Three's a Shroud (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Martita,” I said quietly, “you've got to make up your mind right now. Spill it all, every single bit you know, and maybe you'll get off easy; but stay clammed and you're sure as hell going to Tehachapi. For a long time. Long enough for your face to get wrinkled. Long enough."

  Slowly she put a hand to her throat, dark eyes looking straight into mine. Her fingers moved on her throat as she swallowed.

  “There's a lot of bitter old women in Tehachapi, honey. They're all bitter old women up there. Even the young ones."

  Almost before I finished she was talking, fast and furious. Blake stepped toward her, but a cop grabbed him. Martita kept spitting words out. They were the right words. Another prowl car had arrived, and officers were going after the vanished hoods. The car radios were busy. I found my empty gun. Two officers gathered up all the papers they could find and I found a couple still left in my pockets. From Clint I got the manila envelope with Hershey's stuff in it; he knew me well enough so that when I told him it had nothing to do with the dope on Blake he let me take it. He was interested in the others, anyway.

  And with reason. Blake bad used a little blackmail to keep some of his men, including a couple State Legislators, in line, and there were photostats, legal and illegal documents, evidence of perjury, bribing or being bribed, proof of other extra-legal transactions, even some of the usual photos. I wasn't particularly interested in the individual items, just their overall effect. Hershey's opponent was one of the men Blake had the goods on, so as far as the upcoming election was concerned, there was no doubt that Paul Hershey was in. Blake was in, too; in Q, as the boys at Quentin say, for a few years. The way Martita was still spitting words, it did appear that she might not have a very difficult time. I wasn't too sorry.

  I told Clint, “So that's it. Blake set up the Merchants’ Union meeting to be sure Hershey would be out of the house while they leisurely searched it. Martita can fill it in.” I told him I'd be down in the morning to take care of statements and charges, then said, “You know the whole thing now. How about phoning Paul Hershey and giving him the scoop? Tell him I'll bring his envelope back tomorrow."

  “Okay, Shell.” He frowned slightly. “Why can't you call him?"

  “Well, I'll be doing something else."

  Somebody guffawed. Clint looked around and said, “What are you laughing at?” The cop said, “Nothing,” and looked at a star. I headed for the Cad, and I didn't walk, I ran.

  Dead Giveaway

  1

  She came into my office as if she were backing out of it, a thin, frightened-appearing mouse who looked like the picture taken before the Before picture, and she stared all around the office in a most bewildered way before even looking at me.

  “You—are you Mr. Scott? It said on the door—I—oh—"

  It says on the door, Sheldon Scott, Investigations, but I'd never thought that was anything to crack up about. Not even my appearance—six-two, 205 pounds, stand-up white hair and whitish miniature-boomerang eyebrows, plus a slightly bent nose and a thin slice gone from my left ear—could have done this to her. Life could have. Or jaywalking through the Los Angeles traffic on Broadway one floor below. Or trouble. Well, people come to me when they're in trouble.

  “Yes, ma'am, I'm Shell Scott."

  I got her seated in the leather chair opposite my desk, then sat down again and waited.

  She was about twenty-five years old, possibly less, with muddy brown hair and eyes and complexion. Squint lines of worry etched the skin around her eyes, and the corners of her thin-lipped mouth turned down. Her face was almost expressionless, as if she were trying to keep the features rigid and immobile.

  She had been carrying a paper sack in her hand. Now she started to put it on my desk, changed her mind, started again and then let out a little sigh as if she wished she could leave the thing hanging there in the air.

  Finally she reached into the sack and took out a bottle of milk. She put the bottle on the edge of my desk, and we both stared at it. I don't know what she was thinking, but I was thinking maybe she was in the wrong office. Next door to me is Dr. Elben Forrest, a consulting psychologist. He's pretty balmy himself, and all sorts of weird characters visit him.

  But I didn't say anything except, “What did you want to see me about, ma'am?"

  “I—I'm Ilona Cabot,” she said. “Mrs. Cabot. I'm married.” She paused, her head turned slightly sideways, peering at me from the corners of her eyes. Despite her plainness and drabness, she had a rather sweet look about her. Sweet—but naive, unknowing.

  After a pause, she went on, “I've been married four days. And my husband has been—missing since late yesterday afternoon. I hope you can find Johnny. Something bad must have happened to him."

  “Johnny's your husband?"

  “Yes. Somebody must have hurt him. Maybe he's dead."

  Her face didn't change expression, but her eyes, which had appeared shiny as glass, seemed to melt a little, two tears spilling from them and running down her cheeks. They reached her chin and for a second hung oddly from the flesh, like trembling beads, before falling to the dark cloth of her dress.

  She went on, “Otherwise, he'd be with me. Maybe whoever's responsible for him being away is—is the same one who's trying to kill us."

  “Somebody's tried to kill you?"

  “Two nights ago, Sunday night, just about dusk, I was walking to the little store near our place—I live on Robard Street—when the car almost hit me."

  “What car was that?"

  “Just a car. I can't tell one from another. But it came down the street and, well, it seemed like whoever was driving it tried to hit me."

  “Did you see who was driving?"

  “No. I jumped and the car just barely missed me. I fell and skinned my leg."

  She paused and I nodded encouragingly. I certainly didn't want her to show me her leg. She went on. “At the time I thought—well, that it was just an accident."

  “But you don't think so now."

  “No.” She pointed to the bottle on my desk. “I got the milk from the porch this morning and before breakfast gave some to Dookie—my little cat. She died right away."

  Without touching the glass, I took the top off the bottle and smelled the milk. I'm not a poison expert, but with cyanide you don't have to be an expert. The odor was faint, but it was the smell of peach pits.

  “Cyanide,” I said. “I'm pretty sure.” It appeared that Mrs. Cabot was in the right office after all.

  I found out what I could about her suddenly missing husband. Oddly enough, she didn't know very much. She'd met Johnny Cabot, it developed, on the seventeenth of this month, Saturday, exactly ten days ago.

  I said, “You mean that you'd only known each other six days when you were married?"

  She nodded. “It was—all of a sudden.” Two more shiny tears oozed from her eyes. And still there was no real change of expression on her homely face. It was as if pressure built up inside her head, forcing the tears out like fluid through a pinpoint opening in a mask of flesh.

  “I'm awfully worried about him,” she said. “He's all—he's all I've got."

  And right then I moved over onto Ilona's side, not just because she was about to become a client, or because she seemed to be in trouble. It was Ilona Cabot's voice when she said “all I've got.” Not the words themselves so much, but the sound of them, the twisted, aching sound that she seemed to be trying so desperately to control. The way she said that her husband was all she had it sounded literally true.

  Until ten days ago, Ilona had been Ilona Green, living cheaply and frugally by herself in a rented house on Robard Street and working in a secretarial pool at the Grandon Insurance Company on Hill Street. Usually, after leaving work, she said, she stopped for dinner at a cafeteria called Hansen's. That Saturday, ten days ago, she'd been eating when Johnny Cabot joined her at her table. They'd started talking, and from this casual meeting had gone on to a movie and arranged to meet the following day. Three days after the
y'd met he'd proposed to Ilona, they'd got their blood tests and been married on Friday, four days ago.

  Her husband had gone out after dinner last night, she said, about seven p.m., and hadn't come back. He had told Ilona he was a salesman for the Webley Dinnerware Company, but was on vacation; she didn't know where the company was located.

  “What about this milk? When is it left at your house?"

  “The milkman comes by about five every morning and leaves a bottle on our porch. Between five and a quarter after, usually."

  “Uh-huh. And when did you get it from the porch this morning?"

  “It was about six."

  “So if somebody poisoned the milk, it was probably between five and six this morning.” She nodded and I went on, “Where was Mr. Cabot when you almost got hit by that car?"

  “He'd gone out for a walk. That was Sunday."

  “Uh-huh.” She didn't seem to find anything unusual in the fact that her husband had been nowhere around at the time of both attempts on her life. So I didn't mention it. Instead, I asked her to describe her husband.

  Her eyes brightened and a smile touched her lips. She sort of glowed. She beamed. The man she described sounded like a composite of Greek gods and Roman athletes, so I asked her if she had a picture of him. She had brought one along in her purse.

  Johnny Cabot even looked a little like a Roman athlete. In the snapshot, he was wearing swim trunks, leaning back on the sand with his elbows under him, sunlight glinting on almost as much muscle as tan. The features were sharp, and pleasant enough. He appeared to be a very well-built, good-looking guy about thirty. The expression was a bit surly, though. The dark eyes under heavy brows seemed angry, or resentful. Take him back a couple of thousand years and put him in a different outfit, and he might well have been a Roman gladiator lying on his back in the arena, glaring up at some egg about to stab him with a trident. He was plenty good-looking, and that puzzled me; he and Ilona Cabot just didn't make a pair.

  Ilona gave me their address and their phone number. And in a couple more minutes I was hired, for a minimum fee, to accomplish two things: first find Ilona Cabot's hubby, if he was still alive, and second learn who was trying to kill the Cabots—or kill Ilona; I had a feeling that the poison had been meant solely for her. I told her she'd better move to another address temporarily, but she refused, saying that her husband might come home or try to get in touch with her there. I told her to be extremely careful about answering the door, and that I would phone or come by later in the day. She said that would be fine, and left.

  As the door closed behind her, I picked up my phone and dialed police headquarters. I was still talking to Sergeant Prentiss in Missing Persons when the office door opened and my second caller of the morning came in. I didn't even look around for a few seconds, just finished asking Prentiss to let me know if they came up with anything from his bureau or the morgue on John Cabot, then started to hang up, and looked around, and dropped the phone.

  This one would have made a pair with Johnny Cabot, gladiator. Or with Caesar. Or, especially, with me. Maybe it was just that she benefited so much by comparison, and that she had entered about fifteen seconds after the dull, drab one had left, but she seemed to have in abundance everything that Ilona had not.

  2

  This one was bright and sparkling, and her hair was red, fire-engine red, and that was appropriate because she would always be going to a fire. She was about five feet, five inches of spontaneous arson leaning forward on the desk, both hands far apart on its top, and that caused the white blouse she was wearing to fall away from her body far enough to reveal truly remarkable proportions.

  “I hope you can help me,” she said.

  “Help you?” She had great big blue eyes and one of those mouths best described as ripe and red. It was plain asking for it.

  She went on breathlessly—but breathing, as I took pains to notice, “Oh, I do hope you can help me."

  “I do, too. I—"

  “It's men. Men like you. And sex, and all that."

  “I—sex?"

  “Yes. It's difficult to explain. Perhaps it's because I was so late getting started. I don't know how I could have been so casual about men before. Now I—I just want to hug them and squeeze—"

  “Hug them and squeeze—"

  “Like you. I could just hug you! Boy, could I hug you! You must be big as a house."

  “I'm only six-two. Hardly a house. What the hell—"

  “It's nice, but I can't go around like this all the time. Can't you do something to help me. Doctor? Prescribe something?"

  “Honey, I know exactly what will ... Doctor? What do you mean, Doctor?"

  “Aren't you Doctor Forrest?"

  “Hell, no,” I said disgruntledly. “I'm only Shell Scott."

  “Who's Shell Scott?"

  “Me. I just told you, I'm Shell Scott—oh, the hell with it."

  “What have you done with Doctor Forrest?"

  I got up and walked across the room to the bookcase against the wall. I looked at the happy, dumb, multicolored guppies cavorting in their small aquarium atop the bookcase. They crowded up at the front of the tank and ogled me, leaping about friskily, expecting me to feed them. But I merely dipped my fingers in the water and put them, cool and wet, on my temples.

  When I'd got pretty well calmed down I said, “I haven't done anything to Doctor Forrest. He is right next door, where he belongs. Where you belong. Where, perhaps, I belong."

  She laughed, but then got quiet for a moment. “You must mean I'm in the wrong office."

  “Now you got it."

  She stared at me, then said almost resentfully, “Well, it's a mistake anybody could have made. Especially when I saw that woman leaving here. That proved it."

  “Proved what?"

  “That this was a psychologist's office. A woman who looked like that would almost have to be coming out of a psychologist's office. What kind of an office is this, anyway?"

  “I'm a private detective."

  “Gracious. What would a woman like that want with a detective?"

  “She wants me to find her husband, among other things."

  “Husband!” She looked shocked. “Husband? I—well, who would have thought she'd have a husband?"

  “Lady,” I said, “this has all been very new and interesting, but it's time to call a halt. I have work to do."

  “You must think I'm an awful goof. It's just that I had an appointment with Doctor Forrest and was so worried about telling him. I had to grab my courage with both hands if you know what I mean."

  “I think I do."

  “I'm really not a goof. Normally I'm quite normal. But—well, I'm sorry. If I need a detective to investigate something I'll get in touch with you, Mr. Scott. All right?"

  I grinned. “That would be all right even if you don't need a detective to investigate something, miss. Is it Miss?"

  She smiled. She was really an interesting, intriguingly fashioned female when she smiled like that. “Miss Carol Austin,” she said. “Plaza Hotel, Room Thirty-seven, Mr. Scott."

  “I'll remember. And call me Shell."

  “Good-bye.” She walked to the door, then looked back at me. “Shell.” She went out smiling.

  I sat behind my desk, smiling. Then my eyes fell on the bottle of milk. Ah, yes; Ilona. I went back to work.

  3

  It was afternoon before I came up with anything solid. By then I'd had the milk tested—it was loaded with enough potassium cyanide to kill a dozen people—and had located Johnny Cabot's address. At least it had been his address before he'd married Ilona.

  At the Hall of Justice I got a copy of the application for marriage license which had been issued ten days before to Johnny Cabot and Ilona Green. He had, automatically, given his parents’ true name and address. Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Cabitocchi lived at Pomona, California. When I called them the Cabitocchis knew nothing of their son's marriage, but were able to supply me with the address at which they wrote him.
That was Apartment 12 in the Franklin on Sunset Boulevard between L.A. and Hollywood. By five p.m. I was talking to the manager there. After I'd identified myself and explained why I'd like to look over Cabot's room, the manager let me into Apartment 12, and followed me inside.

  The room looked as if it had been very recently used. I asked the manager if Cabot were still living in the room. “Far as I know,” he said. “Rent's paid up for another month."

  In the bureau drawer I found a stack of photographs. There were about twenty of them each different and all of women. Ilona wasn't one of them. In the same drawer were two clippings from newspapers. One of them, yellowed by time, was brief mention of a paternity case that had been tried here in Los Angeles. A man named William Grant, 26, had been accused of fathering the child of one Mary Lassen, 18, but had beaten the case in court. The other clip stated that William J. Grant had died after a long illness and that services for the “well-known local bachelor-millionaire” would be held on the following Thursday.

  A paternity case. I wondered why they were never called maternity cases. I also wondered what Johnny Cabot was doing with the two clippings—but then I hit pay dirt. It was a pay voucher, showing that John Cabot had received his salary from the Westlander Theater.

  I'd never been to the Westlander, but I knew what and where it was—and I was very soon going to visit it for the first time. The Westlander was a burlesque house, but it was to the burlesque circuit about what Spike Jones is to classical music, or one pair of bloomers is to the Arabian Nights. On occasion newcomers to the game got their start at the Westlander, but usually the game was almost over before an act hit the small theater on Los Angeles Street.

  I headed for Los Angeles Street.

  The Westlander was showing a twin movie bill—Dope Hell of the Sadistic Nudists, and a film about a real negative thinker, I Even Went Wrong Wrong. In front of the small theater were stills from the movies, and nearly life-size photos of the burlesque queens currently appearing here. I bought a ticket from the gal in the booth, turned and took a step toward the entrance, then stopped and blinked, and blinked again.