Murder on Location (2 page)

“I've got connections with the police.”

“So?”

“So, it was a friend of mine there that gave me your name.”

“Come on, Mr. Mason. Look, cops can get thick in the head too. I'm not the Mounties. If you ask my friends at the cop shop they'll tell you that they do all my work for me. They're not kidding. I …”

“I'm asking you to take the case, Mr. Cooperman.”

“Why?”

“Because I want her found.”

“And?”

“I don't want her to get hurt.”

“And?”

“And I miss her, and I can't stand the place without smelling her burning something in the kitchen.”

When he left, I had the eight-by-ten glossy of his wife and a fair-sized retainer. He told me the make of her car and gave me a lecture about the unpaid parking tickets she collected on the dashboard before telling me the licence number. The big piece of information he left with me was that Billie was stage-struck. She had played Stella in
A Streetcar Name Desire
for the Grantham Little Theatre last October.

I put in a call to Robin O'Neil at CXAN. Robin had been an announcer long before Wally Skeat breezed in and out. On the side, he still ran the Little Theatre with a lot of arty flair that got on Ned Evans' nerves. From Robin I learned that Billie Mason had talent, that she was
a malleable actress, but that she had made a cheap success of the part of Stella. He told me that the CBC had interviewed her about her acting two months ago, although he had to admit there were other actresses in town just as talented. When I asked whether she was particularly friendly with any other members of the cast, I heard the name David Hayes for the first time.

“What about David Hayes?”

“David was a great Mitch. He
was
Mitch. He was very good. And he's not even a serious actor. More interested in writing. Works at the
Beacon
. He was one of Monty Blair's protégés.” I learned that Hayes had driven Billie home from rehearsals a few times in his beat-up classic Jaguar with a cracked windshield. When I called the
Beacon
, Grantham's long-lived daily, I found out from an editor that Hayes hadn't been seen at his desk in a week.

From there I floundered around talking to Hugo Shackleford, who serviced the Jaguar, and to Hayes' landlady, who let me see his room only when I told her I was trying to deliver a summons. Hayes had cleared out about the same time Billie'd disappeared. I took a flyer and guessed that they had both headed to the Falls to get bits in the movie. It was a pretty limp theory, but it stiffened up when I discovered a cracked windshield on a broken-down Jaguar Mk VII in the parking lot at the Tudor Hotel. From the hotel desk I learned that David Hayes, newspaperman from Grantham, was registered by himself in Room 1738. He wasn't in when I rang the
number. I had no better luck in the bar, the restaurant or the snack bar. So that's when I settled down among the sheltering potted palms and waited … and waited.

TWO

I didn't get back to my over-heated room at the City House in Grantham until about two in the morning. As I pulled my damp shoes off, I felt that I'd already given Lowell Mason value for money. The snow-plough coming along King Street moved a blue flashing shadow up a wall and across the ceiling of my room, and I fell asleep to the alarm clock threatening me at each tick with an early wake-up call.

By the time I was fit to talk on Tuesday morning, I was beginning to sort things out. First I wanted to see about Mason's business, and when it comes to real estate I always go to Martha Tracy for information. She works for Scarp Enterprises, the biggest real-estate and property development outfit in the Niagara district. As secretary to the managing director there isn't much she doesn't know and for the price of a beery lunch she'd always given me excellent advice. I asked her about Lowell Mason. Off the top of her head she was able to say that he was one of the five biggest operators in the area and the fastest growing. “He's a real old-fashioned hustler, Benny. You know: rye and ginger ale in the back office. They say that he leans heavily on his wife's looks in hooking his clients. She
helps him land the fish and she enjoys the fuss men make over her. She's over twenty-one, and her husband encourages her. She's the out-going type. Now, I happen to be the in-going type, but what good does it do me?”

Just before I hung up, she asked what all this was in aid of, and I told her.

“Well, one thing's sure,” she said.

“What's that?”

“A let's-pretend blonde like that is going to have to get professional help. She'll need to find a good hairdresser, Benny. It's all in the packaging.” Martha had a brilliant future as a detective that she wasn't going hear about from me. She then invited me over to have a cup of her instant hot tap-water coffee. I think she meant it as a sign of growing intimacy, and so far I'd managed to slow the growth right there.

I spent an hour running up my long-distance bill, and when I'd finished I had the name Norman Baker, former CBC television producer, who had dispatched a crew to interview Billie Mason and was currently in hot water with the network brass about a film he was doing, or refusing to do, depending on whose version you went by. I couldn't locate Baker himself, but the very sound of his name made a lot of secretaries giggle and several producers growl. I tore off the page with Baker's number on it and put it in my pocket.

It was nearly noon, so I left the dusty mess of my office to grab a bite of lunch at the United Cigar Store on St. Andrew Street. They make the best chopped-egg
sandwiches in town. The waitress made no wisecracks about my cowardly eating habits, she just ordered my usual for me. The mad scribbler was sitting a couple of stools away, with his shaggy head bent over his furious writing, and Mrs. Prewitt from the drug store was mining a guilty fudge sundae with a long slender spoon.

Half an hour later, I took a drive out to the north end of town to look in on my parents. When parents are getting on in years, it's easy to forget them. I parked in front of the condominium and let myself in with my key. They never hear the two-toned chime.

“Who's that? Benny, is that you?”

“Hello, Ma, how are you?”

“How am I? How should I be? My doctor's in the hospital and his locum-shlocum isn't minding the store.”

“You're not feeling well?” She was standing in a wine-coloured zip-up housecoat with pink feathery slippers. Her hair was still tangled from sleep and her face was still upstairs in the bathroom.

“I'm fine, Benny. I just want people to stay in one place. It makes me nervous when my doctor's in intensive care. I hope you've eaten lunch.”

“I just had a bite uptown.”

“I suppose I could make you an omelette. You want me to make you an omelette, Benny?”

“I just ate, Ma. Thanks anyway.”

“I know how you eat,” she said rolling her eyes. “I know what you put on your stomach.”

“Where's Pa?” I asked.

“Gone to the club. Lately he's been going early. I think he's got a gin game, but I don't ask. If his life is a card game, I'm not going to criticize. You've been busy?”

“I've been doing some work at the Falls.”

“Don't tell me. I don't want to know. Your work makes me nervous, Benny. I wish you'd find something safe, something solid.”

“Like Sam?”

“What's the matter with Sam? You could do worse than being a doctor, believe me.”

“I could be in intensive care this minute.”

“Don't make jokes. Dr. Bannock is a wonderful human being. You hear?”

“I believe you. Do you want me to do any shopping for you? I've got the car.”

“You're coming to dinner tomorrow night?”

“Sure.”

“Good, then I don't need anything. In the freezer, thank God, I've got everything I need.”

“Fine. I'll see you around seven.” She saw me to the door. “Ma, why don't you do something about that chime? If I didn't have a key, I could die of old age ringing the bell.”

“That's why you've got a key.”

“But what about other people? I'm sure you don't catch half the people who come to the door.”

“Half is plenty. What am I going to do with the others? Inefficiency makes the world go round. A new chime! I'll
give you a chime.” Ma opened the door for me, took in yesterday's mail and last night's
Beacon
and waved me off. I always liked to check in on Ma once in a while. It interrupted the patches of guilt.

The drive to the Falls is short enough along the Queen Elizabeth Way, just twenty minutes with a tail wind. The highway lifts above the Welland Canal just outside Grantham and for ten miles offers a free view of prime real estate under snow drifting up to red snow fences, with the dusty line of the Niagara Escarpment framing an old-fashioned picture. Once the canal is left behind, the road gently climbs the height of land, flies over a few frostbitten cloverleafs before coming down for a landing beside the Rainbow Bridge, which straddles the US-Canada border, just across from the Colonel John Butler Hotel.

I drove around the corner to the Tudor Hotel and parked so that I blocked David Hayes' Jaguar in its parking lot. I checked as the desk: he hadn't been in his room. I left another message for him, just to tag his movements. I bought a pack of Player's and walked back around the corner, into the lobby of the bigger hotel.

The mezzanine floor at Butler's Barracks was more acquainted with travellers, buyers and sellers, and Shriners on convention than it was with the movie business. I looked for abandoned drinks in unlikely places without finding them. Noonan's girl read my card and then took it in to him on five-inch heels. I didn't have to stare at the plastic ferns for very long; Noonan saw me almost at once. As I took the chair he indicated, I got the idea that
he was seeing me not because he wasn't busy but because he was so disorganized it was easier to take on new problems than deal with old ones. He sat behind a desk with watermarks on the wood and on the faded green blotter. There was a stack of four filing drawers, with a pile of expense-account red filing folders close at hand.

Noonan's face was puffy and forty. Curly hair made a widow's peak not very far above his heavy eyebrows, but the fleshiness of his face took away any hint of the diabolic. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and he looked like he hadn't seen a shower or a bed lately. I told him my business.

“Billie Mason, eh?” He got up and visited his files. In a minute, he came back carrying a folder with a copy of the same picture I had. “Nice-looking girl,” he said, and he was right. It was a three-quarter view with the right side of the face in shadow. Shadow sculptured the planes of her cheeks and brow, and out of it two big eyes looked up at me. They whispered to me. There was loneliness and promise written in them. The rest of the face echoed the twang of the eyes. The mouth was frank and sensual, the hair arranged to make you think of satin pillowcases. She was wearing a man's shirt with the buttons at the top unfastened. The results were not in the least masculine. I tried for the second time to get the face filed in my brain and the drawer slammed closed.

Noonan read through the
curriculum vitae
that was pasted on the back of the photograph and examined the mimeographed form that completed the file. When he'd
looked his fill, he passed it over the desk to me. There was nothing about her husband, but she'd mentioned her performance as Stella in
Streetcar
. I made a note of the address and phone number in town where she was staying and passed the file back to Noonan. I asked if he remembered her and he shook his head. “I must be getting too old if I can't place a face like that, but some of them just mailed in their stuff. Sorry I can't be a bigger help. If anything comes up, I mean if Mrs. Mason comes in, where can I get ahold of you?” I pointed at the card in the middle of his blotter and picked up my hat. Noonan saw me to the top of the grand staircase.

From the lobby I tried the number in the Falls I'd got from Noonan: Billie Mason had been there two nights, but hadn't been seen since. I went back to the Tudor through the parking garages that connect the two hotels. It saved me going out into the slicing wind blowing off the falls. Up in the lobby, a mob scene was going on. The elevator doors opened on about fifty people, some with cameras, some with tape recorders, some with notebooks, all crowding around an elderly tanned giant with a string tie like a rancher in a movie. When he saw the doors open, he called out: “Hold that car!” I pushed the rubber sides of the door so it wouldn't close. A battery of portable floodlights added a silver edge to the man's profile.

“When I got back from Italy,” he said into a bouquet of microphones, “I got a call from the studio about doing
Ice Bridge
. I told them I could give them until the middle of March, when I have to go to Dublin to do
Parnell
. I'm
goin' to enjoy doing
Ice Bridge
. I've always liked comin' here.”

“You've visited the Falls before, sir?” asked a journalist with dark racoon-like eyes.

“I know the Canadian west. I've worked in the Black Hills country and the coast. Look, I'm talked out. Have a heart. Dick,” he called out vaguely into the glare of the lights, “Dick, you see that the boys are looked after. You'll excuse me right now. I'll see you later. I'm not goin' anywhere for three weeks.” That didn't stop the questions, but he shook his head, and made a sudden leap in my direction followed by a bellhop with a truckload of suitcases. “Hold that car!” he repeated, and crossed the rest of the lobby with a few long strides between the exploding photo flashes. The mob tried to follow, except for the curious hotel guests, who stood frozen like lawn animals watching from the sidelines. I pushed the rubber edges again against their repeated spasm and the big man climbed aboard, moving well back so that his luggage could follow. “Much obliged to you,” he said, giving me a full grin of false teeth. “I think we're goin' to make our getaway after all.” The reporters crowded us right to the closing stainless steel doors. I didn't make good my escape; I was trapped inside with a Texas Ranger and his wardrobe.