The April Robin Murders

Twenty

“I’m getting very confused, Handsome,” Bingo confided as he sank down on the davenport. He wished for a moment that he were caught in a traffic jam at the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel. He wished he were trying to work out a theory in nuclear physics. “There seem to be so many things I know, and yet so many things I don’t know. How are we ever going to get rich and famous if all these problems keep popping up?”

“Murder is a problem,” Handsome agreed, nodding solemnly.

“I have to make a few more phone calls,” Bingo said. He looked at Handsome apologetically. “I realize I’m running up the phone bill—”

“The telephone is our cheapest luxury,” Handsome said. “I once read a pamphlet on it put out by the New York Telephone Company. It gave a comparison list of prices in the rising cost of living. And whereas the price of wire and plastic and labor had gone up—”

But Bingo was already dialing.

“Hello?” he said into the phone. “William Willis?”

“Yes,” Willis said. “Who’s this?”

“Bingo Riggs.”

“Oh, yes. Hello.”

“Mr. Willis, I wonder if I may ask you a few questions. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Is it about my sister?” Willis asked.

“Yes. Your stepsister. You did say she was your stepsister, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And her name, before she married Julien Lattimer, was Lois DeLee. Is that also right?”

“Yes.”

“And she was a slack-wire performer?”

“Yes, and a darned good one,” Willis said.

“Did you ever see her act?”

“Of course I did. You might say, in fact, that I first met her while she was doing her act.”

Bingo blinked. “How was that again?” he said.

“Lois. I first met her in 1947. We were booked together on the same bill. Me and my birds, and her and her slack wire.”

Bingo blinked again. “If I understand you correctly,” he said, “you’re saying you first met your sister in 1947? Is that what you’re saying?”

“If you want to be technical about it,” Willis said, “I first met her in 1922. That was when my father married her mother. He was a widower, and Lois’ mother was a widow. They met, fell in love, and got married. Lois had an older brother, Frank. He’s dead now. Died young.”

“Then if you really met Lois in 1922, why did you say—?”

“Well, when our folks got married, we all moved into the same house, naturally,” Willis said.

“Naturally,” Bingo replied.

“I was about twenty-one years old then. This was in 1924. Lois was just a little kid.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I left home. Not right away, but about a year after the marriage. Figured I was about ready to step out into the world on my own. The family moved away from Hollywood soon after that. To Colorado. So the last time I saw Lois, until 1947 when we booked on the same bill, was when she was eleven years old. And meeting her in 1947 was like meeting an entirely different person, if you know what I mean. It was quite a reunion.”

“I can imagine,” Bingo said. “Had she changed much?”

“Well, after all,” Willis said, “quite a few years had gone by. She was in her early thirties in 1947. Sure, she’d changed. She was a young woman and not a little girl any more. But she was still delicate... and fragile... and blond, and with this enormous spirit of gentility. I loved my sister very much.”

“When did she marry Lattimer?” Bingo asked.

“Several years later. Must have been 1949 or 1950. Yes, that’s right. That was when they bought your—” He corrected himself. “The house you’re living in now. That’s right. About three years before they both disappeared.”

“Thank you, sir,” Bingo said, and he hung up.

“Well?” Handsome asked.

Bingo was already thumbing through the directory. “I have another call to make,” he said. “Do you know what the whole trouble with this setup is, Handsome?”

“What?”

“The dead won’t stay dead,” he answered, and he began dialing. “He ought to be home by now, don’t you think?”

“Who?” Handsome asked.

Bingo didn’t get a chance to answer. A voice on the other end of the line said, “The Henkin residence.”

“Let me talk to Leo Henkin, please,” Bingo said.

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“Bingo Riggs.”

“One moment please, sir.”

Bingo waited. Handsome watched him.

Henkin’s voice came onto the line. “Well, well, how’s the discoverer from New York?” he said. “What can old Leo Henkin do for you?”

“I want to know about April Robin,” Bingo said.

There was a long pause on the line.

“Do you know about her?” Bingo asked.

“Leo Henkin knows everything,” Henkin said, but the brass had gone out of his voice.

“Then I want you to tell me what you know.”

“It’s a sad story. And a long one.”

“I’ve got plenty of time and plenty of sympathy,” Bingo said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“Come over here,” Henkin said. “To my house.” And he gave Bingo the address.

The Beverly Hills home of Leo Henkin did not resemble his office at all. Whereas the office had looked like an extension of Santa Anita Raceway, with horses cluttering up each wall and surface, his home was a clean low modern house which seemed to be built chiefly of flagstone and glass. And curiously, the Leo Henkin who lived in this house did not very much resemble the Leo Henkin from the horsy office. A servant met Bingo and Handsome at the front door, led them through a slate-paved entrance hallway and then into a lanai which overlooked Henkin’s large swimming pool. Henkin was wearing chino pants and a sports shirt. The shirt was neither loud nor particularly Californian, Bingo noticed, and he wondered if the twinkling little man in the horse-bestrewn office was simply an act for the industry. As Leo Henkin advanced with his hand outstretched, he seemed somehow taller than his five feet three inches, somehow more relaxed than he would ever look in his private office. “Come in,” he said, “come in. Can I get you something to drink?”

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Henkin,” Bingo said, “we’d like to get straight to the point. We’d like to know about April Robin.”

Leo Henkin heaved a particularly forlorn little sigh. He gestured to two Saarinen chairs and then sat in another chair facing the pool. Darkness had come with its customary suddenness. The flagstones surrounding the pool were black and shadowy, but the underwater lights cast a reflected glow into the lanai, tinting Henkin’s thin white hair with amber.

“Her real name was Abigail Ross,” Henkin said. “They changed it to April Robin when she began working for Metro in 1926. Her first movie was one of those Ruritanian romance things. The movie stank, but April Robin... ahhhhh!” Leo Henkin kissed his fingers. “She was only fifteen at the time, but God, what an actress! Have you ever seen her? Have you ever seen any of her pictures?”

“No,” Bingo admitted.

“A beauty, a beauty,” he said. “Like a bird, like a bird on the wing.”

“What did she look like?” Handsome asked, and his brow was furrowed and Bingo knew he was teasing his memory, coaxing it to come up with a photo of April Robin.

“Brown hair,” Henkin said, “as soft as mink. And big brown eyes. A delicate profile, high cheekbones, a rosebud mouth. Small-boned, she was, small all over, but with a beautiful figure. She was like a sister on the screen, do you know what I mean? But a sister with whom you wanted to commit incest. I’ll tell you what her secret was. Would you like to know what April Robin’s secret was?”

“Yes,” Bingo said.

“She was youth. She was fifteen and a star, both parents dead, most of her money going into a trust fund. Fifteen! Youth! And youth was in her face and her eyes and her body, and I’ll tell you something. She’d still be young today. She had that kind of beauty. If she was still alive today, she’d be forty-seven years old, and I’ll bet my house and my business and my life that she wouldn’t look a day over thirty-two. Unchangeable. The beauty that never grows old, a few have it, and they last forever. She’d be young always. You’d look at her and automatically think of her as a young girl.” Henkin shook his head. “If she’d lived. But she’s dead, isn’t she? A shame. A real shame.”

“How did she die, Mr. Henkin?” Handsome asked. His brow was still furrowed.

Henkin shook his head. “Oh, what a story,” he said, “what a terrible story. Do you know what happened in October of 1927?”

“Yes,” Handsome said. “The Jazz Singer opened at the Warner Theatre in New York.”

“The Jazz Singer,” Henkin said, nodding soberly. “And, of course, the revolution of the film industry. April Robin was working on a silent movie when the news broke. Somebody read the writing on the wall and immediately began reshooting it. It was a good thing, too. By the middle of 1928 the lousiest sound movies were outdrawing the best silent films all over the country. April Robin’s first sound film was released in December of 1928. She was just seventeen, I remember. She was one of the first silent stars to take the plunge.”

“What happened?” Bingo asked.

“I remember the opening,” Henkin said. He sighed. “It opened at the Pantages. There were signs all over the place.” He gestured with his hands. “Robin Speaks.” He paused. “Well, she spoke. And they laughed. Oh God, they laughed. They laughed because the voice wasn’t fragile April Robin. The voice was Abigail Ross of Brooklyn, New York. It didn’t fit the concept the movie public had of their star, and so they laughed. They laughed fit to bust. She ran out of the theatre, I remember. She grabbed the nearest car, and drove away. They said later that she really wasn’t a good driver, didn’t even have a license, in fact. They said that was what caused the accident.”

“She had an accident that night?”

“No, no,” Henkin said. “The next day. Nobody saw or heard from her that night. The next day the newspapers made a shambles of her career. One critic said she sounded like a millhand with laryngitis. She must have seen the papers. She was a very sensitive girl, and also a kid, don’t forget that. Only seventeen years old with a whole life ahead of her. In any case, for reasons nobody yet understands, she went to her Hollywood bank the next day and withdrew seventy-five thousand dollars — her entire savings. She was earning fabulous money, you know, but most of it went into a trust fund. Close to a million dollars at the time of the accident. But all she had in cash was seventy-five thousand dollars, and she withdrew that and drove off again. And then—”

Henkin paused. Except for the lights from the pool, the lanai was very dark. He switched on a lamp and then sat again, heavily, like and old, old man who had seen everything the movie colony could offer, the quick successes and the quicker failures, the overnight stardom, the exorbitant salary demands, the movies made and the movies remade, the cycles returning and vanishing, all of it.

“They found her at the bottom of a cliff the next day in the car she’d stolen. The car was a wreck, destroyed, completely burned — terrible, terrible. April Robin — the most beautiful and tender thing on the screen — she... she couldn’t be described, it was that bad. They... they also found a few charred hundred-dollar bills in the wreckage. They identified them as part of the money she’d withdrawn from the bank that afternoon. And they found her purse, of course, with identification. And that was the end. The press hushed it up. They didn’t like the idea that maybe their reviews had caused what looked like a suicide.”

Henkin stopped talking. The room was very silent.

Bingo waited for what seemed like a very long time. Then he said, “You knew her personally?”

“Yes. I knew her personally.”

“Would you say that Janesse Budlong resembles her?”

“I would,” Henkin said.

“Resembles her very much?”

“A little,” Henkin said. “Actually, she resembles her mother more. That flaming red hair. Exactly like her mother’s.”

Bingo felt a slight twinge of disappointment.

“And her mother?” he said. “What was her maiden name?”

Henkin chuckled a bit. “Victor would kill me if I told you this, and so would Alexandria. That’s her name. Janesse’s mother. Alexandria.”

“Alexandria what?”

Henkin chuckled again. “Alexandria Breckenfoote, and for God’s sake, don’t tell Victor I told you.”

“There isn’t then,” Bingo said morosely, “the slightest possibility that Janesse Budlong is April Robin’s daughter.”

Henkin’s eyebrows went up onto his forehead. “Not the slightest possibility,” he said. “Even if April Robin hadn’t died in 1928, why, for God’s sake, I know people who were at the hospital when Janesse was born. Alexandria’s her mother all right, no question.” He paused. “What gave you the idea—?”

“I don’t know,” Bingo said. “I guess I’ve been thinking of ghosts too much. May I use your phone, Mr. Henkin?”

“Please,” Henkin said.

He put a call through to the Skylight Motel. A woman answered the phone and said that Mariposa DeLee had not yet returned. Bingo went back into the lanai, thanked Henkin for his time and information, and then started out with Handsome.

At the door, some of Henkin’s flamboyancy seemed to come back. “Remember,” he said. “When you need studio space, actors, scripts, anything, just call on old Leo Henkin.”

“We’ll be sure to,” Bingo promised, “and thanks again, Mr. Henkin.”

As they walked toward the car, Handsome said, “Maybe that’s why I couldn’t remember about her, Bingo. Because the newspapers hushed it up. Maybe my memory’s all right, after all.”

“I’m sure it is, Handsome,” Bingo said.

“Where are we going now?”

“To Kimballsville,” Bingo said.

“What for?”

“To look up a ghost, Handsome.”

The Kimballsville cemetery was not a large one, but it was a scary one nonetheless. As Bingo and Handsome threaded their way through the tombstones with the assistance of a flashlight, Bingo had the distinct urge to whistle or something. Instead, he began talking.

“You’ll remember,” he said, “that Mariposa DeLee told us her sister-in-law died in Kimballsville and was buried here. Am I right, Handsome?”

“You’re right,” Handsome said. “She also said that Charlie Browne was married to this Miss DeLee.”

“Mmmm,” Bingo said. He flashed the light onto a tombstone. “Parker Atchison,” he read. “That’s not what we’re looking for.”

He flashed the light onto another tombstone. Then he stepped closer to the grave. “I think this is it,” he said. Together, they studied the chiseled inscription:

“What I’d like to know,” Bingo said, “is how Lois DeLee managed to get buried in 1928 and then marry Julien Lattimer in 1950.”

Handsome nodded soberly. “Maybe her sister-in-law Mariposa can tell us,” he said. “It should make interesting listening.”

Bingo was not willing to speculate on whether or not Mariposa DeLee was actually at the Skylight Motel all day long and simply refusing telephone calls. Such an observation would have been ungentlemanly, and he liked to think of himself as possessing at least some of the social graces. The fact remained, however, that Mariposa was very much in evidence when he and Handsome arrived at the motel. Sitting in front of the office under an amber-colored bug light, she started from the chair when she spotted the convertible and then apparently decided to brave it through.

“We’ve been trying to reach you,” Bingo said.

“I’ve been out,” she answered. In the soft amber light, she looked younger than she did in natural sunshine. She wore a white sweater and black tapered slacks, and the yellow light concealed the wrinkles on her face, so that she might have been a young matron.

“Find Charlie Browne?” Bingo asked.

“No.”

“That’s a shame,” Bingo said. “There were a few things, Mrs. DeLee...”

“Yes?”

“... which we know you won’t mind discussing since we’re such old friends.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“You said that your sister-in-law died in Kimballsville a couple of years back. You did say that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.” Nervously Mariposa DeLee lighted a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke.

“What did you mean by a couple of years back?”

“Just what it sounded like.”

“A couple is usually defined as two,” Bingo said. “Now, you didn’t mean two years back, did you?”

“I meant a couple. Two, three, four — who remembers?”

“Her tombstone remembers,” Handsome said.

“What?”

“She died in 1928,” Bingo amplified. “Unless you’re counting by fifteens, that’s not a couple of years ago.”

“All right, I forgot the date,” Mariposa said.

“Did you forget her name, too?”

“Of course not.”

“What was her name?”

Mariposa paused. “Lois,” she said at last.

“Lois what?”

Again Mariposa paused. This time the pause assumed rather lengthy proportions. Bingo and Handsome waited. It seemed as if Mariposa was not going to answer.

“Lois what?” Bingo repeated.

Mariposa maintained her silence.

“You said she was married to Charlie Browne, didn’t you? You said he took care of her while she was sick. You said he was more like a mother to her than a husband. Didn’t you say that, Mrs. DeLee?”

“Yes, I did,” Mariposa answered. She puffed on the cigarette, let out a quick nervous ball of smoke, and then puffed on it again.

“Then her name would be Lois Browne, wouldn’t it?” Bingo asked.

“Yes.”

“Then why is the name Lois DeLee on her tombstone?”

“I... I don’t know. Perhaps it was a mistake.”

“Perhaps,” Bingo said. “Or perhaps she wasn’t married to Charlie Browne at all. Since she was only fifteen when she died—”

“Who says she was only—”

“The tombstone,” Handsome said. “1913 to 1928.”

“Since she was only fifteen,” Bingo continued, “it’s unlikely that she was married, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Mariposa said. “I don’t have to answer your questions. I don’t have to—”

“Naturally you don’t,” Bingo said. “But we’re all friends and all trying to work this thing out together, aren’t we? Sure we are. Like for example, your husband’s name was Frank, isn’t that right? Frank DeLee?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And he died young, isn’t that right?”

“He died shortly after we were married.”

“And Lois DeLee was his sister, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“How did she happen to be in Kimballsville, Mrs. DeLee? And how did she die?”

“She came to visit me, as I told you.”

“And the dying?”

“She was very sick.”

“With what?”

“Pneumonia.”

“And she died of pneumonia?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have a doctor?”

“Not until it was too late.”

“Was a death certificate issued?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“By a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Which doctor?”

“A... a doctor Charlie knew.”

Bingo nodded. “Do you still maintain, Mrs. DeLee, that Charlie Browne was married to young Lois? Isn’t it more likely that he was a... ah... a friend of yours?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Mariposa said.

“I suppose we’ll have to,” Bingo answered, sighing. “Come on, Handsome.” He turned on his heel and then stopped. “Mrs. DeLee, I hope you realize that permission is often granted for the exhumation of bodies.”

“What are you talking about?” Mariposa said.

“Only this. I’m not a betting man, but I’m willing to wager that the coffin of Lois DeLee is, and always was, empty!”