Red Gardenias (6 page)

"Would you know Mr Maxwell?"

"I reckon so," said the old man.

Crane stared at her with reluctant admiration. He could see it was a photograph of Richard March. Tall, tanned and blond, he looked like a movie actor in gray slacks and an open shirt. Ann handed the picture to the old man, smiled at Crane.

He made a face at her. She was too darned efficient. He thought he had better go to work. He thought it was a fine thing when a man had to work hard to keep ahead of a woman. Especially one as pretty as Ann.

The old man handed back the photograph. "That's him."

"Well, thanks," Crane said.

"One more thing," said the old man, "though I don't know as it's much of a clue..."

"It might be," Ann said. "What is it?"

"Well, twice I borrowed matches from Mr Maxwell. An' both times he gave me a package from the Crimson Cat. That's a night club near here."

A middle-aged man with spectacles and dandruff flakes on his blue serge suit came into the office. He turned out to be the old man's son, Charles, who operated the realty business. The old man told him Crane was an insurance investigator, looking up the Maxwells.

"Been a lot of interest in them today," the younger Mr Jameson said.

"How's that?" Crane asked.

"A fellow came a couple of hours ago to collect the Maxwell things. He had a note from Mrs Maxwell." Ann said excitedly, "He wouldn't still be there?"

"I don't know."

Crane said, "How do we get there?"

Following the younger Mr Jameson's directions, it took them three minutes to reach February Lane. The house was a Cape Cod cottage, white, with a high roof and a screened porch on the side. In the driveway was a big sedan with a woman in the driver's seat.

As Ann brought their car to a stop the woman hooped the horn. Crane couldn't see her very well, but he got an idea she was young.

A hollow, metallic voice called from the rear of the house, "What's wrong?"

Ann exclaimed, "Our burglar!"

The woman hit the horn again, pushed the starter. Arms bearing a cardboard box, the man came around the house, turned his face toward Crane and Ann, broke into an unsteady run. He jerked open the sedan's door, jumped in as it started. The door swung crazily. He reached out and closed it. The woman gave the motor gas.

"Hey!" Crane called. "Wait a minute."

The car swayed as it entered the street, swung wide around their sedan. Crane caught a vivid impression of the woman. She was handsome with milk-white skin and carrot hair, and her large mouth looked as though it had been lipsticked with a vermilion squirt gun. The man kept his face turned away.

Ann pulled Crane back into the sedan. "Come on."

They got around in a wide sweep which carried them over the curb and onto the soft lawn of a Spanish cottage across the lane. The other car was still in sight. Ann shoved the sedan to fifty-five before she shifted into high. Motor and tires began to scream.

Crane clutched desperately at the dashboard. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

Ann didn't answer. She watched the road, her foot holding the accelerator against the rubber floor mat. Her eyes gleamed and her face was determined. She held the wheel so firmly her knuckles showed white through her skin.

She was a beautiful girl, Crane thought, but he wondered if she didn't have just a shade too much character. She seemed to take the detective business too seriously. She didn't act like a blonde at all. He wondered if she'd been a redhead, too, and had bleached her hair.

With a wail of tires, the sedan rounded a turn. He looked at the speedometer, saw with horror they were going eighty miles an hour. The other car, swaying violently from one side of the clay road to the other, was about two hundred yards ahead. He hoped his car was more stable, but he suspected it was not. They seemed to be gaining on the other car.

He had to shout to be heard. "What do we do when we catch them?"

"Arrest him. He's a burglar."

"What if he resists?"

"Knock him down."

They were passing through a long valley, and the light was dim. Ann switched on the headlights, but they didn't do much good. The road undulated slightly, and every time they raced over a crest and dropped into the following hollow Crane felt his stomach turn over. It didn't seem to be the road they had come over from Marchton.

Crane shouted, "What if he has a gun?"

"Shoot him."

"With what?"

"In my purse... a pistol."

The pistol was a.25 automatic with an effective range of about ten yards. He examined it gingerly, then put it back in the purse.

"You haven't got a drink in there?" he shouted.

She ignored him. She was concentrating on the chase, which was turning out to be a pretty even affair. She drove well, catching the turns with a minimum of slide and seldom allowing the arrow indicator to fall below seventy miles an hour.

The other car had more trouble. On one abrupt curve it slid onto the grass, throwing up a screen of dust, and Crane thought it was going to overturn. He could see suitcases and boxes tumbling about the rear and the man and woman leaning far over to the right, away from the pull of momentum. Almost on the lip of the ditch the car straightened, careened back onto the road.

An instant later Ann hit the turn and Crane held his breath. They made it without trouble.

"Good gal," he said.

He felt a little better. He was beginning to have confidence in her. He was also beginning to feel they would never catch the other car.

Ahead, dark green in the half-light, a wavelike barrier of low hills obstructed the road. The road went up at an easy angle for a half mile, then abruptly made a hairpin turn to the left so that it came back parallel to them, about twenty feet away, but higher. The sedan in front cut almost into the left-hand ditch to make the long turn, taking advantage of the natural banking provided by the ditch. As it came back toward them, not more than thirty yards to the left, Crane could see the woman clinging to the wheel, her face half a foot from the windshield. The man leaned over her back, his head almost out her window, a hand holding a revolver thrust through it. He fired as they passed. Crane ducked at the flash, but he heard no report.

Ann, intent on making the U turn, asked, "What's the matter?"

Crane reached down and turned off the ignition.

"What's the matter?" Ann asked again.

The car lost speed rapidly on the steep grade, came to a stop. They could see the taillight of the other car far up the hill. Presently it disappeared around a bend. There was a sound of crickets from the woods above them.

"We would have caught them," Ann said. "Why did you make me stop?"

Crane turned to the rear seat of the sedan, pointed a finger. In the left-door window, low and to the left, was a neat, thumb-sized hole. The glass around the hole had slivered; it looked like a pineapple ice. The bullet had apparently gone through the open window on the other side. Anyway, they were unable to locate a hole.

They drove home soberly, both preoccupied, and parked the sedan in front of the house.

"How're we to explain the bullet hole?" Ann asked.

"We could say you shot at me and missed."

She said, "When I do I won't miss."

They went in and found Doc Williams in the kitchen. He was an operative of their agency. He'd driven their car from New York and he was posing as their chauffeur. He was a middle-sized, dapper man with a waxed mustache and a streak of dead-white hair over his left temple. He saluted Crane smartly.

"Have a nice trip?" Crane asked formally.

"Very good, sir."

"Come up to my room. I want to talk with you."

Crane turned to Beulah. "This is Mr Williams. I want you to treat him right."

They mixed a shakerful of martinis in the dining room, then went upstairs.

"How're you gettin' along with tutz?" Williams asked Crane. He winked at Ann, who was carrying celery, olives, and caviar canapes on a tray.

"I wish she wouldn't keep trying to get into my room at night," Crane said.

"Still got the appeal, hey?"

"It's my silk pajamas," Crane said modestly.

"Next time a burglar comes I'll let him take the ground floor away," Ann declared.

"A burglar?" Doc Williams was interested. "You had a burglar?"

Crane poured the martinis. "First a drink."

The drinks were just right, with the vermouth cutting the flavor of the gin without destroying the dryness. Crane poured a second round, then told of the burglary, of Mr March's accusation of Carmel March, of Delia and of the recent chase.

Williams was pleased. "It looks as though we're in for something."

"You'll think so when you see Carmel."

"A good number?"

Crane said, "Just looking at her makes me wish I knew how to tango."

The caviar was excellent. The black eggs were the size of buckshot, and about half the canapes had grated onion sprinkled over them. Some of the celery was stuffed with Roquefort.

Williams smiled at Ann. "It looks to me like you was giving Uncle William some lessons in detection."

"I am," Ann said.

Crane finished his drink, poured another. "I was afraid you were going to mention that." He selected a heart-shaped canape.

"Yes, and where's my champagne?" Ann said.

"You'll get it... probably across the bow, too, the way they christen a ship."

They sipped the martinis, munched celery and discussed the case. They agreed they would visit the Crimson Cat on the following night. Ann went to her room and presently reappeared in a semiformal dress of blue brocaded lame with silver shoulder straps. Her skin was smooth and tan.

Williams removed an olive pit from his mouth, flicked it under Crane's bed. "Bill was saying John traveled for the company, Ann."

"Yes?"

"That'd give Richard a chance to chase Carmel."

"And John knew it," Crane added. "Or else he wouldn't have inquired about Richard's dovecot from the Jamesons."

Ann sat on the arm of Williams' chair. "But where did he hear about the cottage?"

Crane didn't know.

"He couldn't have heard much," Williams asserted. "He wouldn't have asked the Jamesons to describe the woman if he had."

Crane admired Ann's eyes, quite green under artificial light. He said, "We agreed John found out about Richard and Carmel and killed Richard to stop the affair."

"But who killed John?" Williams objected. "We thought of that," Ann said. "He killed himself in remorse."

"What about Carmel?" Williams asked Crane, who was furtively tilting the shaker over his glass.

"I think she's beautiful," he replied.

Ann asked, "You're not going to get tight again, Bill?"

"Oh no." The shaker was empty, anyway. "Not me."

"I mean," Williams said, "couldn't Carmel have killed her husband?"

"Why?"

"She loved Richard, she wanted to avenge him."

Crane picked the olive out of his glass. It had absorbed enough alcohol to taste good. "Old man March thinks she killed him. He thinks she killed them both."

Williams asked, "Does he think she's going to wipe out the whole family... one by one?"

"Gosh!" Crane said. "I didn't ask him."

After dinner, Beulah's brother, James, served Ann and Crane coffee and brandy in the library before a bright pine fire.

"I don't like being a detective," Ann said.

Crane was astonished. "What could be nicer than this?" He halted his demitasse halfway to his mouth. "And besides, it isn't costing us a cent."

"It's a dead man's house," Ann said.

"Are you afraid of ghosts?"

"I don't know what it is." She looked at him through very wide green eyes. "I think it's the way everybody dies. Doesn't it give you a creepy feeling, Bill?"

"I haven't had a creep yet, darling."

"I think it's the gas. It hasn't any odor or color; it just sneaks up and kills you. It's horrible. Thinking of it makes me feel it in my throat, choking off my breath."

"Don't think about it, then," Crane said.

"If I were a March I'd be scared to death." Light from the fire made her eyes glisten. "It's like having a curse on a family. So much hatred and death..."

"You aren't a March," Crane said. She was silent.

After a few minutes James brought Peter and Carmel into the library. Carmel took off her glossy mink coat, tossed it carelessly across the library couch. "Hello." Her voice had a throaty quality. She sat on the couch, crossed her legs. They were slender and long, but rounded.

"Hello," Crane said.

She had on a black velvet evening gown, so simple and so perfectly fitted to her body, that Crane knew it must have cost a lot of money. A diamond-and-ruby bracelet, on her left arm, glittered in the rays of the pine fire.

Ann greeted Peter. "How's the burglary business tonight?"

His face was pleasant with a smile. "I never start work before midnight."

"Then have a drink," Crane said.

James brought cups and fragile inhalers, and Ann poured them coffee from a chromium pot with an arched nose. Crane gave them good portions of brandy. Ann sat in a leather chair. Crane decided her legs were as attractive as Carmel's. They weren't so long, but the knees were better.

Peter said, "What we came over for was..." Crane interrupted him. "I know. You came for your car."

"Oh no."

"It's slightly damaged but it runs," Crane persisted.

"A pebble flew up and made a hole in the window," Ann explained.

"No, it was a bullet," said Crane.

"A passing car." Ann glared at him. "A stone must have shot up from its tires."

"It was an obvious attempt to assassinate us both." Crane said. "I was terrified."

While Ann poured the brandy Carmel said, "What we really came over for was to tell you about the Country Club dance Saturday night." Crane smelled her gardenia perfume.

"I told you Dad fixed you up with a membership," Peter said. "We thought you might like to come with us."

"That's awfully nice of you," Ann said.

"I only dance the bunny hug," Crane said. "Has that got out here yet?"