The April Robin Murders

by Craig Rice

  “Who doesn’t remember April Robin!” she said, and then, “Well!” The smile almost glowed like neon. “I’m sorry to lose you two nice, interesting gentlemen. Can I help you pack?”

  But by the time they reached Number 7, Handsome was just closing the last suitcase.

  Bingo looked at her a little regretfully. She was a nice old girl at that, and nobody could be blamed for wanting to look young, or wanting to own a whole chain of motels. “I hope we can do something for you, sometime.”

  “Bingo,” Handsome said, “maybe the lady’d like us to take some pictures of her nice motel to give her, pictures with her in it. She’d take a real good picture in those cute pants.”

  Mariposa DeLee beamed with pleasure, made a polite and charming pretense at refusal, and began patting her hair before Handsome had even started unpacking his camera.

  Bingo watched approvingly, while pictures were taken by the pool, at the office, in front of the entrance, and back by the pool again. There was no doubt about it, Handsome did come up with some very sound ideas. When they brought over the prints, made purely as a present for her, she’d very likely hit on the idea of having a flock of advertising postcards made up, and probably some large prints—he stopped himself on the verge of going into some mental arithmetic and reminded himself that they were no longer interested in the peanut trade. They owned a movie star’s mansion now, and sooner or later they’d own an office building—

  He said good-by to her with real regret and added, “We might even bring the pictures over tomorrow. There won’t be much business doing on a holiday.” She looked a little puzzled. “Consolidation Day,” he added.

  She looked puzzled for about half a minute more and then said, “Oh gosh yes, I almost forgot. I’ll be looking for you.”

  She said it to both of them, but her eyes said it to Handsome. Bingo sighed, very slightly. It was always that way. Or always had been. Out here in Hollywood, which was full of beautiful, unattached girls, things were going to be different.

  The sun was going down as they reached 113 Damascus Drive, and darkness was coming with that unexpected suddenness that still startled Bingo. The April Robin house was beginning to look very big and very somber and very forbidding, without a solitary light showing. Bingo felt just the very faintest of qualms.

  But there, to one side of them, walking in his garden, was their next-door neighbor, the famous producer, Rex Strober himself. It had to be Rex Strober, no one who didn’t own a garden could possibly walk in it quite that way. He looked at the great man curiously. Rex Strober was a tall man, thin and stooped, with a deeply gloomy face and half-bald head. He looked, Bingo thought, like a grade school principal who had bought his dark blue suit at a rummage sale.

  Just what is the etiquette in a case like this? Bingo wondered suddenly. Exactly who should speak first, and what should be said? Then the great man looked up, Bingo caught his eye, waved and called, “Hello, there.”

  Rex Strober stared at him for a full minute, his dour face without expression. At last he said, “Hello,” in a flat and colorless voice, turned, and walked back toward his almost Spanish house.

  “There’ll be plenty of time to get acquainted later,” Bingo said grimly, more to himself than to Handsome.

  They had begun to unload the car when a voice from the other direction called, “Hello!” to them.

  This voice was far from colorless, and its owner far from gloomy. Leaning on the low wall that divided their properties was a woman who appeared to be their other neighbor. The rich society widow, Bingo remembered.

  She was a chubby, bright-faced woman whose gunmetal-colored hair appeared to have been carved rather than combed. Her eyes were a twinkling blue, and looked as though they were interested in, and seeing, everything. Even in the rapidly fading light, Bingo could see that her flowered chiffon afternoon dress included practically every color known to chemistry, and that her very small feet wore threadbare and not too clean tennis shoes. No one could possibly have doubted, though, that the pearls at her throat and ears were real.

  She called, “Hello,” again, and added, “You two!”

  They walked over to the wall. “How do you do, ma’am,” Bingo said politely, wishing he had a hat to tip. “We’re your new neighbors. I’m Bingo Riggs, and this is my partner, Handsome Kusak.”

  “And I’m Mrs. Hibbing,” she said sociably. “Mrs. Waldo Hibbing.”

  “I remember you,” Handsome said. “From your picture. In the World-Telegram, page three. You were christening a battleship. On April 18th—”

  “It was a destroyer, not a battleship,” she said. “And my friends and neighbors call me Myrtie.” She gazed at them with what seemed to be more than neighborly interest. “So you’re the boys who’ve taken the Lattimer place.”

  “That’s us,” Bingo said. He’d forgotten that it had ever been, even briefly, the Lattimer place. “Only it’s really the April Robin mansion. You know, the star. April Robin.”

  She seemed surprised that he should even ask. “Sure do! I don’t think I missed one of her pictures. But that was so long ago—” She stopped suddenly, the passage of years was evidently something she didn’t like to discuss. “But I’ve only been here the past two years, and to me, it’s the Lattimer place, and—” She broke off again. “It’s so nice that you’re going to live there.”

  “We think so,” Bingo said, a little confused.

  Mrs. Waldo Hibbing leaned a little further forward. “And I do hope if you find it—you’ll tell me, first!”

  Now Bingo was thoroughly confused. “Find what, ma’am?”

  “Either one,” she said. “The body, or the money. Either one, it’s going to be so exciting. And if we’re going to be friends, I want to be the first to know!”

  four

  “Golly, Bingo,” Handsome said, almost apologetically. “I didn’t know it was that Lattimer. There’s a lot of Lattimers. And the eastern papers didn’t carry any pictures of the house, and the stories didn’t give its address. So that’s why I didn’t know.”

  “What Lattimer?” Bingo asked crossly, lifting out one of the lighter suitcases.

  “Why,” Handsome said, “the one that was murdered by his wife.”

  Bingo let go of his suitcase and turned around. “Just how is that again?”

  “He was murdered by his wife,” Handsome said. “Anyway, that was what everybody figured. Only he isn’t legally dead.” He took hold of one end of the wardrobe trunk. “It’s a very funny story, Bingo. Queer, I mean.”

  The sky was almost dark now; the April Robin mansion loomed up in front of them forbiddingly, without a single light showing. Bingo looked up at it a little apprehensively.

  “Tell me all about it later,” he said hoarsely. “Let’s get these things in and go get some dinner.” He told himself encouragingly that the hollow feeling in his stomach was due entirely to the hours that had passed since their late breakfast.

  He took hold of the front end of the wardrobe trunk and marched up to the big, ornate wooden door. He took out his keys and then stood for a moment, holding them in his hand. For as long as he could remember, he’d dreamed of just this, unlocking his own door—their own door, of course—with his own—their own—key. Now he had a fleeting sense that he might be unlocking a chamber of horrors.

  “Everything all right, Bingo?” Handsome asked anxiously.

  “It’s dark here,” Bingo said. He unlocked the door and flung it open bravely. Then he opened the door that led into the main room.

  Seen now in the semidarkness, it seemed to be twice as large as it had by daylight. Large and cavernous. He remembered a newsreel he’d seen of Mammoth Cave, only it had been better lighted. He had a curious feeling that any minute now, a horde of bats would come zooming out of nowhere.

  “There’s a light switch here some place,” Handsome said. A moment later the two floor lamps near the davenports created a little island of furniture and light in what was still an abyss of shadows.
Another switch clicked, and a half dozen wall brackets, designed to imitate candles in antique holders, added their yellowish glow. They only served to make the small furnished island in front of the fireplace seem more isolated and small.

  Bingo glanced up to where, seemingly a vast distance above them, a wrought-iron chandelier held more imitation candles, a lot of them. “I wonder what turns that on.”

  Apparently nothing did. Handsome tried every switch in sight, unsuccessfully. “Maybe it’s out of bulbs,” he said helpfully.

  “Probably,” Bingo said. He wondered how anyone would ever replace the bulbs in that chandelier without borrowing a ladder from the fire department. “Turn off those side things, we don’t need them.” And they dispelled the one spot of homelike coziness the room had.

  “We won’t unpack,” Bingo said, as they deposited the last suitcase inside the door. “We’ll wait till after we go out and eat.” He paused and then said, “I wonder if that caretaker is around. Because right now would be a good time to tell her to go.” One thing was certain, he didn’t want to come back, later when it was really dark, and find that baleful, malicious face glaring at him. Especially, he didn’t want to sleep under the same roof with it.

  They stood for a minute, listening. There wasn’t a sound in the big house, anywhere. In the vast cavern of the living room, the little island of furniture and floor lamps seemed very small and defenseless. Suddenly Bingo felt an impulse to throw their belongings back in the car, return to the Skylight Motel and, in the morning, look up Mr. Courtney Budlong and tell him the deal was off. Even if they couldn’t get their down payment back! For one moment the impulse even included going back to New York, not tomorrow morning, but right away.

  “I’ll go look for her, Bingo,” Handsome offered.

  Bingo shook his head and squared his shoulders. “We’ll both go.”

  They found their way to the caretaker’s room, turning on lights all the way. Bingo knocked on the door, lightly at first, and then louder. There was no answer. He reminded himself sternly that they owned the house now, and pushed open the door. The room was empty.

  “She must have gone somewhere,” Bingo said, hoping the relief didn’t show in his voice. “So we’ll leave a note for her.”

  He ripped a leaf from his address book, considered the matter for a moment, and then wrote:

  We have bought this house and moved in. We will not need you any more. Please leave tonight.

  Riggs and Kusak

  There, that settled that. A load had been lifted from his mind. All at once the whole house seemed better and brighter. And to think that he’d been considering—even very briefly—giving up this wonderful deal! He must have been out of his mind!

  “We’ll leave the lights on,” he told Handsome. “It’ll be really dark by the time we get back.”

  “It’s really dark now,” Handsome said. “It gets dark out here right away when the sun goes down. Bingo, this Mr. Lattimer—”

  Bingo slammed the car door shut and said, “Let’s find a place to eat, first. And then talk.”

  He thought about all the restaurants described in the “Where to Go” section of the guidebook, especially those marked with (*), which translated into “a favorite with the stars.” They could afford to go to any one of them. And perhaps they owed it to themselves, as the new owners of the April Robin mansion.

  But that would mean going back into the house, opening suitcases, changing clothes. Suddenly he felt entirely too tired. Tired, and still strangely unsettled. Tomorrow night would be time enough. He finally said, “Let’s find a hamburger stand.”

  Handsome found several that were only slightly less ornate than the Chinese Theatre. They passed those up in favor of one on Wilshire Boulevard, a pleasant circular affair. Bingo relaxed, settled down, and felt at home at last.

  “All right,” he said. “You told me this Mr. Lattimer was murdered, but he wasn’t dead.”

  “He hasn’t been murdered long enough,” Handsome said. “So he isn’t legally dead, I mean.” He added, “You don’t need to worry about the house, Bingo, because he wasn’t murdered there so far as anyone knows. Account of, the police kept going over and going over and going over the house trying to find out about his being murdered and trying to find where the money was.”

  Bingo sighed. “Start from the beginning.” He took a bite of his hamburger and decided it tasted wonderful.

  “I don’t know a lot. Because the eastern papers didn’t carry much,” Handsome said apologetically, seeming to apologize as much for the eastern papers as for himself.

  His name had been Julien Lattimer, and although he appeared to be only in his early fifties, he was a retired businessman. And with a lot of money. He’d been married five times, his fifth and final wife being named Lois.

  “The News ran a picture of his five wives,” Handsome said. “Not very good pictures, though. Three of them died, and the fourth one got a divorce, and the police—and I guess everybody—think the fifth one murdered him, except nobody ever could find his body, or the money.”

  “Looks like he was good at making money, but no good at picking women,” Bingo said. “But not everybody knows how.”

  Three years before, the Lattimers had bought the mansion at 113 Damascus Drive, and as far as anyone knew, lived there happily. But according to theory, Lois, who was younger, and tending toward the glamorous in looks, had married him for his money. He had been, according to the stories, just a bit crotchety and hard to get along with. While she had been friendly. A little too friendly, especially with a handsome young would-be actor whose name had never come into the story, and who had remained throughout as an unsubstantiated rumor but still a possible motive.

  Then one day early in 1953—Handsome hadn’t seen that story and wasn’t too sure of the date—Julien Lattimer’s ex-wife Adelle had turned up and asked the police to find either Julien Lattimer or his body, and she suspected it would be the latter. He’d skipped three months of alimony payments, so, after vain attempts to reach him by telephone, she’d gone ringing his doorbell. She was met by Lois, the current Mrs. Lattimer, who told a story about his having gone away on a business trip. That had been two months before and, inquiring in the various places Julien Lattimer usually frequented, Lois could find no one who had seen him or heard from him.

  Adelle produced a will, made, she said, at the time of the divorce settlement, leaving her one quarter of everything he had in the world. She was dead-set that he’d been murdered, probably buried in the cellar, and she demanded that the police find his body, and immediately.

  Bingo gulped his coffee and said, “The cellar of our house?”

  “The cellar of our house,” Handsome said, nodding. “Only they never found any body. Not in the house or anywhere else. And nobody would’ve asked any more questions, except for some funny things. This Lois wife told a bunch of mixed-up things. Like, the night after which she never saw him again, he’d gone to the drugstore to get her some cigarettes. Now wouldn’t you think, Bingo, very rich people in a big house like that, wouldn’t run out of cigarettes?”

  Bingo nodded. “Or if they did, they’d call up and order some. Or send the housekeeper or something.”

  “Of course,” Handsome said, “he could’ve just wanted some fresh air. Only he didn’t take his car. And the drugstore was almost two miles away.”

  “He maybe wanted a walk in addition to the fresh air,” Bingo said.

  “Maybe,” Handsome said. “Only, he never did come back. And this Lois wife didn’t do anything about it.”

  “Maybe she found she had cigarettes after all,” Bingo said, “or maybe she thought he’d gone to buy them at the factory.”

  Handsome didn’t smile. “Then she said, she hadn’t worried and she hadn’t told the police, because he was a very moody guy, and sometimes he would go away for months at a time and not say anything to her or anybody else about it. Then she sort of changed her mind, and said that he had gone away on a busin
ess trip but it was all very secret and he hadn’t wanted anybody to know about it and told her not to tell anybody, and furthermore he hadn’t even told her where he was going and she hadn’t heard from him, but she wasn’t worried.”

  Bingo stirred his coffee and said, “But that doesn’t mean he was murdered. Or that she murdered him.”

  Handsome said, “When the police went all over the house, they didn’t find that he’d taken any clothes with him out of his closet. Or his razor.”

  “He could have had other clothes,” Bingo said. “And two razors.” He preferred not to think of Julien Lattimer as being murdered, even if he had been moody, crotchety and hard to get along with.

  “Well,” Handsome said, “there was the money.”

  “How much?” Bingo asked.

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Handsome said. “I guess to people like the Lattimers it would be merely fifty thousand dollars.” He paused. “But not to most people.”

  Only a few days after Julien Lattimer had gone out for cigarettes and never come back, Lois Lattimer had gone to the safety deposit box to which both the Lattimers had had access, and emptied it of securities which she had promptly converted into cash, fifty thousand dollars’ worth of it. During the following months she’d cleaned out the joint checking account.

  “So,” Handsome said, scowling a little, “she must’ve figured that some questions might be asked sometime and she had to have some money to make a getaway, and that’s exactly what happened, and nobody’s even seen her since. She just got in her car and drove away, and the car turned up a coupla months later parked on a side street in El Centro but nobody in El Centro had seen anybody looking like her, and for a long time it would look like she’d turned up some place or been some place, all the way from Vancouver to some place in Guatemala, and even once in Hawaii, only it turned out either it wasn’t her or else she’d gone already.”

  She’d done a nice job of getting away, Bingo thought.