Mink Is for a Minx [1st Annual Edition: The best from Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine]

Mink Is for a Minx by Tighe Jarratt

Chip Stack ogled the cabana photo of the glamorous Mrs. S. E. T. Harrison for a full minute, gave three seconds each to the pages of the insurance report, and returned his lecherous thoughts to the photo.

“A minx without a mink is like a fish without its scales,” he said. “I’ll bet she has been raising hell.”

Richard Ramsey, chief of Claims and Settlements, rattled the check on his desk. “Seventeen thousand dollars worth of hell, and I have no excuse to hold up the settlement.”

Stack snapped his thumb against the bottom of his cigarette pack to make one jump into his shark-shaped mouth. “You’re being taken! That was the old coat check switcheroo, without trimmings. Some broad walked in with a rat and checked it early in the evening. Then Mrs. Harrison arrived and checked her mink. The two met in the powder room or at the bar and exchanged coat checks. Then the broad walked out with the mink and left the rat for Harrison.”

“The switch could have been a sleight,” Ramsey said. “There’re still some artists around who could take the dentures out of your mouth and stuff it with a baked potato. Or the coats may have been physically switched on the hangers in the checkroom. Or the check girl may have palmed Mrs. Harrison’s proper check and sneaked it to some accomplice. There’s a third possibility. In the confusion of the dinner rush, the check girl may have made an honest mistake and given the coat checks to the wrong parties.”

“Or maybe the mink was a muskrat in disguise!” Chip Stack jeered.

Ramsey shrugged his bony shoulders. “In any case, we’re liable and we’re paying.” He scaled the check expertly into the Outgoing box.

“If you’re settling, why call me in?” Stack grunted.

Ramsey removed his rimless glasses to polish them. “Because if the coat girl made an honest error in the rush and got the checks mixed up, then some career girl in the muskrat bracket is walking around with a seventeen thousand dollar mink on her back — and she is not technically guilty of one damn thing. What we need now is the special aptitude of a shamus who will go to practically any length to get the clothes off some frightened woman’s back. Naturally, we thought of you.”

“I always cherish your high opinions of me,” Chip acknowledged. “You boys want the coat back, but you don’t dare go after it. What are you going to do with an old coat?”

“Return it to Mrs. Harrison with the suggestion she relinquish the new one she will have by then.”

Chip Stack chortled. “You may know the insurance laws, but you sure don’t know women! You’d have a better chance getting the settlement returned by her old man.”

“The age of miracles is past,” Ramsey said dryly. “He happens to be on the board of our own bank, and he didn’t get there without learning that bona fide settlements cannot be repossessed. Just bring in the old coat and you’ll earn your fee.”

Stack poked on his hat and raised his chubby body erect with the surprising ease of a seal surfacing. “I have a terrific streak of chivalry,” he confessed. “I’d much rather bring you in the money.” He punched out his cigarette and moved toward the door with his rolling, carefree gait.

Ramsey’s drill voice pinned him on the doorsill. “You might bear in mind that if you get arrested for blackmail, illegal entry, or named as a correspondent, we don’t know you.”

Chip Stack bowed. “A man appreciates that solid, old school-tie type of loyalty.”

He sauntered around to the investigation file room and got the scuttlebutt on the check girl. Bonded without a question. Not a blemish on her record in six years of checking at the plush spas. Supporting a crippled brother. Savings account. No addiction to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. No steady boy friends — shady or otherwise.

And a real cute trick, fore, aft and sidewise. It was amazing what the files of an insurance company could produce.

Stack found Rosa Antonelli cleaning house, with a smudged nose, a towel tied in rabbit ears around her head, her skirts tucked up peasant fashion, her feet bare and dirty from mopping. It took a special type of girl to look good under those circumstances. She was the type.

She made him a cup of java, talking from the kitchenette. It was clear she was worried as hell over her bond and future jobs.

She called with a catch in her voice, “I suppose you think I made a mistake in the checks or the coats, too — unless you think something worse! But I want to tell you, Mr. Stark, there was no mistake of any kind.”

“Now take it easy, Rosa, and I’ll try to clear you,” he advised.

She brought his coffee, her eyes shining with gratitude. “I don’t know why. Everybody else has good as called me a thief!”

He took her hand reassuringly and seated her opposite, where he could enjoy her knees. “Let’s just recall the evening.”

“Well, it was rushed, but I was alone on the checkroom. When I’m alone, I never handle more than one party at a time. So I couldn’t have gotten any checks mixed up except right in the Harrison party.”

She thought back a minute. “The Harrisons came in late. They had to wait for a vacant table at the bar. By that time, the back check racks were full and I was using the very front ones, with the check numbers near two hundred. Mr. Harrison’s number was one ninety-two, for instance.”

Rosa Antonelli spoke rapidly and had her facts in order. But of course, she’d already recounted the facts half a dozen times to police, routine insurance investigators, the bonding company, her bosses.

“The Harrisons were late leaving and there weren’t many coats left. All the other coats were where they should be, on the front racks. But Mrs. Harrison handed in check thirty-six, and it was the last coat on the back rack. You see what I’m getting at?”

Stack nodded. “She shouldn’t have had check thirty-six to begin with. But if there had been some error in the check stubs, the coat for thirty-six should still have been on the front rack.”

The check girl nodded, but tears filled her eyes. “I tried to say that, but nobody would listen. Mr. Harrison was sure I was a thief, and wanted me thrown in jail right then. And Mrs. Harrison was telling the manager that she’d certainly given me back the same check I gave her.”

Stack laid a hand upon her knee to stop her. “Mrs. Harrison gave you her own check? I mean, in that kind of restaurant, isn’t it usual for a lady’s escort to carry both checks?”

“Yes it is and that’s what I was trying to make her see — that some smart operator might have seen her tuck the check in her evening bag, and pulled something when she laid it on the bar, maybe. If she’d only listened, maybe she could have remembered who sat next to her or stood behind her or if she laid her purse down in the powder room—”

Rosa choked up suddenly. “But all they wanted to do was blame me!” she sobbed.

“Now,” Stack said sympathetically, “I’m not blaming you, and maybe you’ve solved the whole thing without knowing it.”

“Oh, Mr. Stack!” She reached his hand impulsively and hugged it against her neck. “If you’d just tell that to the bonding company, I’d do anything—”

“Hrrrrumm,” he nodded. “Well, I’ll need quite a little help from you. Private and confidential, of course.”

“Any time you want to see me,” she agreed with the vaguest hint of color in her cheeks. “And I’ll tell you something, Mr. Stack, if I had been stealing, I’d have wanted the imitation, not that lavish mink of Mrs. Harrison’s.”

“Do you have any recollection of the woman who checked the other coat?” he asked.

Rosa shook her head. “I’ve tried and tried but can’t remember. But it was still a lovely coat, Mr. Stack. Compared with the Harrisons, she may have been dirt poor, but she still must dress very beautifully.”

“Maybe you’ll have a coat like that someday,” Chip said, and smiled.

“Oh! I’d really do anything—” she burst out.

“Hrrrumm!” he said again.

He made some chitchat to relax her and then took a taxi to his apartment, where he could pursue investigation reclining with a Scotch and phone. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that the culprit was Lili Harrison herself, in spite of her husband’s wealth. Women just didn’t pick up their own coat checks when escorted by their husbands.

However, he double-checked with some fairly reliable gossip mongers, and came up with what he expected. S.E.T. Harrison had been badly hurt in last summer’s stock crash and had been raising hell about household expenses ever since. He’d gone further and reduced the staff of his oceangoing yacht to a skeleton crew just big enough to keep the vessel in commission.

When a yachtsman was driven to that deprivation, he would certainly deny his wife the extravagance of a new coat he considered unnecessary. But Lili Harrison was not the kind to see it in that light. The mink was well-known and four years old. She had always made a particular point of trading in for a new one a year ahead of the time interval that was customary with most wealthy women. The easy alternative to the impasse was to sock the insurance company.

As far as the method went, that was easy to figure. The question was, who had been her trusted confederate, or confederates, and how could she be sure of trusting them?

In this case, that factor alone eliminated her maid. It required well-oiled underworld connections to sell a coat like that, and a maid would not have them. And she’d not dare wear the coat herself. So the coat would be valueless for purchasing her timeless silence.

Chip Stack mixed himself another drink and considered that the check girl had supplied that answer, too. She was the only one who had noted that the switched coat, although of very moderate value, must have belonged to a very well-dressed woman — the kind of a woman who could wear mink if she had the money. One who moved socially high enough so that her appearance in a refinished mink would not arouse too much curiosity.

That sounded like some poor but social friend of Lili’s, just the kind of friend a rich woman would have. That kind of a friend could be trusted eternally, because her own social position would be involved, and because she’d lose the mink if she made one slip. The old mink would be her reward for helping Lili Harrison gain a new one.

Chip Stack was satisfied with his picture and phoned an old friend who moved on the fringes of the Gold Coast crowd in Westchester. Adroitly, he learned that Lili Harrison had just such a playmate, a girl named Valerie Snowden, married to a fatheaded cousin of that prominent family, without the brains or gumption to make them a decent income. What it boiled down to was that Valerie’s good times were largely the result of knowing Lili Harrison. As might be expected with such a dumbun husband, Valerie liked her martinis and the ponies. She was damned good-looking, too, the friend added.

That was too bad, Stack considered. He did have his streak of chivalry — he hated framing pretty women.

He hopped in his Mercedes Special and drove out to Westchester. The upper crust would not do their bar hopping at obvious, popular places, but such communities were invariably dotted by discreet little back-lane bistros where they were relatively safe in letting down their hair. One such place always led to another.

It took four days and nine bars to pick up the haunts of Valerie Snowden. It was an unduly long time for Chip Stack to reconnoiter, but he was handicapped by not daring to mention the Harrisons or Valerie Snowden even casually. Just a whispered rumor that a stranger was interested in them might get that mink buried deeper than a skunk’s hide.

He might have eased things by a little social name-dropping, but that could be a trap, too. So he let himself appear in a character role that wouldn’t expose him to too many risks — that of a well-heeled, self-made man on a little loup while away from the wife. A man without any social pretensions, and quiet enough not to alarm the Gold Coast strata.

He was a good tipper and did much of his drinking in the off hours when the bartenders had time and freedom to talk, and it was the bartender with the passion for the ponies who first mentioned her. They’d been talking horses for two days when Chip Stack expressed the opinion that long shots were smarter betting than favorites.

“Now that’s a funny thing for anyone who knows the ponies to say,” the bartender argued. “But maybe there’s something to it. We have a customer, a Mrs. Snowden, who’s making a mink coat on longshots. She picks ’em, too. She’s got it almost made.”

“I’m not that good,” Chip chuckled. “I ought to get her system.”

Privately, he was blessing the devil for the break. He’d been growing afraid that she was a home drinker and a kind of uppity wench who wouldn’t speak to the hoi poloi. But it was now assured that she did make the rounds and was not above chumming with a bartender, which meant that she often stopped by alone.

They had some more random talk and then a couple entered from the side door. The bartender confided with a mutter, “The longshot lady and her useless.”

Seating herself, the girl looked Chip Stack over with the open curiosity of her kind about a stranger who had invaded a more or less private club. She and her husband joshed the bartender in friendly fashion while they had a martini.

Then leaving, she laughed, “Henry, you’d better pick a damned good long shot for me tomorrow. I’ve got everything but the collar on that coat!”

So, Chip Stack thought, she’s using the ponies to set up the explanation of how she came by Lili’s coat when she begins to wear it. Lili Harrison got her check and new coat. They figure the investigation’s over, and all’s clear now for Valerie as soon as she gets a new collar to disguise the coat around the home neighborhood.

He had another drink himself on that, and then drove in town and brightened the check girl’s spirits with the report that the case was breaking and she’d soon be in the clear. But he’d still need her help for identification, of course.

At noon next day Stack opened the Westchester bistro, armed with a Telegraph and the scratch sheet. He’d also learned the name of a possible long shot in the first, and he gave a ten to Henry to play on a split, just to prove his theory.

Henry phoned in the bet and Chip had an eye-opener and brunch, and he was making up his day’s bets when Valerie Snowden came in wearing flannel slacks that fitted her from all sides, which was an achievement among young matrons. She really had something. It was going to hurt Chip Stack to turn her in.

Henry had just served her drink when his bookie phoned back that the long shot had come in. Henry emerged from the phone, as excited as a kid. He explained to Valerie what the excitement was all about, and she made a face and complained that he hadn’t acted like a friend in not including her in.

It was a three-way conversation now with no suspicions raised, and Stack said that he didn’t see much more he felt confident about today, but there would be some horses running tomorrow. The hitch was, he confessed, that he’d have to be in town and right at a bookmaker’s to get the tips, and there wouldn’t be time to phone her.

“But you probably know the spot,” he added. “It’s the upstairs lounge of the Parakeet, and they serve a better lunch than downstairs. I think half the women drop in more for lunch than for the bet.”

She showed surprise. “You mean that plush spa is simply the front for a bookie — and I never even suspected it? Of course; I know the place. It’s very toni.”

She looked at him speculatively. “If I were sitting right here waiting and Henry could make my bet right away, don’t you think there’d be time for you to phone?”

“Well—” he murmured. “You know how it is. They have some private way of getting reports, but they probably don’t like outgoing calls about bets.”

She made a cute, wry face.

“But if you’d really like to bet,” he said, “I’m driving in at noon and I have to be back here by seven sharp — earlier if possible. It’s a pretty select spot. You wouldn’t have to worry about being seen.” He laughed good-naturedly. “Unless it was being seen with me.”

She thought it over. It was clear she was busting to cap her phoney story and have the excuse to wear the mink. She said, “No woman would feel self conscious about riding in a Mercedes. But it’s not a convertible, is it?”

“No,” he agreed. “It’s strictly wide open. You’d have to bundle.”

“Well—” she said.

He watched the excited lights flicking through her eyes, and knew exactly what she was thinking. It was a chance to wear the coat in town before the collar was changed, where it wouldn’t be recognized, and also the opportunity to package her excuse so that she could appear in the remodelled coat locally any time now.

“I’d like to go if you’ll really be back by seven,” she said. “But I’ll have to be on the dot. I have to be at dinner at eight.”

He made a gesture. “We’ll hit ’em hard and duck back as early as you like.”

Valerie Snowden studied him and relaxed even while he could feel her gathering excitement. But he knew damned well that she would not have made a date with a stranger except for the coat. It was a funny thing what a woman would do for a mink.

He met her next day at the shopping center where she parked her car. The day was cold and clear, and he’d set his trap right. She picked a luxurious mink off the seat beside her and pulled it on as she darted from her car to his and snuggled in the open seat.

The lounge of the Parakeet was loaded with women in mink, but Valerie drew special envious attention even from that crowd. They ordered lunch and made their bet for the second race, Chip Stack betting a hundred with the usual proviso that if it hit, half of it would be hers. He could sense her calculating what the bet would bring, her excitement growing as she realized that it would pay for the remodeling of the coat.

Chip Stack played across the board and when the horse romped in for place, Valerie had a woman’s usual reactions to soaring excitement and visited the powder room. It gave him the chance he needed to examine the coat under the lining, his practiced eye quickly finding the identifying marks of the furrier and the insurance code on the backs of the hides.

He could have ended the case there, either by turning her in or simply walking out with the coat. The insurance company hadn’t asked for an arrest — simply for the mink. But she was a beautiful girl with excitement in her, and Chip’s chivalry was fired by his romantic spirit. He said nothing until they were on the crowded highway returning — early, as he’d promised.

Then he said, “Well, I’m glad you came out winning. It may help to pay the lawyer.”

Valerie Snowden sat up sharp, staring at him with sudden alarm. “Lawyer?” she repeated.

“You’ll probably need one,” Stack explained. “To get you out of the rap of stealing Lili Harrison’s coat.”

“So you’re a detective!” she cried. She broke all to pieces for a moment, then caught herself in hand. But that one bitter challenge was the slip that confirmed his theory of the switch beyond any possibility of doubt.

“It isn’t Lili’s coat, and Lili will back that!” she declared haughtily.

“It carries her insurance marks,” he told her.

He saw her hand snap into a fist, but she was a cool one and she had her alibi. “If it’s hers, I didn’t know it,” she bit out. “Somebody left it at the house one night, but I didn’t find it until the other day and nobody had inquired about it. I didn’t see how it could be Lili’s, seeing that she lost hers at a New York restaurant, but I called her home anyway.”

Even the best turn weasel when they’re caught! he thought cynically. But she surprised him.

“She wasn’t home, but I spoke to Seth — her husband. In fact, I’m still burning at his rudeness. He practically told me I must be drunk, that it could not possibly be her coat, and as she already had her new one, he didn’t want to hear any more about it. Then he as good as hung up.”

Chip Stack’s mood brightened and he grinned with admiration. Those two cool chicks had figured Harrison out and involved him without his knowing it, just in case something did go wrong sometime, so that he’d have to stick behind them.

“So,” she bit out with scathing anger, “if she got mixed up about the fur she wore to town that night, I can’t help it. I wasn’t the witness — her husband was.”

“Well, it can be very easily settled, if your statement is correct,” Stack said. “I’ll just return this coat to her in exchange for her new one, and the insurance company won’t come out too badly.”

“But... but this is my coat now!” she cried with deeper feeling than the first fright had roused. “It is! It is! I didn’t steal it. Lili’s husband wouldn’t even look at it, and no matter how it happened, it’s mine as long as nobody claims it!”

“But I’ve already claimed it for the insurance company,” Chip said quietly. “Unless you’d rather have me turn it over to the police.”

“Oh no!” she breathed. Then she bent her face into her hands and sobbed the real sorrow on her mind. “But I’ll never — never get another chance to own a mink like this!”

He let her cry a space and then he said, “Now, you might. You might even get to keep this coat.”

Her sobs shut off like a faucet. Every fiber in her was listening.

“And Lili Harrison may also get to keep hers,” he added. “If you’ve told the truth about the phone call.”

“I have! I swear it! You can ask Seth!”

Chip Stack nodded. “I intend to. Now I’m going to take this coat over there and try to straighten this out so everybody’s happy, but you’ll upset the apple cart with any phone calls.”

“I won’t do anything to hurt her!” she declared.

“This won’t hurt her. She’ll probably get to keep her new coat out of it. So you just clam up until things are settled.”

“How will I know if I can’t phone her?”

“She’ll phone you damned fast. But if she doesn’t, and you see her wearing her new coat after tonight, you’ll know everything’s worked out.”

“And I’ll get this one back?” she breathed.

He pulled up beside her car in the shopping center and looked at her. “Any time you want to come in town and call for it — it will be at my apartment.”

She got the message. Scorn flashed in her eyes. But she didn’t say no. She said, “You’re a real fink, aren’t you?”

“A fink for a mink,” he grinned. “But mink are for minx.” He gave her his card. “All the essentials. Just call me.”

She wriggled out of the coat angrily, but she rammed his card into her pocket book. She crossed to her own car without another word, reached in, and pulled on a sport coat. It was clear that she hadn’t dared wear the mink from her home, so her alibi was phoney and the deal had been a criminal switch transpiring at the New York restaurant, as he’d felt sure.

He backed his car out and gave it the gun for Harrison’s estate. He got a lofty reception from the butler. The Harrisons were dressing, the butler insisted.

“I think Mrs. Harrison will want to see me anyway,” Chip Stack grunted. “I have located her lost coat.”

She saw him fast and privately in her personal suite. She didn’t even take time to don a more formal robe in place of the very alluring one in which she came, still damp, from her bath. She shot one glance at the coat and dismissed the maid and butler before she even looked at Chip.

She lighted a cigarette coolly and remained on her feet. “I suppose,” she remarked tartly, “that is the coat poor Valerie thought might be mine.”

“It is yours, Mrs. Harrison,” he said. “You are probably not aware of the fact that valuable coats like this are furrier and insurance marked.”

She sat down with abrupt anger and crossed her legs. Her negligee fell away, and she looked better than in the photo taken at Palm Beach.

He said, “Of course, if Mr. Harrison wishes to reimburse the insurance company for its settlement, the company will have no further interest in the coats.”

“That miser would rather see me naked!” she declared. Chip Stack had his own thought about that, but restrained it. But it must have exuded from him like the beat of a tomtom, for she looked at him with sudden keen speculation.

“I’d rather burn up my mink than return it to the insurance company!” she said. “But maybe you have some alternative?”

Chip Stack looked directly at her bare legs. He said, “I think it could be handled quietly and without a report.”

She smiled coolly and said nothing.

“I think perhaps I can persuade Mr. Harrison to make you a gift of your new mink,” he said.

She inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out slowly. She got to her feet and crossed to him and lifted two fingers to tap his chin. “Try it. Maybe you’re worth knowing,” she said. “That is — if you succeed.”

She gave a wry smile and opened the door to the hall. “If you’ll wait downstairs, I’ll have Mr. Harrison see you.”

He handed her one of his private cards. “It will be a pleasure to see you again wearing your new mink.”

“That is the only way you will,” she said, and stood musingly watching him to the stairs.

In five minutes, Mr. Seth Harrison appeared in the library, arrogant and bad-tempered from being disturbed at dressing. He started to threaten and bully from the height of his unassailable position.

Chip Stack let him run out of wind and then held out the coat on his arm. “Mr. Harrison, this is the coat that you swore to the police that your wife was wearing and lost at the Gay Paree. It was entirely on the strength of your identification that the insurance settlement was made. Now it has shown up at Valerie Snowden’s, who says it was left at her house, and that she so informed you personally, but you refused to see it for possible identification.”

Harrison turned purple, but he stood his ground. “If it was a mistake, it was a mistake that the insurance company accepted after due investigation! The only legal restitution that can be demanded is Mrs. Harrison’s new coat.”

“That would be satisfactory to the company, but it involves a detailed report of the circumstances. The report, of course, will have to emphasize your error of memory as to which coat Mrs. Harrison was wearing at the Gay Paree, and your peculiar attitude in refusing to see the coat Valerie Snowden found at her house. In fact, the report may require a brand-new investigation.”

Harrison’s eyes spit fire, but his color drained to grey.

“And you will probably wish to give your wife a new fur soon in any case,” Chip Stack said guilelessly. “It might wind the whole matter up more satisfactorily for everyone if you just let her keep her new coat and made restitution to the insurance company in cash.”

“Upon what grounds?” Harrison snapped.

“That the lost coat has been accounted for after a mistake and so you are returning the insurance settlement. I can promise you that the company will have no further interest in the matter.”

Harrison stalked to a desk, ripped out a checkbook and, writing quickly, finally thrust a check for the full amount at Chip Stack.

Chip bowed with admiration. “A most generous surprise for your wife, Mr. Harrison. This coat is rather worn and she wanted to give it to Valerie Snowden anyway.”

He left the house humming softly. There was only one remaining chore now, to clear the check girl officially and get Rosa the coat that had been left in the switch.

Chip Stack felt quite chivalrous. Everybody was getting what they wanted, including himself. A very just reward for minx — and finks.