The Case of the Vanishing Beauty (18 page)

"Wasn't it right after that Press had his accident?"

"Yeah. Two, three months later. But, Scott, I know what you're driving at, and it just sounds silly. Word gets down to me from some of the boys that Press got killed in an accident in Oregon someplace, but if you're thinking maybe one of the boys lumped him for tearing them off up in Frisco, forget it."

"Sure. They wouldn't do anything like that, huh?"

"Not that so much. It's just silly. Too many marks, Scott. Just like Barnum said."

"O.K. You don't know anything about his getting tied up with the Inner World thing?"

"No. Must have been after the Frisco mess, though."

"Good enough. That makes it between the time he skipped with the money and the time he got killed." I thought again about those fingerprints and added, "Or when he's supposed to have been killed. You hear anything funny about the accident?"

He shook his head. "Not a thing. I hear it from the boys, is all. Nothing smells. I didn't even wonder about it. It didn't mean anything to me, so I just took what they said."

"Sure. When did Press pull this caper up north?"

He thought a moment and answered, "Around the first of July. The mark was on a vacation over the Fourth, I remember.

"O.K. Well, thanks, Vincent. It might help. I'm damned if I know for sure, but thanks for the story. Sorry I can't send you a mark in payment."

He grinned. "It's O.K. I might want a private eye sometime."

Chapter Fifteen
 

IT WAS ALREADY four o'clock, and I had a lot of places to go. And the first person I wanted to see was Lucille Stoner, the gal Sam had said was connected with Press in the beginning of IW.

I checked her number in the phone book and gave her a ring from a drugstore to make sure she'd be home. I didn't want to waste so much time that Sam would get tired of waiting.

She was home. And from the way she sounded, she was plastered like a California duplex. I gave her my name and told her I'd like to talk to her, expecting a possible argument. She didn't argue.

Even made a little tinny by the telephone, her voice didn't sound bad at all. "Why, sure, honey," she cooed. "You come right on up here. Right now I'd talk to an Eskimo. You're not an Eskimo, are you, honey?"

I assured her I wasn't an Eskimo, and she chattered on like a senator on a filibuster. "Honest, honey, I'm so damn bored. Where is everybody, anyway, huh? Where'd everybody go, honey? Nicest party. Sure was a nice party. All I did was just go to sleep for a little while. Just the littlest while. An' everybody just went home. You come on up, honey. I just need somebody to talk to. I just need somebody. You got anything to drink, honey? Hey, what do you look like, huh? What time is it?"

I told her I had a fifth of bourbon in my hip pocket, I was sixty-two years old with a long white beard, it was just after four o'clock, and I'd be right up.

I'd have given eight to five she was a blonde.

She was. But she was more than simply a blonde. And she must not have believed I was sixty-two. She'd dressed for younger company.

She was dressed fit to kill, and the result was manslaughter. I'd say she was close to twenty-eight years old, and none of the years had been wasted. About five-five and a hundred and thirty pounds, which made her a little plump in places, but I'll bet nobody ever objected to her face. Or to her back, or her front, or her top, or anywhere.

She had a cute, round face with brown eyes and a flock of yellow-blonde hair that tumbled halfway down her back, but you lost track of the face and the hair when your eyes wandered. And they wandered.

She was wearing a bright-red, ankle-length gown split down the front in the latest fashion, and if the front had been split another three inches, she'd have been naked for all practical purposes.

She stood in the open doorway for a moment, looking me up and down as if she was going to write a thesis on me, while I involuntarily wiggled my ears and said I was Shell Scott.

She sort of hummed a throaty chuckle that there's no word for and said, "Long white beard. Well. Honey, you were foolin' li'l ol' me. Li'l ol' Lucille. You just come on in."

I went inside and held up the bottle of bourbon I'd brought with me, thinking it might make conversation smoother. If her conversation got any smoother, it was going to be in another language.

The bottle gurgled pleasantly. Lucille gurgled pleasantly.

She took the bottle, pinched my cheek, and said, "You sit right down. What's your name? Shell? You sit right down, Shell. I'll just make us a quickie. A li'l ol' quickie."

She went off on a tangent toward the kitchen in back, and I heard the clink of glasses and a half chorus of "Home on the Range" while I found myself a seat. Not on the low divan at the left. In a chair. I was beginning to wonder about Lucille.

There'd been a party, all right. Half a dozen ashtrays on tables at the ends of the divan and against the walls were overfull of cigarette and cigar butts, and highball glasses stood on the tables and floor.

Lucille came back into the living room carrying two tall frosted glasses that looked as if they were intended for zombies. She was a gal that gets four drinks out of a fifth of bourbon. But the motions she saved making highballs she got reckless with coming back across the room. She walked as if she were on a runway.

She had an idea before she got all the way over to me, and veered toward a radio at the left of the front door. She set both drinks on the radio, switched it on, and turned her vocal "Home on the Range" into bebop while she waited for the radio to warm up. She found some dance music, turned around, and held out her arms with what is sometimes called reckless abandon.

"Come on," she piped. "Yes dance. Yes dance, yah-te-tah. Yeeees dance." All this with snapping fingers and more reckless abandon.

"Honey," I said, "I want to talk. Like I said on the phone. I want to ask you some questions."

"Talk? Talk?" Hiccup, burp. "'Scuse. Yes dance. Shell an' li'l ol' Lucille."

"Honey. Lucille. All I want out of li'l ol' you is some information."

"You just be nice to me or I won't tell you any…thing. Come on an' dance with li'l ol' me."

"Sweetheart," I said, "I want to be nice to you. But I've got an awful lot to do. Lots of places to go. I'd appreciate it if you'd answer some questions for me. About Walter Press."

She walked to the radio, took two inches out of her zombie glass, and put the glass back on the radio. "Told police everything," she bubbled. "Just everything. Forget about it. Huh, Shell? Shellie?"

She giggled and walked up close to me and grabbed the lapels of my coat. "Huh, Shellie?"

I said weakly, "So many things to do. Very busy. Maybe it'd be better if I went, and came back later for that talk."

She pouted, lower lip moist and glistening. "That's mean. You better go way and leave." She giggled again. "Sure, honey, you just better leave."

That was a laugh. The way she pushed you away was to put both hands behind your back and wiggle.

I croaked, "Can't we just talk?"

"Nope. Gotta dance with me."

What could I do?

She was some morsel. She was a woman by what's called an act of God, but the way she proved it was her own idea. You couldn't miss. On the phone, she'd sounded plastered, but dancing, she was plastered all over me. I knew this kind of thing couldn't go on indefinitely, worse luck, so I pulled her in close, held her tight while she did a rumba, and kissed her the way she obviously wanted to be kissed.

She kissed as if she was chewing bubble gum.

It was a long, hard struggle, and I kept getting weaker and weaker and weaker, and finally I weakened.

I danced with her again.

But I got what I wanted: information. She said she'd known Press about a year when he'd told her about the setup for the Inner World Society, and she'd gone in with him at the start of it. There'd been another woman besides her, and one man besides Press—a total of four in the outfit. The idea was simply to start up another cult, like so many that flourish in Southern California, and if the take from the "converts" was big enough, they'd make a good thing out of it.

"And was it a good thing?" I asked.

"Pretty good. Pretty good. Slow, real slow to start with, but it picked up. Just when the take's gettin' real good after a couple of months, he cans us all. Just cans us. Then, boom, couple days he's dead an' gone, he's dead an' gone. Poor li'l ol' Pressy."

"He got killed right after he fired everybody, Lucille. Doesn't that strike you as a little strange?"

"Uh-uh. Hell, no."

She seemed a little more sober, but her eyes looked like brown ball bearings. I said, "What would you think if I told you Press was still alive? That maybe he wasn't killed in that wreck?"

She rolled the ball bearings up at me. "Wouldn't believe you."

"Why not? You sure he's dead?"

She puzzled it over a minute. "No. Not sure, come to think. Thought he was dead. Killed in his car. Boom, off a cliff. Wasn't he killed?"

"I don't know, Lucille. I'm wondering myself. You never saw him anywhere after the wreck?"

She shook her head. "Never saw him. Don't care if I don't never see him."

"Didn't you like Press?"

"He was a worm. A li'l skinny worm. No use for him.

An' he fires us all. Just for nothin', out of a blue sky."

"Was he much of a hand with the ladies?"

"Him?" She giggled again. "That li'l bald-headed shrimp? Not him. He wasn't like you, Shellie. You're big an' strong an'—"

I changed the subject. "You ever check back with the IW outfit since you left it?"

"Never, never. No sense to. I got a deal, different deal now. Pretty soft."

I looked around the beautifully furnished apartment, but I didn't ask her what her deal was now. Instead I asked, "How come the outfit's still going strong? When Press got killed, that took the guiding light away, but it's still going."

"Don't know, Shellie. Don't know. Could be anybody, one of his chums, maybe. If I'd still been 'round, maybe I'da tried it myself. Lotsa money in it."

"Was there enough dough in the racket to make it worth while for somebody else to muscle in once the thing started going strong? Some tough boy, maybe? A guy with guns?"

"Sure, I s'pose so. Lotsa money. Not when it first started, but it was getting better and bigger."

I stopped for a minute and thought about it. So far, the way the whole thing shaped up, Press had made a big touch with the help of some of his con friends, then double-crossed them and skipped with all the dough. The double-crossed pals were griped and might have fixed his wagon, but from what I'd gathered they'd probably just ignore him and besides, there wasn't anything yet to show his death wasn't accidental. If he was dead. Press had skipped out around the first of July, then shortly after that he'd started up the Inner World Society, run it a couple of months-or so till it started going good, then fired everybody connected with him. Right after that he was supposed to have wound up dead in a car. Something smelled somewhere.

I asked Lucille, "How long after all of you got fired till Press was reported burned up in his car?"

"Right after. Couple days, dead an' gone."

"O.K., thanks, honey. Thanks for everything." I got up and started for the door. "Be seeing you."

"Hey," she squealed. "Shellie!"

I glanced back over my shoulder. She was coming up off the divan with her arms stuck out toward me.

I got my hand on the doorknob.

"Shellie. Yes dance."

I shut the door quietly behind me. She was a good dancer, one hell of a good dancer, but I was all danced out.

Chapter Sixteen

WHEN I WALKED out on Toberman Street, cold air slapped me in the face and cleared my head of the bourbon fumes I'd carded, down from Lucille's apartment. The sun was a low, red ball of fire behind a palm tree across the street. I stopped my car around the corner on Pico and called Samson and told him I'd be down in a couple of hours; things were taking longer than I'd expected. He told me to get on my horse and get downtown, and after a little good-natured beefing I hung up and headed back to the Cadillac.

I sat in the car for a while, thinking, and then drove down to Fifth and parked.

I got out, walked across the street to the Los Angeles City Library, and went up to the Science Room.

I came out with four books, got back in the buggy, and drove down to Broadway and then to the Hamilton Building, I spent an hour over the library books and my Encyclopedia Britannica. After that I dug the registers I'd swiped from Narda out of the magazines where I'd hidden them. Probably Narda had missed them by this time and was having a fit.

I started with the register I'd signed myself on Sunday morning. Apparently the registers were a record of attendance at Narda's ghosted lectures, and I noticed that there was a series of signatures, then a couple of spaces skipped before the next series. At the top of each group of names was a date. It appeared to be a running, record of daily attendance, and on the Sunday morning I'd been one of the disciples there'd been twenty-two others who'd signed the register. No signatures appeared after those entries for the simple reason that I'd had the book. I remembered the young writer, Jordan Brent, had said it was probably a new "class" I'd been with, and sure enough, I couldn't find any of the names listed under last Sunday's date on any of the previous pages of either book.