The Red Carnelian

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  She leaned forward and put her hands on my shoulders, turned me so that I faced her.

  “You’re young. Linell,” she said. “Only a few years older than Chris. Too young, perhaps, to have learned tolerance.”

  “Tolerance!” I cried. “How can you talk about tolerance when two people have been murdered?”

  “Listen to me,” she pleaded. “I’m not talking about murder. I’m talking about someone who is innocent and mustn’t be brought into this.”

  I had to believe in her sincerity. I might not understand her motives, but I couldn’t doubt that she was honest in what she was saying.

  “There’s nothing I can do anyway,” I told her. “Hering looked up the fur theft and he put the whole thing in McPhail’s hands. But right now McPhail is busy suspecting Bill Thorne.”

  “Bill!” Helena’s tone was incredulous. Then she remembered. “He phoned you tonight. I told him you were working late and that everything was all right. He said he’d be seeing you and hung up.”

  That was a help. Not that I blamed Helena, since she hadn’t known what was happening at the store. But if Bill took her at her word, he might not even come home tomorrow. And he had to come home. Quickly. In order to defend himself.

  I gave Helena a further account of the evening while I was getting ready for bed, and the strangeness between us began to wear off. After all, Helena had as much right to shield someone if she chose, as Bill had to shield me, or I him. Probably none of us was obscuring the real issue. I couldn’t help wondering who it was Helena was shielding. And why?

  It took me a long time to get to sleep and then I had a queer dream. I was back in my office at Cunningham’s and that missing picture was again in place on the wall. I knew it was there. But it was in place only so long as I had my back to it. The moment I started turning around, the spot on the wall was empty again. I kept trying and trying to sneak up on that picture and catch it in place—but always it just managed to elude me.

  I woke up limp with fatigue, but came alive the moment I got out of bed. This was to be a day of action. If Bill wasn’t to be arrested the moment he set foot back in town, somebody had to do something. And I knew one thing I was going to do—about that missing picture from the wall of my office.

  I think I was a little shocked when I walked over from Michigan and found Cunningham’s State Street windows alive with color and light. The curtains had been opened and the red windows were on display.

  There were my signs, lettered in red on creamy paper. “Red is the Color of the Year!” with a crimson exclamation point. And Sondo’s backgrounds bright and spectacular—when Sondo herself lay so tragically dead.

  I had forgotten all about the windows from the time I’d found Sondo. But others had been more responsible than I. Sometime, between all the police procedure, Tony had managed to get his windows done. They were every bit as striking and effective as we’d hoped and I felt sick at heart to think Sondo couldn’t see them. For all her scrapping with Tony, she’d loved her work and had taken a real pride in the things she did for the windows.

  The store was in a state of confusion. The news of the second murder was out and I think every employee in Cunningham’s had the jitters. The women, particularly, went to the locker rooms and upper floors in groups of two or three and during the day there were several resignations. Policemen were posted at every entrance and reporters lurked in every corner. Not even Mr. Cunningham could stem the tide now.

  The day had a remorseless tempo. One thing led to another so swiftly that I seemed to be out of breath most of the time.

  Keith started things off. He was already in the office when I arrived, and I knew by his face that he’d heard.

  “I told you it would be like that,” he said. “Something’s loose now and it can’t be stopped unless it’s caught and bound. I told you it wasn’t safe to know too much. Remember? So I’m going to be rid of what I know.”

  “What do you know, Keith?” I asked evenly.

  His eyes were dark and haunted in his yellowish face. “It’s all right to tell you now,” he said, “because then I’m going over to tell McPhail. Remember Tuesday afternoon—before Mr. Montgomery was murdered—when you gave me those signs to take down to lingerie?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I didn’t leave the store right away afterward. I was going down to the basement to look at some shirts they had on sale. I took the basement stairs down from the main floor. The stairs at the front of the store. You know where they come in?”

  I knew perfectly well. That stairway, with its head close to window five, cut down just below the front windows.

  He saw my quickening of interest. “Just as I was starting down the stairs I heard somebody talking in the window. Somebody talking loud and angry. I’m pretty sure it was Mr. Montgomery, and I heard part of what he said.”

  I leaned forward. This was the thing Chris wouldn’t tell.

  “What did you hear?”

  “He was swearing some. And then he said, ‘You get out of here and get out fast. I’m sick of the whole tribe of Gardners and you’re the worst of the lot.’ ”

  My eyes were on Keith, but I didn’t really see him. Certain little pieces of a puzzle were beginning to fall into place. But my mind shrank from accepting the pattern they presented. Monty might have addressed those words to Chris, though that seemed unlikely, if her story of hiding in the window during Monty’s tirade was true. The other person to whom he might have been speaking was Owen Gardner.

  Had Owen gone down earlier to see Monty? And then gone down again to discover the body? It was not only possible, but suddenly very likely. If it had been Owen in the window, then many things were explained. Chris’s hysteria, her lack of hatred for the murderer.

  That would be why she’d kept her presence in the window secret; why she refused to tell what she had heard. It explained Owen’s behavior too. Torn between the necessity to save himself, the love for his daughter, and the need to keep her from being involved. Might it not even explain Sondo’s death?

  Owen, watching Sondo as she tortured Chris and threatened to involve her. It all dovetailed perfectly. The only trouble was that I had pieces left over. I had Lotta Montez, and Helena shielding someone, and a carnelian ring, and a mannequin with a smashed head.

  Perhaps those things were really extra. Perhaps they fitted no more than that stone in my pocket, or Bill’s thumb print on the hammer.

  Keith was watching the expressions that crossed my face.

  “I’ve been afraid,” he said. “But I’m not afraid any more. If I wait, maybe I’ll be the next one after Sondo. So I’d better go talk to McPhail.”

  “Yes,” I said, “you’d better go talk to McPhail.”

  He went off and I phoned Universal Arts to see if there’d been any word of Bill. But nobody had heard from him since the day before.

  I took care of a few urgent matters on my desk and then put on my hat and coat. One last look at the vacant spot on my wall told me nothing, but I knew now what I might be able to do about it.

  The public library was only a short walk and I went straight up to the periodical room and explained to the attendant what I wanted. I sat down at a table with an armful of magazines and started going through them methodically.

  These were the magazines from which Keith and I had cut pictures to paste on the walls of my office. We’d chosen old ones to cut up, of course, so if I went back a few months before the time we’d papered the office, I ought to find a copy of the picture that had been torn from my wall.

  I knew I was on familiar ground. Many of the pictures I had pasted on the office walls looked up at me from those pages. But though I went through the magazines carefully, with my hopes high at first, and then gradually dying, I found no picture which struck a responsive chord in my memory.

  Just as I was about to give up, I was rewarde
d—not by finding the picture, but by discovering one I’d never seen before.

  It was a beautiful photograph done in full color—rich golds and reds and black. A man with a young, narrow, Spanish face smiling down at the woman in his arms. A woman in a dance frock of gold and red, and high-heeled gold sandals. Her head was tipped back to look up into his eyes and her glossy black hair swung to her shoulders.

  My eyes dropped to the caption below the picture—“The dance team of Luis and Lotta, which has been making such a stir at style shows lately”—and then back to the profile of the woman.

  I knew her in spite of the dark hair. Lotta. Shortened from Carlotta? Eventually Carla? There was no doubt about it. Lotta Montez was Carla Drake.

  I sat back, wondering where the path led to now. Carla Drake, was Lotta Montez, and whose dancing partner had been sent to jail in connection with a fur theft at a store where Michael Montgomery had worked. Had she loved that much younger man in the photograph? Was he the “lost” husband Mrs. Babcock had mentioned? And what had become of him in the end? Hering had said that he’d been arrested. He’d said nothing of trial or conviction. But he’d said something else too—that the woman had got away.

  I carried the magazines to the desk and headed for Cunningham’s as fast as I could go. I left the elevator at the fourth floor.

  Miss Babcock greeted me with a frantic wave of her hands. “The police are questioning Mr. Gardner again. And the style show’s scheduled to go on at two this afternoon. What am I to do?”

  So Keith had had his interview with McPhail.

  “I want to see Miss Drake,” I said. “Right away.”

  Miss Babcock went on for five minutes about Owen, the style show and the inconvenience of murders in general.

  Then she said, “Oh, Miss Drake won’t be down till later. She’s not modeling this morning.”

  I was just as glad. There was something I wanted to see before I faced Carla.

  “Do you mind if I have a look at that white dress she’s wearing in the show?” I asked Miss Babcock.

  The buyer motioned absently toward the racks where the style show dresses hung. I found Carla’s lovely Juliet frock without any difficulty and lifted the soft material in my hands.

  I could remember the tears in Carla’s eyes when I’d told her how beautiful she looked. I could remember the graceful way she’d lifted the skirt. And the way she’d shied away from the slightest mention of dancing.

  I ran the edge of the hem through my hands. There was a gray tracing of grime along the edge of the skirt. Grime never picked up from the soft, well-cleaned carpets of the dress section. I went back to speak to Babcock.

  “Do you happen to remember where Miss Drake was during the rehearsal last evening?” I asked.

  “Why—she was here, of course. Where else would she be?”

  “But there were so many models. Are you sure? Would there have been any time when she could have slipped away for fifteen or twenty minutes?”

  Miss Babcock considered. “Well, if it comes to that, I don’t suppose there was one of us who was in plain sight all the time. Not even Mr. Gardner. Wait!” Something like a glitter came into her eyes and she put an excited hand on my arm. “There was a time. We had to wait for her once. In fact we ran some of the other girls through ahead. But she showed up right afterwards. She said she’d got bored and was looking around the department. It was strictly against rules for her to be out of the dressing rooms and I was very annoyed. You—you don’t think Miss Drake has anything to do with—with all this?”

  She looked disgustingly eager and I had no intention of satisfying her curiosity.

  I said, “Oh, no. Certainly not,” and left before she could stop me.

  Now I was pretty sure about the mysterious hand that had played the phonograph last night. And where did it get me? If Sondo had been murdered around that time—but she hadn’t. She’d been dead since early morning.

  I went upstairs to my office and found Bill tilted back in my chair.

  20

  Bill!” I cried. “Oh, Bill, I’m so glad to see you!”

  He nodded approvingly. “Now that’s the sort of heartfelt greeting I like from my women. Maybe you’ll appreciate me more when I’m around after this.”

  I didn’t bother to take him down. I could do that later on.

  “Bill, so many awful things have happened. Have you heard about Sondo?”

  He dropped his joking manner and I saw how tired he looked, saw the anxiety in his eyes. He got up and pushed me gently down in my chair.

  “Yes,” he said, “I know. I’ve had a talk with Hering. I wish I’d been here. I wish you hadn’t had to go through all that alone.”

  I remembered suddenly. “But, Bill, how did you get here without being arrested? I thought McPhail—”

  “McPhail isn’t interested in me just now. He’s got his hands full. Keith told him what he’d heard in the window and he’s having it out with Gardner and Chris.”

  I dropped wearily down in my chair. “I wonder if it’s really over? Oh, I’d hate it to be Owen!”

  “There’s no telling,” Bill said.

  “What happened yesterday?” I asked him. “I mean when you went up to see Sondo. How did your fingerprints get on that hammer?”

  He was airy about his explanation, but anxiety was still there.

  “It’s simple enough. The hammer was on a high shelf and she asked me to hand it to her. I don’t know what she wanted it for—she wasn’t hammering anything. I got the impression that she was setting the stage for something and that she wanted me out of the way in a hurry.”

  “She must have set it all right,” I said. “When McPhail gets through with Owen, you’re going to have a lovely time explaining those fingerprints.”

  Bill shrugged.

  “What about your trip?” I asked. “Did you find out anything?”

  He shook his head. “I was on the trail of something, but it fizzled out. Carla knows more about Monty than she’s telling. She almost gave something away and then caught herself up. She said it all went back to the time when Monty worked at a department store in a city in Missouri. There was some sort of scandal and he ran off to Mexico with the woman. So I followed the thread back to that store. But it must have been eighteen years ago, or more, and I wasn’t able to pick up the last strands. Maybe if I’d taken more time—but I couldn’t tell what you’d be getting into while I was gone, so—”

  I broke in. “Maybe Carla’s smarter than you think. I rather suspect she’s had a little experience twisting men around her fingers. And you probably twist as well as the next one.”

  Bill’s eyebrows went up in an amused quirk. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that she tossed you a few red herrings and you were gullible enough to bite. What better way to get you off the real track than by sending you down a side trail?”

  “How can you love me and have such a poor opinion of my intelligence?”

  I ignored that “I’ve been following a few threads myself. I know a lot more about Carla than you do, and I didn’t have to take her to breakfast to find out.”

  He grinned at me, but I went ahead and told him about my discovery at the library. About Carla being Lotta Montez. About her knowing Monty in the East and being mixed up in that theft of fur coats. That she was probably still wanted by the police. And about that tracing of grime on the hem of her white dress.

  He let out a low whistle. “Next time, baby, I’ll stay home and let you do the sleuthing.”

  There was more evidence against either Chris or Owen than there was against Carla. Or against Bill and me for that matter. There was, however, a possible motive in the light of what I’d found out. If Carla was wanted by the police and Monty knew it—? But then why would she come to the very store where he worked? If that had been accidental, why had she stayed? And what
connection had she with the ring?

  I began to feel more and more that the key to the puzzle of Carla lay in Helena Farnham’s hands. If Helena could be made to talk! If she’d only tell us what really happened the day Carla exchanged the pin! Helena had seen something, knew something.

  I picked up the phone and called the costume jewelry section. Helena was busy with a customer and I had to wait a moment. When she answered I wasted no time.

  “You’re having lunch with me,” I told her. “What time do you go?”

  “More questions?” she said. “It isn’t any use, Linell.”

  “Oh, yes it is!” I told her. “It’s got to be. Do you know what’s happening up here? Do you know that McPhail is about ready to arrest Owen Gardner and that Chris is badly mixed in?”

  There was silence at the other end of the wire and I knew I’d surprised her. I pushed my advantage hastily.

  “None of us thinks Chris or Owen is guilty, but Bill and I come next on the list. So don’t you think you’d better tell me what you know?”

  Again silence. Then she said, “Linell, I honestly don’t think it will help, but if you want the story, I’ll give it to you.”

  I arranged to meet her and hung up, to face Bill triumphantly. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  I told him everything else I could think of, the things I’d had no opportunity to tell him before. About the queer way I’d found the stone to the ring, for one thing.

  “Sondo must have had it in her possession,” Bill said. “She could have dropped it on the floor of the mannequin room herself. Or it might have fallen out of her clothes when the murderer dragged her body in there and hid it in the cabinet.”

  I shivered. Every time the thought of those moments in the mannequin room came back to me I broke out in goose flesh.

  Bill saw the look on my face and went on quickly in a matter-of-fact voice. “Or the murderer might have recovered the stone and dropped it himself.”

  “Or herself,” I said.