by Craig Rice
There was a little box of a kitchenette, obviously used for nothing but coffee-making, and a bathroom with chipped tile and slightly tarnished faucets; there was a small closet with three built-in drawers and a rack from which hung a suit of clothes and a gabardine raincoat.
But there was nothing to indicate that Dennis Dennis or anyone else lived there, really lived there, that it was or had ever been anything more than a stopping-off place for sleeping, bathing, and changing clothes. Even the unemptied ash trays had a rented look.
There wasn’t much to search. Helene sat in the sagging chair and watched Jake.
“Naturally,” she observed as he opened the desk, “if there ever was anything here that told, or even hinted anything about the real Dennis Dennis, the murderer would have known about it and been here ahead of us.”
“A fine piece of logic,” Jake said, “and I’m proud of you. It occurred to me too. And probably to Malone. This is just to be on the safe side.”
Helene glanced around the four bare walls. “It’s a little sad. Dennis Dennis, writing poems, and living here.”
“He undoubtedly didn’t write them here,” Jake said. “Or if he ever did, he carried them away with him. Poems, and everything else. There’s nothing here about Dennis Dennis. Nothing about his ex-wife. In fact, nothing about anything.”
“Too bad,” Helene said regretfully. “I’d hoped there’d at least be a picture of his ex-wife. That woman has an unpleasant kind of fascination for me. Nobody could be that typical.”
Jake shut the desk. “That’s that. Unless, of course—somebody did get here first.”
The telephone rang. It was Reilly. Jake hung up and said, “Time to go.”
From around the corner in the corridor they could hear the elevator door open and close, and the sound of heavy footfalls. Von Flanagan’s voice was muttering, “A guy in the radio business, living in a dump like this.” A door closed.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Jake said.
“You’re forgetting the ex-wife,” Helene reminded him.
“Nobody who knew Dennis Dennis could forget the ex-wife,” Jake told her gloomily. “But even so, that’s an awful lot of poverty for anyone with his job.” He listened closely for a minute and then said, “Come on.”
Helene took two steps down the stairs, paused, said, “Oh!” and then tried to smother a giggle.
Jake stared at her. “If there’s anything funny that I’ve happened to miss—”
“My box,” Helene said with a gasp. “The box of Paris-made panties, pink, blue and green, with real lace, at twenty-five dollars a pair.” She caught her breath and said, “I left them. Back there. In Dennis Dennis’ apartment.” She paused and added, “Thank goodness, my name wasn’t in them! But just the same—”
“Von Flanagan,” Jake said. A slow grin spread over his lean, freckled face. “He’s going to have a busy time figuring that one out. If he ever finds out the truth, he’ll swear you did it on purpose.” He looked at Helene searchingly. “Or did you?”
She sniffed at him and led the way down the stairs. The dreary little lobby was deserted except for the tired-faced Reilly, but through the dusty glass of the door they could see an ominously uniformed figure.
Reilly apparently took in the situation at a glance. He motioned them around the desk and into a tiny cubbyhole of an office. “Can’t let a friend of Malone’s get into trouble with the cops,” he explained affably.
Jake nodded, and Helene beamed her thanks.
“For that matter,” Reilly said, “can’t let a friend of Malone’s go thirsty, either.” He produced three glasses and a half-empty bottle of cheap bourbon from a cabinet in the wall.
“Do tell us about Dennis Dennis,” Helene said, shuddering a little as the bourbon burned its way down.
Reilly lifted his shoulders wearily. “Nothing to tell. Been here a year or so. No visitors. No parties. Not many phone calls. Not much mail.” He refilled his glass and added, “No trouble.” His voice indicated that he would be very happy to have more guests exactly like that. “Now you tell me about Dennis Dennis. Who murdered him?”
This time Helene lifted her shoulders. “Who knows?” she said owlishly.
Jake decided it was time to help out. “What time did Dennis Dennis go out this morning?”
“It was—let me see.” Reilly squinted his eyes and wrinkled his forehead. “Oh, yes. Late. Not terribly, but late for him. About ten o’clock, in fact. I was thinking of ringing to see if he was awake, I knew he had to be at his job early. He got a telephone call. A couple of minutes later he went tearing out in a big hurry.”
Helene’s and Jake’s eyes met and agreed that Dennis Dennis must have gone straight to Rico di Angelo’s establishment without sparing any particular horses on the way.
“I don’t suppose you noticed who called?” Helene said, very casually.
Reilly shook his head.
“Man or woman?” Jake asked helpfully.
Reilly didn’t know.
They waited in silence for a while. Once Reilly stepped out to answer the telephone, twice he handed mail to outgoing guests. Then von Flanagan’s booming voice and the clang of the elevator door sounded together.
“—not even a morning paper. Guy must’ve spent his time someplace else.”
“Mmmmpf.” That was Klutchetsky.
“I should of hung on to Malone. And those other two. They must be up to something.”
Silence. Also Klutchetsky.
A long sigh. “Well, one thing,” von Flanagan said in a happier voice, “we know one thing. He had one hell of an expensive girlfriend. Now the first thing we got to do is find the babe who was going to get those very, very fancy pants—”
This time Jake’s look at Helene was a long and somewhat anxious one. She shook her blond head and gave him her don’t-worry-about-a-thing expression.
Von Flanagan was tossing a few more questions at the desk clerk, who’d gone back out front. He sounded tired, annoyed and baffled.
“Somewhere around ten,” Reilly was saying in a bored voice. “I believe he had a telephone call before he left.”
“No mail? No visitors? Nothing else?”
“No sir!” The manager of the Astrid Arms didn’t seem to care much for the police.
He waited a minute after they’d gone, then strolled casually to the door and glanced up and down Dearborn Street. “All clear,” he reported as he came back.
Jake and Helene thanked him profusely and started for the street. Suddenly Reilly called them back.
“Got something I’d rather give Malone than the police,” he announced. “Malone’s a friend of mine.” He produced a small packet from behind the desk. “When Mr. Dennis came in last night—this morning—I was up. He asked me to keep this for him. Said he’d rather not have it around his room.” He waved the packet in the air as he spoke, then handed it to Jake.
Helene said, “When he came in—what time was that?”
Reilly thought, shrugged his shoulders, finally said, “Must have been about four—five.” There didn’t seem to be anything unusual about his having made a night of it.
They thanked him again and examined the packet. It was a small manila envelope, loosely sealed, its metal clasp fastened. Jake took just a shade under ten seconds deciding whether or not to open it.
Inside were Myrdell Harris’ missing bankbooks.
Chapter Thirty
Tamia Tabet looked a little tired, Malone reflected, but it was a nice, cuddly tired. He wanted at least to reach out and pat her cheek comfortingly, better yet, to snuggle her sleepy head on a protecting shoulder. He sighed deeply and confined himself to a smile that tried to convey the same idea.
He only hoped she wouldn’t be too tired to pick up their date exactly where it had been interrupted last night.
Hazel Swackhammer, she informed him, wasn’t in. She’d been in, yes. Then she’d gone out to see about poor Miss Harris’ funeral, and hadn’t come back. What time?
Oh, she’d gone out about ten o’clock or so.
The little lawyer nodded and then said solemnly, “Dennis Dennis is dead.”
Her eyes and mouth made little round circles of surprise. “Oh!” she said, and then, “Who murdered him?”
Malone blinked. “Now what makes you think…” he began.
Otis Furlong walked in from the next room and said, “Hullo, Malone, thought I heard your voice.” He looked at Malone, at Tamia Tabet, at Malone again, and finally said, “What’s what?”
“Dennis Dennis,” Malone said. He didn’t have time to add the word “dead.”
“Murdered?” Otis Furlong said, frowning.
Malone nodded and said nothing. He reflected that, for some reason, whenever anyone died around the Delora Deanne establishment, everyone leaped to the conclusion that it was murder.
Tamia Tabet said, “How awful,” in a shocked little voice, and Otis Furlong said, “Well!” as though he couldn’t think of anything more appropriate on short notice. Neither of them seemed particularly grieved, Malone observed, or even surprised. Finally Furlong said, “Too bad,” and took out his pipe.
Malone sat down on an exquisite little chair of delicate, gilded wrought iron and oyster-white satin, unwrapped a cigar, and told them briefly what had happened, skipping most of the details.
Otis Furlong frowned again. “Amazing,” he said at last. “An undertaking parlor. Funny place for a murder. And besides, you know—Swackhammer Brothers—”
“I do know,” Malone said and waited.
“Maybe a coincidence,” Furlong said. He began filling his pipe, slowly and deliberately. “Undertaking business being mixed up in it.” He paused and added, “Might make me a suspect. I used to work for an undertaker myself. Quite a bunch of them, in fact.”
“Oh?” Malone said hopefully. There was a time to ask questions and a time to sit still.
“Ump. Taking beautiful naturally colored pictures of the dear departed, after they were all beautifully dressed and combed and made up. Beautiful pictures. The families used to buy a lot of them.” He grinned wryly. “Beginning photographers have to do all kinds of jobs to get started.”
Malone remembered something, and kept quiet about it.
“Matter of fact,” Otis Furlong said, “that’s how I happened to meet Hazel.”
There was a little silence. The handsome photographer seemed to have exhausted the subject.
Tamia Tabet spoke up pertly. “I used to work for an undertaker myself. One of the Swackhammer brothers. I took care of the clothes. The laying-away clothes.” That seemed to exhaust the subject for her too. But after a moment she added, “And Anna Hodges, who designs those lovely Delora Deanne jars and boxes used to work for a florist designing lovely funeral pieces.”
“It’ll probably turn out,” Malone said gloomily, “that Dennis Dennis got his literary start writing epitaphs.”
But no one seemed to know anything about how Dennis Dennis got his start.
Malone sighed. “His wife. Does anyone have her address? Has anyone here seen her? Does anyone here know anything about her?”
Neither of them did, beyond what Dennis Dennis himself had told Malone. Finally Tamia Tabet brightly offered to ask his secretary, and went away. The little lawyer turned to Otis Furlong.
“Tell me something,” he said suddenly, deciding this was a time to come right out with things. “I heard a rumor that Myrdell Harris knew some unpleasant secret about you. With all that’s happening around here, if you have any secrets, they’d be safer with me than—well, others.”
“The police, you mean,” Otis Furlong said, with another wry grin. “But I didn’t murder Myrdell, and I didn’t murder Dennis Dennis. And as far as the secret is concerned—I told you, photographers just starting out in life—sometimes have to turn to all sorts of ways of making a living—”
Malone nodded and let it go at that. He was afraid Otis Furlong might add that he’d included a few improvements of his own.
Tamia Tabet came back with the secretary, a dour, bored girl who seemed neither surprised at nor sorry about her boss’ death, and who knew nothing at all about his ex-wife except that she cost an appalling amount in alimony payments. She didn’t know much of anything about Dennis Dennis, either.
It appeared that no one did. Within an hour, Malone had talked with everyone in the Delora Deanne building, and what he’d learned fitted comfortably on the back of an old envelope. And Hazel Swackhammer still had not returned.
He went away unhappily, hoping Jake and Helene had had better luck, and not really expecting it.
In the taxi back to his office, he took out the scribbled notes and looked them over. So far, they didn’t add up to much except a lot more questions to be asked.
No one had seen Dennis Dennis’ ex-wife, knew what her name was, or had spoken to her. Nor had anyone ever seen a picture of her. There wasn’t any address for her in any of Dennis Dennis’ files, nor the name of anyone who might have been her lawyer.
No one had the faintest idea what Dennis Dennis’ name had originally been, but everyone agreed that it had once been something else.
On the positive side, his birthday had been July 17, year unknown; this had been his first job—before that he’d had a couple of poems in Poetry Magazine; from various remarks he’d made, he was a Chicago product and had graduated from college here—some said Chicago University, some said Northwestern, and nobody knew what year; and he’d been with Delora Deanne for six years and two months.
The sum total was small, and time was short, and quite possibly the lines of inquiry he meant to follow would either lead him nowhere or mean nothing anyway, and in his haste he’d forgotten to confirm a second date with Tamia Tabet for that night.
And the snow was turning to rain.
Jake and Helene were waiting when he walked in his office, tired and thoroughly discouraged with it all, hurled his hat on the sofa and slumped down behind his desk.
“Nothing is ever that bad, Malone,” Helene said gently. “And we didn’t find anything else, but we found Myrdell Harris’ bankbooks.”
Jake handed them over and described the excursion in detail.
The little lawyer sighed and looked through them. “They show exactly what I thought,” he said at last. “A number of large deposits over a considerable period of time. No big withdrawals. She didn’t put up the money that was paid the Delora Deannes.” He slid them into a desk drawer and slammed it shut, looking at it indignantly.
“The important thing about the bankbooks,” he said at last, “was not what was in them, but who took them, and why. Now we know Dennis Dennis took them and still don’t know why.”
“Or when,” Helene put in.
Malone stared at her for a minute. “Yes we do. I do, anyway. It was some time last night. Because the telephone slips weren’t there.” He reached for a fresh cigar and said, “No, I am not addled by all this,” and went on to explain about the telephone slips. “He must have kept on calling, and finally was told she was dead. Then he went up to the apartment and took the bankbooks out of there—and the telephone slips at the same time.”
“Why?” Jake asked.
Malone glared at him.
“How did he get in?” Helene asked.
“With a key,” Malone growled. “Everybody seems to have had keys to Myrdell Harris’ apartment. Maybe she was his ex-wife.”
“Malone,” Helene said, “who was his ex-wife?”
“Myrdell Harris,” Malone growled, “or Hazel Swackhammer, or one of the five Deloras. Don’t bother me.” He took the envelope out of his pocket, laid it on his desk, scowled at it, and said, “So far, that’s all we know about the late Dennis Dennis.”
“Not quite,” Helene said cheerfully. “I have news for you, Malone.”
She went on to tell him of leaving the package of Paris pants in Dennis Dennis’ apartment, and of von Flanagan’s interest in the discovery. Malone grinned briefly and then began to worry all over a
gain.
“The label on the box,” he said. “He may go to the shop and ask questions.”
“I thought of that,” Helene told him in her most serene voice. “I think of everything. So I went back to the shop. I looked very unhappy and told them my husband would probably beat me if he knew I’d paid so much for three pairs of underpants.”
“He probably would, too,” Jake said.
She ignored him. “So everyone swore they’d never, never tell anyone who’d bought them.” She smiled sweetly and added, “I had to buy a dozen pairs of stockings to clinch it, but—”
Jake sighed, looked martyred, and said nothing.
“And while I was there,” Helene went on, “the other girl came in. The one who’d sold that pair of gloves. In a place that size, purchases like that are remembered.”
“Well?” Malone demanded.
“Naturally,” she said, “it was Dennis Dennis!”
Chapter Thirty-one
“If only I’d had a lot more information,” Malone said, “or a lot less.” He thought that over and said, “If only I’d never heard of Delora Deanne. If only I’d never become a lawyer.”
“That’s von Flanagan’s line,” Jake said coldly.
Malone said, “If only I’d died in my cradle.”
“Don’t worry,” Helene said, “you’ve got us.”
He looked at her desolately and went right on worrying. That was the main trouble, he had them. If only it weren’t for the Jake Justus Television Production Company and a prospective Delora Deanne show. He tried to tell himself that otherwise everything would be all right, that he didn’t really care what had happened.
The telephone rang. Malone looked at it as though it probably had more bad news, and finally answered it. He listened, said once, “I’ll be damned!” then, “Anything on the other one?” and finally, “Well, let me know.”