The Lonesome Badger

3

Otis Beagle was pounding the old portable typewriter when Joe Peel entered the office. He grunted, took the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and laid it face down on his desk.

“Well?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Peel. “I got it.” He turned his face sidewards to show Beagle the bruise on his cheekbone.

Beagle exclaimed peevishly, “What’s the matter with you, Joe? You can’t do the simplest little thing any more without running into trouble. It’s that chip you’re carrying on your shoulder—”

“That ain’t all I’m carrying,” Joe Peel retorted. He pointed to the telephone. “You’d better call your friend, Pinky.”

“Why should I call Pinky?”

“You’re going to need him.”

“Why?”

“Murder.”

Beagle kicked back his swivel chair so violently that it crashed to the floor. “What are you talking about, Joe? Mur...” He choked on the word.

“Badger, badger, who’s got the badger?”

“Oh, no!” wailed Beagle.

“Oh, yes, and you walked into it.” Peel cleared his throat. “I mean, I walked into it... Only something happened, the outraged husband wound up with a bullet in his head.”

“Not you, Joe!”

“Where would I get a roscoe?”

Beagle whirled and strode to the steel files across the room. He pulled out the bottom file, reached into the space behind the letter files and brought out a rusty, nickel-plated revolver. He started to wheeze in relief, then caught himself.

“Have you got a gun of your own?”

“On my salary?” Peel shook his head. “I wasn’t awake when he got if.” He touched the bruise on his face. “He hit me when I wasn’t looking and then he gave me the boots.” He paused. “The little lady gave it to him...”

“Linda Meadows?”

“Mrs. Dave Corey. At least that’s what he claimed.” Peel crossed to his swivel chair and sank down into it. “The letters are there, Otis — the letters you signed with my name. And I gave the receptionist my name.”

“Why’d you do that?” Beagle groaned. Then he went to his chair, picked it up and seated himself heavily. “All right, give it to me, the whole thing.”

“That’s it, Otis. I hardly had time to make a, uh, a small pass, when Corey bust in. He had a key. Oh, sure, they went through a routine. She said she’d divorced him and he claimed it wasn’t a legal divorce. And then he popped me. That’s it — except she’d skipped when I came around. But not before calling the cops. I got out about two jumps ahead of them.”

“And Corey was dead, you re sure of that?”

“As dead as a fur coat.”

Beagle’s face showed great anguish. He locked his fat hands across his ample stomach and began to rock back and forth in the squeaking swivel chair. The pain did not erase from his face, but after a few minutes he shook his head. “If it was a badger game, why would she kill him?”

“Maybe because I only had a dollar forty in my pocket,” Joe Peel said, then exclaimed and quickly thrust his hand into his pocket He brought out a crumpled dollar bill and some small change. He sighed with relief. “Guess they figured it wasn’t worth while.”

“I don’t like it,” Otis Beagle said. He scowled, shook his head and got to his feet. Walking to the coat rack he took down his Homburg hat and set it jauntily upon his head. When he reached for his cane, Peel got to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“To the club.”

“Whoa!” Peel cried. “You’re not letting me stay here to face Lieutenant Targ.”

“I’ve got to see Pinky.”

“And I’ve got to see a man about a hole,” retorted Joe Peel. “I’ll need it to hide.”

Beagle hesitated, then strode back to the desk. He scooped up the phone, dialed a number. “Otis Beagle. Is Mr. Devol in the club?... Yes, I’ll hold on.” He covered the mouthpiece. “This is going to cost me something. Pinky’s got an aunt visiting him from St. Louis who’s crazy about opera and...” He uncovered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Pinky, old man? Otis. Certainly, old man, I was just about to leave, but a little matter came up. Mmm, maybe you can help me out and I can get away so much sooner. You know what help’s like these days... cant trust them to do a thing right... That little detective agency... That’s right, more trouble than it’s worth, but I hate to throw these people out of work.” He sighed and shrugged expansively. “That’s the cross we’ve got to bear, Pinky. Can’t let them down... As I was saying, one of my men blundered into something... May not amount to much... damned nuisance, though... That’s right... A little matter down at the Hillcrest Towers... Uh, wonder if you could call Homicide?... Lieutenant Targ down there’s not a bad sort... Yeah, ask him what it’s all about... Call me back at this number, will you? Granite 7-9757... Yes, certainly, the sooner you call me back the sooner I can leave... Good, I’ll hang on...”

He hung up. “He’s getting right on it.”

“Decent of you not to let the help down,” sneered Joe Peel.

“A man’s got to keep up a front.”

“Sure, sure. You owe me a week’s pay right now, but I’ll bet you’ve paid your club dues.”

“If it’s any satisfaction to you, I haven’t. As a matter of fact...” Beagle hesitated, then shrugged. “Pinky’s got my IOU right now for a little matter of six hundred.”

“He trust you for six hundred?”

“He’d trust me for six thousand.” Beagle coughed. “I hope.” Then he drew a deep breath. “But the club won’t. I’ve got to get some money by the end of the week. That thousand dollars—”

“What thousand?”

“The thousand from Linda Meadows. I’d counted on that...”

The phone rang and he scooped it up. “Yes? Pinky, old man... What...?” He listened. “You’re sure...? All right, Pinky, just as I thought Thanks — I’ll leave right now.”

He slammed the receiver back on the hook and looked at Joe Peel angrily. “What’re you trying to pull, Joe? There wasn’t any dead man...”

Joe stared at Beagle. “I know a dead man when I see one.”

“If he was dead he got well awfully quick. They got a call from the Hillcrest Towers all right. Anonymous. But when they got there the apartment was empty. False alarm.”

“That’s screwy, Otis. I tell you Dave Corey was dead when I left — and it couldn’t have been more than a minute before the cops got in.”

“A minute’s long enough for a man to pick himself up and walk out.”

“Dave Corey didn’t pick himself up.”

“All I know is what Pinky told me. A false alarm. That’s good enough for me. Pinky’s waiting for me now. They need a fourth for bridge. I’ve got to run.”

Swinging his cane, Otis Beagle left the office. Joe Peel scowled at the door a moment, then his eyes flitted to the other side of the desk. Beagle had forgotten to take along the sheet of paper on which he’d been typing when Peel had come in. He reached across and scooped up the letter.

He read, aloud:

“Dear Pen Pal: — Your description in Heart Throbs is entrancing. All my life I have dreamed of a girl like you...”

Angrily, Peel crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket. He got up and headed for the door, but before he reached it the door swung open and a girl came into the office.

A blonde. A honey blonde about five feet four and a figure... Joe Peels mouth fell open and his tongue came out and moistened his lips.

He said weakly, “Hello.”

She smiled, and Joe’s temperature went up about three degrees.

“Hello. This is a detective agency, isn’t it?”

“Just the best detective agency in town,” drooled Joe.

“And you, ah, locate missing persons?”

Joe pointed to the lettering on the door. “Know what a beagle is, miss? A hunting dog, the best hunting dog that ever had four legs and a tail. It can find, uh, anything. That’s us, the Beagle Detective Agency...”

“Oh, is that why you call it the Beagle Agency? I thought Beagle might have been your name.”

“Uh-uh, my name’s Peel, Joe Peel.” Peel swallowed hard. “As a matter of fact, I do have a man here named Beagle, Otis Beagle. I took him into the agency just because of his name. But don’t worry about him, he doesn’t do much around here. I do all the work...”

He stepped quickly around the desk and brought forward Beagle’s swivel chair. He pulled it up near his own chair. “Won’t you have a seat?”

“Thank you.” The girl seated herself, revealing legs that caused Joe Peel to blink. “I really don’t know if I can afford your rates—”

“You can afford it,” Peel said earnestly.

“How much would you charge to find a missing person?”

“That depends. You can find some people in a half hour, some you can’t find in six months. How long has this person been missing?”

“A week.”

“Well, then lets say it’ll take a week to find him.”

“It’s not a him.”

Joe brightened. “That’s better. It’s easier to find females. Mmm, a week at, say fifty dollars a day—”

“Oh, I couldn’t afford that.”

“How much can you afford?”

“A... a hundred dollars, at the most.”

“A hundred...” Joe swallowed hard. “For you, miss, a hundred dollars—”

“And you guarantee to find her? I mean, if you don’t, I get my money back?”

Joe groaned inwardly. He thought of his last week’s pay and he thought of the dollar and forty cents in his pocket. And he also thought of the phrase she’d just said, “Money back.”

“Yes, we find her or your money back.”

“Very well.” The client fished in her alligator skin purse and brought out two twenties and a ten. “Here’s fifty dollars as a... what do you call it, retainer?”

“Retainer.” Peel took the fifty dollars and stowed them away.

“Now, if you’ll give me a receipt...”

Peel grimaced, then reached across the desk and picked up a letterhead. He wrote down the date and added aloud, “Received $50.00 on account from...?” He looked inquiringly at the girl.

“Linda Meadows.”

Peel scribbled the “L” before he reacted. “Linda Meadows!”

She spelled it. “M-e-a-d-o-w-s, Meadows.”

Peel stared at the girl, then at the sheet of paper. Finally he wrote, saying the words aloud, “Linda Meadows.”

The girl who gave her name as Linda Meadows continued, “...for locating Susan Sawyer. An additional $50.00 is to be paid when assignment is completed satisfactorily, but if the Beagle Detective Agency does not locate Susan Sawyer within seven days from date, the $50.00 retainer is to be refunded.”

Joe wrote it all out. “Sure you’re not a lawyer?”

“I once worked in a lawyer’s office,” she replied. “We had a lot of business from people who didn’t write things out. Will you sign that now, please?”

Joe scrawled his name on the document and Linda Meadows took it from him, folded it and put it away in her purse.

“Now,” she said brightly, “you will want the details.”

“Oh, sure,” Joe Peel said. “Tell me all about Linda Meadows.”

“You mean Susan Sawyer. I’m Linda Meadows. Susan was my roommate. That is, we shared an apartment at the Hillcrest Towers.”

The thing to do, of course, was to give her back the fifty dollars. But Peel had worked too long for Otis Beagle. Beagle never gave back anything.

Peel said, “What did this Susan Sawyer do for a living?”

“She received money from home.”

“Where was her home?”

Linda Meadows frowned. “This may sound strange, but I don’t know. Iowa, but the town I couldn’t tell you. Susan was, well, a little on the mysterious side. I suppose she got mail, but I never saw it. The mail came after I went to work. She never talked much about her past.”

“How long did you live together?”

“Six months, almost seven.”

“How did you meet her?”

Linda hesitated. “Do I have to tell you?”

“It might make my job easier.”

“It was at a... a sort of a dance. We had lunch the next day and then she came over to my apartment one evening — if you can call the place where I lived then an apartment. She told me of her place at the Hillcrest Towers and said that the rent was a little high for one person, but for two... well, my share came to about what I was paying for the dump. So I moved in with her. We got along well, but we didn’t double-date or anything like that.”

“She had boy friends?”

“Susan’s a very attractive girl.”

“So she had boy friends. Anyone special?”

“A fellow named Dave came around about as often as anyone. But there were others. Bob, Dan, Pete.”

“Mike, Joe, Fred—”

Linda showed annoyance. “Now, you’re being facetious.”

“No-no. I just meant, I’ve got to have other names than just Bob and Joe and Dave. This Dave — what was his last name?”

“I don’t know. Linda didn’t introduce her friends that way. She’d just say, ‘Meet Bob.’ ”

“And your boy friends?”

“Marshall Tan...” Linda caught herself. “What’s the idea?”

“Marshall Tan... you started to say.”

“Marshall Tanner. But that’s got nothing to do with this. You’re investigating Susan, not me.”

“Well, what else can you tell me about Susan?”

“That’s about all. She went out one evening a week ago and hasn’t returned.”

“Not even for her clothes?”

“Everything’s just as she left it. Except...” She stopped.

“Except what?”

“Her personal things. Her... her letters and things like that.”

“She’s taken them out? When?”

“I don’t know. I really didn’t look until yesterday. Whether she removed them a week ago or has returned since and gotten them, I don’t know.”

“Did it ever strike you that this Susan might just have decided to move out on you?”

“And leave a mink stole?”

“I see what you mean.” Joe nodded thoughtfully. “Now, her description...”

“I can do better than that. Here’s a picture of her.” Linda reached into her purse and brought out a snapshot. “I guess she forgot that I had this.”

Peel took the picture. It was the girl he had met at the Hillcrest Towers, the one who had given him her name as Linda Meadows, the one with whom Otis Beagle had corresponded.

“All right,” he said, “you’ll hear from me tomorrow.”

“You expect results that quickly?”

Peel shrugged. “I’m a fast worker. Oh — one thing more. Where can I get in touch with you during the day? You said you were working.”

She hesitated. “I don’t want you to call me where I’m working. I’ll be at home after six.”

“But in case of an emergency—”

“It can wait until after six.” She got to her feet. “Please try to find Susan as quickly as you can.”

“I will,” Joe promised.

She went out, but left the aroma of her perfume in the little office. Joe sniffed it a moment, then turned and dropped into his chair.

“Goddam Otis Beagle!” he swore.

He reached for the phone and dialed the number of the Sunset Athletic Club. The operator answered in a moment.

“I want to talk to Otis Beagle,” Joe said. “He’s probably in the card room.”

A minute or two later the operator replied, “Mr. Beagle is busy and cannot come to the telephone.”

“Tell him it’s important,” Joe exclaimed. “He’s got to talk to me...”

“One moment, please.”

A long minute went by and then the operator said, “Mr. Beagle says that it can’t be as important as the five spades he has just bid and if this happens to be Joe Peel to... to drop dead!”

Peel slammed down the receiver and swore again. “Goddam Otis Beagle!” He gave it more feeling than the first time.

He shot a quick look around the office, then went to the door and unsnapped the catch lock. Deliberately leaving on the lights, he went out.

Out on the street he walked down to Hollywood Boulevard and looked to the left. His eye caught the marquee of a theater, advertising a double bill he had not seen.