The ice cold nude

chapter eleven

I parked the convertible right out front of Elmo’s jewelry store and we got out. Schell was still speaking to me, but only just. When he’d gotten out to Patty Lamont’s apartment I’d altered the facts just a little—not so much the facts really—just the sequence of events. The way I’d told it to him, I hadn’t even remotely suspected that Marty Estell was hidden out in the apartment, listening to my every word from the bedroom. So I was stunned when he suddenly appeared from nowhere and gunned down Patty. But what choice did I have but to gun down him before he got around to me?—and I was lucky at that. I was almost sure the lieutenant didn’t believe a word of it, on principle if nothing else, but he couldn’t disprove it.

We stood on the sidewalk for a moment while he scowled at me. “I’ve strung along with you on this, Boyd,” he said bleakly. “But if you don’t deliver, so help me, I’ll—¹”

“I’ll deliver,” I said, keeping my crossed fingers behind my back.

“I set up the appointment with Elmo,” he said, still not real sure. You would have figured the guy didn’t trust me or something. “You make me look like an idiot and I’ll—”

“I know,” I said with immense restraint. “You keep on telling me.”

We went into the store and were greeted by a magni-

119

ficent redhead with a real way-out hair-do—or the lieutenant was greeted, to be accurate. 1 was ignored like a frozen clam that’s passed beyond its prime. “Mr. Elmo is expecting you, Lieutenant,” she said, smiling warmly at him. “Please go striaght in. Is that the murderer you have with you?”

“No.” Schell scowled at me. “Just a piece of garbage that’s been rejected by the city dump.”

He stalked ahead of me into Elmo’s office and I trailed along behind, too dispirited even to notice the taut curve of Tamara’s dress exactly where a dress should be tautly curved.

Elmo stood up to greeet the lieutenant and he looked like an overweight sparrow as he leaned across his desk to shake hands with the law.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Lieutenant!” The gold-rimmed glasses flashed warmly. “I see you had quite a night last night?”

“I’d call it that,” Schell grunted. “You know Boyd, naturally? It’s a misfortune shared by too many people in this town!”

“I thought I had seen the last of him yesterday,” Elmo said in tones of infinite sorrow. “But still—won’t you sit down?” He plunked back into his own chair before I could peek and see how many cushions it took to raise him above the level of the desktop.

The lieutenant sat in the pseudo-antique and I sat on something designed by a medieval torturer. There was a silence while Elmo looked expectantly at the lieutenant.

Schell finally cleared his throat irritably. “I’m humoring Boyd—the last time before I have him committed,” he said finally. “He figures he knows where that tiara is, but he’s got an obligation to tell you before anyone else —so we compromised and now he’ll tell both of us at the same time.”

“Indeed?” The glasses flashed in my direction. “This sounds most interesting, Mr. Boyd.”

“I hope it is,” I said politely. “You’ll have to ride along with some of it, Mr. Elmo, because it won’t make any sense to you, but it will be the lieutenant.”

“Maybe!” Schell muttered darkly.

I lit a cigarette, which is kind of hard with crossed fingers.

“Patty, complete with a blonde wig, set herself up with Willie Byers as her own sister Louise—right?”

“I got that,” the Lieutenant grunted.

“Everything was fine. Willie made the fake tiara and Patty passed it on to her sister. Then Louise and Marty told her the hell with her—they weren’t handing over the real tiara once they got their hands on it. They were going to keep it and whatever money they made on it. That put Patty in a real jam. She couldn’t go back to Byers and say Louise had double-crossed her—because she was Louise to little Willie—right?”

Schell’s face- contorted for a moment. “I guess so,” he said after a while.

“So she talked Willie into making a second fake tiara —she must have had a good excuse that some dreadful accident had happened to the first one. She’d tried it on in the bathroom and lost it in the plumbing or something—” “She’d need something better than that!” Schell said in a pained voice. “Oh, all right—she came up with something that was good enough for litde Willie to swallow.” “It wouldn’t be too hard,” I said. “Remember, he was crazy for her.”

“Are you talking about our Mr. Byers, by any chance?” Elmo asked suddenly. “It doesn’t seem possible!” “Willie was more sinned against than sinner, Mr. Elmo,” I said solemnly. “Anyway—” I turned back to Schell. “Then, I guess Patty worked on him some more —as Louise, she would have to make the switch—and told him it was too dangerous. Too many things could go wrong—what if she fumbled it at the crucial moment and was caught? What if the switch was discovered before she’d gotten out of the store and they insisted that everybody there be searched? She had a brand new idea, much better and much safer—foolproof in fact.” “Can’t you condense this a little?” Schell snarled at me. “I’m going around in circles already!”

“Patty knew from her good friend and confidante, Tamara O’Keefe,” I said cheerfully, “that Elmo’s jewelry store was in a bad way financially—like just about flat broke.”

“You are gravely misinformed, Mr. Boyd,” Elmo said acidly. “I shall investigate the source of these scurrilous rumors immediately!”

“You want to do it real fast, Mr. Elmo,” I said politely, “Because I have a feeling you won’t be around very long after this morning.”

“Get to the point!” the lieutenant snapped.

“She told Willie about this—suggested he approach Elmo with a nice snug little larceny proposition. That Elmo should switch the fake tiara Byers would give him for the real one, before the beauty contest people ever arrived. Then Byers should spot the fake in the window later that morning and it would appear one of the beauty contest people must have stolen the tiara. The insurance company would pay up and they would divide the money equally. Elmo would still have his tiara, and later, Byers could take the stones out of the setting and rework them into another piece of valuable jewelry.”

“Lieutenant,” Elmo said sorrowfully, “I’m afraid this man is insane.”

“So am I,” Schell said hopelessly. “Is there more to this, Boyd?”

“It was kind of cute,” I said in genuine admiration. “So the real Louise Lamont comes into the store with the first fake tiara, and neatly switches it for the second fake tiara. I bet Patty spent the whole day screaming with laughter. So when Louise got back to Marty Estell, the fake wouldn’t fool him for too long, right? So once he discovered they’d been gypped, he’d start looking for whoever double-crossed him. The logical suspect would be Louise herself—and that’s what Patty hoped for. But when Marty didn’t kill her sister, she had to do it herself.”

“And she put the second fake tiara on Louise’s head as a pointer toward Marty Estell?” the lieutenant asked.

“As a second bet maybe,” I said. “But that tiara was pointing right at Byers. Patty figured you’d be convinced that it was Louise who had stolen the tiara, double-crossed her partner with a second fake, and had been murdered for her trouble.”

“Lieutenant,” Elmo said frostily, “you surely don’t expect me to sit here and calmly listen to these monstrous allegations against my own integrity?”

“You’ll listen to Boyd until he’s finished,” Schell said curtly. “What else, Boyd?”

“Elmo yelled loud and long the insurance company wasn’t going to pay the claim,” I went on. “But his lawyer told him they’d pay from the very beginning—it was just a smoke screen. Asking your advice on a private eye was another smoke screen. As soon as he decently could, he told me the insurance company was paying the claim after all—his lawyer had somehow come up with a gimmick, so his deal with me was off. No five grand if I found the tiara—I could keep the grand he’d already paid me.”

“We can check all this later,” Schell said abruptly. “Where’s the real tiara?—that’s what I want to know.” “I figure it’s where Marty Estell was,” I told him.

He gaped at me. “Marty’s in the morgue!”

“The same theory applies,” I added quickly. “Where was the safest place for Marty to hole up—the place that nobody would think of looking? Back in Patty La-mont’s apartment.”

“The tiara’s not there,” Schell said in a defeated voice. “We ripped the whole place apart.”

“It’s the principle, Lieutenant,” I reminded him. “If you were Mr. Elmo now, and you had a hot tiara to hide someplace nobody would ever dream of searching for it— where would you put it?”

Schell looked at me for about five seconds, then nodded slowly. “Mr. Elmo,” he said formally, “I’d like to take a look inside your vault.”

The jeweler seemed to shrink suddenly to an even smaller size. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses slowly and put them on the desk, then rubbed his eyes with trembling fingers.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s there. Boyd was right about the deal Byers suggested to me—and I took it. I was desperate—not that it’s any excuse of course.”

“You want to come and get it for us now, Mr. Elmo?” Schell suggested firmly.

“Of course,” he nodded. “I can see I sadly underestimated you, Mr. Boyd.”

“It was that crack about having reservations as to whether you'd received sufficient services for that thousand dollars,” I told him sincerely. “It worried me—a dissatisfied client is always bad for business.”

Elmo smiled bleakly. “I can see 1 should have kept my big mouth shut—as you might put it, Mr. Boyd.” “I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. “Otherwise I probably never would have gotten your tiara back for you.”

Schell got onto his feet and gestured to Elmo. “Let’s go open that vault,” he said crisply.

The little man got out of his chair and made his way around the desk, and I watched the two of them walk toward the vault. Elmo wore elevator shoes, I noticed, and they brought him to somewhere real close to five feet. I figured Schell could have the rest of it, and if I moved real quick right now I could be out of town before he’d even had time to notice.

My fast getaway got sabotaged almost before it got started. I stopped beside the desk of a redhead who was studiously ignoring me.

“School’s out, honey,” I said. “Everybody go home.” “Are you talking to me?” she said in a frigid voice. “It’s a long story, but it’s true,” I said in a kindly voice. “Your Mr. Elmo stole his own tiarra and the Lieutenant’s on his way now to get it out of the vault. I don’t think Mr. Elmo will be back for some time.”

Her eyes widened as she lifted her head and looked at me. “Is that true, Danny? You wouldn’t kid me about something like that, would you?”

“It’s true,” I told her. “You hear about Patty?” “Yes,” she said, nodding gravely. “Was that what fouled up our date last night?”

“I had a long inner struggle,” I said modestly, “but finally I had to give in—catching a murderess and a murderer was just a shade more important than keeping that date with you.”

She thought about it for a while. “I’d like to believe that,” she said finally. The great thaw had hit. The icicles were gone from her voice, and now her tawny eyes radiated awarmth that was almost fiery even.

“Poor Danny,” she said suddenly. “What bad luck— finding out your client was the thief!”

“I had another client,” I said smugly, “and he paid off like real handsomely.”

I showed her Rutter’s check for five grand and her eyes widened again. “Danny! That’s an enormous amount of money.”

“Big enough for a vacation,” I said casually. “I was thinking of Acapulco maybe—the Bahamas—you decide.”

“I couldn’t do that,” she said wistfully. “It wouldn’t be fair for me to choose where you spend your vacation.”

“Who’s talking about my vacation?” I asked sharply. “I’m talking about our vacation!”

The gleam in her eyes was suddenly subdued by a caution signal. “Danny Boyd,” she said slowly, “are you making me some kind of proposition?”

“What else?” I said smoothly. “You name it—we go there!”

“Somewhere along the line there has to be a price tag,” she said regretfully, it seemed to me.

“I was thinking of someplace where they have rum-based drinks superior to the Luau Bar,” I admitted.

I watched in silent fascination while maybe a dozen different emotions played tag back and forward across her face. Finally, a steady, resolute determination won out over all the others, and she sat up straight, squaring her shoulders.

“I’ve made up my mind, Danny,” she said in a taut voice.

“Okay, honey,” I said with genuine regret. “It’s your life and you got the right to make your decisions.”

“All my life I’ve prided myself on being alert,” she said, ignoring my comments completely. “The straight pass, the underhand, the clandestine—I could pick ’em all from way back.”

“It must be something of a record for a redhead stacked the way you’re stacked honey,” I said dismally.

“And where has it gotten me?” she asked in fierce rhetoric. “No place! Danny Boyd, we’ll go to the Bahamas!” “Well, I tried,” I said. “It’s too bad you—what?”

She smiled at me triumphantly. “We are going to the Bahamas. I’ll have a bag packed in an hour! I’ve spent all my life fending off guys like you and where has it gotten me!—a lousy job in a crummy jewelry store where the boss turns out to be a thief! So now I’m going to find out what happens to a girl when she doesn’t resist a pass!”

“I can t^ll you right now, honey,” I said truthfully. “But I figure on saving it for the Bahamas!”