Women Crime Writers

by Sarah Weinman

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, now you know as much about my business as I do. Or,” she added, with a shrewd glance, “as much as you care to, eh?”

  “It’s very interesting.”

  “Sometimes the whole thing makes me sick, but it’s a living, and I’ve got three kids to support. The youngest is fourteen. When I get her through college or married off to some nice steady guy, I’m going to retire. I’m going to loll around the house all day in a bathrobe and bedroom slippers and I’m never going to open another jar of face cream as long as I live, and every morning when I get up I’m going to look in the mirror and chortle myself silly over a new wrinkle and another gray hair.” She paused for breath. “Don’t mind me. I’m only kidding. I think. Anyway, you didn’t come here to listen to my blatting. What do you want to know about this Evelyn Merrick?”

  “Everything you can tell me.”

  “It won’t be much. I only saw her once and that was a week ago. She read my ad in the News offering a free consultation for a limited time only, and in she came, sat in the same chair you’re sitting in now. A scrawny brunette very poorly dressed and made up like a tart. Pretty impossible, from a professional point of view. She had one of those Italian boy haircuts gone to seed. They’re supposed to look casual, you know, but actually they require a lot of expert care. And her clothes . . .” Miss Hudson stopped sharply. “I hope she’s not a friend of yours?”

  “I’ve never seen her.”

  “Why do you want to find her, then?”

  “Let’s stick with the long-lost heiress story,” Blackshear said. “I’m beginning to like it.”

  “I always have.”

  “You gave her the free consultation?”

  “I did the usual thing, tried to put her at ease, called her by her first name and so on. Then asked her to stand up and walk around and watch herself in the mirror and tell me what she thought needed correction. Ordinarily the girls are embarrassed at this point, and sort of giggly. She wasn’t. She acted—well, odd.”

  “In what way?”

  “She just stood there looking into the mirror, without making a sound. She seemed fascinated by herself. I was the one who was embarrassed. . . .”

  “Walk around a bit, Evelyn.”

  The girl didn’t move.

  “Are you satisfied with your posture? Your skin? How about your make-up?”

  She didn’t speak.

  “It is our policy to let our prospective students analyze themselves. We cannot correct faults that the student doesn’t admit having. Now, then, would you say that you are perfectly happy about your figure? Take a good honest look, fore and aft.”

  Evelyn blinked and turned away. “The mirror is distorted and the lights are bad.”

  “They are not bad,” Miss Hudson said, stung. “They are—realistic. We must face facts before altering them.”

  “If you say so, Miss Hudson.”

  “I say so, I— How old are you, Evelyn?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  She must consider me a fool, Miss Hudson thought. “And you want to be a model?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “I want to pose for artists. Painters.”

  “There’s not much demand for that kind of . . .”

  “I have good breasts and I don’t get cold easily.”

  “My dear young woman,” Miss Hudson said with heavy irony. “And what else can you do besides not get cold easily?”

  “You’re making fun of me. You simply don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “I want to become immortal.”

  Miss Hudson lapsed into a stunned silence.

  “I couldn’t think of any other way to do it,” the girl said. “And then I saw your ad, and the idea came to me suddenly, suppose someone paints me, a really great artist, then I will be immortal. So you see, it makes sense, if you think about it.”

  Miss Hudson didn’t care to think about it. She had no time to worry about immortality; tomorrow was bad enough. “Why should a young woman like you be concerned about death?”

  “I have an enemy.”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “No, I mean a real enemy,” Evelyn said politely. “I’ve seen her. In my crystal ball.”

  Miss Hudson looked at the cheap rayon dress stained at the armpits. “Is that how you make your living, telling fortunes?”

  “No.”

  “What do you work at?”

  “Just at the moment I’m unemployed. But I can get money if I need it. Enough to take your course.”

  “You understand we have a waiting list,” Miss Hudson lied.

  “No. No, I thought . . .”

  “I shall be most happy to put your name on file.” And leave it there. I want no part of your immortality. Or your crystal ball. “How do you spell your last name?”

  “M-E-R-R-I-C-K.”

  “Evelyn Merrick. Age, 21. Address and phone number?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. I’m moving out of my present place tomorrow, and I haven’t decided just where I’ll go.”

  No address, Miss Hudson wrote on her memo pad. Good. It will give me the perfect excuse for not calling her.

  “I’ll phone you when I get settled,” Evelyn said. “Then you can tell me if you have an opening.”

  “It might be quite some time.”

  “I’ll keep trying anyway.”

  “Yes,” Miss Hudson said dryly, “I believe you will.”

  “I’ll call you, say, a week from today?”

  “Listen to me a minute, Evelyn. If I were you, I’d reconsider this modeling business, I’d . . .”

  “You are not me. I will call you in a week. . . .”

  “The week was up yesterday,” Miss Hudson told Blackshear. “She didn’t call. I don’t know whether I’m glad or sorry.”

  “I think,” Blackshear said, “that you ought to be glad.”

  “I guess I am. She’s a real mimsy, that one. God knows my girls aren’t mental giants, not one of them has an I.Q. that would make a decent basketball score. But they’re not really screwy, like her. You know what I wonder, Mr. Blackshear?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder what she saw in that mirror when she stood there half-hypnotized. What did she see?”

  “Herself.”

  “No.” Miss Hudson shook her head. “I saw herself. She saw somebody else. Gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “It does me. I felt sorry for her. I thought, suppose it was one of my kids—suppose something happens to me before they’re safe and grown-up, and they’re cast out into . . . Well, we won’t go into that. Very depressing. Besides, I’m healthy and I drive carefully. Also, I have a sister who’s perfectly capable of taking over the kids if anything happened to me. . . .” In sudden fury, Miss Hudson reached out and slapped the fragile mauve and white desk with the palm of her hand. “Damn that girl! You go along for years, doing your best, not worrying about dying, and then something like this happens. Some screwball comes along with a bunch of crazy ideas and you can’t get them out of your head. It’s not fair. Damn her hide. I’m sorry I tried to help her.”

  Blackshear raised his brows. “How exactly did you help her, Miss Hudson?”

  “Maybe I didn’t. But I tried. I could tell she was broke, so I gave her the name of a man. I thought he might give her an odd job to tide her over until she came to her senses if any.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Posing. He’s an artist, a good one, too, which means he has to teach to make ends meet. He uses live models in his classes, not just pretty girls, but all kinds and shapes and sizes. I figured it wouldn’t do any harm to send Evelyn over there. He might take a fancy to her earlobes or her big toe or something. Moore’s a stickler for details.”

  “Moore?”

  “Harley Moore. His studio is on Palm Avenue, just off Sunset near Santa Monica Boulevard.”


  “Has she actually done any posing, do you know?”

  “She said she had. She said she’d done some work for Jack Terola. He’s a photographer, ten or twelve blocks south of here. I don’t know much about him except that he pays pretty well. He does photo illustrations for one of those confession magazines—you know, where the wife is standing horrified watching her husband kiss his secretary, or the young Sunday school teacher is being assaulted in the choir loft—that sort of thing. My youngest kid reads them all the time. It drives me crazy trying to stop her. Stuff like that gives kids the wrong idea about the world—they get to thinking all secretaries get bussed by the boss and all Sunday school teachers are assaulted in choir lofts. Which isn’t true.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  Blackshear wasn’t exactly sure where he was. But he knew where he was going.

  The means to charm were apparently more profitable than its ends: Miss Hudson could afford glass bricks and mahogany paneling; Terola’s place was a long narrow stucco building between a one-way alley euphemistically named Jacaranda Lane and a rickety three-story frame house converted into apartments. Black stenciling on the frosted glass window read:

  PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKSHOP

  JACK TEROLA, PROPRIETOR

  PIN-UP MODELS • LIFE GROUPS FOR AMATEURS AND PROFESSIONALS • RENTAL STUDIOS FOR ART GROUPS

  Come in Any Time

  Blackshear went in. In spite of the rows of filing cabinets and the samples of Terola’s work which lined the walls, the office still looked like what it had been originally, somebody’s front parlor. Near one end of the room was a dirty red-brick fireplace which had a desolate and futile appearance, as if it had become, from long disuse, a mere hole in the wall which a careless workman had forgotten to plaster over. To the right of the fireplace was a curtained alcove. The curtains were not drawn and Blackshear could see part of the interior: a brown leather chair, the seat wrinkled with age, a day bed partly covered with an old-fashioned afghan, and above it, the stenciled front window. The alcove reminded Blackshear of his childhood in the Middle West—all the best people had had a “sun porch,” which was indescribably hot in the summer and equally cold in the winter and no good for anything at all except social prestige.

  Terola’s sun porch seemed to be not a mark of prestige but a sign of necessity. The day bed was obviously used for sleeping; a dirty sheet dribbled out from under the afghan and the pillow was stained with hair oil.

  There was no one in sight, but from behind the closed door at the other end of the room came sounds of activity, the scraping of equipment being moved across a wooden floor, the rise and fall of voices. Blackshear couldn’t distinguish the words but the tones were plain enough. Somebody was giving orders and somebody else wasn’t taking them.

  He was on the point of knocking on the closed door when he noticed the printed sign propped against the typewriter of Terola’s desk: FOR ATTENTION, PLEASE RING.

  He rang, and waited, and then rang again, and finally the door opened and a young girl came out, wearing a printed-silk bathrobe. She wore no make-up and her face glistened with grease and moisture. Water dripped from the ends of her short black hair and slid down her neck, and the damp silk of the bathrobe clung to her skin.

  She seemed unconcerned. “You want something?”

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. Terola.”

  “He’s busy right now. Sit down.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m supposed to be drowning but Jack can’t get the water right. It’s supposed to be Lake Michigan, see.”

  Blackshear nodded politely to indicate that he saw.

  “Jack’s a sucker for drowning scenes,” the girl added. “Me, I like to stay dry. The way I look at it is, I could just as easy been stabbed. All this fuss trying to make like Lake Michigan. Don’t you want to sit down?”

  “I’m perfectly comfortable.”

  “Well, all right. You here on business?”

  “In a way. My name is Paul Blackshear.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Nola Rath. Well, I better get back now. You want a magazine to read?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You may have quite a wait. If Jack gets this shot right he’ll be out here in a jiffy, but if he don’t, he won’t.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “I could just as easy been stabbed,” the girl said. “Well, I’ll tell Jack you’re here.”

  She left behind a trail of water drops and the smell of wet hair.

  Nola Rath. Blackshear repeated the name to himself, wondering how old the girl was. Perhaps twenty-five, only a few years younger than Helen Clarvoe, yet a whole generation seemed to separate the two. Miss Clarvoe’s age had very little to do with chronology. She was a middle-aged woman because she had had nothing to keep her young. She was the chosen victim, not only of Evelyn Merrick, but of life itself.

  The thought depressed Blackshear. He wished he could forget her but she nagged at his mind like a broken promise.

  He looked at his watch. Three-ten. A wind had come up. The curtains of Terola’s alcove were blowing in and out and the cobwebs in the fireplace were stirring, and somewhere in the chimney there was a fidgeting of mice.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Blackshear turned, surprised that he had not heard the opening of the door or the sound of footsteps.

  “Mr. Terola?”

  “That’s right.”

  “My name’s Blackshear.”

  They shook hands. Terola was in his early forties, a very thin, tall man with an habitual stoop as if he were trying to scale himself down to size. He had black bushy brows that quivered with impatience when he talked, as if they were silently denying the words that came out of the soft feminine mouth. Two thin parallel strands of iron-gray hair crossed the top of his bald pate like railroad ties.

  “Just a minute.” Terola walked over to the alcove and drew the curtains irritably. “Things are in a mess around here. My secretary’s home with the mumps. Mumps, yet, at her age. I thought they were for kids. Well, what can I do for you, Blackshear?”

  “I understand you employ, or have employed, a young woman called Evelyn Merrick.”

  “How come you understand that?”

  “Someone told me.”

  “Such as who?”

  “Miss Merrick used your name as a reference when she went to apply for training as a model. She claimed she had done some work for you.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Whatever kind you had to offer,” Blackshear said, attempting to conceal his impatience. “You do quite a bit of—shall we call it art work?”

  “We shall and it is.”

  “Have it your way. Do you remember Miss Merrick?”

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I’m not answering a lot of questions unless there’s a good reason. You got a good reason, Mr. Blacksheep?”

  “Blackshear.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to co-operate, only I kind of like to find out first who I’m co-operating with, in what and for why. What’s your business, mister?”

  “I’m an investment counselor.”

  “So?”

  “Let’s say that there’s an estate to settle and Evelyn Merrick may get a piece of it.”

  Terola spoke tightly, barely moving his mouth, as if he was afraid there might be lip-readers around peering in through the curtains of the alcove or the chinks in the chimney: “The kind of piece that babe gets won’t come out of any estate, mister.”

  “She came here, then?”

  “She came. Gave me a hard-luck story about a dying mother, so I let her have a couple of hours’ work. I’m a sucker for dying mothers, just so’s they don’t change their minds and stay alive, like mine did.”

  “Did the Merrick girl give you any trouble?”

  “I don’t take trouble from chicks like that. I bounce them out on their ear.”

  “Did you bounce her?”

&n
bsp; “She got nosey. I had to.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of weeks ago, maybe less. When they get nosey, they get bounced. Not,” he added with a wink, “that I have anything to hide. I just don’t like snoopers. They get in my hair, what’s left of it.”

  “What else did she do besides snoop?”

  “Oh, she had some screwy idea about me making her immortal. At first I figured she was kidding and trying for a laugh. I have a pretty good sense of humor so I laughed, see? She got sore as hell. If you want the truth, I don’t think she’s playing with all her marbles.”

  “Exactly what kind of work did you give Evelyn Merrick?”

  “She posed.”

  “For you personally? Or for one of your ‘art’ groups?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It might make a lot of difference to me.”

  “How so?”

  “If she posed for you, for a magazine story layout, you might give me a print of the picture. If she worked with your art group, I don’t think you will.”

  Terola ground out the stub of his cigarette in an ashtray. “I never give away prints.”

  “What do you do, peddle them?”

  “Peddle is a very nasty word. You’d better leave before I push it back down your throat.”

  “I didn’t realize what a sensitive fellow you were, Terola.”

  “I don’t want any trouble with your kind. Blow.”

  “Thank you for the information.”

  Terola opened the door. “Go to hell.”

  Blackshear walked down the alley and got into his car. It was the first time in thirty years that he’d been close to having a fight and the experience aroused old memories and old fears and a certain primeval excitement. His hand on the ignition key was unsteady and anger pressed on his eyeballs like iron thumbs. He wanted to go back and challenge Terola, fight him to the finish, kill him, if he had to.

  But as he drove in the direction of Harley Moore’s studio, the brisk sea wind cooled his passions and neutralized the acid in his mind: I’m not as civilized as I like to think. There was no need to antagonize him. I handled everything wrong. Maybe I can do better with Moore.