Mink Is for a Minx

by editor Leo Margulies

  He had another drink himself on that, and then drove in town and brightened the check girl’s spirits with the report that the case was breaking and she’d soon be in the clear. But he’d still need her help for identification, of course.

  At noon next day Stack opened the Westchester bistro, armed with a Telegraph and the scratch sheet. He’d also learned the name of a possible long shot in the first, and he gave a ten to Henry to play on a split, just to prove his theory.

  Henry phoned in the bet and Chip had an eye-opener and brunch, and he was making up his day’s bets when Valerie Snowden came in wearing flannel slacks that fitted her from all sides, which was an achievement among young matrons. She really had something. It was going to hurt Chip Stack to turn her in.

  Henry had just served her drink when his bookie phoned back that the long shot had come in. Henry emerged from the phone, as excited as a kid. He explained to Valerie what the excitement was all about, and she made a face and complained that he hadn’t acted like a friend in not including her in.

  It was a three-way conversation now with no suspicions raised, and Stack said that he didn’t see much more he felt confident about today, but there would be some horses running tomorrow. The hitch was, he confessed, that he’d have to be in town and right at a bookmaker’s to get the tips, and there wouldn’t be time to phone her.

  “But you probably know the spot,” he added. “It’s the upstairs lounge of the Parakeet, and they serve a better lunch than downstairs. I think half the women drop in more for lunch than for the bet.”

  She showed surprise. “You mean that plush spa is simply the front for a bookie—and I never even suspected it? Of course; I know the place. It’s very toni.”

  She looked at him speculatively. “If I were sitting right here waiting and Henry could make my bet right away, don’t you think there’d be time for you to phone?”

  “Well—” he murmured. “You know how it is. They have some private way of getting reports, but they probably don’t like outgoing calls about bets.”

  She made a cute, wry face.

  “But if you’d really like to bet,” he said, “I’m driving in at noon and I have to be back here by seven sharp—earlier if possible. It’s a pretty select spot. You wouldn’t have to worry about being seen.” He laughed good-naturedly. “Unless it was being seen with me.”

  She thought it over. It was clear she was busting to cap her phoney story and have the excuse to wear the mink. She said, “No woman would feel self conscious about riding in a Mercedes. But it’s not a convertible, is it?”

  “No,” he agreed. “It’s strictly wide open. You’d have to bundle.”

  “Well—” she said.

  He watched the excited lights flicking through her eyes, and knew exactly what she was thinking. It was a chance to wear the coat in town before the collar was changed, where it wouldn’t be recognized, and also the opportunity to package her excuse so that she could appear in the remodelled coat locally any time now.

  “I’d like to go if you’ll really be back by seven,” she said. “But I’ll have to be on the dot. I have to be at dinner at eight.”

  He made a gesture. “We’ll hit ’em hard and duck back as early as you like.”

  Valerie Snowden studied him and relaxed even while he could feel her gathering excitement. But he knew damned well that she would not have made a date with a stranger except for the coat. It was a funny thing what a woman would do for a mink.

  He met her next day at the shopping center where she parked her car. The day was cold and clear, and he’d set his trap right. She picked a luxurious mink off the seat beside her and pulled it on as she darted from her car to his and snuggled in the open seat.

  The lounge of the Parakeet was loaded with women in mink, but Valerie drew special envious attention even from that crowd. They ordered lunch and made their bet for the second race, Chip Stack betting a hundred with the usual proviso that if it hit, half of it would be hers. He could sense her calculating what the bet would bring, her excitement growing as she realized that it would pay for the remodeling of the coat.

  Chip Stack played across the board and when the horse romped in for place, Valerie had a woman’s usual reactions to soaring excitement and visited the powder room. It gave him the chance he needed to examine the coat under the lining, his practiced eye quickly finding the identifying marks of the furrier and the insurance code on the backs of the hides.

  He could have ended the case there, either by turning her in or simply walking out with the coat. The insurance company hadn’t asked for an arrest—simply for the mink. But she was a beautiful girl with excitement in her, and Chip’s chivalry was fired by his romantic spirit. He said nothing until they were on the crowded highway returning—early, as he’d promised.

  Then he said, “Well, I’m glad you came out winning. It may help to pay the lawyer.”

  Valerie Snowden sat up sharp, staring at him with sudden alarm. “Lawyer?” she repeated.

  “You’ll probably need one,” Stack explained. “To get you out of the rap of stealing Lili Harrison’s coat.”

  “So you’re a detective!” she cried. She broke all to pieces for a moment, then caught herself in hand. But that one bitter challenge was the slip that confirmed his theory of the switch beyond any possibility of doubt.

  “It isn’t Lili’s coat, and Lili will back that!” she declared haughtily.

  “It carries her insurance marks,” he told her.

  He saw her hand snap into a fist, but she was a cool one and she had her alibi. “If it’s hers, I didn’t know it,” she bit out. “Somebody left it at the house one night, but I didn’t find it until the other day and nobody had inquired about it. I didn’t see how it could be Lili’s, seeing that she lost hers at a New York restaurant, but I called her home anyway.”

  Even the best turn weasel when they’re caught! he thought cynically. But she surprised him.

  “She wasn’t home, but I spoke to Seth—her husband. In fact, I’m still burning at his rudeness. He practically told me I must be drunk, that it could not possibly be her coat, and as she already had her new one, he didn’t want to hear any more about it. Then he as good as hung up.”

  Chip Stack’s mood brightened and he grinned with admiration. Those two cool chicks had figured Harrison out and involved him without his knowing it, just in case something did go wrong sometime, so that he’d have to stick behind them.

  “So,” she bit out with scathing anger, “if she got mixed up about the fur she wore to town that night, I can’t help it. I wasn’t the witness—her husband was.”

  “Well, it can be very easily settled, if your statement is correct,” Stack said. “I’ll just return this coat to her in exchange for her new one, and the insurance company won’t come out too badly.”

  “But—but this is my coat now!” she cried with deeper feeling than the first fright had roused. “It is! It is! I didn’t steal it. Lili’s husband wouldn’t even look at it, and no matter how it happened, it’s mine as long as nobody claims it!”

  “But I’ve already claimed it for the insurance company,” Chip said quietly. “Unless you’d rather have me turn it over to the police.”

  “Oh no!” she breathed. Then she bent her face into her hands and sobbed the real sorrow on her mind. “But I’ll never—never get another chance to own a mink like this!”

  He let her cry a space and then he said, “Now, you might. You might even get to keep this coat.”

  Her sobs shut off like a faucet. Every fiber in her was listening.

  “And Lili Harrison may also get to keep hers,” he added. “If you’ve told the truth about the phone call.”

  “I have! I swear it! You can ask Seth!”

  Chip Stack nodded. “I intend to. Now I’m going to take this coat over there and try to straighten this out so everybody’s happy, but you’ll upset the apple cart with any phone calls.”

  “I won’t do anything to hurt her!” she d
eclared.

  “This won’t hurt her. She’ll probably get to keep her new coat out of it. So you just clam up until things are settled.”

  “How will I know if I can’t phone her?”

  “She’ll phone you damned fast. But if she doesn’t, and you see her wearing her new coat after tonight, you’ll know everything’s worked out.”

  “And I’ll get this one back?” she breathed.

  He pulled up beside her car in the shopping center and looked at her. “Any time you want to come in town and call for it—it will be at my apartment.”

  She got the message. Scorn flashed in her eyes. But she didn’t say no. She said, “You’re a real fink, aren’t you?”

  “A fink for a mink,” he grinned. “But mink are for minx.” He gave her his card. “All the essentials. Just call me.”

  She wriggled out of the coat angrily, but she rammed his card into her pocket book. She crossed to her own car without another word, reached in, and pulled on a sport coat. It was clear that she hadn’t dared wear the mink from her home, so her alibi was phoney and the deal had been a criminal switch transpiring at the New York restaurant, as he’d felt sure.

  He backed his car out and gave it the gun for Harrison’s estate. He got a lofty reception from the butler. The Harrisons were dressing, the butler insisted.

  “I think Mrs. Harrison will want to see me anyway,” Chip Stack grunted. “I have located her lost coat.”

  She saw him fast and privately in her personal suite. She didn’t even take time to don a more formal robe in place of the very alluring one in which she came, still damp, from her bath. She shot one glance at the coat and dismissed the maid and butler before she even looked at Chip.

  She lighted a cigarette coolly and remained on her feet. “I suppose,” she remarked tartly, “that is the coat poor Valerie thought might be mine.”

  “It is yours, Mrs. Harrison,” he said. “You are probably not aware of the fact that valuable coats like this are furrier and insurance marked.”

  She sat down with abrupt anger and crossed her legs. Her negligee fell away, and she looked better than in the photo taken at Palm Beach.

  He said, “Of course, if Mr. Harrison wishes to reimburse the insurance company for its settlement, the company will have no further interest in the coats.”

  “That miser would rather see me naked!” she declared. Chip Stack had his own thought about that, but restrained it. But it must have exuded from him like the beat of a tomtom, for she looked at him with sudden keen speculation.

  “I’d rather burn up my mink than return it to the insurance company!” she said. “But maybe you have some alternative?”

  Chip Stack looked directly at her bare legs. He said, “I think it could be handled quietly and without a report.”

  She smiled coolly and said nothing.

  “I think perhaps I can persuade Mr. Harrison to make you a gift of your new mink,” he said.

  She inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out slowly. She got to her feet and crossed to him and lifted two fingers to tap his chin. “Try it. Maybe you’re worth knowing,” she said. “That is—if you succeed.”

  She gave a wry smile and opened the door to the hall. “If you’ll wait downstairs, I’ll have Mr. Harrison see you.”

  He handed her one of his private cards. “It will be a pleasure to see you again wearing your new mink.”

  “That is the only way you will,” she said, and stood musingly watching him to the stairs.

  In five minutes, Mr. Seth Harrison appeared in the library, arrogant and bad-tempered from being disturbed at dressing. He started to threaten and bully from the height of his unassailable position.

  Chip Stack let him run out of wind and then held out the coat on his arm. “Mr. Harrison, this is the coat that you swore to the police that your wife was wearing and lost at the Gay Paree. It was entirely on the strength of your identification that the insurance settlement was made. Now it has shown up at Valerie Snowden’s, who says it was left at her house, and that she so informed you personally, but you refused to see it for possible identification.”

  Harrison turned purple, but he stood his ground. “If it was a mistake, it was a mistake that the insurance company accepted after due investigation! The only legal restitution that can be demanded is Mrs. Harrison’s new coat.”

  “That would be satisfactory to the company, but it involves a detailed report of the circumstances. The report, of course, will have to emphasize your error of memory as to which coat Mrs. Harrison was wearing at the Gay Paree, and your peculiar attitude in refusing to see the coat Valerie Snowden found at her house. In fact, the report may require a brand-new investigation.”

  Harrison’s eyes spit fire, but his color drained to grey.

  “And you will probably wish to give your wife a new fur soon in any case,” Chip Stack said guilelessly. “It might wind the whole matter up more satisfactorily for everyone if you just let her keep her new coat and made restitution to the insurance company in cash.”

  “Upon what grounds?” Harrison snapped.

  “That the lost coat has been accounted for after a mistake and so you are returning the insurance settlement. I can promise you that the company will have no further interest in the matter.”

  Harrison stalked to a desk, ripped out a checkbook and, writing quickly, finally thrust a check for the full amount at Chip Stack.

  Chip bowed with admiration. “A most generous surprise for your wife, Mr. Harrison. This coat is rather worn and she wanted to give it to Valerie Snowden anyway.”

  He left the house humming softly. There was only one remaining chore now, to clear the check girl officially and get Rosa the coat that had been left in the switch.

  Chip Stack felt quite chivalrous. Everybody was getting what they wanted, including himself. A very just reward for minx—and finks.

  MURDER OF AN UNKNOWN MAN

  by James Holding

  WE COULDN’T GET AN ID ON the corpse for three days. When, through a lucky accident, we finally did learn the man’s name, we refused to believe it. And by the time we figured out the motive for his murder, the dead man himself had to reveal some hidden evidence before we could prove it.

  But maybe I’d better start at the beginning.

  I’m Randall, Lieutenant of Detectives in Riverside. Riverside is a comparatively small and crimefree community. So when this unknown man was found by a newsboy early one morning, lying in a gutter on Catalpa Street with his skull bashed in, I thought that it was just another hit-and-run killing or, at worst, a simple local bludgeon murder.

  That kind of killing we could run down easily enough, because violent death is so rare and essentially unprofessional in Riverside.

  I began to realize I was wrong, however, when the unknown man continued to remain unknown for three days, despite my best efforts.

  The clothes he was wearing when the boys brought him in offered no clue as to his identity. The pockets were empty, all of them—a suspicious circumstance in itself. All labels, makers’ names, laundry marks, and so on had been carefully removed from his suit, shirt, underwear, and even the inside of his shoes. And although somewhat crumpled and soiled from lying in the gutter of Catalpa Street for some time, the clothes were of decent enough quality to be completely average and unremarkable.

  I was far from discouraged by our failure to learn his identity from his clothing or possessions, however. I knew that almost invariably, somebody will call up the police very soon after a body is found to report a missing child, lover, parent, or close acquaintance that will help us to establish the identity of any unknown corpses we may happen to have on hand.

  But for this homicide victim, nobody telephoned at all. Nobody reported anyone missing, strayed, stolen, or drunk, even. Our Missing Persons had no record of a worried relative wanting us to find someone who remotely resembled the murdered man.

  And nobody on the whole police department staff had ever seen the guy before in Riverside,
or knew anybody who might have seen him. He was a stranger, all right—a complete outsider in a small city where almost everybody is known to everybody else.

  I asked Doc Sanderson, our part-time and informal medical examiner, to look the corpse over for any body marks that might give us a lead we could work on, but that proved useless, too. All he found were a couple of incision scars from very common operations, likely to be found on the bodies of a thousand different people.

  Doc did tell me, deadpan, that in his opinion the man had been killed by a strong blow on the back of the head with some heavy object—a diagnosis that I didn’t need a medical degree to figure out for myself.

  “You mean like a club, Doc?” I asked him. “Or the bumper of a hit-run car, maybe?”

  “Like a club,” Doc answered me. “This fellow may have been pushed out of a car into the gutter after he was killed, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t hit by a car. The body isn’t beat up enough for that. No bruises anywhere on him except that crack on the head.”

  Meanwhile, I’d sent the fingerprints of the dead man to Washington, and that proved a dead end, too, if you’ll excuse the pun. No prints on file.

  I decided then that the only thing I could do was to display the corpse in our morgue and plant some publicity in the Riverside Herald about him, urging as many of our citizens as possible to come to the morgue and see if the guy was anybody they knew or had ever seen a picture of.

  I figured that pure morbid curiosity would induce a goodly number of Riversiders to file past the slab in the morgue where our unknown man lay with his head wound concealed, so as not to shock the sensitive.

  I certainly turned out to be a good prophet in that respect. Half the people in town came by the morgue during the next twenty-four hours to take a look at the mysterious stranger who had been found brutally murdered out on Catalpa Street.