Red Gardenias

CHAPTER V

That morning, after she had conferred with Beulah about dinner, Ann Fortune put on her black caracul coat, freshened her lipstick and called a taxi.

"The nearest dairy," she told the driver.

This was her first attempt at detection and she felt a little excited. She wondered if the trail would lead her into one of those situations she had so often seen in the William Powell-Myrna Loy movies: possibly to a penthouse with a suave villain from whom she would be saved in the nick of time by the arrival of Bill Crane.

The only trouble was that she felt no confidence in the arrival of Bill Crane anywhere in the nick of time; he was more likely to stop for a drink on the way and come too late.

Not that she didn t like Bill Crane; it was just that he didn t seem to take things seriously. Take the case they were working on: Richard March and John March dead from gas, and Simeon March accusing Carmel, his daughter-in-law, of having murdered them. It was a serious affair! But Bill, apparently, wasn t doing anything about it. He acted as though they were on one of those Long Island house parties he used to take her to in New York when he wasn t working. He acted…

"This do, miss?" the driver asked.

It was the Prima Dairy. She smiled a little at the squat white building. It didn t look like the sort of place Myrna Loy would be detecting in.

However, she did find out something. Her smile almost disorganized the young clerk who took her order for milk and cream, but he retained possession of enough faculties to tell her that the dairy had the only rural service for Brookfield and Blue Lake in Marchton.

Delia s note telling Richard to shut off milk deliveries must have been written two summers ago since Richard had been dead since February. Ann asked the clerk if he could find a Brookfield account in which the milk had been shut off for a week end around the middle of July of that year.

The clerk discovered that a Saturday two summers ago had come on July nineteenth. Under Delivery Stop Orders on that date he found one for a Raymond Maxwell, 12 February Lane, Brookfield.

Under the M file in the regular account book, the clerk found the house on February Lane was owned by a Charles G. Jameson, Brookfield real-estate operator.

Bills had been paid by postal money orders, but there was a letter from Mrs Maxwell, opening the account. Ann s heart jumped when she caught sight of purple ink and Delia s large handwriting.

The clay road to Brookfield was so thickly lined with trees it seemed as though the sedan was going through a long tunnel. Crane brooded over the lecture he had just been given on the evils of strong drink. A warm afternoon sun sent saffron rays angling through elms and oaks and maples, spotlighted bright masses of party-colored leaves. In the air there was a smell of smoke.

He had to admit, though, Ann had done a neat piece of detection in tracing Delia through the dairy. "I guess I owe you a bottle of milk," he said.

"Champagne," Ann said.

"All right. What kind of champagne do you like?"

"Demi-sec, in magnums."

"You ll get it," he said, and added, "I hope it makes you very sec."

This terrible pun made him feel better and he told her what he d heard in the taproom.

He told her about the discovery of Richard s body, of the lipstick on his face, and of the smell of gardenia on his coat. They wondered why Talmadge March had tried to trap Carmel. Or had it been his idea of a joke?

"I m beginning to think Richard was having an affair with Carmel," Crane said.

"In addition to our Delia?"

"Richard was a gay dog."

"Do you think Carmel d deceive her husband with his first cousin?" Ann asked. "I don t know."

A break in the tunnel of trees brought them out into bright sunlight. On the right was a black field, stacked evenly with Indian tepees of cornstalks, and dotted with plump, bright pumpkins. A black-and-white calf, chained to a fence post, grazed in the ditch beside the road.

Crane added, "Look at Peter, too. She s quite friendly with him."

"Peter told me this afternoon he wanted to get Richard s letters to protect a lady," Ann said. "From hints he dropped I got the idea the lady is Carmel, and that the letters were important." She glanced at his face. "And that gave me an idea."

The road curved to the right, crossed a small stone bridge and entered a valley. Apple orchards, fruit trees and cornfields lay on either side of them. They passed a wagon loaded with yellow feed corn.

"I think you re wonderful," Crane said.

"Be serious. If Carmel was your wife and was having an affair with Richard, what would you do?"

"I d lock her up in the coalbin."

"Please be serious."

"I d be angry with Richard."

"Exactly "

"My God!" Crane blinked at her. "You don t think John killed him?"

"He could have discovered Carmel in the car with Richard (that fits in with the gardenia), sent her into the club, then killed Richard."

"How?"

Ann smiled. "That s as far as I ve gone."

"I ve got an idea." Crane lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth. "I ll tell you if you re not mad at me."

"I ve never been mad at you."

"No?"

"Well, I wish you wouldn t drink so much."

Crane was about to tell her of his plan to make people think he was a drunkard so they d disregard him, but it didn t sound so convincing sober.

"All right, I won t," he said. "Here s the idea."

He reconstructed the murder (if it had been a murder) for her. Richard, he said, had passed out. Then John, or someone else, had fastened a rubber hose to the exhaust of his sedan, run the free end through a partially open window, and started the engine. Then, when Richard was dead, he removed the hose.

"I think that s very clever," Ann declared.

The road came to a good cement highway, and Ann turned to the left and increased the sedan s speed. The sun was barely above a long ridge ahead of them, and the air was cooler. Haze hung like muslin over the distant countryside.

Crane was frowning. "Only then I don t see who killed John," he admitted.

Ann held her cigarette out the window to let the wind remove the ash. "John killed himself. Remorse."

Crane looked at her smiling face with respect. "That makes it pretty neat." He pulled the tan camel s hair around him. "But the old man is certain Carmel did the murdering."

Ann said, "That s a good theory, too."

Crane had another thought. "Maybe Carmel signed her notes to Richard with the name Delia."

"She didn t. Her handwriting s different."

"You ve been busy, haven t you?"

"One of us has to work."

Crane retired into high dudgeon. He had begun to be a little alarmed about Ann Fortune. It would be an awful thing if she solved the case singlehanded. He would never live it down. He had a dreadful feeling he might have to go to work.

"I need a drink," he said, and then, as Ann looked at him, added, "of nice warm tea."

Presently he saw they were entering Brookfield. Middle-sized houses, many with fine lawns, sat under great oak and chestnut trees. There were gardens, filled with the yellow and white and orange flowers of late fall, around the houses and barbered hedges around them. Twice the clear stream forced the road to arch its back with stone bridges.

The village had a double main street with a partition of young trees in the middle. The stores had evidently been influenced by Tudor England. Their dark, exposed beams and red bricks contrasted with clean sidewalks and Paris-green grass. A one-story building had two display windows: one read, Daphne Gray, Beautician; the other, Charles G. Jameson, Real Estate.

Ann parked the sedan at an angle to the curb, and they went into the office and found an old man in a pair of slippers tinkering with a radio. He wore a coat and trousers and a shirt, buttoned at the collar, but no tie.

"Fix one o these?" he demanded.

Crane said he couldn t. He showed the old man a card from the American Insurance Company, said he was an investigator, and asked him about the Maxwells. He didn t know very much about them.

"I recollect they paid Chuck in advance for two years," he said in a reedy voice.

"Then the lease hasn t expired?" Ann asked.

"No, ma am. They got until next May." He looked curiously at Crane. "What you investigatin, Mr Maxwell s death?"

Crane asked, "How d you know he d died?"

"The house ain t been used this summer. And besides, another feller was inquirin about him last January. I suspicioned he was dead then."

Crane and Ann exchanged glances. Both were thinking Richard March had died soon after the man s inquiries, in February.

"What d the man want to know?" Crane asked.

There was a sly look about the old man s bright eyes, as though he shared some secret with Crane. "Wanted to know what Mrs Maxwell looked like."

"Did you tell him?"

"We couldn t. Me and Chuck never laid eyes on her."

"Did he want to know anything else?"

The old man chuckled. "Wanted to know how much they used the house." He didn t make any noise, just shook inside.

"How much did they?"

The old man gave Crane that sly, secretive look. "It seemed kind of odd. They paid a right fine price for the house." He looked down at his slippers. "But they only came week ends."

Crane asked if he d seen Maxwell, and he said he had. He thought his name was assumed, but he wasn t sure.

"You ve no clue to who he was?" asked Ann.

"Your speakin of that s a funny thing." The old man looked at her with a pleased smile. " Bout a month ago I seen a picture that looked a lot like the feller who was askin for him in January. It was in the newspaper."

"Who was it?"

"John March, the one that died in his garage."

Crane flicked a glance at Ann, then asked, "Do you think Mrs March and Mrs Maxwell were the same person?"

"I got my idears."

Ann was wearing a three-quarter length black caracul coat, fastened at the neck with a gold chain and cut so that it hung like a tunic to just about the knees. She undid the coat and found a photograph in an inside pocket.

"Would you know Mr Maxwell?"

"I reckon so," said the old man.

Crane stared at her with reluctant admiration. He could see it was a photograph of Richard March. Tall, tanned and blond, he looked like a movie actor in gray slacks and an open shirt. Ann handed the picture to the old man, smiled at Crane.

He made a face at her. She was too darned efficient. He thought he had better go to work. He thought it was a fine thing when a man had to work hard to keep ahead of a woman. Especially one as pretty as Ann.

The old man handed back the photograph. "That s him."

"Well, thanks," Crane said.

"One more thing," said the old man, "though I don t know as it s much of a clue…"

"It might be," Ann said. "What is it?"

"Well, twice I borrowed matches from Mr Maxwell. An both times he gave me a package from the Crimson Cat. That s a night club near here."

A middle-aged man with spectacles and dandruff flakes on his blue serge suit came into the office. He turned out to be the old man s son, Charles, who operated the realty business. The old man told him Crane was an insurance investigator, looking up the Maxwells.

"Been a lot of interest in them today," the younger Mr Jameson said.

"How s that?" Crane asked.

"A fellow came a couple of hours ago to collect the Maxwell things. He had a note from Mrs Maxwell." Ann said excitedly, "He wouldn t still be there?"

"I don t know."

Crane said, "How do we get there?"

Following the younger Mr Jameson s directions, it took them three minutes to reach February Lane. The house was a Cape Cod cottage, white, with a high roof and a screened porch on the side. In the driveway was a big sedan with a woman in the driver s seat.

As Ann brought their car to a stop the woman hooped the horn. Crane couldn t see her very well, but he got an idea she was young.

A hollow, metallic voice called from the rear of the house, "What s wrong?"

Ann exclaimed, "Our burglar!"

The woman hit the horn again, pushed the starter. Arms bearing a cardboard box, the man came around the house, turned his face toward Crane and Ann, broke into an unsteady run. He jerked open the sedan s door, jumped in as it started. The door swung crazily. He reached out and closed it. The woman gave the motor gas.

"Hey!" Crane called. "Wait a minute."

The car swayed as it entered the street, swung wide around their sedan. Crane caught a vivid impression of the woman. She was handsome with milk-white skin and carrot hair, and her large mouth looked as though it had been lipsticked with a vermilion squirt gun. The man kept his face turned away.

Ann pulled Crane back into the sedan. "Come on."

They got around in a wide sweep which carried them over the curb and onto the soft lawn of a Spanish cottage across the lane. The other car was still in sight. Ann shoved the sedan to fifty-five before she shifted into high. Motor and tires began to scream.

Crane clutched desperately at the dashboard. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

Ann didn t answer. She watched the road, her foot holding the accelerator against the rubber floor mat. Her eyes gleamed and her face was determined. She held the wheel so firmly her knuckles showed white through her skin.

She was a beautiful girl, Crane thought, but he wondered if she didn t have just a shade too much character. She seemed to take the detective business too seriously. She didn t act like a blonde at all. He wondered if she d been a redhead, too, and had bleached her hair.

With a wail of tires, the sedan rounded a turn. He looked at the speedometer, saw with horror they were going eighty miles an hour. The other car, swaying violently from one side of the clay road to the other, was about two hundred yards ahead. He hoped his car was more stable, but he suspected it was not. They seemed to be gaining on the other car.

He had to shout to be heard. "What do we do when we catch them?"

"Arrest him. He s a burglar."

"What if he resists?"

"Knock him down."

They were passing through a long valley, and the light was dim. Ann switched on the headlights, but they didn t do much good. The road undulated slightly, and every time they raced over a crest and dropped into the following hollow Crane felt his stomach turn over. It didn t seem to be the road they had come over from Marchton.

Crane shouted, "What if he has a gun?"

"Shoot him."

"With what?"

"In my purse… a pistol."

The pistol was a. 25 automatic with an effective range of about ten yards. He examined it gingerly, then put it back in the purse.

"You haven t got a drink in there?" he shouted.

She ignored him. She was concentrating on the chase, which was turning out to be a pretty even affair. She drove well, catching the turns with a minimum of slide and seldom allowing the arrow indicator to fall below seventy miles an hour.

The other car had more trouble. On one abrupt curve it slid onto the grass, throwing up a screen of dust, and Crane thought it was going to overturn. He could see suitcases and boxes tumbling about the rear and the man and woman leaning far over to the right, away from the pull of momentum. Almost on the lip of the ditch the car straightened, careened back onto the road.

An instant later Ann hit the turn and Crane held his breath. They made it without trouble.

"Good gal," he said.

He felt a little better. He was beginning to have confidence in her. He was also beginning to feel they would never catch the other car.

Ahead, dark green in the half-light, a wavelike barrier of low hills obstructed the road. The road went up at an easy angle for a half mile, then abruptly made a hairpin turn to the left so that it came back parallel to them, about twenty feet away, but higher. The sedan in front cut almost into the left-hand ditch to make the long turn, taking advantage of the natural banking provided by the ditch. As it came back toward them, not more than thirty yards to the left, Crane could see the woman clinging to the wheel, her face half a foot from the windshield. The man leaned over her back, his head almost out her window, a hand holding a revolver thrust through it. He fired as they passed. Crane ducked at the flash, but he heard no report.

Ann, intent on making the U turn, asked, "What s the matter?"

Crane reached down and turned off the ignition.

"What s the matter?" Ann asked again.

The car lost speed rapidly on the steep grade, came to a stop. They could see the taillight of the other car far up the hill. Presently it disappeared around a bend. There was a sound of crickets from the woods above them.

"We would have caught them," Ann said. "Why did you make me stop?"

Crane turned to the rear seat of the sedan, pointed a finger. In the left-door window, low and to the left, was a neat, thumb-sized hole. The glass around the hole had slivered; it looked like a pineapple ice. The bullet had apparently gone through the open window on the other side. Anyway, they were unable to locate a hole.