The April Robin Murders

Six

“It isn’t nonsense, and we have bought a house,” Bingo said. “And nobody seems to know if the guy was murdered or not.” It wasn’t exactly the tone of voice to use to a cop and he knew it, but this was entirely too early in the morning to be polite to anybody.

“Oh now, let’s be friendly about this,” Detective Hendenfelder said. His attitude seemed to imply that if Bingo and Handsome had really bought the house, they were important people and should be treated courteously as such, and if it turned out that they hadn’t, no real harm would have been done. “Too bad we had to wake you up so early, but that’s the way things are because — well, because that’s the way things are. Let’s have a cup of coffee and talk this over, h’m?”

Perroni simply said, “Where was this woman’s room?”

Bingo rose and showed him. The first cigarette of the day was making him feel a little better, and if the big fat-faced cop was willing to be friendly, why, Bingo was willing to go along with him. Besides, he and Handsome had nothing to worry about, and nothing to lose except a little time.

The small room still smelled heavily of cleaning fluid. Perroni sniffed and said, “Whew!” He looked it over with sad, mournful eyes, and finally said, “Have to go through her things, but we can do that later.” He led the way back into the living room, to Bingo’s relief.

“All right,” he said with a sigh, taking out a notebook. “What do you know about the woman?”

“Nothing,” Bingo said. “Absolutely nothing. She was around yesterday afternoon and we saw her — not to speak to — when Mr. Budlong was showing us the house.”

“Budlong?” Detective Perroni asked.

“Mr. Courtney Budlong,” Bingo said.

“Budlong and Dollinger?”

“They sold us the house,” Bingo said. “Or, Mr. Courtney Budlong did. Say, did you know that this house used to belong to—”

“Stick to the woman,” Perroni said.

Bingo said stiffly, “That’s the only time we ever saw her. Alive. Mr. Budlong said she’d been the caretaker. And that her name was Pearl Durzy.”

“That’s the only time you ever saw her?”

“Just like I told you,” Bingo said. He wished Handsome and the fat-faced cop would hurry up with that coffee.

“You’re not being very informative,” Perroni complained.

“I don’t know what you want to know,” Bingo said.

The coffee arrived just in time. Handsome had even located some cinnamon rolls and warmed them. Life began to get brighter.

“You looked the house over yesterday afternoon,” Perroni said, as though his patience were being strained toward its outer limit, and declined coffee. “Then what did you do?”

“Then,” Bingo said, “we went into Beverly Hills with Mr. Budlong and bought it.”

“Just like that,” Perroni said.

Bingo nodded and said, “Yes, just like that.” How else would anyone buy a house?

“We’ll get back to that later,” the detective said. “What did you do after you bought the house?”

“We went back to where we’d been staying, and packed,” Bingo said. “A very nice place. The Skylight Motel.” He was beginning to wish again that they’d stayed there. “We took some pictures of it, and then we came back here.”

“Took some pictures?” Perroni asked.

“A present for the lady that owns it,” Bingo said. And whose business was it, anyhow?

“Professional pictures?” Hendenfelder said, with a show of interest.

Bingo handed him a card of the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America. He looked impressed and handed the card to Perroni, who didn’t.

“All right,” Perroni said, tucking the card in his pocket, “you came back here. Where was this Pearl Durzy then?”

“We don’t know,” Bingo said. “She wasn’t here.”

“How do you know she wasn’t here?”

“Well,” Bingo said, “there wasn’t any light on. In her room, I mean.”

“She could have been sitting in the dark,” Perroni said, “or taking a nap.”

“Yes,” Bingo said. “She could. It just didn’t feel like she was here, that’s all.”

Detective Perroni looked at him glumly and silently.

“Or she could have been dying already,” Hendenfelder said.

Bingo shook his head. “We’d’ve smelled the cleaning fluid.”

The skeptical look on Perroni’s sad face expressed what he thought of that for proof. “Go on,” he said.

“Well,” Bingo said, “we got acquainted with our next-door neighbor. Mrs. Waldo Hibbing. Her first name’s Myrtie. She’s a widow.”

“We know everything about Mrs. Hibbing,” Perroni said.

Bingo looked at him in surprise. Mrs. Waldo Hibbing didn’t look as though she’d ever been involved with the police, even for a minor traffic violation.

“It’s been our business to know everything about everybody in this neighborhood,” Perroni explained, with that air of exhausted patience. “Since Julien Lattimer was murdered.”

Bingo opened his mouth to say that Mr. Lattimer couldn’t have been murdered, and then shut it again.

Perroni waited a minute, and then said, “Well?”

“Well,” Bingo said, “we spoke to our other neighbor, too. Mr. Rex Strober. But we didn’t exactly get acquainted with him.”

Detective Hendenfelder snorted. “Nobody gets acquainted with Rex Strober,” he said.

“Then you did what?” Perroni asked.

“We went out to dinner,” Bingo said.

Perroni sighed deeply. “Look, you don’t have to volunteer any information, but just to save us all a little time—”

“Okay,” Bingo said. “We went out to dinner. At—” He turned to Handsome.

“Goody-Goody’s,” Handsome supplied. “It’s down toward the ocean.”

“It’s a hamburger joint,” Hendenfelder said.

Bingo started to say that they were tired of fancy Hollywood restaurants and that they just happened to feel like going to a hamburger joint, especially since they were tired from a long, busy day.

Handsome said, “It’s a very swell hamburger joint, too,” and conveyed exactly what Bingo had had in mind.

“I’ll say it is,” Hendenfelder said. “I eat there all the time.”

And the cashier would remember their being there, Bingo thought.

“It was quarter to seven when we left here,” Handsome said. “Half past eight when we left there. Took about half an hour to drive home.”

“That’s what I mean,” Perroni said. “Helping out with a little information on things we’d have to ask about anyway.” It didn’t seem to make him look any happier, though.

“And when we got back,” Bingo said, although not feeling any particular desire to be helpful, “we smelled this stuff, and looked to find out what it was, and found her, and brought her out here where there was some air, and called for an ambulance. Just as fast as we could, too.”

“That could check,” Hendenfelder said. “Doc said she’d only been inhaling the stuff about an hour, maybe hour and a half. Long enough, though. But if they were at Goody-Goody’s from about seven or seven-thirty till eight-thirty, that would check.”

“Now look here,” Bingo said. “You said this dame — this lady — was murdered—”

“Knockout drops in the drink,” Perroni said. “Killer figured he was being smart. Knew the doc might find she’d been drinking, because of the way the stuff she breathed in worked so fast. So he must have rinsed out the glass, and then put a little whiskey in it. No knockout drops in the glass. Found effects of them in her, though.”

“All right,” Bingo said indignantly, “but why ask us so many questions and fuss about where we were when, and all that stuff. We didn’t murder the lady. Hell, we didn’t even know her.”

Perroni looked as though he was thinking that people did murder perfect strangers on occasion. But he said, “Last night the squad car boys got the idea you knew all about carbon tetrachloride and how it worked.”

Bingo sighed and said, “You don’t understand.”

“You can say that twice,” Perroni said.

“It was a Sunday newspaper during Home Safety Week,” Handsome said. “About bathtubs and ladders and not leaving matches around, and stuff like cleaning fluids and ant poison.” He paused. “There was an article about great screenplays of yesterday on the opposite page, with a picture of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.”

Perroni looked at Bingo and said, “What’s with this guy?”

“My partner remembers everything he reads,” Bingo said. “Just the way it looked when he read it. That’s how he happened to remember the article.”

Hendenfelder looked impressed. Perroni looked doubtful, but let it pass. “All right,” he said. “We can check on all that stuff. Now,” he said, with a cold note of skepticism, “you claim to have bought this house.”

“We have bought this house,” Bingo said, just as coldly. He took out the precious papers and handed them to Perroni, who looked at them and handed them on to Hendenfelder.

Hendenfelder scrutinized them and finally said, “Looks as though they have bought this house. But I thought there was more to buying a house than just this.” He handed the papers back to Perroni.

“We still have to get a deed,” Bingo said, “but that takes a day or so. Mr. Courtney Budlong said this would be all right in the meantime.”

Perroni looked at Hendenfelder. “Hell,” the round-faced man said, “I wouldn’t know about buying a house. I’m just a cop, and I live with my in-laws besides.”

“I live in a hotel, myself,” Perroni said. “We can check all that with Budlong. But look at that signature.”

Hendenfelder looked. “Looks like his,” he said after a minute.

“We can check that with a handwriting expert,” Perroni said. “But if it is his signature—”

“He’s alive,” Hendenfelder said. “I don’t know anything about ink, either, but that don’t look like he wrote it any four years ago.”

“No, it don’t,” Perroni said. “And if that is his signature, and he is alive, then damn it, I’ve wasted four years of time on this case.” He looked just a shade more sad.

“Budlong and Dollinger’s a good firm,” Hendenfelder said.

That cheered up Bingo, but not Perroni.

“I told you, we’re going to check with Budlong,” Perroni said. He sounded sad. He looked at his watch. “Office will be open by now.”

Bingo finished a second cup of coffee. He was beginning to feel himself again. This was just a silly mistake, a mix-up of some kind. And the murder — if it was murder, he was still inclined to doubt it — had nothing to do with their purchase of the April Robin mansion.

Perroni went to the telephone, the papers still in his hand, and dialed. He asked for Courtney Budlong. Then he said, “How’s that?” and then, “Well, what Mr. Budlong is there?” Finally, “Okay, when will he be in?”

He hung up, folded the papers, put them in his pocket, and looked accusingly at Bingo. “I don’t know what you guys are trying to pull off, but—”

“We’re not trying to pull off anything,” Bingo said coldly.

“Maybe not,” Perroni said. “Only there isn’t any Courtney Budlong.” They stared at him.

“Nobody there ever heard of a Courtney Budlong,” Perroni said. “The only Budlong is Victor Budlong.”

Hendenfelder nodded and said, “He’s a big shot in the Chamber of Commerce,” as though he felt that was very important to the situation.

“There’s some mistake,” Bingo said bewilderedly. “Mr. Budlong — Mr. Courtney Budlong — was going to a big civic dinner last night—”

The two detectives looked at each other. “Far’s I know, there wasn’t any big civic dinner last night,” Perroni said. He scowled at them. “And also, far’s I know, there isn’t any Courtney Budlong, either.”

“But there has to be,” Bingo said. He added, “He had his initials on his cuff links.”

For the first time, there was a smile on Perroni’s face, a faint one, though.

“That does look like Lattimer’s signature,” Hendenfelder said.

“We’re going to straighten this out right now,” Perroni announced. “You guys get dressed. We’re going straight down to Budlong and Dollinger and talk to Mr. Budlong in person. The only Mr. Budlong. And his name isn’t Courtney.”