From the outside, Penny’s for Beauty didn’t look like much-just another storefront, except that its front window was curtained instead of open for display, in the middle of an attractive new downtown mall that covered several blocks. But the reception room inside was pretty ritzy: walls painted in cool blues and greens, lots of potted plants and latticework and white wrought-iron furniture. There were half a dozen women in it, five occupying various pieces of wrought-iron and the sixth ensconced behind a reception table with a telephone and an appointment book on it.
All of the women looked at me when I came in. I felt like an idiot standing there under their scrutiny; I always felt like an idiot in places like this, the more or less exclusive domain of women. I also felt myself grinning fatuously at the six females, none of whom grinned back. The smells of shampoo and other beauty salon concoctions were in the air, a mixture that was vaguely reminiscent of disinfectant; it made my nose twitch and I wanted to sneeze. I got that under control, wiped off the stupid grin, and went over to the reception desk.
The woman behind it was a well-groomed blonde, dressed in an outfit that matched the blue-and-green color scheme; she was about forty and made up to look thirty, and you were supposed to believe that her secret was in the various bottles and tubes and decanters on the display shelves at her back, and in whatever was going on-buzzings, clickings, murmurings-beyond a lattice-bordered archway to one side. She gave me the same kind of look a bum might get if he wandered in off the street for a handout, and asked, snootily, if there was anything she could do for me.
I wasn’t in a mood to tolerate being sneered at, so I leaned over in front of her and said, “I’m a detective, here to see Penny Belson,” in a tough-guy voice. “If she’s in, sister, trot her out here so we can talk. Pronto.” Philip Marlowe, circa 1940.
But the blonde wasn’t a Chandler fan; she blinked at me a couple of times, gnawed her underlip a couple of times, asked my name in a much more polite tone, and then used her telephone to talk to somebody I assumed was Penny Belson. When she put the receiver down she said, “Miss Belson will be right out.” Then she sat stiff-backed and stared at me.
The waiting customers were staring at me too; they’d overheard my exchange with the receptionist. But the stares were of a different kind now and I felt better about the whole thing. I put on a little more tough-guy for them, in the form of a glower, and it would have worked out fine if the damned salon smell hadn’t been so strong in there. I sneezed right in the middle of the glower, none too quietly, and scared hell out of them and me both.
Another blonde came through the latticed archway, this one about the same age as the receptionist and just as attractive and well-groomed. But she had more poise, a kind of icy self-possession; and her eyes were an odd, striking gray accented by makeup. A very sexy number, if you like them chipped and chiseled and sharp around the eyes and mouth. She was wearing a sort of tailored smock in the same colors as the reception room and the receptionist. She was also wearing an expression as unrevealing as a snowfield in a blizzard. I wouldn’t have liked to play poker with her. Or anything else with her, for that matter.
She looked at me and said, “I’m Penny Belson. Come with me, please.” That was all; no fuss of any kind. It was in deference to the customers, no doubt-never make a scene in front of customers-but she handled it with aplomb.
So I went through the arch into another room full of women, this batch evidently being tortured in various ways. Most of them were sitting under big hair dryers that looked like hunched, helmeted aliens devouring their heads; a few of these were reading magazines like Vogue, a few were having their nails done by manicurists, and a few were either asleep or dead. None of them paid any attention to me as I followed Penny Belson on a course to another door at the far end.
This one led to La Belson’s private office, a room in marked contrast to the other two. Flat white decor, a mostly bare desk, some file cabinets, three chairs, a bowl of cut flowers on a small side table, and a still life on one wall. Sterile. No frills, no nonsense. A room where business was transacted and the take was counted assiduously at the end of each day.
She shut the door, went to the desk, sat down behind it, waited for me to take a chair uninvited, and said, “Now then. You’re with the Redding police?”
“No, ma’am.”
“The county sheriffs department?”
“No. Actually, I’m a private investigator.”
That got me a flat, contemplative look. “You told Miss Adley that you were a policeman,” she said.
“No, ma’am. I told her I was a detective and that’s what I am.”
“I see.” She smiled faintly and wryly, without humor. “I suppose you’re here about Munroe Randall.”
“Yes. I’m working for his insurance company.” I had my wallet out, for the purpose of showing her my ID, but she made a dismissive gesture. I put the wallet away again.
“You’re wasting your time and mine,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything about his death. As I’ve already explained to the police, I hadn’t seen him for over a month before he died.”
“Oh? Why is that, Miss Belson?”
“If you’d known Munroe, you wouldn’t have to ask that question. He liked women-lots of different women. He got bored very easily.”
“Does that mean he’d broken off your relationship?”
“That’s what it means.”
“Suddenly?”
“Very. But I wasn’t surprised.”
“Were you upset?”
“Not particularly.”
“Meaning you no longer cared for him either?”
“Meaning I also get bored easily.”
Uh-huh, I thought. I said, “Do you know who he began seeing after he ended things with you?”
“Who he began seeing before he ended things with me, you mean.”
“Do you know the woman’s name?”
“I didn’t at the time,” she said.
“But you do now?”
She hesitated. Then she said, “A beauty parlor is a great place for gossip. You’d be amazed at the things a person can find out here.”
“I can imagine.”
“No you can’t. Not really. The damnedest secrets come out, no matter how well hidden they’re intended to be.”
“Was Randall’s new affair a secret?”
“Yes. A big one.”
“Why?”
Again she hesitated, as if weighing things in her mind. One shoulder lifted and fell in a delicate shrug and she said, “He made a mistake. He decided to start playing in his own backyard.”
“I’m not sure I understand that, Miss Belson.”
“You’re a detective. You ought to be able to figure it out.”
“A married woman? The wife of someone he knew?”
She didn’t say anything. But there was a malicious little glint in her eyes.
“The wife of one of his business partners?” I asked.
“Only one of his business partners is married,” she said.
“Frank O’Daniel’s wife?”
“Little Helen,” La Belson said. The malice was in her voice now.
“You know her, then?”
“Helen? Oh yes, she used to be one of my customers.”
“Used to be?”
“She decided to try another salon in town. About six weeks ago, as a matter of fact.”
“Because she’d started an affair with Randall?”
The delicate shrug again. “Why don’t you ask her?”
Cute stuff-playing games, telling me what I wanted to know without actually saying it. Maybe. It could be a lie, too; for all I knew she had something against Helen O‘Daniel and wanted to do her dirt. That might explain the coyness: if she didn’t come right out and accuse Mrs. O’Daniel of anything illicit, she couldn’t get herself sued for slander.
On the other hand, it might be the truth. Not that an affair between Randall and Mrs. O’Daniel had to mean anything sinister. I just didn’t know enough yet about the principals involved to form much of an opinion either way.
I tried prying more information out of La Belson, but she wasn’t about to give me more than she already had. I asked her a few other questions, also without finding out anything new, and got up to leave.
She said, “All these questions-you don’t honestly believe Munroe’s death was anything but an accident, do you?”
“I’ve got an open mind. What’s your opinion, Miss Belson?”
“Munroe was a careless man. With women, with everything else in his life. Including flammable materials around his house.” Another shrug. “Accidents happen,” she said.
“So do murders,” I said.
I left her and managed to run the gauntlet of hair dryers and fat women without disgracing myself. Along with the receptionist, Miss Adley, there were only two customers waiting out front now. I went straight on out, minding my own business, and just as I was shutting the door behind me I heard Miss Adley say in a stage whisper, “Cops. They’re all assholes.”
Penny’s for Beauty was quite a place. And what made it so special was the beautiful people who worked there.
The address I had for the Northern Development offices turned out to be a stone-and-brick commercial building on Yuba and California streets, not far from the mall. The directory in the lobby sent me up to
the second floor, where I found a pebbled-glass door with some fancy gilt lettering on it that said:
NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
“GROWTH + EXPANSION = PROSPERITY”
Munroe Randall, President
M.J. Treacle,
Vice President
F.L. O’Daniel,
Vice President
Very impressive. And what was on the other side of the door was impressive, too-a nice front for a company wobbling on the edge of Chapter Eleven. The anteroom was about twenty feet square, paneled in blond wood and outfitted with chrome-pipe furniture covered in some kind of black-and-white cloth. Behind a desk directly opposite was a slender woman in her thirties; but she wasn’t sitting down, she was standing up near one of two unmarked doors in a pose that suggested she’d been eavesdropping on what was going on behind it. Which was an argument between two men, apparently, because both voices were raised and had an angry buzz to them, like disturbed bees. What they were saying to each other wasn’t quite distinguishable.
The woman turned away from the door, but not as if it mattered much to her that I’d caught her with her ears flapping. She had tawny hair cut short, brown eyes, the kind of nose that is called patrician, a nice body encased in a green shift, and a secretarial air of cool efficiency. One of those little metal-and-wood nameplates on her desk identified her as Shirley Irwin.
She said, “Yes, may I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mr. O’Daniel.”
“Have you an appointment?”
“More or less. He’s expecting me.”
“Your name, please?”
I told her my name. She recognized it, but it didn’t impress her much; I didn’t impress her much either. The only thing about me that interested her seemed to be my mustache. At least, that was what her gaze kept fastening on.
“Mr. O’Daniel is in conference at the moment,” she said. “Will you wait?”
“Some conference,” I said, smiling.
“I beg your pardon?”
“All that shouting.” I realized I was stroking the mustache and quit that; but Miss Irwin kept right on staring at it. The voices in the other room seemed to be getting louder and angrier.
“Will you wait, sir?”
“Sure. But would you mind letting Mr. O’Daniel know I’m here?”
“Mr. O’Daniel asked that he not be disturbed.”
“I see. It makes me look like Groucho Marx, right?”
“What?”
“The mustache. Groucho Marx.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You keep staring at it. It’s not that bad, is it?”
“I couldn’t care less about your facial hair,” she said in a voice you could have used to chill beer.
I caught myself starting to stroke it again-and one of the men behind the door said distinctly, “I don’t have to take that kind of crap from you! By God, I don’t!”
I looked at the door; so did Miss Irwin. I could feel the skin across my neck pull tight.
The other man yelled, “Get away from me! Goddamn you, get away-!”
“I’ll fix you once and for all, you son of a bitch!”
There was a sharp thudding sound: and there were thrashing noises, and the second man let out a half-strangled cry.
“Help! Help!”
Some of Miss Irwin’s coolly efficient facade had melted and she had her hand up to her mouth. She said, “Frank!” and started for the door, but I got there ahead of her, yanked it open, and went barreling into Frank O’Daniel’s private office like Fearless Fosdick to the rescue.