Эд Макбейн - The April Robin Murders

She smiled then, eyebrows and all, and said, “Well, naturally!”

“We were very lucky,” he said expansively. “Got a terrific buy.” He paused for dramatic effect. “It’s the old April Robin mansion. You remember April Robin, of course.”

“Who doesn’t remember April Robin!” she said, and then, “Well!” The smile almost glowed like neon. “I’m sorry to lose you two nice, interesting gentlemen. Can I help you pack?”

But by the time they reached Number 7, Handsome was just closing the last suitcase.

Bingo looked at her a little regretfully. She was a nice old girl at that, and nobody could be blamed for wanting to look young, or wanting to own a whole chain of motels. “I hope we can do something for you, sometime.”

“Bingo,” Handsome said, “maybe the lady’d like us to take some pictures of her nice motel to give her, pictures with her in it. She’d take a real good picture in those cute pants.”

Mariposa DeLee beamed with pleasure, made a polite and charming pretense at refusal, and began patting her hair before Handsome had even started unpacking his camera.

Bingo watched approvingly, while pictures were taken by the pool, at the office, in front of the entrance, and back by the pool again. There was no doubt about it, Handsome did come up with some very sound ideas. When they brought over the prints, made purely as a present for her, she’d very likely hit on the idea of having a flock of advertising postcards made up, and probably some large prints — he stopped himself on the verge of going into some mental arithmetic and reminded himself that they were no longer interested in the peanut trade. They owned a movie star’s mansion now, and sooner or later they’d own an office building—

He said good-by to her with real regret and added, “We might even bring the pictures over tomorrow. There won’t be much business doing on a holiday.” She looked a little puzzled. “Consolidation Day,” he added.

She looked puzzled for about half a minute more and then said, “Oh gosh yes, I almost forgot. I’ll be looking for you.”

She said it to both of them, but her eyes said it to Handsome. Bingo sighed, very slightly. It was always that way. Or always had been. Out here in Hollywood, which was full of beautiful, unattached girls, things were going to be different.

The sun was going down as they reached 113 Damascus Drive, and darkness was coming with that unexpected suddenness that still startled Bingo. The April Robin house was beginning to look very big and very somber and very forbidding, without a solitary light showing. Bingo felt just the very faintest of qualms.

But there, to one side of them, walking in his garden, was their next-door neighbor, the famous producer, Rex Strober himself. It had to be Rex Strober, no one who didn’t own a garden could possibly walk in it quite that way. He looked at the great man curiously. Rex Strober was a tall man, thin and stooped, with a deeply gloomy face and half-bald head. He looked, Bingo thought, like a grade school principal who had bought his dark blue suit at a rummage sale.

Just what is the etiquette in a case like this? Bingo wondered suddenly. Exactly who should speak first, and what should be said? Then the great man looked up, Bingo caught his eye, waved and called, “Hello, there.”

Rex Strober stared at him for a full minute, his dour face without expression. At last he said, “Hello,” in a flat and colorless voice, turned, and walked back toward his almost Spanish house.

“There’ll be plenty of time to get acquainted later,” Bingo said grimly, more to himself than to Handsome.

They had begun to unload the car when a voice from the other direction called, “Hello!” to them.

This voice was far from colorless, and its owner far from gloomy. Leaning on the low wall that divided their properties was a woman who appeared to be their other neighbor. The rich society widow, Bingo remembered.

She was a chubby, bright-faced woman whose gunmetal-colored hair appeared to have been carved rather than combed. Her eyes were a twinkling blue, and looked as though they were interested in, and seeing, everything. Even in the rapidly fading light, Bingo could see that her flowered chiffon afternoon dress included practically every color known to chemistry, and that her very small feet wore threadbare and not too clean tennis shoes. No one could possibly have doubted, though, that the pearls at her throat and ears were real.

She called, “Hello,” again, and added, “You two!”

They walked over to the wall. “How do you do, ma’am,” Bingo said politely, wishing he had a hat to tip. “We’re your new neighbors. I’m Bingo Riggs, and this is my partner, Handsome Kusak.”

“And I’m Mrs. Hibbing,” she said sociably. “Mrs. Waldo Hibbing.”

“I remember you,” Handsome said. “From your picture. In the World-Telegram, page three. You were christening a battleship. On April 18th—”

“It was a destroyer, not a battleship,” she said. “And my friends and neighbors call me Myrtie.” She gazed at them with what seemed to be more than neighborly interest. “So you’re the boys who’ve taken the Lattimer place.”

“That’s us,” Bingo said. He’d forgotten that it had ever been, even briefly, the Lattimer place. “Only it’s really the April Robin mansion. You know, the star. April Robin.”

She seemed surprised that he should even ask. “Sure do! I don’t think I missed one of her pictures. But that was so long ago—” She stopped suddenly, the passage of years was evidently something she didn’t like to discuss. “But I’ve only been here the past two years, and to me, it’s the Lattimer place, and—” She broke off again. “It’s so nice that you’re going to live there.”

“We think so,” Bingo said, a little confused.

Mrs. Waldo Hibbing leaned a little further forward. “And I do hope if you find it — you’ll tell me, first!”

Now Bingo was thoroughly confused. “Find what, ma’am?”

“Either one,” she said. “The body, or the money. Either one, it’s going to be so exciting. And if we’re going to be friends, I want to be the first to know!”

“Golly, Bingo,” Handsome said, almost apologetically. “I didn’t know it was that Lattimer. There’s a lot of Lattimers. And the eastern papers didn’t carry any pictures of the house, and the stories didn’t give its address. So that’s why I didn’t know.”

“What Lattimer?” Bingo asked crossly, lifting out one of the lighter suitcases.

“Why,” Handsome said, “the one that was murdered by his wife.”

Bingo let go of his suitcase and turned around. “Just how is that again?”

“He was murdered by his wife,” Handsome said. “Anyway, that was what everybody figured. Only he isn’t legally dead.” He took hold of one end of the wardrobe trunk. “It’s a very funny story, Bingo. Queer, I mean.”

The sky was almost dark now; the April Robin mansion loomed up in front of them forbiddingly, without a single light showing. Bingo looked up at it a little apprehensively.

“Tell me all about it later,” he said hoarsely. “Let’s get these things in and go get some dinner.” He told himself encouragingly that the hollow feeling in his stomach was due entirely to the hours that had passed since their late breakfast.

He took hold of the front end of the wardrobe trunk and marched up to the big, ornate wooden door. He took out his keys and then stood for a moment, holding them in his hand. For as long as he could remember, he’d dreamed of just this, unlocking his own door — their own door, of course — with his own — their own — key. Now he had a fleeting sense that he might be unlocking a chamber of horrors.