The April Robin Murders

Seventeen

“Don’t get excited,” Bingo hissed. “Don’t turn the lights on. Don’t make any noise.” He wondered if Handsome could hear his teeth chattering.

“Should I call the police?” Handsome whispered.

“No!” Bingo told him. “We’ll handle this ourselves.” He stood up, thanking his stars he had his clothes on. “It can’t be Chester Baxter,” he whispered, “he’d ring the bell. It can’t be Courtney Budlong, he probably still has keys.” He drew a long breath. “Never mind who it is. We’d better look!”

The faint but definite sounds of someone in the garden had ceased momentarily. Now they began again, soft and stealthy. Someone seemed to be looking for someone.

Bingo caught himself about to say, “You look outside, and I’ll watch inside in case he tries to open a window.” That was no way for the president and senior partner of the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America to behave. He slipped on his jacket and said, “Be careful, now.”

There was the unmistakable sound of a window being tried at the rear of the house.

As they slipped outside, Bingo realized that it must be near morning, there was a faint, grayish light. He wondered a little wildly if here in Southern California daylight came in with a rush the same way the dark came down. If it did, it should be bright as noon any minute now.

They stole around the corner of the big house, keeping to the shadows of the wall through the rose garden, and then they saw him, a tall, attenuated figure, cautiously trying a window.

Bingo saw Handsome brace himself for a flying tackle, put out a quick restraining hand, thrust his right hand into the pocket of his jacket and said in a voice that, to him at least, sounded strong and steady, “Stand still, or I’ll shoot!”

The man turned around, slowly.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Bingo barked, using a line from a long-remembered movie, “and walk over here.”

The dark figure moved closer, empty hands in sight. As the dim gray light struck his face, Bingo recognized the ice-eyed man who had been in the crowd the afternoon before. He didn’t look ice-eyed now. He looked a little frantic.

“Well,” Bingo said, “you pick a funny time to go collecting souvenirs. Or are you looking for a new place to train birds and keep rentable reptiles?”

“I got about as much right to be here as you have,” the man said sullenly. “I’m William Willis.”

“You told us that already,” Bingo said. “That doesn’t explain why you’re trying to break in our house.”

“If it is your house,” William Willis said. He pulled back his shoulders and said, “I’m Mrs. Lois Lattimer’s brother.”

“Well,” Bingo said. “That makes things different.” He added quickly, “But not very different.”

William Willis said, “Mister, I don’t have anything against you, and I don’t think you have anything against me. I hope. Can we sit down some place and talk this over?”

“Sure,” Bingo said. “Let’s go inside out of the cold.” He remembered just in time to add, “But don’t forget, I’ve got you covered.”

William Willis marched obediently into the house and sat down on one of the davenports. Handsome switched on the lights and vanished into the kitchen to make coffee.

Seen now at this hour, the tall, thin man seemed about as formidable as an abandoned kitten. Bingo relaxed, took his right hand out of his jacket pocket, and lit a cigarette. It pleased him to observe that his hand was not shaking.

“All right,” Bingo said, sounding as stern as he could, “go on and explain.”

William Willis cleared his throat and said, “The question seems to be, who explains first.”

“We have nothing to explain,” Bingo said coldly. “We own this house and we live in it.”

“So you told me this afternoon,” William Willis said. “You’ll pardon me if I sound a little skeptical.”

Bingo thought things over for a moment. No, he was damned if he was going to explain the whole situation to this intruder, who, for all he might be Lois Lattimer’s brother, was still a stranger. “There are still some formalities to go through,” he said, using up all the dignity he had in the world, “but our lawyer, Mr. Arthur Schlee, assured us that our letter of sale and our receipt are sufficient for the present.” He stressed the “Mr. Arthur Schlee” just a trifle.

William Willis made no comment.

“Now,” Bingo said, “you explain what you’re doing trespassing on — prowling around — our property in the middle of the night.”

“I—” William Willis paused.

Bingo looked at him with a sudden rush of sympathy. Their visitor looked pale, extremely tired, and more than a little disturbed. Bingo had a lot of questions to ask, but he decided to let them go until Handsome came back with the coffee. William Willis, he thought, didn’t look like the brother of a woman who had murdered her husband. If Julien Lattimer had been murdered. He looked right now like a weary man, approaching old age, who trained birds for a living and rented out reptiles of all kinds.

A cup of coffee later, everybody felt better. There was even a little color in William Willis’ sallow face. He put down his coffee cup and accepted a cigarette.

“Those papers you mentioned,” he said, scowling. “Was Julien’s signature on them?”

“Yes. But he’s supposed to be dead,” Bingo said, feeling his way with care.

“If he isn’t,” William Willis said, a twisted smile on his thin mouth, “he will be in two more years.”

It took a minute or so for Bingo to figure that one out. Sure. Seven years. Julien Lattimer would be legally dead. “Your sister—” he began.

“My sister,” William Willis said, “will at that time inherit everything. And, it is considerable, I assure you.”

“But your sister can’t inherit if—” Bingo paused again.

Again there was the wry, crooked smile. “My sister can’t inherit the estate if she murdered Julien. But you forget, that remains to be proved.”

Bingo thought that over. True, if Julien Lattimer or his body stayed lost until the seven years were up, it would be a damned difficult thing to prove that his wife had murdered him.

Handsome said earnestly, “I remember a story in a Sunday supplement about a wealthy millionaire and his wife. It was June 5, 1949, the day before prohibition was repealed in Kansas after sixty-nine years. There was a story in the main news section about that, too.”

“Were this wealthy millionaire and his wife in Kansas?” William Willis said, looking a little bewildered.

“Uh-uh,” Handsome said. “Long Island. It was on a right-hand page and there were pictures of both of them and their house. Neither of them was very good-looking, and I didn’t think much of the house.” He added, “Right across was an article about why people walk in circles when they get lost. Do you know it’s because practically everybody has one leg longer than the other?”

By now William Willis looked thoroughly confused and a little apprehensive. He looked anxiously at Bingo.

“It’s all right,” Bingo assured him. “My partner remembers everything. And that’s the way he remembers it.” He gave Handsome a stern look and said, “What about these millionaires?”

“Oh,” Handsome said. “They shot each other. And then his relatives and her relatives both wanted to inherit all the money. So it was a question of who shot who first. And who died first. And if the one who died last shot in self-defense, so it wouldn’t be murder. It was kind of a problem because it looked like they both shot at about the same time.”

“How did it come out?” Bingo asked, fascinated in spite of himself, and forgetting his own troubles for the moment.

“Well,” Handsome said, “it turned out there wasn’t any money anyway because it seemed he had invested all of it in a tin mine somewhere where there wasn’t any tin. So it didn’t really matter.”

“But this does matter,” William Willis said. “I loved my sister very much. But I’ve got to think of myself, too. If Julien Lattimer is dead, and then if anything would happen to Lois—” His voice faded away.

“You’d be able to buy a lot of birdseed,” Bingo said, “and food for those rentable reptiles.” He counted to ten and said, “Where is your sister now?”

The look on William Willis’ face simply said that he was not going to answer that. Whether or not he knew where she was hiding was another question.

“A little more coffee,” Bingo said. He felt another rush of sympathy for their visitor. “Mr. Willis,” he said warmly, “I’m beginning to think we’ll all get a little further if we’re friends.” He looked at the man who had so obviously been up all night, who must have been through a bad few years. He was glad to see Handsome bring some warmed up coffee cake along with the pot of coffee.

The smile he gave William Willis came from his heart. “You were prowling around what may or may not be our house. We don’t care, and I speak for my partner as well as myself.” He felt the smile widening. “Maybe if you’d tell us why you were trying to get in the house, and what you were looking for, we could help you find it.”

William Willis looked up at him with anguished eyes.

Handsome brought some butter to put on the coffee cake and said, apologetically, “I wish we had some jam. Or some eggs.” He set the butter on the coffee table, produced a handful of paper napkins he’d found somewhere, and said, “Like in that story, Mr. Willis. I mean, if Mr. Julien Lattimer is dead but if your sister didn’t kill him, then she inherits this house and almost everything else, and then if anything happened to her this would be your house, so in a way you could consider us trespassers.” He handed William Willis the sugar. “But if you look at it this way, if Julien Lattimer is alive, and if he did sign those papers, why then we practically own this house and you are a trespasser.”

Bingo had a sudden and fleeting thought that maybe Handsome should have been a lawyer instead of a photographer.

Handsome handed William Willis the cream and said, “But it’s nicer to have you as our guest.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Bingo said. “So drink your coffee, and then let’s us all go looking for what you came here to find.”

“I don’t know what I’m looking for. Believe me, I’m telling the truth. It just seems to me that there must be something—” He paused. “I never was able to get into the house before. There was the caretaker guarding it. Last night I thought I could break in. I had no idea you would be here. I thought the house would be empty. That I could get in and dig around and look around—” He paused. “I don’t know what I expected to find, or where I expected to find it. Believe me, believe me, it was just that I wanted to search the house, by myself.”

Bingo said gently, “The police have done everything but tear down the walls.”

William Willis said, “I loved my sister very much.” He lifted his head and suddenly he didn’t look quite as tired, quite as defeated. “She was beautiful. She could have gone a long way in show business, if she hadn’t married that horrible, really horrible man for his money. She did, and it was a terrible mistake.” He stopped himself suddenly and said, “Look, I can’t possibly tell you all about it right now. Only it wasn’t just because of Julien Lattimer’s money. She was very frail, very delicate, her heart wasn’t too good. This Julien Lattimer offered her what seemed to be a snug harbor, a secure refuge. She didn’t realize—” He paused, bit his lip, and said, “She was an artist, a real artist. She did a slack-wire act—” His eyes suddenly looked into faraway and unseen places, as though he were seeing his little sister perform on the stage. For just an instant, Bingo could see her too, a dream image as April Robin was a dream image, frail, delicate, lovely, floating over space on a slack wire—

Bingo brought himself back to this earth and this day with a jolting effort. “Look, pal,” he said. “If we’re going to be friends, let’s you answer me just one or two quick questions. Do you know anyone named Courtney Budlong?”

William Willis brought himself back to earth, too. He looked a little bewildered and said, “No.”

“Do you know a Mr. Chester Baxter? A Mr. Charlie Browne?”

William Willis had never heard of them, either.

“Clifford Bradbury?” Bingo asked.

William Willis shook his head and didn’t even bother to say no. Bingo realized he was running out of questions. Not only that, but he wasn’t getting any answers.

“Mr. Willis,” Bingo said deprecatingly, “I’m what you might call sort of a fan of wire acts, and I don’t remember any Lois Willis.”

William Willis looked at him wearily and said, “Her name wasn’t Willis. I thought I told you, she was my stepsister. Her name was Lois DeLee.”

There was a little silence, and then Handsome said, “Oh.” Then there was a longer silence.

Bingo had a gross of questions to ask now. The question was, which one to ask first. He was turning them over in his mind when the doorbell rang with a grimly authoritative sound.

It was Perroni and Hendenfelder. They looked as though they’d been awake all night, too.

Perroni flashed his hard and professional smile and said, “Well. You’re up and dressed early this morning.”

Bingo cast desperately around for an answer and finally said, “We got up at dawn to watch the sunrise.”

“You couldn’t have picked a better time for it,” Perroni said. He looked at William Willis and said, “What are you doing here?”

William Willis looked helpless. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out of it.

“We’re businessmen,” Bingo said indignantly. “Mr. Willis trains birds and rents out reptiles. We’re just talking over some future deals.” Why he should cover up for William Willis, he didn’t know, but it seemed to be the thing to do at the time.

Perroni looked as though he believed William Willis had been there on a business deal, and also that flying saucers landed on a regular schedule at Giant Rock, but he didn’t make an issue of it.

“We brought you a little news,” Hendenfelder said. “That’s why we’re here so early. About Chester Baxter.”

“He’s dead,” Perroni said, making it obvious that he didn’t like to waste time.

“Found in an alley in Ocean Park, with his throat cut,” Hendenfelder said.

“And,” Perroni added grimly, “where were you boys all last night, and can you prove it?”