The Little Sister (13 page)

Ned Gammon nodded. “Nothing like a little hamming to clear the air. All right here we go.”

He went back beside the camera. The assistant shouted “roll ‘em” and the scene went through without a hitch.

“Cut,” Gammon said. “Print that one. Break for lunch everybody.”

The actors came down a flight of rough wooden steps and nodded to Wilson. Mavis Weld came last, having stopped to put on a terry-cloth robe and a pair of beach sandals. She stopped dead when she saw me. Wilson stepped forward.

“Hello, George,” Mavis Weld said, staring at me. “Want something from me?”

“Mr. Marlowe would like a few words with you. Okay?”

“Mr. Marlowe?”

Wilson gave me a quick sharp look. “From Ballou’s office. I supposed you knew him.”

“I may have seen him.” She was still staring at me. “What is it?”

I didn’t speak.

After a moment she said, “Thanks, George. Better come along to my dressing room, Mr. Marlowe.”

She turned and walked off around the far side of the set. A green and white dressing room stood against the wall. The name on the door was Miss Weld. At the door she turned and looked around carefully. Then she fixed her lovely blue eyes on my face.

“And now, Mr. Marlowe?”

“You do remember me?”

“I believe so.”

“Do we take up where we left off—or have a new deal with a clean deck?”

“Somebody let you in here Who? Why? That takes explaining.”

“I’m working for you. I’ve been paid a retainer and Ballou has the receipt.”

“How very thoughtful. And suppose I don’t want you to work for me? Whatever your work is.”

“All right, be fancy,” I said. I took the Dancers photo out of my pocket and held it out. She looked at me a long steady moment before she dropped her eyes. Then she looked at the snapshot of herself and Steelgrave in the booth. She looked at it gravely without movement. Then very slowly she reached up and touched the tendrils of damp hair at the side of her face. Ever so slightly she shivered. Her hand came out and she took the photograph. She stared at it. Her eyes came up again slowly, slowly.

“Well?” she asked.

“I have the negative and some other prints. You would have had them, if you had had more time and known where to look. Or if he had stayed alive to sell them to you.”

“I’m a little chilly,” she said. “And I have to eat some lunch.” She held the photo out to me.

“You’re a little chilly and you have to eat some lunch,” I said.

I thought a pulse beat in her throat. But the light was not too good. She smiled very faintly. The bored-aristocrat touch.

“The significance of all this escapes me,” she said.

“You’re spending too much time on yachts. What you mean is I know you and I know Steelgrave, so what has this photo got that makes anybody give me a diamond dog collar?”

“All right,” she said. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if finding out is what it takes to shake you out of this duchess routine, I’ll find out. And in the meantime you’re still chilly and you still have to eat some lunch.”

“And you’ve waited too long,” she said quietly. “You haven’t anything to sell. Except perhaps your life.”

“I’d sell that cheap. For love of a pair of dark glasses and a delphinium-blue hat and a crack on the head from a high-heeled slipper.”

Her mouth twitched as if she was going to laugh. But there was no laughter in her eyes.

“Not to mention three slaps in the face,” she said. “Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe. You came too late. Much, much too late.”

“For me—or for you?” She reached back and opened the door of the dressing room.

“I think for both of us.” She went in quickly, leaving the door open.

“Come in and shut the door,” her voice said from the dressing room.

I went in and shut the door. It was no fancy custom-built star’s dressing room. Strictly utility only. There was a shabby couch, one easy chair, a small dressing table with mirror and two lights, a straight chair in front of it, a tray that had held coffee.

Mavis Weld reached down and plugged in a round electric heater. Then she grabbed up a towel and rubbed the damp edges of her hair. I sat down on the couch and waited.

“Give me a cigarette.” She tossed the towel to one side. Her eyes came close to my face as I lit the cigarette for her. “How did you like that little scene we ad libbed on the yacht?”

“Bitchy.”

“We’re all bitches. Some smile more than others, that’s all. Show business. There’s something cheap about it. There always has been. There was a time when actors went in at the back door. Most of them still should. Great strain, great urgency, great hatred, and it comes out in nasty little scenes. They don’t mean a thing”

“Cat talk,” I said.

She reached up and pulled a fingertip down the side of my cheek. It burned like a hot iron. “How much money do you make, Marlowe?”

“Forty bucks a day and expenses. That’s the asking price. I take twenty-five. I’ve taken less.” I thought about Orfamay’s worn twenty.

She did that with her finger again and I just didn’t grab hold of her. She moved away from me and sat in the chair, drawing the robe close. The electric heater was making the little room warm.

“Twenty-five dollars a day,” she said wonderingly. “Little lonely dollars.”

“Are they very lonely?”

“Lonely as lighthouses.”

She crossed her legs and the pale glow of her skin in the light seemed to fill the room.

“So ask me the questions,” she said, making no attempt to cover her thighs.

“Who’s Steelgrave?”

“A man I’ve known for years. And liked. He owns things. A restaurant or two. Where he comes from—that I don’t know.”

“But you know him very well.”

“Why don’t you ask me if I sleep with him?”

“I don’t ask that kind of questions.”

She laughed and snapped ash from her cigarette. “Miss Gonzales would be glad to tell you.”

“The hell with Miss Gonzales.”

“She’s dark and lovely and passionate. And very, very kind.”

“And exclusive as a mailbox,” I said. “The hell with her. About Steelgrave—has he ever been in trouble?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“With the police.”

Her eyes widened a little too innocently. Her laugh was a little too silvery. “Don’t be ridiculous. The man is worth a couple of million dollars.”

“How did he get it?”

“How would I know?”

“All right. You wouldn’t. That cigarette’s going to burn your fingers.” I leaned across and took the stub out of her hand. Her hand lay open on her bare leg. I touched the palm with a fingertip. She drew away from me and tightened the hand into a fist.

“Don’t do that,” she said sharply.

“Why? I used to do that to girls when I was a kid.”

“I know.” She was breathing a little fast. “It makes me feel very young and innocent and kind of naughty. And I’m far from being young and innocent any more.”

“Then you don’t really know anything about Steelgrave.”

“I wish you’d make up your mind whether you are giving me a third degree or making love to me.”

“My mind has nothing to do with it,” I said.

After a silence she said: “I really do have to eat something, Marlowe. I’m working this afternoon. You wouldn’t want me to collapse on the set, would you?”

“Only stars do that.” I stood up. “Okay, I’ll leave. Don’t forget I’m working for you. I wouldn’t be if I thought you’d killed anybody. But you were there. You took a big chance. There was something you wanted very badly.”

She reached the photo out from somewhere and stared at it, biting her lip. Her eyes came up without her head moving.

“It could hardly have been this.”

“That was the one thing he had so well hidden that it was not found. But what good is it? You and a man called Steelgrave in a booth at The Dancers. Nothing in that.”

“Nothing at all,” she said.

“So it has to be something about Steelgrave—or something about the date.”

Her eyes snapped down to the picture again. “There’s nothing to tell the date,” she said quickly. “Even if it meant something. Unless the cut-out piece—”

“Here.” I gave her the cut-out piece. “But you’ll need a magnifier. Show it to Steelgrave. Ask him if it means anything. Or ask Ballou.”

I started towards the exit of the dressing room. “Don’t kid yourself the date can’t be fixed,” I said over my shoulder. “Steelgrave won’t.”

“You’re just building a sand castle, Marlowe.”

“Really?” I looked back at her, not grinning. “You really think that? Oh no you don’t. You went there. The man was murdered. You had a gun. He was a known crook. And I found something the police would love to have me hide from them. Because it must be as full of motive as the ocean is full of salt. As long as the cops don’t find it I have a license. And as long as somebody else doesn’t find it I don’t have an ice pick in the back of my neck. Would you say I was in an overpaid profession?”

She just sat there and looked at me, one hand on her kneecap, squeezing it. The other moving restlessly, finger by finger, on the arm of the chair.

All I had to do was turn the knob and go on out. I don’t know why it had to be so hard to do.

20

There was the usual coming and going in the corridor outside my office and when I opened the door and walked into the musty silence of the little waiting room there was the usual feeling of having been dropped down a well dried up twenty years ago to which no one would come back ever. The smell of old dust hung in the air as flat and stale as a football interview.

I opened the inner door and inside there it was the same dead air, the same dust along the veneer, the same broken promise of a life of ease. I opened the windows and turned on the radio. It came up too loud and when I had it tuned down to normal the phone sounded as if it had been ringing for some time. I took my hat off it and lifted the receiver.

It was high time I heard from her again. Her cool compact voice said: “This time I really mean it.”

“Go on.”

“I lied before. I’m not lying now. I really have heard from Orrin.”

“Go on.”

“You’re not believing me. I can tell by your voice”

“You can’t tell anything by my voice. I’m a detective. Heard from him how?”

“By phone from Bay city.”

“Wait a minute.” I put the receiver down on the stained brown blotter and lit my pipe. No hurry. Lies are always patient. I took it up again.

“We’ve been through that routine,” I said. “You’re pretty forgetful for your age. I don’t think Dr. Zugsmith would like it.”

“Please don’t tease me. This is very serious. He got my letter. He went to the post office and asked for his mail. He knew where I’d be staying. And about when I’d be here. So he called up. He’s staying with a doctor he got know down there. Doing some kind of work for him. I told you he had two years medical.”

“Doctor have a name?”

“Yes. A funny name. Dr. Vincent Lagardie.”

“Just a minute. There’s somebody at the door.”

I laid the phone down very carefully. It might be brittle. It might be made of spun glass. I got a handkerchief out and wiped the palm of my hand, the one that had been holding it. I got up and went to the built-in wardrobe and looked at my face in the flawed mirror. It was me all right. I had a strained look. I’d been living too fast.

Dr. Vincent Lagardie, 965 Wyoming Street. Cattycorners from The Garland Home of Peace. Frame house on the corner. Quiet. Nice neighborhood. Friend of the extinct Clausen. Maybe. Not according to him. But still maybe.

I went back to the telephone and squeezed the jerks out of my voice. “How would you spell that?” I asked.

She spelled it—with ease and precision. “Nothing to do then, is there?” I said. “All jake to the angels—or whatever they say in Manhattan, Kansas.”

“Stop sneering at me. Orrin’s in a lot of trouble. Some—” her voice quivered a little and her breath came quickly, “some gangsters are after him.”

“Don’t be silly, Orfamay. They don’t have gangsters in Bay City. They’re all working in pictures. What’s Dr. Lagardie’s phone number?”

She gave it to me. It was right. I won’t say the pieces were beginning to fall into place, but at least they were getting to look like parts of the same puzzle. Which is all I ever get or ask.

“Please go down there and see him and help him. He’s afraid to leave the house. After all I did pay you.”

“I gave it back.”

“Well, I offered it to you again.”

“You more or less offered me other things that are more than I’d care to take.”

There was silence.

“All right,” I said. “All right. If I can stay free that long. I’m in a lot of trouble myself.”

“Why?”

“Telling lies and not telling the truth. It always catches up with me. I’m not as lucky as some people.”

“But I’m not lying, Philip. I’m not lying. I’m frantic.”

“Take a deep breath and get frantic so I can hear it.”

“They might kill him,” she said quietly.

“And what is Dr. Vincent Lagardie doing all this time?”

“He doesn’t know, of course. Please, please go at once. I have the address here. Just a moment.”

And the little bell rang, the one that rings far back at the end of the corridor, and is not loud, but you’d better hear it. No matter what other noises there are you’d better hear it.

“He’ll be in the phone book,” I said. “And by an odd coincidence I have a Bay City phone book. Call me around four. Or five. Better make it five.”

I hung up quickly. I stood up and turned the radio off, not having heard a thing it said. I closed the windows again. I opened the drawer of my desk and took out the Luger and strapped it on. I fitted my hat on my head. On the way out I had another look at the face in the mirror.

I looked as if I had made up my mind to drive off a cliff.