Have Gat—Will Travel (12 page)

"Must've passed out," he said. "All seems like a dream. Remember lying there on the grass, everything swimming. Saw them by the pool. Lights were on. They didn't see me, or else they didn't give a damn. Didn't appear to have any clothes on. They were unclothed, yes. There right alongside the pool." He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut. "Some man with Melba, but all I know is it was her. Then there was somebody came running up, and shome — some talk. And a kind of a fright. Whoever it was ran away. And the guy ran away. Then somebody came back, or somebody else did. I don't know. Leave me alone."

"You said somebody came back — after these two ran away. Where was Melba?" I asked.

"Still lying there."

"Who pushed her?"

"Hell, I don't know. Maybe I dreamed it. Pushed her in and ran away. Leave me alone."

That was all we could get out of him. He lay back on the bed and started snoring. Kennedy said, "How much of that do you think happened?"

"Well, you know this guy better than I do. Any chance he's faking part of this drunk act?"

"It's no act. He's probably telling the truth as well as he knows it, or remembers it. I hope so." Suddenly he winced and snapped his fingers. "A.A. — he's got to know about this." He wheeled, went to the phone alongside the bed.

By the time I got to the door, Kennedy was talking to A.A. Porter and I'd heard the words "Wagon Wheels" three or four times. Before I went out I told Kennedy to inform Mr. Porter that I'd be right out to see him. Kennedy nodded, waved a hand, and I left.

M
iss le braque's home was on the way out to Porter's mansion, so I stopped there. She was a blonde, in less than dishabille, and she opened the door, then slammed it in my face, reappearing in a white robe. "Come in," she said.

I showed her the photostat of my license, told her who I was and why I was here. After a while, she corroborated Jay Kennedy's story in all details. Only they'd had several highballs together.

"Like one?" she asked me.

"No, thanks."

She simpered and smiled. "I'm going to have the lead in Wagon Tracks, Jay's next sequel to Wagon Wheels. Clever title, isn't it? After the Wagon Wheels, the Wagon Tra —"

"Please. You say Mr. Kennedy was with you at the party, then from midnight till he phoned Alan Grant's place at five you were alone together."

"Yes. Like a drinkie?"

"No. I don't drinkie in the morning. Thanks. Good-by. . . ."

A.A. Porter was waiting for me in the front doorway of his two-story auditorium. He was short, heavy, red-faced, with thinning strands of black hair on the top of his large head. Looking shaken and shocked, he pumped my hand and pulled me inside. "Terrible . . . terrible," he said in a deep, rumbling voice. "Jay just finished talking to me. Murdered. God! And Grant — do you think he did it, Scott?"

"I don't know who did it. I haven't even been to the Trents' house yet. Mr. Kennedy came to see me only about an hour ago."

He was nodding his big head. "Yes. But that fantastic story of Grant's."

"We can drag the pool, but I'll hazard a guess there's not even a minnow in it. Just Melba — though the police will have fished her out by now." I stopped. "Did Mr. Kennedy tell you the whole story that Grant gave us?"

He nodded. "Of course. Wagon Wheels must —"

"Forget Wagon Wheels for half a second, will you? And you'd better call Kennedy back and tell him to keep his mouth shut about your star's story. It's all right for the three of us to know about it, maybe, but it better not go any farther."

"See here!" He didn't like my tone and language. He was A.A. Porter.

I went on, "Look, by now the police are at the scene. I have to find out all I can before they put the whole bunch of you in jail. Besides which, I've got a lease expiring."

"A what?"

"And Yolanda. Never mind. Mr. Porter, I know there were ten people at the party; one of them was murdered. Of
the nine remaining, I've learned that Mr. Kennedy and another person can alibi each other. It would help both of us if you could tell me, quick-like, where you were from, say, midnight on."

"That hardly seems necessary."
His tone was frigid.

"You don't have to tell me a thing. But you're going to have to tell the police officers who'll soon be here. The quicker I can eliminate eight people, the quicker this mess will be over. Probably the police will get there sooner than I, but I'm going to have a good try at it. And that would make the mess smell sweeter for you and Kennedy. Make up your mind."

One thing I'd noted and liked about men like Kennedy and Porter, the big-wheel, executive, accustomed-to-command type, was that they made their decisions quickly and acted on them. Porter frowned at me for perhaps a second, then said briskly, "I suppose you're right. I was with Mrs. Trent, the hostess. We were —" he fixed his eyes on me, scowling slightly, and went on deliberately — "in the bedroom. Having . . . a . . . drink. A highball. It was necessary that we talk, and it was quiet there. We were together from shortly after midnight, say twelve-thirty, until four this morning, when I left."

This was the drinkingest gang I'd ever run across. Porter's story was so similar to Kennedy's that a man might almost think they'd compared them.

I said, "How is Melba Mallory's death going to affect the release of Wagon Wheels?"

"We'll probably have to shoot several scenes over. Actually, it may well improve the production. I had very high hopes for Miss Mallory, but she wasn't as good as I'd expected."

"Mr. Kennedy told me you insisted she have a pretty good part in the film."

"That's true." He nodded his big head. "I made a mistake. A man can't always be right." He paused. "I discovered Sandra Storme, you know. I rather hoped that Melba would be . . ." He shrugged.

Sandra Storme was the number-four box-office attraction. Everybody knew that Porter had discovered her. He told everybody. After another minute's conversation I left and drove to the Hollywood Hills.

T
wo police cars and an ambulance were parked in front, but I didn't see any policemen. Mrs. Trent answered my ring. Yes, she'd been with Mr. Porter. Yes, business. Yes, in the bedroom. Yes, of course, for a highball. Couldn't stand noise when she was drinking.

Mrs. Trent and I went back to the bedroom. We didn't drink anything. It was a lovely bedroom, with soft pastels dominating the color scheme, an enormous bed, dressing table, high beamed ceiling. This bedroom was at the rear of the house, one door leading from the hall into here, one other door, closed, in the left wall. "I guess that's all the questions I wanted to ask, Mrs. Trent. Thanks very much for letting me ask them. I know you've already talked to the police. You were with Mr. Porter for all that time. With him every minute?"

"Every minute." She paused. "Oh, he went in there for perhaps a couple of minutes."

I took a look. In "there" was a small chunk of Rome before the decline and fall. To be perfectly accurate, it was a bathroom, but with a sunken tub larger than some people's swimming pools, mosaic-tile walls, and the usual. A mink cover, even. Imagine. A big window was open in the rear wall and I looked out it at the lawn behind the house. And it appeared I was going to meet the police about now.

Several uniformed and plainclothes officers were grouped twenty yards away from the pool, one man taking pictures. One of the officers I'd come to know well in these last three years was looking this way, saw me and motioned for me to join them. I went back into the bedroom. Mrs. Trent took me down the hall to a side door and showed me out. I walked around the side of the house and up to Sergeant Casey, the man who had waved at me.

"Hi, Shell. Important people in this one, huh?"

"Yeah. I'm in it, you're in it. Kennedy's retained me."

"I heard. Three thousand policemen isn't enough?"

"Anything you can pass on? Free, I mean." Casey shook his head. I said, "How about the time of death?"

"Coroner can't tell this soon. You know that. Oh — he gave us a guess. Between two and three this a.m. Give or take a couple days. But he's usually close. Good man." He paused. "I suppose you just got up?"

"Been up for minutes. Even talked to a couple people."

"Suspects?" I nodded and he continued, "You might have to talk to them in jail pretty quick. We're rounding them up for interrogation. Got one downtown now. Guy named Simon French. Had him in jail since a little after three this morning."

"French?" He was the Wagon Wheels writer.

"Yeah. Writer who was at the ball here last night.
One of the Hollywood Division's F cars picked him up. He was running down the street naked about half a mile from here."

"Naked, huh? Well, that's at least a misdemeanor.
Also a little uninhibited."

"Yeah, these people are free as birds. You know what he said when the policemen asked him what the hell? The guy said he loved the cool, moist fingers of the morning wind on his burning flesh. He's a writer?"

"That's what they say. Thanks, Casey. Think I could talk to French at the jail?"

"You can ask."

"Sure. How about French's wife, Anastasia? She say anything about her hubby's track suit?"

"Haven't located her yet, far as I know. Not home. She's probably being ravished by the cool, moist fingers of the morning —"

I left before he got carried away. At the jail I was told that Simon French hadn't talked to anybody since being picked up in Hollywood. They let me see him, but he wouldn't tell me much, either. Just before I left, though, I said to him, "The police told you Melba was murdered, of course."

"Of course."

"I don't suppose you killed her."

"I don't suppose."

"French, your dialogue is lousy."

"Who's paying me?"

"The state may, if you keep it up. Look, French. Melba was minus clothes when she was killed. You were flying down the street, a Hollywood nudist, half a mile from where Melba was killed. Coincidence? And word floats around that more than two people cavorted about the Trents' pool around two or three this morning. Maybe four people. Maybe five. Maybe a few words from you could get you out of big trouble?"

Oddly enough, his face got a puzzled expression on it and he started to speak. But he didn't say anything.

I left and drove to French's home just off Beverly Boulevard. Nobody was there. I didn't see any police cars around. After waiting five minutes I started to leave when a big Cadillac pulled into the driveway. A short, pretty woman with her hair piled on top of her head got out of the Cad and walked toward the house.

There was a chance, since Anastasia French hadn't been available or talked to the police, that she didn't know much about what was going on this morning. Anyway, I was going to play it that way. She hadn't seen me yet, and I said, "Hello, Anastasia."

S
he looked up toward me, startled. "Hello . . . who are you?"

"Shell Scott, Mrs. French. Your husband around?"

"He — no." She unlocked the front door. "What do you want?"

I followed her inside, showed her my license, told her I was a detective. "Your husband's in jail," I said.

"Jail! What for?"

"Same deal I'm working on. The Melba Mallory thing?"

She gasped. "But that . . . he shouldn't be in jail."

"He is. Your husband was running down the street with no clothes on, and there seems to be some kind of law about —"

I broke it off because she was laughing. But it was stretched thin, close to hysterical laughter. She calmed herself, her face twitched, and words poured from her. "I've been driving around ever since it happened, trying to get my thoughts straight. I guess I went a little crazy."

I held my breath. It sounded as if I were about to get a lot of answers. She went on, "It was about two-thirty this morning, maybe three. I was alone. Everybody else was with somebody. I went looking for Alan. He'd gone out back with a bottle. I went out to the pool. Alan wasn't around, but I saw them — Melba and Si. My husband, with her!"

She stopped. Quietly I said, "By the pool, you mean?"

"Yes. And the lights were on. Not bright, but . . . right there, out in the open. I ran up to them. I guess I did what I did because of what he said — damn him! I yelled at him, 'Stop that this minute!'" She laughed shortly. "That damn living creep said, 'Really, darling. Not this minute.'"

She swung around and walked away from me, then turned and said, "I just got crazy mad. There was an empty whisky bottle there, and I picked it up, Officer. I'm sorry now for what I did, Off —" She stopped suddenly. "Let me see that — that thing you showed me again."

She meant the photostat of my license. I hadn't told her I was a policeman, hadn't realized till just now that she must have assumed that "detective" meant "police officer." I took out the photostat and told her, "I said I was a detective, Mrs. French. And I am. But I don't want to commit a misdemeanor here. I'm a private detective. Not that it makes much difference, really. How about finishing what you were saying?"

"You told me Si was in jail," she said. "Why would a private detective be interested in that?" She paused again. "I think you'd better leave."

I tried to get her talking again, but it was over. She told me to get out. Before I reached the door somebody knocked on it. Mrs. French opened the door and admitted two men. "Police officers," one of them said, showing his I.D. card. "You'll have to come downtown with us, Mrs. French."

I didn't know the man speaking; the other was an officer I knew casually, a man named Lake. He nodded briefly to me as Mrs. French said, "Downtown? What for? What right have you —"

"Come along, Mrs. French. You're under arrest."

"Arrest?" She sank into a chair. "What for?"

"Suspicion of murder."

Her face got ashen; shock spread over her features. "Who . . . Murder? Whose murder?"

I said, "Melba Mallory's."

She fainted. Her body slumped and she fell out of the chair.

Both of the officers jumped forward; they picked her up, placed her on a divan. The phone rang. Lake took it, listened a moment, then said to me, "It's for you, Scott. Guy named Kennedy."