by Ron Goulart
Larry told us, “This Michaelson had a couple more conversations with that Nazi during the party. I didn’t snap any other pictures of them, though.”
“Michaelson obviously would have access to the Warlock Wardrobe Department,” said Groucho, “and to the Grim Reaper costume.”
“Look at this sheet of proofs.” He poked at a picture in the bottom row. “There’s Michaelson having a little talk with the Grim Reaper himself.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of the Grim Reaper removing his skull mask so he can have a smoke?” asked Groucho.
“No such luck, no,” answered Larry. “I always snap a hell of a lot of shots at parties like this, but I didn’t get many of our pal Death. It’s my impression he didn’t hang around after Olmstead passed out.”
“The fact that Les Michaelson had seemingly cordial conversations with an agent of the Gestapo and the guy who spooked Olmstead,” I pointed out, “doesn’t prove he was in cahoots with them.”
“All too true, Mr. D.A.,” agreed Groucho. “Yet it does inspire one to some interesting speculations.”
“Here’s something else to speculate on,” I said, noticing a picture on the fourth proof sheet. “Olmstead and Lockwood having what sure looks like an argument.”
Larry said, “This batch of pics was taken early in the evening, before Olmstead took his nosedive.”
In the small picture the two men were glaring at each other. Lockwood was clutching his Napoleon hat in one hand and pointing angrily at the director with his other.
“Appears our playboy tycoon is warning Olmstead about something,” observed Groucho. “Telling him to quit being a Nazi spy, mayhap? Telling him to do right by our Nell or else?”
Larry asked, “Are you guys saying that Olmstead was a Nazi agent?”
“We are, yeah,” I answered. “And Lockwood knew it, too.”
“Speaking of Lockwood,” said Larry, picking up the sixth sheet of contact prints, “take a gander at the last two shots in the bottom row. Inside the pavilion I had to use a flash, but later in the evening I was fooling with some infrared film. I tried some shots out in the area where the cars were parked. You can get some interesting stuff that way sometimes, especially when nobody spots you.”
There were two prints showing Warren Lockwood and his troubleshooter Val Sharkey. In the first, Lockwood was reaching into the open passenger side of a Jaguar. In the second, he was handing Sharkey what looked an awful lot like a revolver.
“If that’s the thirty-two,” said Groucho, “it would confirm the fact that the Nazis didn’t execute Olmstead.”
“There’s one hell of a big story here, maybe,” said the photographer. “What are you going to do about it?”
“At the moment, we can’t prove anything,” reminded Groucho. “If you tell any of your reporter cronies on the L.A. Times right now, it’ll probably never see print. For one thing, the FBI doesn’t want any news about Olmstead’s spy work leaked out just yet, as I’m sure they’ve warned your editors.”
“But you’re going to try to get proof?” asked the photographer.
“We are,” promised Groucho.
Twenty-nine
Groucho seated himself, cross-legged, on the rug near our dozing bloodhound. He looked up at Jane, who was on the sofa studying the contact prints we’d borrowed from Larry Shell. “You’re absolutely certain it’s going to be a girl?” he asked.
“I am,” replied my wife, resting the proof sheets on her lap. “So that definitely rules out naming our baby Groucho or Julius.”
“How about Julia?” he suggested. “A sort of feminine version of Julius. Now, I’ve been accused of being a feminine version of Julius, but those—”
The telephone rang.
I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“They match,” announced Win Mulvane.
“The thirty-two-caliber slugs?”
“That’s what I’m talking about, Frank,” said my policeman friend. “The gun that killed Eric Olmstead also killed Len Hickman, alias James Pearson.”
“I thought that might be—”
“Do you have any idea where that particular thirty-two revolver might be at the moment?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Some of my colleagues at the Beverly Hills Police Department have been thinking that we can only go along with the FBI so far in keeping a lid on this mess,” said the cop. “If this thing is turning into a string of killings, then we—”
“Our sentiments exactly,” I told Mulvane. “As soon as I find out more, Win, I’ll let you know.”
“That’ll be nice.” He hung up.
Groucho, creaking slightly, rose up to his feet. “What gives?”
“My cop chum Mulvane says the same gun killed both Olmstead and Pearson/Hickman.”
“Golly,” said Groucho.
“Might that be this gun here?” inquired Jane, pointing to the small photo of Lockwood handing a .32 revolver to Sharkey.
I answered, “The odds are it is, yeah.”
“We ought to look around hither and yon,” said Groucho, “and see if we can unearth this weapon.”
“We can start at Val Sharkey’s place,” I said. “He’s got a cottage up in Cautela Canyon.”
“First we’ll have to determine if the lad’s at home or—”
“Sharkey is at the premier of Way of a Buccaneer,” said Jane.
“Did the pixies inform you of that?” asked Groucho.
“No, it was Johnny Whistler’s show,” she answered. “Warlock’s premiering their movie at Grauman’s Chinese tonight, and Whistler mentioned that in addition to the stars, Warner Baxter and Evelyn Venable, Warren Lockwood, and Val Sharkey would be attending the gala event.”
“Evelyn Venable,” said Groucho slowly. “Evelyn Venable. I dearly love to recite that name.”
“We know,” I mentioned.
“When she grows older, I can refer to her as the venerable Evelyn Venable, and if she becomes bulletproof, I’ll be able to call her the invulnerable venerable Evelyn Venable.”
“What say,” I suggested, “we look around Sharkey’s joint while he’s at the gala festivities?”
“A splendid suggestion, Rollo. We’ll telephone first to make certain there’s nobody home.”
“Why don’t you take Dorgan along?” asked Jane.
Groucho withdrew a fresh cigar from his jacket pocket. “Why, my dear?”
“He can sniff out the gun.”
“Only if he’s got a whiff of it earlier.”
“I imagine if you let him smell a little gunpowder and tell him to find something that smells like that, he ought to be able to nose out a hidden revolver.” She got up off the sofa.
“Possibly, but it’ll be difficult procuring gunpowder at this hour of the night. I doubt if even the all-night Thrifty Drug Store on La Cienega carries—”
“I had a handful of thirty-eight-caliber shells that I borrowed from Win Mulvane when I was drawing that gangster sequence in Hollywood Molly a couple months back,” she said. “That might work. If you open one and—”
“Sounds feasible,” decided Groucho. “And even if it doesn’t work, having Dorgan along will provide me with the sort of intellectual companionship that’s often lacking when I’m in the company of your esteemed husband. Or when I’m traveling with steamed clams, for that matter.”
“I’ll fetch them,” she said.
Dorgan was on his feet, wagging his tail.
In the backseat of my Ford, Dorgan was sprawled and snoring.
Groucho, hunched in the passenger seat, said, “Sherlock Holmes had a better class of dogs to work with. I’ll wager the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t snore.”
“Mostly he devoured people out on the moor.” The rain was still heavy, and I was concentrating on the twisty canyon road. The windshield wipers were slapping away at the rain-swept glass.
“I’ve been thinking, Rollo,” he said, taking a cigar out of the pocket of his jacke
t. “They’ll be holding that memorial service for Eric Olmstead tomorrow evening out at the Warlock studios.”
“You figure that might be an apt place to announce our solution to this case?”
“Admittedly it isn’t in perfect taste to accuse somebody of murder at a wake,” he conceded.
“Emily Post is strangely silent on that point of etiquette.”
“The last time I ran into Emily Post, she was rolling sailors in a clip joint down in Tijuana,” said Groucho. “Since then I’ve ceased to use her as a social arbiter.”
“What we have so far,” I reminded, “is a theory and not enough proof.”
“If we locate the murder weapon,” he said, “we’ll have a pretty good case. Then if Dinah’ll allow me to make a presentation at her late husband’s memorial service, I think I can parlay that into an impressive denouncement.”
“Then we’d best find that gun,” I said.
There was a party, a loud one, going on in the house that sat about three hundred yards down the hill from Val Sharkey’s Tudor-style cottage. I parked uphill from his place, sheltered by a stand of pepper trees. There were a half-dozen cars further down the hill, parked on either side of the quirking road.
Light was spilling out of the windows of the neighboring house, a large modern redwood-and-glass construction. Up through the night rain, as I eased open the door on my side of the car, came the sounds of laughter and loud conversation. Somebody was attempting to play the piano—a ragged version of “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie.”
“Not the ideal location,” observed Groucho, stepping out into the rain, “for a bit of polite housebreaking.”
“The noise of the party will probably cover any noise we make.” Opening the back door, I attached Dorgan’s leash to his collar. “Okay, we’re going to do some hunting.”
The bloodhound gave me an affectionate, and alert, look. From my coat pocket I took the envelope that held the powder we’d extracted from the .38 shell. I spilled some out into the palm of my hand.
“Take a whiff, Dorgan, and find me something similar,” I instructed. He did considerable sniffing at my hand. Then he hopped free of the car.
Holding onto his leash, I went trotting along in his snuffling wake.
Groucho followed.
The bloodhound led me down the short white gravel driveway to the right of Val Sharkey’s dark cottage. He ignored the cottage entirely, aiming instead for the detached shingled garage.
As we approached the side door, someone off in the shadows asked, “What in the hell are you doing here?”
Thirty
“And, faith and begonias, who might you be, me bucko?” asked Groucho, shining his flashlight beam on the pale young man who was standing under the overhang of the slanting garage roof.
The guy was in his early twenties, had several splotches of lipstick in the vicinity of his mouth. Huddled behind him was a blond woman about ten years his senior and the obvious source of the lipstick. She was clutching the handle of a rolled-up black umbrella.
“Here now, you pack of spalpeens,” continued Groucho in a very dubious Irish accent, “I’ll have you know that we’re officers of the Greater Los Angeles Private Security Patrol.”
“That’s right,” I said, picking up the cue. “Mr. Sharkey, whose property you’re trespassing on, has been complaining about attempted burglaries, and he recently hired our organization to—”
“Hey, take it easy,” said the blonde in a slightly slurred voice. “We’re guests of Bernie Zuber next door. We just came out for a breath of fresh air.”
“That’s right, some fresh air,” said the young man, who was swaying on his feet.
“I suggest that you hotfoot it back to the party,” advised Groucho, in a somewhat different bad Irish accent. “We won’t report you this time, but should you—”
“Thanks, Officer.” The young man slipped an arm around the blonde’s waist. “Let’s get back, Angie.”
“What part of Ireland are you from?” she asked Groucho as she opened the umbrella and they started off downhill.
“Sure and I’m from County Cohen,” he called, clicking off the flash.
Dorgan trotted over to the side door of the garage, commenced scratching at it with his forepaws.
“We’d best speed up our nosing around,” I suggested.
Groucho turned the doorknob. “Locked, Rollo.”
“Hold Dorgan’s leash for a minute.” I handed him the looped end, reaching into my trouser pocket for the ring of skeleton keys I’d acquired back during my crime-reporter days. “That was a lousy Irish accent, by the way.”
“Nonsense, I picked that up from Sean O’Casey himself,” he told me. “I also picked up a bad case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever from the old boy. Ah, and well I remember that morning that the Fitzpatrick Brothers and I first sighted the Spotted Rockies in the distance and ordered our porters to bring up the Technicolor cameras and—”
“Bingo,” I said quietly.
The third key I’d tried on the lock succeeded.
Carefully I nudged the door open.
Eagerly, the bloodhound went rushing inside.
The concrete-floored garage was empty of cars, smelled strongly of spilled oil and mildew.
Groucho followed us into the place, turning on the flashlight again. “Speaking of oil, did I ever tell you about the occasion when old John D. Rockefeller gave me a dime?”
“Nope.”
“That’s a pity, because it’s a touching yarn and you’d have enjoyed it immensely.”
Dorgan led me deeper into the shadowy garage.
There was a heavy wooden workbench, complete with vise, built into the rear wall. Beneath it were shelves that held an array of cigar boxes and coffee tins.
The dog halted close to a shelf on which rested three Orem Bros. Coffee cans with adhesive tape labels that read, “Nuts & Bolts.” Making agitated whimpering noises now, he reached out to poke at one of the cans with a paw.
“This one?” I reached for it.
After I’d lifted the coffee can off the shelf and before I could open it, Dorgan jabbed his paw into the dark space behind where the can had been standing. Squatting, I reached into the darkness.
There was a small black strongbox tucked back against the wooden wall. After I’d extracted it and placed it on the garage floor, Dorgan began sniffing enthusiastically at it.
The box was locked, but it opened easily when I used the pick attached to my ring of keys.
There was something in the box wrapped in a scrap of white terry-cloth toweling. Gingerly, I unwrapped it.
Groucho shined the flash over my shoulder. “Eureka, as Balboa remarked when he fell into the Pacific Ocean for the first time.”
What was wrapped in the towel was a .32 Smith and Wesson revolver.
The rain had stopped a few minutes shy of midnight. When I glanced out a window in our kitchen, I saw a few stars showing in the night sky.
Very quietly I had taken a quart of Golden State Vanilla Ice Cream out of the icebox. Plopping two scoops into Dorgan’s turquoise food dish, I said, again quietly, “This is your reward for a job well done, old man.”
As soon as I set the dish on the linoleum near the sink, the bloodhound came trotting over to commence lapping up the ice cream.
Patting him on his knobby head, I added, “If you guys had a bloodhound union, I’d have to pay you a heck of a lot more for finding what may well be the murder gun for us.”
The dog, ignoring me, continued to eat.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to crave ice cream at odd hours.” Jane was leaning in the kitchen doorway, wearing a yellow terry-cloth robe over a pair of candy-stripe pajamas.
I said, “I thought I’d succeeded in sneaking home without waking you. Sorry.”
“You didn’t wake me,” she said, smiling. “I simply sensed that you were back and got up.”
“More mystic stuff. Want some ice cream?”
“Don’t mind if I
do.”
I returned to the icebox. “With pickles on the side?”
“Actually, a banana would be more suitable.” Jane crossed to the cut-glass fruit bowl, a wedding gift from an aunt up in Berkeley, and selected a ripe banana. “Dish out the ice cream while I slice this. You guys found the murder weapon?”
“Dorgan sniffed out a thirty-two-caliber revolver in Val Sharkey’s garage.”
The bloodhound licked up the last spot of vanilla ice cream, trotted over to watch Jane.
“What are you going to do with the gun, Frank?”
“Run some tests, find out who it’s registered to.”
“You and Groucho aren’t equipped to run tests like that,” she pointed out.
I put a scoop of ice cream into a blue bowl. “No, but the Beverly Hills cops are.”
“They’re cooperating now?”
I set the bowl on the kitchen table. “Not Jake Fuller, no. But Win Mulvane is going to run the ballistics tests and trace the ownership of the Smith & Wesson,” I said. “I phoned him from Groucho’s place when I dropped Groucho off.”
“This sure doesn’t sound like standard police procedure.” Jane added the slices of banana to the ice cream. “Find the chocolate sauce, huh?”
I found it on a shelf in the icebox. “Mulvane’s sort of caught up in the spirit of the chase,” I told her. “He’s going to help us out on the sly. So are a couple of his colleagues who’re pretty annoyed about the FBI muzzling them on the Olmstead case.”
“Okay,” Jane said as I handed her the opened tin of chocolate syrup, “let’s say this is the gun that killed both Olmstead and his valet. Let’s further stipulate that the gun is registered to Val Sharkey or Warren Lockwood. Is that enough to enable you guys to hang the murders on them?”
“Groucho and I discussed that driving home,” I said. “He thinks he can stage a performance at the Olmstead wake tomorrow night out at the Warlock studios. A show that’ll prompt both the killer and the spies to step forward and give themselves up.” I decided to fix a banana split for myself. “Do we happen to have any walnuts?”