The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

  Seven thirty-four East Stoyle was a neat one-story frame cottage in a middle-class residential district. A woman of about twenty-eight came to the door.

  She was a brunette, dark and torrid-looking in a skin-tight black dress which no one could have guessed was supposed to signify mourning, for it outlined every curve of her finely-developed body. A rather full lower lip, an attractive but slightly flat nose and dark eyes which seemed to slant a trifle upward gave her a slight oriental flavor.

  Ross was startled when he saw her, but it didn’t show in his face. Now he knew why the woman he had seen with Quinnel had looked vaguely familiar. Benny Stoneman had once showed him his wife’s picture.

  “Mrs. Stoneman?” Ross asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Clancy Ross.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Come in.”

  She led him into a small but well-furnished front room and asked him to sit. After a standard expression of sympathy from Ross and an equally standard expression of thanks from the woman, she examined him with bright interest.

  “Benny spoke of you a lot,” she said. “He had a good deal of admiration for you.”

  “I liked Benny too. Which is one of the reasons I’m here.”

  She looked a question and the gambler explained, “This isn’t entirely a sympathy call. I’m playing cop. Trying to run down Benny’s killer.”

  “Oh? Well, I’m afraid I told the police everything I knew.”

  “I know. But maybe if we kicked it around a while, you’d remember something you didn’t tell them. A clue to the identity of this mistress you think he had, for instance.”

  She hushed slightly. “I see you’ve been talking to the police.”

  “Some. Had dinner yet?”

  She shook her head. “We… I usually eat about seven.”

  “Then suppose you have it with me. We can talk while we’re eating.”

  “In public?” she asked. “With my husband dead less than twenty-four hours? Oh, I couldn’t.”

  The objection struck Ross as more a sop to convention than a symptom of grief. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t detect any grief in the woman.

  “We’ll pick a quiet place where you won’t be known,” he said.

  She considered. “You think it would be all right? Maybe your being Benny’s employer and all…”

  “It will be all right,” he assured her.

  He took her to Romaine’s, where the only illumination was candlelight and the clientele was small but select. He learned her first name was Helene, and before dinner was over he was calling her Helene and she was calling him Clancy.

  After dinner Ross ordered drinks, and it developed that Helene Stoneman had an affinity for double bourbons and soda. As Ross drank only his usual weak scotch and water, by ten p.m., when they finally left Romaine’s, Ross was still dead sober, but Helene Stoneman was hilariously drunk.

  By now she had completely forgotten her widowhood. As soon as they were seated in the Lincoln, she leaned against him, gave him a moist kiss on the cheek and then nestled her head on his shoulder.

  When they reached her home, he had to help her from the car. Though he steadied her with one hand gripped to her bicep, she staggered all over the walk on the way to the front porch. Leaning her against the door, he took her purse and searched it for her key. He gripped her bicep again when he opened the door, to prevent her falling inward with it.

  The gambler was a little irked with himself for letting her get so drunk. When he had discovered her liking for bourbon, he had deliberately shelved talking about her husband’s murder in the hope that he could first loosen her tongue with alcohol. But in her present state it was unlikely he could get any sense out of her at all.

  Leading her into the front room, he switched on a lamp and steered her toward the sofa. But instead of sitting, she suddenly spun against him, threw her arms about his neck and dragged his mouth down to hers.

  He found it wide open.

  For the next few moments Ross merely hung on while the woman’s body undulated against his and her mouth greedily worked at his lips. Finally he forcibly broke the kiss and held her away by the shoulders. She fought his grip, attempting to struggle back into his arms.

  “Hold it, Helene,” he said. “I’ll play with you when you’re sober, but I don’t take advantage of drunken women.”

  “I am sober,” she said in a strained voice. “That sobered me like a jolt of electricity.”

  Looking down at her, he realized with astonishment that she was telling the truth. Only moments before she had hardly been able to stand, but she had sobered as abruptly as she had managed to get drunk.

  “Don’t just stand there looking at me!” she said. “For God’s sake, kiss me!”

  And hanging his detaining grip from her shoulders with an outward movement of her hands, she was back at him like a wildcat, twining her arms about his neck and moving her body passionately against his. Ross made another halfhearted attempt to disengage himself, but her almost animal abandon was too much for him.

  Giving up the fight, he grabbed her as roughly as she was grabbing at him and threw her onto the couch.

  CHAPTER 7

  Later, as they sat side-by-side on the sofa quietly smoking cigarettes, Helene seemed impelled to offer some explanation for her startling performance.

  “I’m not a nympho, Clancy,” she said in a subdued and entirely sober tone. “But you don’t know how long I’ve been pent up. Benny and I… Well, there just wasn’t anything there any more. I knew he had another woman, so I wouldn’t…” She let it trail off. “Did you expect the evening to end like this?”

  “It got a little off the track,” Ross admitted. “All I planned was a bit of discussion about Benny.”

  “Do we have to talk about him?”

  He looked down at the top of her head. “Don’t you want your husband’s killer caught?”

  She shifted a little uncomfortably. “Well, yes, I suppose. But you must know I wasn’t in love with him.”

  Ross asked casually, “What were you doing with Big John Quinnel this afternoon?”

  Straightening up, she looked at him. “What?”

  He repeated the question, then added, “I happened to see you together at the Park Plaza. At the time I didn’t know who you were.”

  Helene frowned. “Why did you wait so long to ask me?”

  Ross shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t think it was important. Is it?”

  The question made her pause. “Of course not,” she said finally. “Big John was Benny’s employer in Chicago, you know, so I got to know him quite well. When he saw about Benny’s death in the paper, he phoned to offer sympathy. Then he asked me to drop by the hotel because he wanted to talk to me. I met him in the bar for one drink. All he wanted was to know if I needed help. Money help, he meant. I said no and he brought me home.”

  Ross said nothing for a few moments. Then he asked, “Have you gone through Benny’s things yet? Papers and so on?”

  She shook her head. “I’m supposed to tomorrow morning. With a Lieutenant Redfern. He thinks maybe he can find a clue to the identity of Benny’s mistress. Though what good that will do him, I don’t know.”

  “It might solve the case,” Ross told her. “A witness who saw the shooting claims a woman did it.”

  “Oh? Do the police have a description?”

  “The police don’t even have the witness. I dug him up. Anyway, about the only description he could give was that she was female. Incidentally, what kind of car do you drive?”

  “A blue Ford sedan. Why?”

  “Nothing. Just checking.”

  She frowned at him. “What kind of car did this witness see?” she demanded.

  “A black coupe,” he lied in an easy voic
e.

  Her lower lip stuck out petulantly. “I don’t think that was a very nice question to ask.”

  “I’m not a very nice guy,” Ross conceded cheerfully. “Do me a favor tomorrow, will you?”

  “What?”

  “If you and the lieutenant turn up the name of Benny’s mistress when you go through his papers, phone it to me.”

  “All right,” she said. “If you’re looking for a woman suspect, I’d just as soon you’d look away from me.”

  CHAPTER 8

  It was nearly midnight when Ross pulled into his reserved place in the parking lot behind Club Rotunda.

  The lot was on the opposite side of the alley from the club and in the center of the block. Club patrons had to walk approximately a hundred feet to the alley mouth, turn right and walk half the length of the building to the side entrance. Clancy Ross, having a key to the alley door leading from the club kitchen, had to walk only half that distance.

  Even before he caught the glint of light on metal, Ross sensed a shadowy figure crouched in the alley. Instantly he dropped flat, his right hand darting beneath his left arm as he fell. A streak of fire probed out above his prone body, the sharp crack of the pistol echoing from the building walls a micro-second later.

  So close behind the first shot that it seemed a continuation of the sound, his own .38 automatic roared. With a pained grunt the figure in the areaway slammed backward, careened from one of the brick walls and tumbled to the ground.

  The gambler was up as instantly as he had dropped, his gun pointed at the downed man and ready to fire again at the slightest movement. The man lay on his back, but the areaway was too dark to make out his face. The gleam of metal on the ground several feet away told Ross he had dropped his gun.

  The downed man emitted a single low moan, then began to make a bubbling noise which brought a grimace to the gambler’s face. Stepping back from the areaway, Ross glanced both ways along the alley.

  At that time of night the two office buildings were deserted, and no one on the streets seemed to have noticed the shots. After listening for a moment Ross returned to the area-way. The man hadn’t moved his position and the bubbling noise had stopped.

  Sheathing his gun, Ross flicked on his lighter and held it to the dead face. It was the thin pale bodyguard he had seen with Big John Quinnel, the man registered at the hotel as Earl Windt, but more familiarly known as Bugsy.

  Leaving him there, Ross crossed to the club’s rear door and let himself into the kitchen. He found Sam Black in the downstairs club.

  “Got a job for you,” he told the assistant manager. “Quinnel’s boy, Bugsy, just took a shot at me as I walked up the alley.”

  Black frowned. “I told you so, Clancy. What’d you expect, pushing around an employee of a guy like Quinnel. He missed this time, but…” He paused to give Ross closer examination. “He did miss, didn’t he?”

  “He missed. He’s lying in the area-way between the two office buildings out back.”

  “Dead?”

  Ross nodded.

  “Self-defense,” Black said. “Want me to phone the cops?”

  “No. I want you to go over to the warehouse, get a panel truck, some kind of big bucket or tub and some cement. Plant his feet in the cement, drive down to the old quarry pool at the south edge of town and dump him in a hundred feet of water.”

  Black looked at him in astonishment. “We’re playing like 1920 gangsters now? What the hell for? You wouldn’t have any trouble making self-defense stick if he shot at you first.”

  “I want to give Quinnel something to worry about.” Ross said.

  Black thought this over, started to frown and grinned instead. “I guess it might disturb Big John’s sleep a little,” he said.

  He started off in the direction of the alley door. Ross went up to his apartment, changed into a dinner jacket and went down to the casino to take over his role of host.

  At one a.m. the gambler was called away from a poker game to answer the phone. It was Helene Stoneman calling.

  “I decided to look through some of Benny’s papers tonight after you left,” she said. “I think I found it.”

  “His mistress’s name?”

  “Well, her address. It’s a letter from a woman, addressed to him at the club. The letter’s only signed ‘M’ but there’s a return address on the envelope. Nineteen twenty-two Park. The postmark is two weeks old.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It’s kind of funny. It’s sort of…well, affectionate, but it doesn’t sound much like a love letter. It mentions enjoying some evening they had together and asks if he could come to dinner the following Tuesday. That’s about all. It’s signed, ‘Affectionately, M.’”

  “I see. There’s only one letter?”

  “All I found. Want me to show it to Lieutenant Redfern?”

  “Let him find it himself about noon.” Ross said. “That will give me a chance to get in my pitch first. Thanks for calling.”

  “Don’t mention it. Miss me?”

  “Already? We haven’t been parted two hours.”

  “You could still miss me a little,” she pouted.

  “All right,” he said. “I miss you a little. Good-night, Helene.”

  “Wait a minute, Clancy. When am I going to see you again?”

  “I’ll call you. Good-night.”

  “Good-night,” she said reluctantly.

  Though the downstairs club closed at one thirty in conformance with local liquor laws, the gambling rooms stayed open until four. At three a.m. Ross was called to the phone again.

  “Hello,” Helene’s voice said. “I’m still not asleep.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Just can’t seem to sleep. I keep thinking about tonight.”

  “Take a pill,” Ross suggested.

  “You’re not very romantic,” she complained. “I knew you’d still be up, because Benny told me the upstairs stays open till four. What are you doing?”

  “Playing poker.”

  “You winning?”

  Ross fingered the scar on his cheek a trifle irritably. “It’s a seesaw game. Is that all you wanted; to know if I’m winning?”

  “I just wanted to hear your voice. Will I see you any more before the funeral? That’s day after tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll call you. Good-night.”

  After he hung up, he stood staring at the phone puzzled a few moments before returning to the game.

  He got one more call before the club closed for the night. Sam Black phoned to report that his mission was accomplished.

  CHAPTER 9

  The phone next to his bed awakened Ross at eight a.m., and when he answered it a female voice he didn’t recognize asked, “Mr. Ross there?”

  “Speaking,” the gambler said.

  “Mr. Clancy Ross?”

  “Right.”

  The woman hung up.

  At first the incident puzzled him, but then light dawned. Big John Quinnel, having heard nothing from his gunman Bugsy, had taken this method to learn if Ross were still among the living.

  Ross grinned to himself.

  At nine, just as he was getting ready to leave the apartment, the phone rang again. This time it was Helene Stoneman.

  “Did I get you up?” she asked.

  “No. I’ve been up an hour.”

  “Would you like to come over here for a home-cooked dinner?”

  “Tonight?” Ross said. “I really ought to stay at the club, Helene. I missed most of last night, and this place doesn’t exactly run itself.”

  “Oh.” She was silent for a few moments. “You mean you won’t be able to get away any evenings any more?”

 
“I take nights off,” Ross said patiently. “Just not two in a row.”

  She said, “Oh,” again, then, “The funeral’s tomorrow, you know. Logan’s Funeral Home. Are you going?”

  “I planned to. What time?”

  “Two p.m. There won’t be any relatives, so you can sit with me. You being Benny’s employer, it will be quite proper, won’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” she said in a soft voice.

  She made it sound like a rendezvous. Ross thought as he hung up, torn between irritation and amusement at the idea of a lovers’ tryst taking place at the funeral of the husband of one of the lovers—

  * * * *

  Nineteen twenty-two Park Street was the right half of a two-story duplex house in a neighborhood of about the same economic level as Helene Stoneman’s, but much older. There was no name plate on the letterbox.

  A plump, plain-faced woman of about thirty answered Ross’s ring. She was an ash blonde with a round Dutch-girl face which looked as though it would normally be cheerful. At the moment it was woebegone and the eyes were reddened from weeping.

  Ross said, “Hi. I don’t know your name, but does your initial happen to be ‘M’?”

  The woman looked at him blankly. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “I’m Clancy Ross. Benny Stoneman worked for me. That mean anything to you?”

  Now the woman looked startled. She examined the slim gambler from his prematurely gray hair to his brightly polished shoes.

  Finally she asked, “How’d you find out about me?”

  “A letter Benny left lying around. You are M, aren’t you?”

  She shrugged hopelessly. “Come in, Mr. Ross.”

  He followed her into a large living room comfortably but old-fashionedly furnished with mohair furniture, marble-topped end tables and beaded lamps of the same vintage as the house. Ross chose an over-stuffed chair and the woman wearily seated herself in the center of a huge sofa, her hands folded in her lap.