Эд Макбейн - The April Robin Murders

This was the great occasion, this was what they had been working toward. It was all so wonderful, and yet — he wondered what had happened to April Robin; he even wondered for one wild moment if April Robin’s body was buried somewhere underneath her house.

He looked across the room, smiled as best he could at Janesse Budlong, and said quietly, “What was your mother’s maiden name?”

She looked straight back at him and mouthed the words, “Damned if I’ll tell.” He knew from the look in her eyes that he didn’t dare ask more.

Finally it was all over. The contracts signed, the champagne drunk, the last picture taken.

Joyce Grimstead said, “Good luck, kids. Not that you’ll need it, but I always think it’s polite to offer it.”

Janesse Budlong said, almost tearfully, “I don’t know what to say — I don’t know what to say—” and didn’t say it.

Leo Henkin said warmly, “Remember now, when you need studio space, writers, anything, call on old Leo Henkin. Just because you fell into a gold mine doesn’t mean you may not need a digger.”

The big house seemed very, very still, and very, very empty after they had all gone. Bingo sat silently on the davenport while Handsome did a fast darkroom job on the pictures of Janesse Budlong signing the contracts, of the future new star toasting the deal with champagne.

Once Bingo reached for the phone and started to call Vital Statistics. No, if whatever had happened to April Robin had been hushed up, there would be no good in asking.

On a momentary impulse he dialed Victor Budlong and said gaily, “Well, I signed your daughter—”

Victor Budlong’s voice came back softly. “I’m glad. I feel she can get somewhere with you managing her. Well, well, well. My little girl is going to get somewhere, at last.” There was the kind of pause it usually took someone to light a cigar. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Oh no,” Bingo said bravely. “Just wanted to tell you. But since you’re on the wire. There is one question—!”

“Whatever you want to know,” Victor Budlong said.

“Good,” Bingo said. “Now.” He braced himself. “Whatever did happen to April Robin?”

The silence sounded as though it had, been dropped from outer space.

“If you don’t know,” Victor Budlong said at last, “I don’t want to be the one to tell you.” And that seemed to be that.

“I’m getting very confused, Handsome,” Bingo confided as he sank down on the davenport. He wished for a moment that he were caught in a traffic jam at the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel. He wished he were trying to work out a theory in nuclear physics. “There seem to be so many things I know, and yet so many things I don’t know. How are we ever going to get rich and famous if all these problems keep popping up?”

“Murder is a problem,” Handsome agreed, nodding solemnly.

“I have to make a few more phone calls,” Bingo said. He looked at Handsome apologetically. “I realize I’m running up the phone bill—”

“The telephone is our cheapest luxury,” Handsome said. “I once read a pamphlet on it put out by the New York Telephone Company. It gave a comparison list of prices in the rising cost of living. And whereas the price of wire and plastic and labor had gone up—”

But Bingo was already dialing.

“Hello?” he said into the phone. “William Willis?”

“Yes,” Willis said. “Who’s this?”

“Bingo Riggs.”

“Oh, yes. Hello.”

“Mr. Willis, I wonder if I may ask you a few questions. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Is it about my sister?” Willis asked.

“Yes. Your stepsister. You did say she was your stepsister, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And her name, before she married Julien Lattimer, was Lois DeLee. Is that also right?”

“Yes.”

“And she was a slack-wire performer?”

“Yes, and a darned good one,” Willis said.

“Did you ever see her act?”

“Of course I did. You might say, in fact, that I first met her while she was doing her act.”

Bingo blinked. “How was that again?” he said.

“Lois. I first met her in 1947. We were booked together on the same bill. Me and my birds, and her and her slack wire.”

Bingo blinked again. “If I understand you correctly,” he said, “you’re saying you first met your sister in 1947? Is that what you’re saying?”

“If you want to be technical about it,” Willis said, “I first met her in 1922. That was when my father married her mother. He was a widower, and Lois’ mother was a widow. They met, fell in love, and got married. Lois had an older brother, Frank. He’s dead now. Died young.”

“Then if you really met Lois in 1922, why did you say—?”

“Well, when our folks got married, we all moved into the same house, naturally,” Willis said.

“Naturally,” Bingo replied.

“I was about twenty-one years old then. This was in 1924. Lois was just a little kid.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I left home. Not right away, but about a year after the marriage. Figured I was about ready to step out into the world on my own. The family moved away from Hollywood soon after that. To Colorado. So the last time I saw Lois, until 1947 when we booked on the same bill, was when she was eleven years old. And meeting her in 1947 was like meeting an entirely different person, if you know what I mean. It was quite a reunion.”

“I can imagine,” Bingo said. “Had she changed much?”

“Well, after all,” Willis said, “quite a few years had gone by. She was in her early thirties in 1947. Sure, she’d changed. She was a young woman and not a little girl any more. But she was still delicate... and fragile... and blond, and with this enormous spirit of gentility. I loved my sister very much.”

“When did she marry Lattimer?” Bingo asked.

“Several years later. Must have been 1949 or 1950. Yes, that’s right. That was when they bought your—” He corrected himself. “The house you’re living in now. That’s right. About three years before they both disappeared.”

“Thank you, sir,” Bingo said, and he hung up.

“Well?” Handsome asked.

Bingo was already thumbing through the directory. “I have another call to make,” he said. “Do you know what the whole trouble with this setup is, Handsome?”

“What?”

“The dead won’t stay dead,” he answered, and he began dialing. “He ought to be home by now, don’t you think?”

“Who?” Handsome asked.

Bingo didn’t get a chance to answer. A voice on the other end of the line said, “The Henkin residence.”

“Let me talk to Leo Henkin, please,” Bingo said.

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“Bingo Riggs.”

“One moment please, sir.”

Bingo waited. Handsome watched him.

Henkin’s voice came onto the line. “Well, well, how’s the discoverer from New York?” he said. “What can old Leo Henkin do for you?”

“I want to know about April Robin,” Bingo said.

There was a long pause on the line.

“Do you know about her?” Bingo asked.

“Leo Henkin knows everything,” Henkin said, but the brass had gone out of his voice.

“Then I want you to tell me what you know.”

“It’s a sad story. And a long one.”

“I’ve got plenty of time and plenty of sympathy,” Bingo said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“Come over here,” Henkin said. “To my house.” And he gave Bingo the address.

The Beverly Hills home of Leo Henkin did not resemble his office at all. Whereas the office had looked like an extension of Santa Anita Raceway, with horses cluttering up each wall and surface, his home was a clean low modern house which seemed to be built chiefly of flagstone and glass. And curiously, the Leo Henkin who lived in this house did not very much resemble the Leo Henkin from the horsy office. A servant met Bingo and Handsome at the front door, led them through a slate-paved entrance hallway and then into a lanai which overlooked Henkin’s large swimming pool. Henkin was wearing chino pants and a sports shirt. The shirt was neither loud nor particularly Californian, Bingo noticed, and he wondered if the twinkling little man in the horse-bestrewn office was simply an act for the industry. As Leo Henkin advanced with his hand outstretched, he seemed somehow taller than his five feet three inches, somehow more relaxed than he would ever look in his private office. “Come in,” he said, “come in. Can I get you something to drink?”