by Craig Rice
One of them had been the tie-in between the kidnaping and the murder. He’d wondered why, if the prime object had been to lure Leonard Estapoole to the office for the purpose of murdering him and arranging the frame-up, it had been necessary to go through, the elaborate and surely dangerous business of the kidnaping at all. There would have been other and easier ways to get Leonard Estapoole to the scene.
But now with the kidnaping explained—he paused in his thinking, yawned, and shook his head to clear it. If it was explained. Then the kidnaping was one thing and the murder was another. And left Carmena Estapoole and Hammond Estapoole completely out of the murder.
More and more it seemed to him that he was not even finding himself right back where he started from, but continually losing a little ground.
Then Tony’s brother-in-law had to turn out to be a di Angelo. He would be. Everybody in this whole muddle, Malone thought furiously, seemed to be allied with somebody else, and everybody, including his best friends such as von Flanagan and Joe the Angel, seemed to know a lot more about what was going on than he did himself. He made another memorandum to himself, this one to settle this fast with Joe the Angel and perhaps even, as soon as he’d paid his bar bill, take his patronage down the street.
He sighed deeply and wondered how the living conditions were in, perhaps, Honduras.
Lily Bordreau slowed down the big car she had been steering expertly through the late traffic and said, “I hope you got a few minutes rest, Malone.”
“I did,” he said gratefully, resisting an impulse to pat her curly little head.
“Good,” she said. “Because I have a feeling you don’t want to go straight home. I have a very definite feeling that you’d much rather go along with me to my place. And talk things over with Helene.”
CHAPTER 13
It was a beautiful apartment. In fact, Jake Justus reflected, it was undoubtedly the most beautiful, most luxurious, and most comfortable apartment in Chicago, if not in the civilized world. What’s more, it was home. It had been home ever since the joyous day when he married Helene and—he remembered—promptly found himself involved in a whole series of murders.
But Helene wasn’t here.
Home, he observed, out loud and theatrically, was where the heart was. Trite and mawkish though it might be, that was his sentiment. Helene was his heart, and Helene wasn’t here, and there was no telling where Helene might be.
He glared at the serene cream-colored walls as though they were deliberately withholding information of her whereabouts, and kicked the leg of an unprotesting chair, but it didn’t make him feel the least bit better.
He went out into the little kitchenette and gazed woefully around as though Helene herself might pop out of one of the gaily decorated cupboards. He sighed and mixed himself a tall, cool drink, being very fancy and particular about the proportions and even carefully adding a cherry and a slice of lime. He tasted it, and it could easily have been stale soda pop. He poured it into the sink and went away.
He wandered unhappily into the bedroom and stared at the collection of cut crystal and blown-glass ornaments on Helene’s dressing table. He took the stopper from a bottle of perfume and sniffed it hungrily.
Much more of this, he told himself, and he’d be bursting into tears.
But Helene had to be somewhere! He scowled balefully at the inoffensive telephone and finally sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for it as if he were a drowning man and it was the last life preserver left afloat.
He called Malone’s office. There was no answer. He called Malone’s hotel, identified himself to a wary clerk who hadn’t quite recovered from the alarms of the morning, and was finally told that Malone hadn’t been in all day, nor the night before either.
There was an address book in the little ivory-and-gold desk. He began with Abner Aaberg and called Helene’s friends all the way to Dr. Yousoff Zussman, without results.
He had deliberately skipped the Estapoole number, and now he sat glowering at it. He was, he thought, like the man who’d looked in every pocket but one for a lost ten-dollar bill and now was afraid to look in that last one. Because if he called the Estapooles, and Helene wasn’t there—
He called, and she wasn’t there.
The butler was very vague and far from helpful about it. He conceded after a little coaxing that Mrs. Justus had visited there, the day before, in fact, but very briefly. She was not there now, he had no idea where she was. A little more coaxing, and he consented, dubiously, to making inquiries in the household.
But no one else had any idea where Helene was, either.
Damn! Jake put the telephone down on the floor and regarded it as though it were some treacherous small animal that had bitten him once and was likely to do so again.
He got up and prowled the apartment again. He looked at the debris of his drink in the sink and decided to make himself another one, this time not bothering with the proportions nor the decorations. He drank it shudderingly, and remembered that he had had no dinner. Not much lunch, either. But right now he wasn’t hungry.
He said, “Helene!” out loud, and had the sensation that every piece of furniture, every picture, every article of bric-a-brac, was saying “Helene” right back at him.
Alter a little time spent in sulking, he went back to the telephone and tried Malone’s office once more, and then the hotel again. Then as a last resort, he called Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar.
Malone wasn’t there either, and Joe the Angel hadn’t the faintest notion where he could be. But, Joe the Angel added hopefully, von Flanagan was there and perhaps between the two of them, they could locate the missing Malone.
Von Flanagan came on the line and said heartily that he was looking for Malone himself. Perhaps if Jake would come down, they could figure something out together.
Jake promptly said he would, and hung up. At least von Flanagan was another human being to talk to.
He called downstairs to the garage to have the convertible brought around, was told it would be right there, hung up and suddenly wondered. Helene without the big yellow convertible was something he couldn’t quite imagine, and the thought frightened him. It was like Castor without Pollux, or Romeo without Juliet, or rye without beer. Where in the world would Helene go that she wouldn’t take her car along?
There was a whole lot of springtime in the air when he stepped out onto the sidewalk, and he inhaled it deeply, visualizing Helene. This was a time when she ought to be with him, had to be with him.
He got into the car, started driving toward the Loop, and began thinking again of everything that could have happened to Helene. Bound and gagged in the attic room of a deserted and probably haunted house. Beaten and battered in some lonely alley. Embedded in concrete and dropped in the Chicago Drainage Canal. He got to Joe the Angel’s just in time to stop him from imagining even worse.
Von Flanagan looked up from his beer and said sympathetically, “You look terrible.” And then, “Do you have any bright thoughts about where Malone is?”
“No,” Jake said. “And I’m not really looking for Malone. I’m looking for my wife.” He climbed the bar stool as though it were an Alp and said hoarsely, “Rye and beer.”
Von Flanagan and Joe the Angel looked at the tall man solicitously. He was gray-faced from lack of sleep and from worry, his red hair was a forgotten tangle, and his unhappy eyes were red-rimmed. Von Flanagan signaled silently to the man behind the bar that he would take care of Jake, see him home and tuck him in bed, Joe the Angel nodded imperceptibly and filled a somewhat larger glass with rye.
Jake drank it unnoticing and said, “I can’t understand. She never went anywhere without letting me know. Well, almost never.”
Von Flanagan and Joe the Angel said, “Don’t worry,” simultaneously and both at once tried to change the subject. It didn’t work. They talked about the Cubs’ last game, about last Thursday’s wrestling matches, about Judge Touralchuk’s nephew’s dog track and about their friends,
while Jake talked doggedly on about Helene. They gave out first, and Joe the Angel refilled Jake’s glass while von Flanagan said sourly, “Don’t come crying to me with your troubles.” He added, more gently, “Do you want Gadenski’s home phone number? He’s in Missing Persons now.”
Jake said, “Oh, no,” hastily. No, he didn’t want to make this official yet. Not only because he didn’t want to admit to himself that Helene was that much missing, but because it was entirely possible she was alive and well and up to some nefarious nonsense of her own that wouldn’t bear too close scrutiny from official investigators.’
On the other hand, a little fishing for information wasn’t going to do any harm. He said, as indifferently as he could, “What’s the real low-down on that kidnaping? The Estapoole kid?”
Von Flanagan looked at him warily through narrowed eyes. “As far as the police are concerned, there never was any kidnaping. The whole thing was just a rumor.”
“Pretty lively rumor,” Jake commented, “since everybody in town seems to have known all about it, including the police department.”
“Unofficially,” von Flanagan said, stressing the word. He warmed up a little. “It was enough of a rumor, though, that Gadenski made some very discreet inquiries.”
Jake raised an eyebrow and said, “And just what did Gadenski find?” He added, “If it’s any of my business.”
“It isn’t,” von Flanagan said. He caught Joe the Angel’s eye and motioned to Jake’s glass again. “But I don’t mind telling you. Just like I told Malone this morning, she was last seen yesterday afternoon at the Museum of Science and Industry, with a very beautiful blonde.” He added, doing a little fishing of his own, “A tall blonde with a very ornamental figure, expensive clothes, and a lot of long, straight hair.”
It was Jake’s turn to change the subject. He finally said into a very hollow and waiting silence, “There are a lot of blondes in the city of Chicago.” He added, “And Malone’s probably with one of them right now.”
“He probably is,” von Flanagan said. He was caught off guard and said, “Most probably, Tommy Storm.”
Jake sat up. “Why didn’t you say so?” He frowned. “If you were looking for him, why didn’t you look there?” He started to slide off the bar stool. “Where does she live?” He saw von Flanagan’s mouth open and shut again and said bitterly, “Oh, never mind, I’ll look in the telephone book.”
Von Flanagan wearily gave the address on East Walton Place and added, “But you don’t want to go bothering her at this time of night.”
“That’s right,” Joe the Angel put in soothingly. “Jake, you go home and get some sleep.”
“Sleep!” Jake said. He told Joe the Angel and everybody within hearing distance just what he thought of that idea. “Malone might be able to help find Helene.”
“In that case,” von Flanagan said, “I’ll go with you.”
Jake looked at him for a moment. He had started to voice an indignant refusal and suddenly grew cautious. Instead he smiled a little weakly and said, “Maybe Joe the Angel’s right. Maybe we ought to have one more all around and then go home and sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.”
He hoped that he looked a little relaxed and very weary. He even managed to enter into a brief discussion of what was good in the seventh at Tanforan. It was easy enough to fool the big police officer, he mused, but Joe the Angel was something else. Oh well, Joe the Angel wouldn’t matter, once he got outside.
But once he got outside, von Flanagan was right at his elbow, offering to take him home. Jake pointed wordlessly at the yellow convertible.
“In a no-parking zone,” von Flanagan said reprovingly. “But that’s not in my department. I’ll drive you home and take a taxi from there.”
Jake started to demand indignantly, “Do you think I’m drunk?” and remembered that it would be just as well if von Flanagan did. He mumbled, “Goo’ idea,” let von Flanagan slide under the wheel, and got in beside him, slumping a little in the seat. If conversation was going to be made, though, he was going to direct it. “Terrible thing, that murder.”
Von Flanagan agreed that it was all of that. Especially coming on top of the rumored kidnaping. Everything seemed to be all mixed up together. The rumored kidnaping of the Commanday child, the beautiful little four-year-old with long golden curls and blue eyes. The Estapoole murder. Malone rumored as the go-between in the kidnaping. Malone’s office the scene of the murder. He started to go on, “And your wife,” and immediately remembered that the basic idea was to keep Jake’s mind off Helene. Instead he said a little lamely, “Oh well, we’ve got McGinnis and his confession, and it’s all washed up now.”
“And very nicely, too,” Jake said agreeably. He had noticed the slight shade of hesitation in von Flanagan’s voice when he’d mentioned McGinnis, and it matched a disquieting notion in his own mind, but this was no time to bring that up.
At the doorway von Flanagan offered to escort Jake to his apartment, his attitude suggesting going so far as to tuck him into his bed, but at this point Jake did refuse, and stubbornly. He could manage just beautifully, he said grandly, and it had been very nice of von Flanagan to bring him home, and the convertible could be parked right over there, thanks very much.
He said good night at the elevator door, waited until the elevator started, and said, “All the way up. Then all the way down again. In fact, you’d better go all the way up and down twice.”
The elevator operator looked at him suspiciously. “Mr. Justus—”
“I am not,” Jake said. He did feel unusually good, though, at that, for three small ryes, even on an empty stomach. “Nor am I a fugitive from the law.”
When they reached the ground floor the second time, he whispered elaborately, “I just didn’t want my policeman friend to know I’m going to go call on a blonde,” and fled to the front door, where he paused and peered carefully around. There was no sign of von Flanagan in the lobby nor near the convertible. He took time to take one last look up and down the street before he started the convertible and headed for East Walton Place.
The remodeled town house looked discouragingly deserted from the outside, but that didn’t stop him. He double-parked in front of it and bounded up the steps. There it was, Tommy Storm, 2-B. He bounded up more steps and pounded loudly on the door.
There was no answer. He pounded again, and louder. Still no answer. He looked wildly around for something to bang with, saw nothing, used his fist again, and this time called noisily, “Come on, I know there’s someone there!”
A voice came from downstairs, querulously, “There ain’t anybody there and cut out that racket afore I call the cops!”
Jake peeked around the top of the stairs. The head of a thin-faced woman in pin-curls was looking at him from around the comer of the door.
Jake said, “Damn it, I’m looking for my wife!”
“She ain’t here,” the woman said, “I don’t even know who she is. Go on now, get out of here.”
“My wife is—” Jake stopped and said, a little more mildly, “Where’s Tommy Storm?”
“I don’t know where she is, either,” the woman snapped, “and I don’t much care. Cops was looking for her a little while ago, too. She ain’t here and I don’t know where she is, and now git!”
Jake came part way down the stairs. “Cops, you said?”
“One cop. Big red-faced cop.” Suddenly her voice changed a little. “You the cops, too?”
“No,” Jake said magnificently. “Newspaperman.” Well, he had been, once.
She looked at him nastily and suspiciously. “You git, or I will call the cops! Fact, I think I will anyway!” She slammed the door in his face. From behind it he could hear the sound of furious dialing.
He took the steps in one leap, slid into the convertible and went roaring down East Walton Place. That was just what he needed, the police looking for a red-haired man in a yellow convertible, no more conspicuous than a fireman’s parade on a clear day! Oh well, it cou
ldn’t be helped. Just one of the many, many hazards of life. He’d dodged cops before, he could do it again. If only Helene were with him, she’d love this!
He slowed down a little. He could always get quickly home, park the convertible where it had been, swear the elevator operator to deep secrecy, and slide hastily into bed, telling any nosy policemen who might come along later that somebody had obviously been smoking opium, and that he’d been here all along.
Or, police or no police, he could go right on looking for Helene.
There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation as to which he was going to do. But where was he going to look?
Naturally, he told himself, at the Estapooles’. That’s where he should have started in the first place. Helene had flown back to Chicago because of a telegram from someone in the Estapoole family, and she had last been seen in the company of the mysteriously kidnaped or not kidnaped Estapoole child. That flat-voiced butler could easily have been lying. Or Helene could have been there and, for some reason, been hiding from the butler. Why, he didn’t know, but he certainly was going to ask her when he found her.
That, and a few other things. He was beginning to get mad, now. Here was Helene, safe and sound and perfectly all right, hiding out from everyone including a butler, at the Estapooles’ Lake Forest home, while he was practically out of his mind with worry!
He was so furiously absorbed in just what he was going to have to say to Helene that he shot through three red lights before he heard the moan of an approaching siren. Then he swore loudly. This was no time to be involved with cops. He’d explain everything later, but right now, he had to get to Helene, and fast! He realized that he’d already come close to the border of Evanston, once across it he knew a dozen ways to lose himself and find a certain back road to Lake Forest. But right now—
Right now, he got caught in an unexpected traffic jam, and the squad car moved up and stopped beside him. One cop got out, his face grim. “Listen, fella...” he began. Then he sniffed. “Drunk, too,” he said nastily.
A scratchy voice on the police radio said something Jake couldn’t hear, but the squad car’s driver called out something of which he did catch the words, “driving a yellow convertible.”