Shamus in a Skirt

by M. Ruth Myers

  “Like hell it’s not. You bought it a week ago, and you sneeze every time you wear it.”

  “Then maybe you should buy me some that suits me better. Oh — that’s right, you can’t afford it.” Her words were acid.

  Having produced her own hanky, Lena dabbed her nose. She stalked toward the elevator. At the reception desk, departing guests who had paused to watch returned to settling their bills. The angry boyfriend made for the hotel’s small bar. I heard him order whiskey.

  “Gee,” I said to Frances. “Not exactly my idea of two love birds. Do you know all your guests by name?”

  “I try. Those here more than a night or two, anyway.” She laughed nervously. “It sort of goes with the job.”

  She smiled at a passing member of the hotel staff. “I thought it might help if I came down and made myself visible while Joshua’s busy with the police. Make things look normal. I’m glad I saw you. I wanted to apologize for being so weepy. And for being rude when you asked me things I know you had to ask—”

  “You weren’t.” A party of three came down in the elevator. We moved further out of the way. “If things settle down here today or you need me, I’ll be at my office. Otherwise, I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  So far, I hadn’t seen anyone I recognized as a cop in the lobby. A quick peek out one of the heavily curtained windows didn’t reveal any uniforms unless I counted the doorman.

  Eager to make my escape and sift through all that I’d learned and observed that morning, I stepped outside. And swore softly.

  * * *

  Across the street where he could watch all the comings and goings from the hotel, a man with a halo of red-gold curls above a cherubic face sat grasshopper-like against a storefront. A Speed Graphic with a flash on the side and other camera equipment hung from his neck. Deluding myself that I might somehow escape his eagle eye, I started quickly toward a gravel parking lot two doors down.

  “Morning, Mags!” Cheerful as always, Matt Jenkins caught up with me. “One of the Hollywood luminaries got themselves in a pickle already, huh? What is it? Blackmail? One of them light-fingered? Spill.”

  A bell in my head jingled. Tucker mentioning a guest who’d been a dancer before she went to Hollywood.

  “I have no idea what you’re blathering on about, Jenkins.”

  He was a shutterbug for the afternoon paper. At the moment he was the last person my clients needed hanging around.

  “Uh-huh. You were just in the mood for breakfast here instead of the dime store.” Behind gold-rimmed specs his eyes twinkled.

  “It’s a high-class place. The owner hired me to run a background check on someone they’re thinking of hiring.”

  “Hogwash.”

  We’d been friends too long. We knew each other’s ploys. Sometimes we shared information the other wanted, extracting tit for tat. Sometimes we couldn’t.

  It wasn’t making me happy that Jenkins seemed better informed about The Canterbury and its guests than I was. Since he had me at a disadvantage, and knew it, the one thing he wouldn’t expect was for me to act like it was just the opposite.

  We’d reached my DeSoto. Hoisting myself onto the hood, I gave a satisfied smile.

  “Bribe me.”

  For once, I’d caught Jenkins flat-footed.

  “What?” His gaze sharpened.

  Jenkins was as smart as they came. Dealing with him was like dealing with the brighter sort of criminal. You doled out minimal information yourself in hopes they’d tip their hand enough you could use a crumb or two that fell out.

  “The Canterbury is as private a place as you’ll find. Their guests place more importance on that than they do on room service,” I recited. “Anything I give you will be pure gold. I’m thinking six months of credit, minimum. Plus a steak dinner and the Carousel.”

  We kept an informal tally of favors. At the moment I couldn’t recall which of us owed the other. The terms I’d just proposed were so outsized that Jenkins bobbled between doubt and drooling.

  “It could be blackmail, like you said. Or it could be scandal,” I tempted.

  I needed to throw him off. And I needed to find out more about the Hollywood people he’d mentioned.

  “Instead of movie stars, think European royalty,” I said. “Where’d you hear the nonsense about movie people? I hope you didn’t pay good money for it.”

  “My sources are more reliable than yours, and mine don’t go to jail. This guy’s never led me wrong.”

  “Yeah? Who is he?”

  Jenkins wagged his finger.

  “Nice try, Mags.”

  He was regaining his stride.

  “Probably some star-struck clerk from City Hall. So eager to see a live actress, he mistakes half the beautiful women he sees for one.”

  “As a matter of fact, he works at the train station. He’s how I got word that horn player from the Benny Goodman band had slipped into town.”

  Jenkins, his wife and I went to hear jazz together when we had a chance. On the occasion referenced, we’d gone across the river to a Negro club on West Second where we squeezed in to stand at the back. Our reward had been breath-taking playing for an audience that had learned of the event by word of mouth. I filed the prospect of a source at the depot away for later exploration.

  “Well, this doesn’t have anything to do with Hollywood starlets,” I said, and hoped it was true.

  Jenkins didn’t jump in to correct me that it was somebody major, or give any names. Nevertheless, I’d learned something, and I’d managed to keep the nature of my client’s problem — or problems, now that a body had turned up as well — confidential.

  “So,” I said. “Do we have a deal?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Do I look crazy enough to fall for those terms? Give me something to whet my interest and I’ll owe you three — count ’em — three rounds of information.” He held up three fingers.

  Out on the street, a police cruiser passed. Knowing Jenkins might see it, I waved brightly. He scarcely looked before his attention returned to negotiations.

  “If you don’t hang around, waiting to snap pictures.” I tried to think of other end runs he might pull. “And you don’t sic one of your reporter pals on it.”

  “Where’s my down payment?”

  “Veronica Page.” I hoped I’d gotten the name right.

  “Veronica Page!”

  His face came alive. Apparently the name meant something to him. Jenkins went to picture shows a lot more than I did.

  “She’s not a star, but she’s been second lead a time or two. Who else?

  It was my turn to waggle a finger.

  “Stick to the deal, and who knows what kind of chance I might throw your way.”

  “Okay for now, but I expect more. Oh, and Ione said invite you for dinner tomorrow if I ran into you.”

  He started away, walking backward. The police car was safely out of sight around the corner. Possibly parked in the alley though, and no telling where Jenkins’ route now would take him. I hopped to the ground.

  “Where are you headed? I’ll give you a ride.”

  SIX

  I was at my desk eating a turnip when the head of homicide came calling. I’d picked up the turnip at the produce market down the block from my office.

  It was half-past one, and considering the substantial breakfast I’d had at The Canterbury, the turnip made a fine lunch. Its peelings were piled on a used envelope at the edge of my desk, a salt shaker was at hand, and I’d just cut off a nice slice when the door opened. A cop named Freeze walked in with two of his men trailing him.

  “Lieutenant Freeze,” I said. “Always a pleasure.”

  He frowned, not sure whether I was being polite or being a smart ass. I wasn’t sure either. Freeze was lean, with a hard face that went with his job and a pretty little nose that didn’t. His two assistants lounged obediently against the wall.

  “Turnip?” I offered him the fresh slice. It bought me an extra three seconds
to choose my dance steps.

  “One of our officers saw you leaving The Canterbury hotel this morning,” he said, ignoring the turnip.

  “Glad to know there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight.” I raised my eyebrows, mutely inquiring his point.

  Freeze exhaled as if counting to ten. He didn’t like me much, but I’d proved myself a time or two when he and his team had dropped the ball. A jittery truce existed between us.

  “What were you doing there?” he asked with barely reined annoyance.

  “They’ve hired me to do some work. Background checks on people they’re thinking of hiring, like I do for Rike’s department store and other places.”

  My bread and butter work.

  In my last, hurried confab with Tucker, I’d told him to give that explanation in case any cops who knew me saw me there. Now I was glad.

  Freeze narrowed his eyes.

  “A place like that does a lot of hiring?”

  “Don’t know. I haven’t started. The owner was getting ready to spell out details when somebody ran in telling him he had to come, that the cops had found a dead girl in the alley.”

  It seemed like a waste to let a good slice of turnip dry out. I popped it into my mouth and chewed, then talked around it.

  “I assume that’s why you’re here?”

  “You’re a swell detective.”

  He’d planted himself in front of my desk, and stood with legs spread and arms crossed, ignoring the chair available for visitors. I’d recited my piece about why I was at the hotel, yet he wasn’t leaving. It made me uneasy.

  “Gee, Freeze, I hope you don’t think I can tell you anything useful about her, because I can’t. She worked nights. Scrubbed floors, I think. The woman in charge of housekeeping was on the phone when I got there, grousing to Mrs. Tucker that the dead girl hadn’t shown up for work last night.”

  Freeze hadn’t had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth when he entered, which was unusual. He remedied the situation, watching me closely.

  “Just checking all angles. Looked like the girl had been pretty. Maybe the boss had discovered she could do something other than scrub.”

  “Did you meet his wife? Mrs. Tucker?”

  “Boike talked to her.”

  Boike was one of the detectives with him. He was fair haired and built like an icebox.

  “A man with a wife like her would have to be nuts to philander. Right, Boike?”

  He looked up from taking notes, which seemed to be his usual assignment with Freeze. At a glance from his boss okaying comment, Boike nodded. The burly detective actually did have a voice. I’d heard him use it when he was on his own.

  “Funny he’d fire a man for making a pass at the dead girl then, don’t you think?” Freeze asked.

  Had he guessed he’d catch me off guard? I stretched, determined not to let him win a round, and irritated Tucker hadn’t mentioned firing someone when I asked about people with grudges.

  “What I think is, all those years he managed theater people taught him to get rid of troublemakers,” I said. “Freeze, if you were any more off on this, you’d be on the moon.”

  But I was worried. If Freeze believed there was even a grain of truth in what he was saying, he could have men sniffing around the hotel for days. That included talking to guests. Joshua Tucker could end up without a soul getting wind of his jewelry problem only to see his hotel destroyed by unfounded suspicion related to something else.

  “It just seems like a strange coincidence, you showing up at a place linked to a homicide,” Freeze said.

  “The only link is the girl worked there. You going to tell me there haven’t been any other girls raped and killed in this city?”

  “How did—?” He clamped his mouth shut, aware too late that I might have been guessing about the rape, which he’d just confirmed.

  “Look, I know you’re just doing your job,” I said, switching tactics. “Checking every possibility, like you said. How about hunting a connection between the dead girl and the man who went missing from the hotel a month or so back?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  “Is that what butterball hired you for?”

  “I already told you why he hired me.”

  “Yeah? Well, why ever he did, you’ve got yourself a client who’s crazy as a bedbug. Either that or he made up the whole thing about a man disappearing.”

  My mouth opened several seconds before I found my voice.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Maybe to make it look like someone’s got it in for him. To deflect suspicion when he does something else he’s planning. Say, killing a girl who didn’t appreciate his advances or was making demands or—”

  “Get out.”

  “Then he fancies the whole thing up by hiring a shamus in a skirt that he can buffalo.”

  I rose, clenched fists grinding the desktop to keep from punching him.

  “Get. Out.”

  * * *

  To sweeten the sour mood left by Freeze and the fact my client had omitted useful information, I went for a walk along the Great Miami. It wound through the heart of the city, creating a hairpin bend before heading south to empty into the Ohio. Clouds slow waltzed in the brilliant end-of-September sky. A man in much-patched trousers flew a homemade kite accompanied by delighted shrieks from two tykes trailing him.

  Why hadn’t Tucker told me he’d fired someone when I’d asked about people who might have grudges against him? It could be, as Frances had said, that he got so caught up in the present he put past events out of his mind. Or it could be deliberate. Whatever the reason, he’d gotten himself into more trouble rather than less.

  My client was an odd little duck, but Polly’s murder convinced me he hadn’t imagined the tampering with his safe. Or, despite Freeze’s skepticism, invented the tale of a missing guest. Unfortunately, Freeze now suspected him of murder. I had to punch a hole in that theory before I began hunting what lay behind Tucker’s trio of problems.

  What did I have to work with?

  Freeze’s slip of the tongue had confirmed that the dead girl had been raped — or it looked as if she had. He’d also said she’d been pretty. Had Polly been more than pretty? It would open up explanations for her death beyond an affair with her boss.

  More interesting still was Freeze’s use of the past tense. It looked like she’d been pretty, he’d said. That implied she no longer was. It conjured two possibilities. One was that her face had been beaten, or maybe slashed with a knife. The other was that she’d been strangled.

  The question of when the girl had been killed also niggled at me. Sitting with Frances that morning, I’d learned the night scrub women came in at midnight. The late-shift dishwasher was getting off then, as was the bartender who presided in the small lounge, and maybe a couple of others. With employees coming and going through the back kitchen door, it was hard to imagine anyone being attacked and killed just beyond it without being noticed.

  On the other hand, only three women cleaned in the hotel at night. At half-past four in the morning, they were the only ones leaving. The city wasn’t yet stirring with milk deliveries and bakers’ trucks. The alley would be deserted.

  Polly hadn’t made it to work Thursday night. That meant she’d either been killed while arriving at midnight, which seemed unlikely, or while leaving work Wednesday — the same night Joshua Tucker had noticed suspicious activity in the in the hotel safe.

  SEVEN

  Finn’s was the closest I had to a home after selling the one I grew up in to pay my dad’s medical bills. Scarred tables and mismatched chairs gave the pub a comfortable, lived-in feeling. Framed photographs of donkeys pulling hay carts and Irish countryside decorated its walls.

  “Maggie’s here. She’ll do it for me, since all you cops are too yellow,” said a jockey-sized man at the bar as I entered.

  “Only thing yellow in here is your leg,” observed one of the regulars.

  “Keep a distance,” another warned m
e. “He smells worse than usual.”

  “I’ll do what?” I asked.

  Two fruitless hours at the library searching old newspapers for articles on The Canterbury had left me in a bad mood. Now it lifted.

  “Shoot a dog that peed on me. Just look!” Wee Willie Ryan thrust out a leg. A damp spot of unmistakable origin spread from knee to cuff of his letter carrier’s uniform.

  “Willie, if he’d known you better, he’d have bitten you too,” I said solemnly.

  The crowd along the bar hooted with laughter. They’d have been disappointed if Wee Willie and I hadn’t scrapped. The two of us had gone all through school together up until high school. Individually and together we’d set records for getting in trouble.

  I slapped the top of Willie’s shoulder as I moved past. He was nearing the end of the single pint he had before going home to his wife and kids.

  Amid a goodly number of cops who had just come off duty, two white heads stood out. I’d been hoping they’d be here. The brushy one topped a stumpy form. The one with silvery waves accompanied a craggy face and bony body. I made my way toward them.

  “You want a stool? You look kind of peaked,” said Billy, the short one, assessing me critically.

  The two of them and Billy’s wife were my godparents. Billy’s favorite pastime was being a worrywart. Rather than waste breath trying to reassure him, I slid onto the offered stool.

  “What I want, is to ask you two gents what you know about a hotel called The Canterbury.”

  “That the one used to be The Prince Regent?”

  “And before that, Hotel Linden-something,” said Seamus. “Lindenwood, that was it.”

  Billy nodded. They’d been my father’s best friends. What they didn’t know about the city wasn’t worth learning.

  “I think it’s gotten to be a pretty tony place these days,” said Billy. “Some fellow came in and bought it five or six years ago when things were rock bottom bad. Poured a lot of money into it. Fellow from the East, is what I heard.”

  Seamus nodded. Seamus wasn’t much on talking unless he had something he thought needed saying.

  Five years earlier, when I’d left my floorwalker’s job at Rike’s department store to set up shop as an investigator, I’d outlined some boundaries between us. I didn’t expect inside information from them — nothing they wouldn’t tell anybody else, I’d said. In return, I didn’t expect them to seek information from any case of mine beyond what I volunteered. The arrangement had worked, and I honored it now.