The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs (masao masuto mystery)

by Howard Fast

  She hesitated just a moment. “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you know Monte Sweet?”

  “No, not personally. I never met him.”

  “Do you know Monte Sweet?” he asked Nancy Legett.

  She shook her head.

  He turned to Mitzie Fuller.

  She smiled and shook her head. “No; not really.”

  “What does that mean, not really?” Masuto asked.

  “You’re worse than my analyst,” Mitzie said. “It means just that-not really.”

  He turned back to Laura Crombie. “We have three women whose ex-husbands have motives, if not for murder at least for hatred. What about your ex-husband, Mrs. Crombie?”

  She shrugged. “Since this is naked time, I’ll let down my hair with the rest. When I married Arthur Crombie three years ago, he didn’t have a red penny. I’m a very wealthy woman. Even then, I was not poor. I put Arthur into the real estate business. Oh, he isn’t stupid. He’s damn smart, but he just loused up everything he touched. This time, for some reason, it was different. He got into it just as property values out here began to skyrocket. He had been a real estate agent before, so he knew the ropes, and he specialized in very expensive homes. Today he has one of the hottest businesses in town. Then, six months after we were married, my father died. I was the only heir, and the estate came to something over seven million. Arthur got his share of that, since it was I who was pleading for the divorce, not him. In other words, today Arthur is a millionaire because the lady you are looking at is a damn fool. Murder me? He ought to erect a monument to me.”

  Masuto nodded and waited.

  “That’s it.”

  “Do you have any children, Mrs. Crombie?”

  “No!” hard and short.

  Nancy Legett was staring at her. Masuto watched her, then looked at Laura.

  Beckman came back into the kitchen. Masuto guessed that he had searched every corner of the house. Beckman would do it that way. He looked at Beckman, and Beckman said softly, “Okay.”

  Masuto waited. Finally, she said, “Yes. I told you. But what difference does it make? How does it come into this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how anything comes into this. I’m trying to find out.”

  “I had a daughter,” Laura said bleakly. “She’s dead. I told you that this morning.”

  “Please tell me more about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m trying to save lives.”

  “She’s dead. It has nothing to do with this.”

  “I don’t want to go elsewhere and pick up shreds of gossip. I want you to tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. My daughter was killed in an automobile accident. Have you ever lost a child, Sergeant Masuto? Would you find it amusing to discuss?” With that, she leaped to her feet and strode out of the room.

  “She can’t talk about it,” Nancy Legett said to him. “It was over three years ago, and it doesn’t get any better. Kelly was a beautiful, wonderful child.”

  “Kelly?”

  “They called her Kelly. Her real name was Catherine. Laura lived for the child-especially after Laura’s first husband died. We don’t all make rotten marriages. Laura’s first marriage was a good one,” Nancy said.

  “Do you know whether Arthur Crombie was in the army?”

  “Yes, he was a pilot in Korea. He still flies. He has his own plane now.”

  “And did you know Arthur Crombie?” Masuto asked Mitzie.

  “Yes-not too well. About a week ago, he called me and then came to my house.”

  “Why?”

  “You know what’s going on in the real estate market here in California. It’s even worse in Beverly Hills. The moment word gets around that you might want to sell your house, they descend on you like scavengers. Crombie heard that I wanted to sell my house, and he came by to look at it.”

  “And do you want to sell it?”

  “I think so. It’s a huge barn of a place on Palm Drive, and it makes no sense for me to go on living there. My life with Fuller was quick and merry. We were married only six months. Things still aren’t settled. As soon as they are, I’ll sell the house.”

  “And when he was there, did anything out of the way happen? Anything he might have asked you?”

  “About my house?”

  “About anything.”

  She shook her head. “No. Nothing unusual. Just the general questions-you know, how is the plumbing and does the roof leak and that sort of thing. It’s an old house, a big Spanish Colonial, so it’s far from perfect.”

  “And that’s the only time you saw Arthur Crombie?”

  Did she hesitate? Was there something in her large blue eyes? If it was there, it was gone instantly. She was an amazingly self-controlled young woman, Masuto decided.

  “Yes. The only time.”

  Laura Crombie returned to the room. “I’m sorry,” she said to Masuto. “I behaved like an emotional fool. But this has been a terrible day, Sergeant.”

  “I know that.”

  “There are pains that go away. The loss of a child is not one of them,” she said.

  “I know that too.”

  “How long are you going to keep us here in this house?”

  “I’m not keeping you here. I have no authority to keep you here. I suggest very strongly that the three of you spend the night here, and that no one leave the house tomorrow until I see you.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Some time tomorrow afternoon, I hope.”

  “I have a luncheon date and a hairdresser appointment,” Mitzie Fuller said, “not to mention a date that I broke tonight and put off until tomorrow.”

  “I hope you’ll be able to keep your date. I suggest you cancel the luncheon and the hairdresser appointment.”

  “Who’s going to scragg me at Tony Cooper’s?”

  “Stop it, Mitzie,” Nancy said. “He’s deadly serious.”

  “Can you put up Detective Beckman? I want him to stay here tonight.”

  “If I have to give him my own bed,” Laura said. “Right now, the only men in the world who interest me are oversized policemen. But must I have that uniformed policeman standing outside my door?”

  “He’ll leave,” Masuto told her. “Detective Beckman can take care of anything that might come up.”

  Beckman walked with him to the front door. “Well?” he asked.

  “It takes shape. Not too clearly, but at least it begins to take on some shape,” Masuto said.

  “You wouldn’t like to tell me about it? Because for me it don’t have any shape at all.”

  “Not yet.”

  “The house is wired with an alarm system,” Beckman said. “The downstairs windows are locked. For that matter, so are those upstairs. The place is air conditioned. You don’t mind if I get some sleep?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You’re all heart, Masao. When can I leave this place?”

  “Some time tomorrow.”

  “When?”

  “When I’ve picked up that murderous bastard.”

  8

  The Zen Master

  It was just past one o’clock in the morning when Masuto pulled his car into the driveway of his house in Culver City. He closed the car door softly and turned the key in the lock of the kitchen door just as softly. The light was on in the kitchen, and on the kitchen table a note that said, “If you are hungry, there are things in the refrigerator.” It was neither a friendly nor an unfriendly note. There was no greeting and no word of affection.

  As quietly as he had entered the house, Masuto undressed in the bathroom, and then he slid into bed next to Kati, who appeared to be asleep. One session had apparently changed her. On other nights, she would somehow have managed to remain awake and have a hot drink and hot food waiting for him. Tonight, nothing.

  He stretched out in bed and was just beginning to drift off when the sleeping Kati said, “Were they pretty?”

  “Who?”<
br />
  “The four women you spent the evening with.”

  “There were only three,” he told her unfeelingly. “One was killed.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “I’m sorry, Kati. It happened.” He regretted that he had flung this at her. There was no reason to tell her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. And I was so angry at you.”

  “Why?”

  “Not really angry. Only because I’m aware of the inequality of things.”

  “Yes. The consciousness-raising session.”

  “You told me to go.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. I wanted you to go.” He was very sleepy.

  “I heard a lecture by Sono Akio.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Marta Suzuki. Not your Zen Suzuki. They are not even related. I asked.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you did.”

  “They both spoke about the condition of women in Japan. We think of Japan as a modern industrial country, but the women are still enslaved there. They have no rights and no equality.”

  “We don’t live in Japan,” Masuto muttered. “We live in California.”

  “You are not even interested. There is your basic, beginning point of it all. The man has no interest in what the woman thinks or does. But she, on the other hand, is supposed to exist in a condition of total interest in what he does.”

  Masuto sat up and stared at his wife in the darkness. “Kati dear-in one evening?”

  “There is another meeting on Thursday. If you forbid me to go, things will be very unpleasant for both of us.”

  “I would not dream of forbidding you to go. What right have I to forbid you to do anything?”

  “None,” Kati said smugly.

  Nevertheless, although Masuto awakened at six-thirty, Kati was already up and in the kitchen, dressed in her white and yellow kimono, looking very lovely and preparing breakfast. Masuto kissed her on the back of the neck, just below the thick knot of her black hair.

  “Will you have eggs?” she asked him.

  “Nothing this morning. I must go to the zendo this morning and meditate with Roshi Hakuin. I have some questions, and possibly he will be kind enough to answer.”

  “The children are still asleep. How can you leave without seeing the children? I am sure they’ve forgotten that they have a father.”

  “Then you must remind them.”

  “Masao, I’m so afraid. You walk with death always. If it reaches out and touches you-”

  “Nothing will happen to me, Kati.”

  “Then why is there a bandage on your chin? What happened?”

  “Just a scratch. It’s nothing.” He kissed her again. “I must go.”

  It was almost seven o’clock, yet he could not leave without looking at his roses, without walking once through the rose garden. Next to his wife, his children, and meditation, the roses were the most precious part of Masuto’s life. A month before, he had received a rooted cutting of an old-fashioned cabbage rose from a distant relative in New Jersey, with a promise that the blooms would be six inches across. The first buds had just appeared. He wanted to dust them, but they were still wet with the morning dew, and reluctantly he left them.

  The zendo was in downtown Los Angeles. At this hour, the streets would be quicker than the freeway, and Masuto drove down Pico Boulevard to Normandie Avenue. The zendo was a cluster of old wooden buildings that the students of the roshi had purchased and reconditioned. About forty families lived in the cluster that comprised the zendo, husbands, wives, and children-a kind of communal development that existed only in Los Angeles.

  Masuto parked his car and walked to the meditation room, a long room with a polished wooden floor and two rows of pillows and mats. The room was actually two rooms joined together, the windows replaced by Victorian stained glass, picked up at auctions and flea markets. Roshi Hakuin sat at the far end of the room, a small, elderly Japanese man in a saffron-colored robe, sitting cross-legged, his eyes on the floor, while on either side, stretching down both sides of the room, sitting cross-legged on the pillows, were about twenty men and women in their morning meditation. One was a Burmese, two were Korean; the rest were Caucasian.

  The room was filled with a soft, gentle morning light that diffused through the stained glass windows.

  Masuto removed his shoes. He was about to take off his jacket when he realized that if he did, his revolver would be revealed. A zendo was no place to enter with a visible revolver. It was bad enough to enter with a concealed weapon. So he kept his jacket on, walked in his stocking feet to the unoccupied pillow closest to the roshi, sat down cross-legged, and began his meditation.

  On by one, the others completed their meditation and left. Presently, only Masuto and the old Japanese master remained in the zendo. The roshi had finished meditating and was watching Masuto. Masuto put his palms together reverently, bowed his head, and waited.

  “Welcome,” Hakuin said, speaking in Japanese. He was never one to waste words.

  “Thank you, Roshi, so grateful,” Masuto replied, also in Japanese.

  “For what?”

  “For the privilege of speaking to you, Roshi.”

  “What nonsense! Since when is it a privilege to speak to a foolish old man? You would do better to tend your roses. That is what you tend, isn’t it? Roses?”

  “Yes, Roshi. But I am deeply troubled. I am in pursuit of a killer who has killed many times.”

  “Is that why you come into the zendo with a gun under your coat?”

  “I’m sorry, so very sorry. But what was I to do once I was here?”

  “And what have I to do with killers and killing, Masao?”

  “What turns a man into a murderer?”

  “Fear.”

  “But we are all afraid.”

  “And we are all murderers.”

  “This man,” Masuto said, “is like a thousand other men. He has money and position and respect. But he kills again and again. I am trying desperately to understand before I act.”

  “Do you know who he is?” the Roshi asked.

  “Yes-if I know why.”

  “A long time ago,” the little old man said, “a young man came to a worthy roshi, and he said to him, Master, my father begs that I study Zen, but why? Tell me why. And this roshi, Masao, having more patience than I have, said to the young man, ‘If you study Zen, you will not be afraid to die.’”

  “I have heard the story many times. It puzzles me.”

  “Because you are stupid, Masao.”

  Masuto nodded.

  “What else? You are part of a large police force, but you come to a foolish old Japanese man for an answer to your problem. This is certainly a very stupid thing to do. Anyway, as you already told me, you know who this man is. And I have told you why he does what he does.”

  The roshi rose and Masuto rose. They bowed to each other. The old man went to Masuto and put an arm around him.

  “You are a good boy, Masao. Meditate more.”

  “If I could only find the time.”

  “Stand still and very quietly. The time will find you.”

  9

  Alan Greene

  At headquarters, Masuto paused and listened. Fredericks, a uniformed cop, was leaving, and Masuto asked him, “Who’s in there?”

  “Wainwright, the city manager, and the mayor. They’ve been at it since eight-thirty.”

  The mayor was an unsalaried position. Like the president of the lodge who was the butt of everyone’s anger, he did it for the “honor.”

  “There is no police force in the world,” Wainwright was saying, his voice clear through the thin door, “that can prevent crime. I got a forty-page report from the F.B.I., if you want to read it. There’s just no way we could have anticipated what happened to Mrs. Greene.”

  “As I understand, there were two policemen on the scene.” That was the city manager.

  “There could have been ten cops on the scene. How would they know that the car was wired? You don’t look for a wired c
ar in Beverly Hills.”

  “All right. That happened.” The mayor’s voice. “But the rumor’s out that three other murders are tied into this.”

  A long silence.

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, yes or no?”

  “Yes,” Wainwright said shortly.

  “What did you say? Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus God, four lousy murders! We’re not that big. Don’t you understand? We’re just not that big.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Wainwright said, “three of them took place outside the Beverly Hills city limits. So technically, those three belong to the Los Angeles cops.”

  “Well, who tied them in?”

  “Masuto.”

  “Why?” the mayor cried. “For Christ’s sake, why? What’s the motive?”

  “Because that’s the way it is. If it’s that way, that’s the way it is,” Wainwright said.

  “What do you mean, that’s the way it is. You just told us the way it is. Los Angeles has these killings,” the mayor said.

  “We got them too.”

  Masuto stopped listening and went into his office. It was a quarter after nine in the morning now. The Los Angeles Times had cleared space on the front page for the death of Alice Greene. It was mostly a picture of the burned car with only a few words of background squeezed in at the last moment. They specified that the two-seater Mercedes was priced at twenty-seven thousand dollars. It was almost obligatory to include a price in any Beverly Hills story. The deaths of the Chicano boy and the chemist rated only a few lines on inside pages. Violent death was hardly a novelty, unless of course it occurred in Beverly Hills inside a Mercedes.

  Masuto dialed the number of the Crombie house. Mrs. Crombie answered.

  “Our handsome Oriental jailer,” she said. “When do we get sprung?”

  “Soon, I hope. May I talk to Detective Beckman?”

  “He’s at breakfast.”

  “See if he can tear himself away.”

  “Hold on. He’s finishing his second order of scrambled eggs and waffles and honey. I’ll let him take it in the library where he’ll have some privacy.”

  A minute or so later, Beckman’s voice came over the phone, thickened by the fact that he was still chewing. “Do you know, Masao,” he said, “those Arabs got something. Living with three women has its points.”