did at first. Dan’s always been interested in the occult. And he’s superstitious, like all gamblers.”

“Is that his profession—gambling?”

“Oh, no. He’s a real-estate broker. Gambling is his—hobby, he calls it.”

“You don’t call it that?”

“I call it a disease! Lately he’s been burning ‘success candles’ that he gets from Madame Swoboda—the pink ones.” She leaned forward, snuffing out her cigarette in an ash tray with unnecessary violence. “But Dan isn’t the only reason I’ve been going to the séances. Since their son was killed, my sister, Mabel, and her husband have been going to Madame Swoboda’s, too—in the hope of talking to Jimsey.”

“And have they?”

Clarissa smiled wryly, the first change her face had shown. “They think they have. There’s a voice. It doesn’t sound much like Jimsey’s to me, but Madame Swoboda would claim that’s because of the cosmic distance it has to travel. The voice says characterless things like, ‘I miss you Mommy and Daddy, but I’m happy here.’ And garbled things that start out as if they’re going to be important, but that never quite come off. There’s nothing to prove it’s Jimsey. He doesn’t answer questions. After a few sentences he’ll say he’s tired from breaking through and wants to go back. That sort of thing.”

She paused, clenching her hands again tightly in her lap. “It outrages me to see them so taken in.”

Shayne rubbed his lean jaw and turned his eyes to the window for a moment. “Still, even if your husband and your sister and her husband go, why do you have to, if you believe Madame Swoboda is a fake? And especially if you suspect that she sent you the doll? Incidentally, you haven’t told me yet why you think she might want to—at least—frighten you.”

Tears welled suddenly in the woman’s eyes and she seemed, in that instant, unable to move. She let them form and roll down her cheeks before she brought up the handkerchief to wipe them away. “I’m losing my husband,” she said in a barely audible voice. “I thought at first that if I did what Dan wanted, if I attended the séances and tried to see things his way, it would give us a mutual interest that might bring us close again. Now—” she swallowed hard to quell the rising sob—“I think he’s in love with Madame Swoboda.”

“In love with Madame Swoboda?” Shayne’s incredulous eyes rested on the classic loveliness of Clarissa’s face.

“Yes. She isn’t what you think, Mr. Shayne. Madame Swoboda is no raggle-tag gypsy. I don’t know what her real name is, but she’s young—younger than I am—and devastating, from a male point of view. I’ve watched Dan look at her, and other men too. She’s beautiful and cool, but there’s fire underneath. She’s not spiritual, she’s earthy. And she’s soulless!”

“She sounds dangerous,” Shayne murmured appreciatively. “Did your husband tell you he was in love with her?”

“No, but he’s asked for a divorce.” She fell silent, then said, “I wouldn’t—I couldn’t!—give it to him. I love him too much.”

“Might he have left you the doll?”

Clarissa raised one pale hand uncertainly to push a wisp of gold hair back into the bun. “I don’t know. Dan believes in black magic himself to some extent. He’s like a child that way. That’s why, at first, I didn’t want to come to see you. I think I was afraid of what you might find out. You see, Mr. Shayne, I’m heavily insured.” Her voice trailed off.

“Assume for the moment that Swoboda left you the doll. Why did she? To frighten you off so she can marry your husband? Is she in love with him? Could she profit financially or any other way by marrying him?”

“I don’t see how she could profit in any other way, and I don’t know if she is in love with him or not. I only sense how Dan feels about her. But Madame Swoboda hates me for another reason that has nothing to do with Dan. I was concerned about Mabel, my sister—she’s been so terribly upset since Jimsey was killed and so has Percy—and I didn’t want them to live on the false hope they get from séances. The strain is awful and I was afraid they might crack up. So I went to Madame Swoboda the other day and accused her of being a fraud and capitalizing on people’s tragedies and fears, and I threatened to turn her over to the police.” Clarissa paused thoughtfully. “It was curious. My threat seemed to frighten her more than I expected it would.”

“She didn’t agree to stop the séances, though.”

“No. She refused to accept any responsibility for Mabel or Percy or any of her
clients,
I guess you’d call them. She insisted that it was the spirits who spoke through her, and she was only the host, the medium through which they spoke. And then I made a beaut of a mistake. I said the spirits spoke to me, too, and they told me she was trying to steal my husband. I said she’d never do it, except over my dead body.

“She said, ‘It would be a pleasure that way!’ So you see, if she didn’t already have the idea of getting Dan away from me, I gave it to her.”

Clarissa fumbled unsteadily in her purse, took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Shayne, waiting until he had lit them both before she added, “The worst of it is that now I’m so jealous I can’t bear to let Dan go to the séances alone. So I’ll have to face her again.”

“Tonight?”

Clarissa nodded and, for the first time, allowed anger to creep into her voice. “It outrages me to see her victimize Mabel and Percy, but they refuse to miss a night. That’s another reason I go. If she plays too much on their emotions, if they break down or go to pieces, I want to be there to help them.”

“I understand. Now, let’s go back to something you said a minute ago. When you threatened to turn Swoboda over to the police you say she seemed frightened.”

“Yes. She laughed, but it was a nervous laugh—too loud and too long. Then she began to defend herself. She said she was operating scrupulously within the law. She was an entertainer, nothing more. I thought she protested too much.”

“She might have a criminal record,” Shayne said. “I’ll check on it.”

“Then you will take the case?”

“I’ll take it.” He smiled reassuringly. “I’ll be at the séance tonight too. What time does it start?”

“At eight. But you have to be there at a quarter of. They won’t let you in after it starts.”

“That doesn’t leave me much time, but I’ll make it—with a reporter from the
News.
We’ll blow this thing wide open.”

She looked up gratefully, her eyes warm. “I’m glad I came to you. It was for myself at first—I wanted to find out who sent the doll because I was afraid—but if you can help Mabel and Percy too by exposing this criminal fraud…” Her voice trailed off into a little sigh of weariness.

“A last question before you go, Mrs. Milford.” From the first, the circumstances of two such dissimilar people as Henny Henlein and Clarissa Milford receiving the voodoo dolls had intrigued Shayne. “Does the name Henry Henlein mean anything to you?”

She thought a moment and said, “No.”

“Or
Henny
Henlein? He’s a local hoodlum, or was.”

“I’m sure I never heard of him.”

“What about De Luca—sometimes called by his initials, D. L.?”

“You mean the gangster? I’ve seen his name in the papers, that’s all.”

Shayne rose and looked down on Clarissa Milford’s smooth golden head. She was tall, but her bones were light and her waist was small and she gave the impression of delicate fragility. He moved his glance down, past breasts which made a firm thrust against the thin fabric of her blouse, to legs which could have modeled for a stocking ad, then returned to her face again. She was putting on lipstick, her blue eyes focused intently on the tiny vanity mirror. When she snapped it shut and looked up at him she seemed to be one of those rare feminine creatures without imperfection.