The Wrong Murder

by Craig Rice

  She gathered up the glasses, refilled them, and stood looking dreamily at the telephone. Malone looked at her anxiously.

  “I never was one to sit idly by while my man languished in jail.”

  Malone sighed deeply. “I have a feeling that you’re going to do something I’ll be sorry for.”

  “Malone, don’t you trust my judgment?”

  “I only wish I could throw a house as far as I can trust your judgment.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, picked up the telephone, dialed a number, waited a minute, and said, “I’d like to speak to Mona McClane, please.”

  “Helene!”

  She ignored him. “She is? Oh, I see. No, no message.” She put the telephone down. “Mona’s out.”

  “Thank God,” Malone said piously.

  Helene turned to her father. “You know Mona better than I do. She’s not anywhere in particular, just out. Where would she be likely to be?”

  George Brand named a number of places in rapid alphabetical succession, beginning with the Alabam and ending with the Yar. Helene nodded, patted her hair, and slid into her coat.

  “We’ll drop in at all of them until we accidentally run into her.”

  “Then what?” Malone asked skeptically.

  “I’ll think of that when I get to it. Come on.”

  George Brand scowled. “I had hoped to go out and have a drink or so with Willis Sanders,” he said wistfully.

  “Bring him along. We’ll make up a party. Then it won’t look so pointed.” She ushered them to the door, paused there. “We’ll take Lulamay along. I bet she’d have a good time.”

  Before her suggestion could be overruled, she had crossed the hall and knocked on the opposite door. Lulamay Yandry greeted them enthusiastically. She was, she said, just getting terribly lonesome. No, she couldn’t go out with them because she was so busy. But surely they’d drop in and have a drink, just to be sociable.

  She refrained tactfully from inquiring after Jake.

  Helene started to refuse, remembered Jake’s description of real Tennessee corn liquor, and led the way into Lulamay’s apartment.

  It was a strange combination of comfortable disorder and insane confusion. Photographs still adorned the mantel and all the tables, but open suitcases stood on the floor, and odd bits of clothing were scattered from wall to wall.

  “I’m packing,” Lulamay explained apologetically.

  “You’re not leaving us!” Helene exclaimed.

  The gray-haired woman smiled and. nodded. “I’m going home, come next Monday. I like it here, but I’m going home.” She added, as though some explanation had been called for, “I had a little business to attend to up North but now it’s all settled—sooner than I expected—and I’m going home day after tomorrow.”

  Malone had been examining the photographs.

  “Just some of my folks,” Lulamay told him. “I like to take ’em with me wherever I go. Then I don’t get so lonesome.”

  One photograph in particular had attracted Malone’s attention.

  “This one of your folks too?” he inquired politely. “Nice-looking boy.”

  “He was nice-looking,” the woman said. A new, and not too pleasant note had crept into her voice. “That was my boy, Floyd. He was mighty nice-looking. He’s dead.”

  Helene turned to look at her. Lulamay Yandry’s face had become cold and hard and curiously pale.

  “He was killed,” she said, as though she were talking to herself. “Maybe he did deserve to die. But the man who killed him deserved to die too.”

  The room was very still. It was one of those uncomfortable pauses that come after someone has said too much. Then Lulamay laughed suddenly.

  “But, my goodness, you folks don’t want to hear me go on and on talking about my stupid old troubles.”

  The decanter appeared, Lulamay went on talking of other things, and within five minutes the incident had been forgotten by everyone, with the possible exception of Malone. Helene debated the potentialities of corn liquor in cocktail mixing, naming possible ingredients and declaring that the failures among her experiments could be sold to the army as new high explosives. George Brand telephoned to Willis Sanders and arranged a meeting place. Everybody had a wonderful time, save that Malone seemed curiously quiet and contemplative.

  When at last they rose to go, he said good-by to his hostess very gravely, shaking her hand.

  “Good-by, Mrs. Yandry. I’m glad your business up North turned out so satisfactorily.”

  Lulamay Yandry looked startled, but no more so than Helene.

  “And I wish you a safe journey,” the lawyer added.

  Out in the hall Helene turned on him indignantly. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Malone shook his head. “You’ll have to be patient for once in your life. I’m not going to tell you—or anybody—until Lulamay Yandry has gone home.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mona McClane was not at the Alabam, nor Brown’s, nor the Colony, Chez Paree, nor Colosimo’s.

  At the last-named spot Malone declared crossly that the expedition was not only expensive, but hard on the liver, and that in addition Helene’s driving had already aged him in a manner from which he would probably never recover.

  However he displayed no inclination to desert.

  Helene drove slowly up Michigan Avenue from Colosimo’s. “There’s still a lot of places to go.”

  George Brand, in the back seat, hiccuped faintly and said, “On more sober reflection, I’m beginning to think the whole thing’s insane. If Jake wants a night club this badly, I’ll buy him one.”

  Helene sighed. “You don’t understand. Besides, you couldn’t buy him the Casino.” Suddenly the big car swerved dangerously. “I know where she is. We’re a pack of idiots. The Casino. I knew we’d left out one of the C’s. Of course that’s where she’d be.”

  She stepped on the gas and headed north. On the way they stopped to pick up Willis Sanders, after George Brand had been warned not to discuss the murder of Joshua Gumbril out loud.

  Though the Casino was large and usually crowded, it still managed to convey an impression of cozy intimacy. It likewise offered variety. There was the main room, with its dance floor, its band platform, and its tables; there was the bar in another room with its own atmosphere and its own entertainment; there was the lounge bar from which one could watch the floor show, and, for those well acquainted with the management, there were the gambling rooms upstairs. The decorative scheme, Helene declared, was both quietly garish and ornate in a dignified way.

  She looked around her with what Malone muttered was an indecently speculative eye.

  “We’ll take a table and then just wander,” she announced.

  “Maybe you will,” George Brand said firmly, “Willis and I are going to just sit.”

  “Just a couple of old men,” Willis Sanders added, looking hopefully at one of the hostesses.

  Malone ordered something composed mostly of brandy, and reflected that Willis Sanders was a different man, seen away from his wife. Not that Fleurette Sanders wasn’t a charming woman—aside from the hard, determined lines around her mouth. But somehow the big, pink-faced man was not half as dignified and restrained as he was in Fleurette’s company. He seemed like a boy run away from school. More like George Brand who, for all his massive impressiveness, and his neat gray beard, always acted like a boy run away from school.

  Malone was still thinking about it when Helene motioned him to take her on a tour of the whole place.

  “Funny, though,” Helene said unexpectedly as they walked through the corridor to the bar, “Sanders doesn’t look like the henpecked type.”

  Malone started. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “I didn’t. I was thinking of it myself, watching him.” She scowled. “There’s something queer about it, too. Times when I’ve seen him with Fleurette, he didn’t look like a man who was afraid of his wife. He just looked afraid. I didn’t know
it was Fleurette he was afraid of, but now when I see him away from her, I wonder.”

  Malone puzzled about it for a minute, finally said, “The hell with it, it’s none of our business.”

  They paused in the bar long enough for Helene to lose forty cents matching coins with the bartender and to order one drink, not, as Helene carefully explained, because she wanted a drink but just to conceal the fact that she was looking for someone. There was no sign of Mona McClane in the bar.

  Malone set down his glass with an air of sternness. “Why don’t you give up this wild-goose chase and let me take you home, like a respectable matron.”

  “Because I’m having a wonderful time, and besides I’m not a matron. Wedded but not a wife. Malone, do you think you could possibly get Jake out of jail and have him join us here?”

  No. I told you I can’t do a thing until Von Flanagan gets down in the morning.”

  “Call up Von Flanagan and have him get Jake and both of them join us here.”

  “Von Flanagan is death on night clubs. He hasn’t been in one since he nearly got picked up in a raid and fled down an alley in the dressing-room maid’s coat and hat.”

  Helene sighed. “Let’s go look for Mona McClane.”

  They climbed the stairs to the little lounge bar and looked over the room below. The second floor show had just ended, and dancers were moving out onto the floor.

  “There she is, Malone. The table in the corner. She’s talking with the manager.”

  Malone looked. Mona McClane sat alone at a table, dressed in white, with one huge, sparkling ornament on her shoulder. Save for her mouth, there was nothing to her but black and white, he decided. White dress, white skin, black hair. From that distance the dark, heavy bang that fell over her forehead gave her face a curiously childlike look, impish, willful. She seemed very feminine, even frail. She was, he guessed, as hard as nails underneath. While he watched, the Casino’s manager left her table.

  “Let’s go down and run into her by accident,” Helene said.

  By the time they had reached the Casino’s main room George Brand and his companion had gone into the bar. Helene stood by their table a moment, looking around the room. Suddenly her face shone with delighted surprise. Motioning to Malone to follow, she threaded her way among the tables to where Mona McClane sat by herself.

  Mona McClane was also delighted, but not surprised. Probably, Malone thought, nothing would ever surprise her.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Mona McClane said brightly. “I went out because I felt lonely and bored, and only got more lonely and more bored.”

  Helene murmured something appropriately sympathetic, and talked about the floor show. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, she said, “Jake and Malone saw you this afternoon. They were on their way to meet me at the Drake bar and waved at you, hoping you’d join us, but you hopped in a cab and were gone.”

  Mona McClane frowned slightly as though she were trying to remember. “When and where?”

  “At the corner of State and Division Streets, about one-thirty,” Malone said.

  “Oh yes.” She seemed to remember in a flash. “I’d gone out for a walk, and when I got that far it began to rain a little, and I hailed a taxi. Too bad I didn’t see you.”

  “It is too bad,” Helene said lightly. “We’ve been having a swell time. What did you do all afternoon?”

  Mona McClane glanced at her for only a fraction of a second. “Not much. I window-shopped, just for fun, all by myself. It began to rain again about ha’past two, and I went to the Telenews and sat through two shows and then came home. Nothing very exciting.”

  Helene remarked that the weather had been frightful, and Mona McClane agreed that it had. Malone observed that the Telenews was an ideal spot to kill an hour or so, and Helene and Mona McClane said it was indeed.

  Helene gave a little shudder and said, “Why, Mona, you must have been on State Street about the time that man was murdered this afternoon.”

  Mona McClane lifted one eyebrow about an eighth of an inch and nodded. “I must have been.” She lit a cigarette slowly and deliberately and said, “By the way, where’s Mr. Justus? I hardly expected to see a bride of a day out without her husband.”

  “Jake?” Helene said airily. “Oh, he’s in jail.”

  Mona McClane didn’t appear surprised, but she did blink, once. “In jail! What for?”

  Before Helene could answer, there was the sound of a furious row just behind her. She turned her head and saw George Brand and Willis Sanders approaching the table, engaged in a loud and vituperative argument. It was hard to discover just what the argument was about, but there could be no doubt as to its intensity.

  The two men greeted Mona McClane, sat down at the table, and went on arguing.

  “Well damn it,” George Brand said suddenly, “I’ll bet you—” he paused for only an instant. “I’ll bet you my beard.”

  Sanders glared at him. “You’re on. Your beard against my race horse in the Sanders’ stable.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “That’s a wonderful bet,” Helene commented icily, “but what are you betting on?”

  Both men ignored her. George Brand fixed his gaze on Mona McClane.

  “Mona, you’ve got to settle this. Now listen. Yesterday afternoon you got into a discussion with my son-in-law about murder.” He hastily moved his ankle to where Helene couldn’t kick it, and went on, “You told him you were going to murder someone and dared him to find out about it. In fact you even made a wager on it.”

  Mona McClane nodded silently. George Brand drew a long breath and said, “Now what we want to know is—were you just joking when you made that bet, or did you mean it?”

  The pause before Mona McClane answered was probably only a few seconds long, but it seemed to go on and on for hours.

  “Of course I wasn’t joking,” she said very coolly and with perfect serenity. “I meant every single word of it.”

  The two men looked at each other.

  “All right,” George Brand said, “you win. She wasn’t joking. But I think you’ll look like hell in my beard.” The two men rose, and bid the party good-by with all the impressive dignity of two ambassadors leaving the presence of royalty. George Brand said, “Malone, please do me the favor of seeing that my daughter gets safely home.”

  Helene snorted. “Where are you going?”

  “I won’t tell. You may be my daughter, but some things are sacred.”

  “They probably won’t turn up for days,” Malone told her consolingly.

  “Days! The last time he went on one of these, he turned up three months later in Skagway, Alaska.” She turned to Mona McClane. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you make that bet with Jake.”

  “I’m sorry too,” Mona McClane said evenly. She seemed to be a little bored with the subject. “I’m giving a party tomorrow night—more of a brawl, probably—and I hope you’ll come. Mr. Malone too, and your father, if he’s turned up by then, and Jake too of course, if he’s out of jail—” She grinned. “You still haven’t told me why he’s in jail.”

  “Nothing serious,” Helene said lightly. “He’s just held for questioning in connection with a murder.” She rose, wrapped her furs around her shoulders, and said, “It’s been so nice seeing you. And we’ll love to come to your party. All of us.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A night’s sleep, and the arrival of a particularly attractive three-color advertising folder in his morning mail had noticeably mellowed Daniel Von Flanagan’s outlook on life. There was an almost amiable gleam in his eye as he looked up at Helene and Malone.

  “What do you know about Georgia pecan groves?” he asked by way of greeting.

  The little lawyer was taken aback for only a fraction of a second. “Only that they’re full of nuts,” he said cheerfully. “Why?”

  Von Flanagan extracted the folder from his breast pocket and spread it out on his desk. “One of these days,” he announced, “I’m going to re
tire and raise pecans. Maybe when I get this damned Gumbril business washed up.” He reached down into a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of pamphlets, permitting his gaze to linger lovingly on the brightest of them. “Do you know that all you have to do is sit around and watch your income ripening on the trees?”

  “How wonderful!” Helene breathed. “Tell me more!”

  Von Flanagan beamed at her. “Let bountiful nature and God’s own golden sunshine earn your living for you, far away from the dirt and grime of the city,” he quoted with fascinated enthusiasm.

  For fifteen minutes Helene and the lawyer listened in respectful attention to a discourse on the wonders of pecan-raising in Georgia.

  “Any day now,” the police officer said dreamily. He sighed dreamily, suddenly sat bolt upright, and snapped, “What the hell was Jake Justus doing in that room last night, Malone?”

  Malone ignored the question and said, “Look here, Von Flanagan, let’s be reasonable about this.”

  “Don’t you want me to turn him loose?”

  “You know you can’t keep him in jail,” Malone began.

  “He’ll stay there until I know what he was doing in Joshua Grumbril’s room last night,” Von Flanagan said stubbornly.

  Malone began angrily, “I can get him out in—”

  A sudden wave from Helene interrupted him. She turned to the officer. “I’ll tell you what Jake was doing there.” She sat down on a corner of Von Flanagan’s desk and looked at him with wide, confiding eyes. “It was all because of a crazy bet.”

  There was a curious, strangled sound from Malone.

  “What the hell kind of a bet?” Von Flanagan asked.

  Helene carefully avoided Malone’s eyes. “It was like this.” She drew a long, quavering breath. “We read about this man being murdered yesterday afternoon, and we got to talking about how the murderer could ever be found. You know how people get to talking.” There was a wonderfully appealing note in her voice.

  “Sure, sure, sure,” Von Flanagan said. “Go on.”

  “Well—Jake bet that he could find out who murdered that man, and Malone bet that he couldn’t. That’s all.” Helene was careful not to look at Malone.