The April Robin Murders

by Craig Rice

  At the door, some of Henkin’s flamboyancy seemed to come back. “Remember,” he said. “When you need studio space, actors, scripts, anything, just call on old Leo Henkin.”

  “We’ll be sure to,” Bingo promised, “and thanks again, Mr. Henkin.”

  As they walked toward the car, Handsome said, “Maybe that’s why I couldn’t remember about her, Bingo. Because the newspapers hushed it up. Maybe my memory’s all right, after all.”

  “I’m sure it is, Handsome,” Bingo said.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “To Kimballsville,” Bingo said.

  “What for?”

  “To look up a ghost, Handsome.”

  The Kimballsville cemetery was not a large one, but it was a scary one nonetheless. As Bingo and Handsome threaded their way through the tombstones with the assistance of a flashlight, Bingo had the distinct urge to whistle or something. Instead, he began talking.

  “You’ll remember,” he said, “that Mariposa DeLee told us her sister-in-law died in Kimballsville and was buried here. Am I right, Handsome?”

  “You’re right,” Handsome said. “She also said that Charlie Browne was married to this Miss DeLee.”

  “Mmmm,” Bingo said. He flashed the light onto a tombstone. “Parker Atchison,” he read. “That’s not what we’re looking for.”

  He flashed the light onto another tombstone. Then he stepped closer to the grave. “I think this is it,” he said. Together, they studied the chiseled inscription:

  LOIS DELEE

  1913-1928

  “What I’d like to know,” Bingo said, “is how Lois DeLee managed to get buried in 1928 and then marry Julien Lattimer in 1950.”

  Handsome nodded soberly. “Maybe her sister-in-law Mariposa can tell us,” he said. “It should make interesting listening.”

  Bingo was not willing to speculate on whether or not Mariposa DeLee was actually at the Skylight Motel all day long and simply refusing telephone calls. Such an observation would have been ungentlemanly, and he liked to think of himself as possessing at least some of the social graces. The fact remained, however, that Mariposa was very much in evidence when he and Handsome arrived at the motel. Sitting in front of the office under an amber-colored bug light, she started from the chair when she spotted the convertible and then apparently decided to brave it through.

  “We’ve been trying to reach you,” Bingo said.

  “I’ve been out,” she answered. In the soft amber light, she looked younger than she did in natural sunshine. She wore a white sweater and black tapered slacks, and the yellow light concealed the wrinkles on her face, so that she might have been a young matron.

  “Find Charlie Browne?” Bingo asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s a shame,” Bingo said. “There were a few things, Mrs. DeLee…”

  “Yes?”

  “… which we know you won’t mind discussing since we’re such old friends.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You said that your sister-in-law died in Kimballsville a couple of years back. You did say that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.” Nervously Mariposa DeLee lighted a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke.

  “What did you mean by a couple of years back?”

  “Just what it sounded like.”

  “A couple is usually defined as two,” Bingo said. “Now, you didn’t mean two years back, did you?”

  “I meant a couple. Two, three, four—who remembers?”

  “Her tombstone remembers,” Handsome said.

  “What?”

  “She died in 1928,” Bingo amplified. “Unless you’re counting by fifteens, that’s not a couple of years ago.”

  “All right, I forgot the date,” Mariposa said.

  “Did you forget her name, too?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What was her name?”

  Mariposa paused. “Lois,” she said at last.

  “Lois what?”

  Again Mariposa paused. This time the pause assumed rather lengthy proportions. Bingo and Handsome waited. It seemed as if Mariposa was not going to answer.

  “Lois what?” Bingo repeated.

  Mariposa maintained her silence.

  “You said she was married to Charlie Browne, didn’t you? You said he took care of her while she was sick. You said he was more like a mother to her than a husband. Didn’t you say that, Mrs. DeLee?”

  “Yes, I did,” Mariposa answered. She puffed on the cigarette, let out a quick nervous ball of smoke, and then puffed on it again.

  “Then her name would be Lois Browne, wouldn’t it?” Bingo asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why is the name Lois DeLee on her tombstone?”

  “I… I don’t know. Perhaps it was a mistake.”

  “Perhaps,” Bingo said. “Or perhaps she wasn’t married to Charlie Browne at all. Since she was only fifteen when she died—”

  “Who says she was only—”

  “The tombstone,” Handsome said. “1913 to 1928.”

  “Since she was only fifteen,” Bingo continued, “it’s unlikely that she was married, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Mariposa said. “I don’t have to answer your questions. I don’t have to—”

  “Naturally you don’t,” Bingo said. “But we’re all friends and all trying to work this thing out together, aren’t we? Sure we are. Like for example, your husband’s name was Frank, isn’t that right? Frank DeLee?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And he died young, isn’t that right?”

  “He died shortly after we were married.”

  “And Lois DeLee was his sister, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did she happen to be in Kimballsville, Mrs. DeLee? And how did she die?”

  “She came to visit me, as I told you.”

  “And the dying?”

  “She was very sick.”

  “With what?”

  “Pneumonia.”

  “And she died of pneumonia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have a doctor?”

  “Not until it was too late.”

  “Was a death certificate issued?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “By a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which doctor?”

  “A… a doctor Charlie knew.”

  Bingo nodded. “Do you still maintain, Mrs. DeLee, that Charlie Browne was married to young Lois? Isn’t it more likely that he was a… ah… a friend of yours?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Mariposa said.

  “I suppose we’ll have to,” Bingo answered, sighing. “Come on, Handsome.” He turned on his heel and then stopped. “Mrs. DeLee, I hope you realize that permission is often granted for the exhumation of bodies.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mariposa said.

  “Only this. I’m not a betting man, but I’m willing to wager that the coffin of Lois DeLee is, and always was, empty!”

  twenty-one

  The Owl’s Roost would have been called, in New York, a very sleazy dump. In California, it was called a very sleazy dump. The upholstered booths had been done in imitation zebra, which had peeled and cracked long ago and which now resembled vertical interference on a television screen. The people lounging about the roost might very well have been owls. They observed each newcomer with the wide-open stare of a night bird.

  Bingo and Handsome had been so observed when they entered the bar at ten minutes past ten. It was now twenty minutes past midnight, and the observation had slackened off somewhat during the last two hours and ten minutes, but Bingo nonetheless felt the bar’s clientele were wondering what he and his partner were doing here. Matthew, the bartender, had no such moments of speculation. He knew exactly what they were doing there. They were looking for Charlie Browne.

  Eying the clock, he said now, “It don’t look like he’s coming. Maybe he�
��s been tipped to stay away.”

  “Maybe so,” Bingo said.

  “I’ve always wondered,” Handsome said to Matthew, “how to get foam on a whiskey sour. I once read an article in Esquire which told how to make the six most-ordered cocktails in the United States, but it didn’t mention the way to get the foam. An article on Anita Ekberg started on the next page. She was almost naked, as I recall.”

  “Egg white,” Matthew said.

  “I don’t understand,” Handsome said.

  “You separate an egg white from the rest of the egg, dump it in the mixer with the other ingredients, and whammo! Foam!”

  “Thank you,” Handsome said.

  “Do you think he’ll come?” Bingo asked.

  “Not if Mrs. DeLee phoned him,” Handsome said. “She’s a nice old lady but I wouldn’t put it past her. Especially if something funny happened back in Kimballsville in 1928.”

  “I think something very funny happened, Handsome.”

  “I think so, too, Bingo.”

  “It still doesn’t explain, though—” Bingo started, and then clamped his mouth shut. “The window!” he said, and he was off his stool immediately, bolting for the door. Behind him, Handsome said, “Browne?”

  “Yes, but he’s seen us,” Bingo said, and he threw open the door.

  They heard his footsteps instantly. The Owl’s Roost boasted a blacktop parking lot, and Browne’s shoes clattered noisily on the asphalt surface now as he raced across the deserted space toward his car. It was beautiful, Bingo mused, to see Handsome in motion, his long legs chewing up the asphalt, his wide shoulders pushing against the California night. It was beautiful to watch him catch Charlie Browne by the shoulder just as he opened the door to the car, beautiful to watch him spin the con man around, release the shoulder, and recapture the man by the lapels of his suit.

  “What is this?” Browne shouted.

  “Hello, Mr. Budlong,” Handsome said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  “Budlong? What the hell are you talking about?” Browne said. “My name’s Carlyle Buchanan.”

  “And also Courtney Budlong, and Clifford Bradbury, and Charlie Browne.”

  “I never saw either of you before in my entire life,” Browne said, but without much conviction.

  Bingo cocked his head to one side and looked at Browne with paternal exasperation. Handsome clucked his tongue. Browne sighed heavily.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “There now, that’s better,” Bingo said.

  “Since you were about to enter your car anyway,” Handsome said, “why don’t we all go inside and have a chat?”

  “I have nothing to talk about,” Browne said. “I sold you that house legally.”

  “Let’s sit, anyway,” Bingo said.

  They went into the car, Browne sitting on the front seat between Bingo and Handsome. “If you sold us the April Robin house legally,” Bingo said, “that means the Julien Lattimer signature is bona fide. Where’d you get it?”

  Charlie Browne did not answer.

  “He’s very much like Mrs. DeLee,” Handsome said. “She didn’t have much to say, either.” He paused. “At first.”

  “Did you talk to Mari—?” Browne started, and then stopped himself. The mild California night air pushed its way through the window on the driver’s side, worked its way across the serious faces of the three men on the front seat, and then moved past Handsome and through the window on his side, bound for Japan.

  “She told us all about how Lois DeLee died,” Handsome said.

  And then Bingo, thinking bigger than he’d ever thought since he’d come to Hollywood, said, “All about the car accident.”

  To say that Charlie Browne’s mouth fell open would have been complete understatement, Bingo thought. Not only did it fall open, but it appeared ready to drop from his face. At any moment, Bingo expected Browne’s jawbone to fall free and topple down the front of Browne’s sports shirt.

  “Yes,” Bingo said, in simple reiteration. “The car accident.”

  Browne closed his mouth, and then he closed his eyes, and Bingo imagined he was listening to the music of a heavenly choir as the Judgment Day rolls were read. He nodded then and said, “It wasn’t my idea. It was April Robin’s.”

  “Maybe we ought to listen to his side of the story,” Handsome suggested.

  “Sure,” Bingo said. “Certainly. His side of the story begins like this. First, you were not married to Lois DeLee, isn’t that right? You only used that gimmick as an extra sort of pressure.”

  “Yes,” Browne admitted.

  “Second, you were staying at the cabins with Mariposa DeLee on the night Lois died. You’d probably never met Lois before that night.”

  “I’d seen her before,” Browne said. “She’d come to stay with Mariposa about two weeks before the accident. I’d seen her around.”

  “Now let’s have your version of the accident.”

  “We were sitting outside, Mariposa and me,” Browne said. His brow wrinkled but not with the effort of recall. Bingo was more than certain that the events of that December night in 1928 were indelibly stamped into the memory of Charlie Browne and would never be removed. “Lois had gone for a walk. She was just a teen-age kid, you know, fifteen, but well developed for a kid. But she went for walks a lot, a dreamy kind of kid. She was crossing the highway when this Stutz Bearcat came tooling down the road. It was going, man! Not like today’s high-powered cars, but this baby had power of its own, and it hugged the road, and it came roaring out of the darkness like the Twentieth Century Limited. It must have knocked Lois ten feet in the air and then sent her sprawling another thirty feet onto the highway. Mariposa and I came running out of the motel. The car stopped. I don’t know why, but the driver pulled up and got out. I recognized her right away. There wasn’t a person in America, no less California, who didn’t know that face. It was April Robin.”

  “Go on,” Bingo said tensely. He could, through Browne’s voice and words, visualize the fragile seventeen-year-old stepping from the long, low-slung roadster, fresh from the laughter that had greeted her voice at the Pantages, perhaps trembling a little, her hair bobbed, her dress short and straight-lined in the style of the twenties, a long strand of pearls around her throat perhaps, dropping to the middle of the waistless garment.

  “Lois was dead,” Browne said, and Bingo heard the words as if he were young April Robin, and he could feel the sudden knowledge of the highway death, and he almost began shivering as April Robin must have done that night some thirty years ago. “I told this to Miss Robin. I told her she was in serious trouble. I—”

  “You told her Lois was your wife,” Handsome interrupted.

  “Yes. Because… well, I’d already made a plan. The minute I saw who was driving that car, I began thinking in dollar signs. And I knew my case would be stronger if she thought I was Lois’ husband. I told her we would keep it quiet… if she paid us. I asked her how much she had in the bank. She wasn’t sure. Most of her money was in trust funds she couldn’t touch. She said it was something above fifty thousand. I told her I wanted all of it. We took Lois off the highway and left the car at the motel that night. I called a friend of mine, a doctor in San Diego, and he came up and was willing to say the kid had died of pneumonia… for a slice of the dough. The next morning Miss Robin went to her bank in Hollywood to get the money.”

  “And she came back with it,” Bingo said.

  “Yes. And she also came back with the reviews of her picture which had opened the night before. And she also came back with an idea.”

  “What was the idea?”

  “She wanted to get away from Hollywood. After what they’d done to her the night before, she wanted to get away, never see them again, never hear of them again, never give them a chance to laugh at April Robin as long as she lived. Her idea was a simple one. She wanted to change places with Lois DeLee. She wanted April Robin to die.”

  “But she thought Lois was your wife, didn’t she?
Wouldn’t she imagine there were complications to—”

  “As far as she was concerned, Lois Browne was dead, my wife was dead. She wanted to assume the name of Lois DeLee, as if the marriage had never existed. This was fine with me because, actually, there’d never been a damn marriage. She still doesn’t know what the tombstone in Kimballsville says. She probably thinks it’s inscribed ‘Lois Browne.’ But the doctor and I couldn’t take any chances. We had to put her real name on the stone.”

  “But first you put April’s clothes on the young girl, put April’s purse in the car with her, together with a few bills from the bank, and then shoved the car over a cliff,” Bingo said.

  “And then we set fire to it later,” Browne said. “We threw gasoline on the wreckage. And… and the girl. Miss Robin touched the match. I remember that very clearly. It was her who touched the match.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then she left. In the papers the next day, after the accident was reported, after everyone thought April Robin was dead, I found out she’d withdrawn seventy-five thousand dollars from the bank. She’d sold us short by twenty-five grand.”

  “How’d you split the money?”

  “We got fifty all told. Twenty to me, twenty to Mariposa, and ten to the doctor who made out the death certificate.”

  “And the grave?”

  “Nothing but an empty box in Lois’ grave,” Browne said. He paused. “I didn’t commit any crime. April Robin was driving that car.”

  “You’re an accessory to manslaughter,” Handsome said flatly.

  “Okay,” Bingo said, “let’s say that April Robin, now Lois DeLee, learned her slack-wire act and got into show business again, far from Hollywood. Let’s say the twenty-five grand she withheld from you didn’t last very long and that she was damned anxious to marry Julien Lattimer when he came along. By this time, she’d bleached her hair blond and possibly had a nose-bob done on that famous profile. So she marries him and becomes the fifth Mrs. Julien Lattimer. All right, why does her husband disappear? Why does she vanish immediately after him?”