Twenty Plus Two

Chapter 1

She might have been forty-five, but how can you tell? Her hair was dyed a deep mahogany, she could have had a facial rejuvenation job that took out the little lines and tightened the skin. A good brassiere, an expensive girdle — they can fool you. She might have been fifty-five, even fifty-seven or fifty-eight.

She had never been too attractive a woman. Short, on the plumpish side, her eyes were too close together, her nose too generous, her teeth too large. She could have had men in her younger years, if she had been generous with her favors, but in more recent times she would have had to work pretty hard at it.

However, all of that was over now. Julia Joliet had answered her last fan letter.

She was dead.

It hadn’t been a good death. Her murderer had struck her some savage blows in the face, one of which could have knocked her unconscious. It was probably then that he had ripped out her brassiere and released the more than ample breasts. He had gone even further. He had pulled up her dress, jerked down the too-tight girdle. Only partly, however.

The bullet had entered her left breast. Death had been instantaneous and there was very little blood. It had been a small caliber bullet. A .32.

She had not been raped.

There was nothing in the New York Herald Tribune. The Toronto Star, whose Sunday circulation spread throughout Canada, was bare. Chicago had the same old ads and Cleveland and Cincinnati were just as meager. St. Louis had one in the Personals that might have had possibilities, but the amount of money was not enough to interest Alder. Denver had nothing, Minneapolis was as barren as Omaha, which had once produced a beautiful case.

The San Francisco Call-Bulletin carried Joe Stark’s perennial ad, which indicated that there were no missing heirs in the Bay area for when there were Stark pulled his ad. He liked to save a dollar whenever he could.

Well, if the local papers had nothing, it was going to be a lean month for Tom Alder.

He turned to the classified section of the Examiner. The usual come-on ads. Cash-in-advance for legacies. Nothing.

The classified section of the Times took a little more time, for the Personals had to be considered carefully. The Los Angeles lawyers were wily. So were the car repossessors. They ran ads once in a while that sounded legitimate, but were mere ruses to trap the unwary finance company delinquents.

Nothing. Alder put the papers aside, had his second cup of coffee, and then stretched out on the sofa to read the news. It was then that the bell rang away back in his head. It was a throwaway line toward the end of the article, “...among the clippings were several pertaining to the celebrated Doris Delaney case...”

Alder went back to the beginning — to the streamer that stretched across the top of page one: Leroy Dane’s Secretary Slain. There was an immediate hedging below. Julia Joliet, Fan Mail Secretary to Stars, Found Dead in Mystery Killing.

She had not actually been Leroy Dane’s secretary, was not anyone’s secretary for that matter, in the sense that she worked exclusively for, or with, any one motion picture personality. She was a fan mail secretary. At so much per letter she handled the fan mail of movie personalities. Leroy Dane merely happened to be one of a half dozen clients for whom she performed the service.

Alder read the article twice, then shifted to the Los Angeles Examiner. The facts were essentially the same as in the Times. The manager of the court had discovered the body around eight o’clock in the evening. The lights were on, the shades drawn, but the door was ajar an inch or two. It was that which had made the manager suspicious. Julia Joliet always kept her door locked in the evening and mostly during the day. She was afraid of prowlers. Her apartment was on the ground floor.

She had been dead a half hour when Mrs. Woodson entered the apartment. That was established by the medical examiner. Rigor mortis had not yet set in.

The apartment had been ransacked. Papers, letters had been strewn about. There were many, many of these, for letters and papers were the victim’s stock in trade. She kept them in files, in boxes and in twine-tied bales.

Robbery had not been the motive, for there were three stacks of dollar bills in the typewriter desk, each with a band about it and the name of the fan club to which it had been sent. There were fourteen dollars in the Leroy Dane fan club stack.