The April Robin Murders

Twenty-one

The Owl’s Roost would have been called, in New York, a very sleazy dump. In California, it was called a very sleazy dump. The upholstered booths had been done in imitation zebra, which had peeled and cracked long ago and which now resembled vertical interference on a television screen. The people lounging about the roost might very well have been owls. They observed each newcomer with the wide-open stare of a night bird.

Bingo and Handsome had been so observed when they entered the bar at ten minutes past ten. It was now twenty minutes past midnight, and the observation had slackened off somewhat during the last two hours and ten minutes, but Bingo nonetheless felt the bar’s clientele were wondering what he and his partner were doing here. Matthew, the bartender, had no such moments of speculation. He knew exactly what they were doing there. They were looking for Charlie Browne.

Eying the clock, he said now, “It don’t look like he’s coming. Maybe he’s been tipped to stay away.”

“Maybe so,” Bingo said.

“I’ve always wondered,” Handsome said to Matthew, “how to get foam on a whiskey sour. I once read an article in Esquire which told how to make the six most-ordered cocktails in the United States, but it didn’t mention the way to get the foam. An article on Anita Ekberg started on the next page. She was almost naked, as I recall.”

“Egg white,” Matthew said.

“I don’t understand,” Handsome said.

“You separate an egg white from the rest of the egg, dump it in the mixer with the other ingredients, and whammo! Foam!”

“Thank you,” Handsome said.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Bingo asked.

“Not if Mrs. DeLee phoned him,” Handsome said. “She’s a nice old lady but I wouldn’t put it past her. Especially if something funny happened back in Kimballsville in 1928.”

“I think something very funny happened, Handsome.”

“I think so, too, Bingo.”

“It still doesn’t explain, though—” Bingo started, and then clamped his mouth shut. “The window!” he said, and he was off his stool immediately, bolting for the door. Behind him, Handsome said, “Browne?”

“Yes, but he’s seen us,” Bingo said, and he threw open the door.

They heard his footsteps instantly. The Owl’s Roost boasted a blacktop parking lot, and Browne’s shoes clattered noisily on the asphalt surface now as he raced across the deserted space toward his car. It was beautiful, Bingo mused, to see Handsome in motion, his long legs chewing up the asphalt, his wide shoulders pushing against the California night. It was beautiful to watch him catch Charlie Browne by the shoulder just as he opened the door to the car, beautiful to watch him spin the con man around, release the shoulder, and recapture the man by the lapels of his suit.

“What is this?” Browne shouted.

“Hello, Mr. Budlong,” Handsome said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

“Budlong? What the hell are you talking about?” Browne said. “My name’s Carlyle Buchanan.”

“And also Courtney Budlong, and Clifford Bradbury, and Charlie Browne.”

“I never saw either of you before in my entire life,” Browne said, but without much conviction.

Bingo cocked his head to one side and looked at Browne with paternal exasperation. Handsome clucked his tongue. Browne sighed heavily.

“Okay,” he said.

“There now, that’s better,” Bingo said.

“Since you were about to enter your car anyway,” Handsome said, “why don’t we all go inside and have a chat?”

“I have nothing to talk about,” Browne said. “I sold you that house legally.”

“Let’s sit, anyway,” Bingo said.

They went into the car, Browne sitting on the front seat between Bingo and Handsome. “If you sold us the April Robin house legally,” Bingo said, “that means the Julien Lattimer signature is bona fide. Where’d you get it?”

Charlie Browne did not answer.

“He’s very much like Mrs. DeLee,” Handsome said. “She didn’t have much to say, either.” He paused. “At first.”

“Did you talk to Mari—?” Browne started, and then stopped himself. The mild California night air pushed its way through the window on the driver’s side, worked its way across the serious faces of the three men on the front seat, and then moved past Handsome and through the window on his side, bound for Japan.

“She told us all about how Lois DeLee died,” Handsome said.

And then Bingo, thinking bigger than he’d ever thought since he’d come to Hollywood, said, “All about the car accident.”

To say that Charlie Browne’s mouth fell open would have been complete understatement, Bingo thought. Not only did it fall open, but it appeared ready to drop from his face. At any moment, Bingo expected Browne’s jawbone to fall free and topple down the front of Browne’s sports shirt.

“Yes,” Bingo said, in simple reiteration. “The car accident.”

Browne closed his mouth, and then he closed his eyes, and Bingo imagined he was listening to the music of a heavenly choir as the Judgment Day rolls were read. He nodded then and said, “It wasn’t my idea. It was April Robin’s.”

“Maybe we ought to listen to his side of the story,” Handsome suggested.

“Sure,” Bingo said. “Certainly. His side of the story begins like this. First, you were not married to Lois DeLee, isn’t that right? You only used that gimmick as an extra sort of pressure.”

“Yes,” Browne admitted.

“Second, you were staying at the cabins with Mariposa DeLee on the night Lois died. You’d probably never met Lois before that night.”

“I’d seen her before,” Browne said. “She’d come to stay with Mariposa about two weeks before the accident. I’d seen her around.”

“Now let’s have your version of the accident.”

“We were sitting outside, Mariposa and me,” Browne said. His brow wrinkled but not with the effort of recall. Bingo was more than certain that the events of that December night in 1928 were indelibly stamped into the memory of Charlie Browne and would never be removed. “Lois had gone for a walk. She was just a teen-age kid, you know, fifteen, but well developed for a kid. But she went for walks a lot, a dreamy kind of kid. She was crossing the highway when this Stutz Bearcat came tooling down the road. It was going, man! Not like today’s high-powered cars, but this baby had power of its own, and it hugged the road, and it came roaring out of the darkness like the Twentieth Century Limited. It must have knocked Lois ten feet in the air and then sent her sprawling another thirty feet onto the highway. Mariposa and I came running out of the motel. The car stopped. I don’t know why, but the driver pulled up and got out. I recognized her right away. There wasn’t a person in America, no less California, who didn’t know that face. It was April Robin.”

“Go on,” Bingo said tensely. He could, through Browne’s voice and words, visualize the fragile seventeen-year-old stepping from the long, low-slung roadster, fresh from the laughter that had greeted her voice at the Pantages, perhaps trembling a little, her hair bobbed, her dress short and straight-lined in the style of the twenties, a long strand of pearls around her throat perhaps, dropping to the middle of the waistless garment.

“Lois was dead,” Browne said, and Bingo heard the words as if he were young April Robin, and he could feel the sudden knowledge of the highway death, and he almost began shivering as April Robin must have done that night some thirty years ago. “I told this to Miss Robin. I told her she was in serious trouble. I—”

“You told her Lois was your wife,” Handsome interrupted.

“Yes. Because... well, I’d already made a plan. The minute I saw who was driving that car, I began thinking in dollar signs. And I knew my case would be stronger if she thought I was Lois’ husband. I told her we would keep it quiet... if she paid us. I asked her how much she had in the bank. She wasn’t sure. Most of her money was in trust funds she couldn’t touch. She said it was something above fifty thousand. I told her I wanted all of it. We took Lois off the highway and left the car at the motel that night. I called a friend of mine, a doctor in San Diego, and he came up and was willing to say the kid had died of pneumonia... for a slice of the dough. The next morning Miss Robin went to her bank in Hollywood to get the money.”

“And she came back with it,” Bingo said.

“Yes. And she also came back with the reviews of her picture which had opened the night before. And she also came back with an idea.”

“What was the idea?”

“She wanted to get away from Hollywood. After what they’d done to her the night before, she wanted to get away, never see them again, never hear of them again, never give them a chance to laugh at April Robin as long as she lived. Her idea was a simple one. She wanted to change places with Lois DeLee. She wanted April Robin to die.”

“But she thought Lois was your wife, didn’t she? Wouldn’t she imagine there were complications to—”

“As far as she was concerned, Lois Browne was dead, my wife was dead. She wanted to assume the name of Lois DeLee, as if the marriage had never existed. This was fine with me because, actually, there’d never been a damn marriage. She still doesn’t know what the tombstone in Kimballsville says. She probably thinks it’s inscribed ‘Lois Browne.’ But the doctor and I couldn’t take any chances. We had to put her real name on the stone.”

“But first you put April’s clothes on the young girl, put April’s purse in the car with her, together with a few bills from the bank, and then shoved the car over a cliff,” Bingo said.

“And then we set fire to it later,” Browne said. “We threw gasoline on the wreckage. And... and the girl. Miss Robin touched the match. I remember that very clearly. It was her who touched the match.”

“And then what?”

“Then she left. In the papers the next day, after the accident was reported, after everyone thought April Robin was dead, I found out she’d withdrawn seventy-five thousand dollars from the bank. She’d sold us short by twenty-five grand.”

“How’d you split the money?”

“We got fifty all told. Twenty to me, twenty to Mariposa, and ten to the doctor who made out the death certificate.”

“And the grave?”

“Nothing but an empty box in Lois’ grave,” Browne said. He paused. “I didn’t commit any crime. April Robin was driving that car.”

“You’re an accessory to manslaughter,” Handsome said flatly.

“Okay,” Bingo said, “let’s say that April Robin, now Lois DeLee, learned her slack-wire act and got into show business again, far from Hollywood. Let’s say the twenty-five grand she withheld from you didn’t last very long and that she was damned anxious to marry Julien Lattimer when he came along. By this time, she’d bleached her hair blond and possibly had a nose-bob done on that famous profile. So she marries him and becomes the fifth Mrs. Julien Lattimer. All right, why does her husband disappear? Why does she vanish immediately after him?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Browne said.

“No? Then how’d you get Lattimer’s signature for us?”

Browne clamped his mouth shut.

“Did you kill Chester Baxter?” Bingo asked.

“Me? Are you crazy? I never killed anyone in my life!”

“How about Pearl Durzy?”

“I had nothing to do with her death,” Browne said.

“How’d you get that Budlong and Dollinger stuff from Janesse?”

Browne smiled thinly. “I needed the stuff, and I figured out where the weakest link was. Janesse, naturally. A kid who wanted to get into the movies and who’d be impressed by a producer. So I made it my business to meet her, gave her a whirl until I got the stationery and receipt, and then dropped her.”

“Did Lattimer ask you to sell that house for him?”

Browne clamped his mouth shut again, and this time it was clamped shut to stay. Bingo nodded soberly.

“I don’t think you ought to try leaving the city,” he said. “I think the police may be looking you up soon, and they might feel your running away was a clear indication of guilt. Far in excess of simple manslaughter.” He opened the door on his side of the car. “Come on, Handsome. Let’s go home.”

In the convertible, Handsome said, “I don’t think April Robin was very bright.”

“Bright or not, Handsome, she was in a pretty tough spot. There wasn’t much she could do but pay the man.”

“Sure. But she threw away all that money in the trust funds.”

“She also threw away her life.”

“On the other hand,” Handsome said, “she later married a very wealthy man, so maybe she knew what she was doing after all.”

“To my way of thinking, she didn’t learn very much over the years,” Bingo said.

“How so?”

“Well, she ran away again, didn’t she? This time as Mrs. Julien Lattimer. And this time leaving an estate of half a million dollars behind her.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like money,” Handsome said.

“Maybe not. Or maybe she just didn’t like Julien. Maybe she put him in a car and set fire to him, too.”

“I would buy that, Bingo,” Handsome said seriously, “except that he signed those papers for our house. It would be hard to be dead and signing papers.”

Bingo was silently reflective for a moment. Then he said, “It figures, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“Everyone referring to Lois Lattimer as a young woman. Remember what Leo Henkin said about April Robin? She’d always look young, he said. A timeless beauty. Well, at least we’ve solved one of those problems, Handsome. We know who April Robin is.”

“Yes,” Handsome agreed. “But we don’t know where she is, or even why she went.”

“Do you think we should call Hendenfelder to tell him what we know?”

“Yes,” Handsome said. “As soon as we get home.”

They drove the rest of the way to Damascus Drive in complete though shared silence. As they pulled up to the house, Handsome said, “I think we’ve got company, Bingo.”

And then Bingo saw the light burning in the living room.