Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 1, January, 1955

“All right,” I said. “All right.”

“I’m going back to the office,” Hilton said, “as soon as the boys finish with their pictures and prints here. I’m expecting an autopsy report on Cynthia Finch. If anything turns up, I’ll call you. I suggest you go home and get some sleep.”

I tried to do that. I went home, and I got into bed and turned out the lights, and then I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling, and all the while I was thinking of Andy and wondering if she was still alive. You get so you take someone like Andy for granted. Like brushing your teeth in the morning. Like that. Andy was a nice kid, a lot of fun, a sweet girl. Only that.

Until now. And now I began to wonder how much more she really meant to me, now when it was perhaps too late.

When the phone rang, I leaped out of bed and ran into the living room, catching it on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Jon?”

“Yes.”

“This is George.” He paused and added, “Sergeant Hilton.”

“Oh yes, yes.”

“Something interesting,” he said.

“Have you found Andy?”

“No, Jon.”

“Oh.”

“But this autopsy on Cynthia Finch. It gives us something to work on anyway.”

“What have you got?”

“She was pregnant, Jon. Three months.”

“What?”

“That’s the story. Now maybe we’ve got a motive.”

“Cynthia pregnant! I mean...”

“That’s the trouble with homicide,” Hilton said. “You start rooting around, and all the muck comes up. All the nice conventions are broken. There isn’t a person alive without that skeleton in his closet, Jon, and homicide brings it out and rattles the bones a little. But like I say, this may give us our motive.”

“Artie Schaefer was dating her,” I said automatically. “Do you suppose...”

“He told me that, and when I got this report it was the first thing that popped into my head. It’s a shame he was killed with that icepick. Suicide would have fit the picture better.”

“How so?”

“Killed her because she was carrying his unwanted child, and then knocked himself off because he felt guilty as hell.”

“Why couldn’t he have killed himself with the icepick?” I asked.

“Because no prints were on the handle. A dead man doesn’t get up and wipe his prints off the murder weapon.”

“I suppose not,” I said glumly, not seeing how the autopsy report had brought us any closer to finding Andy.

“We’re still working on it,” Hilton said. “Don’t worry.”

“No,” I said. Then I said goodbye and hung up. I tried the bed, but my pajamas seemed too tight, and the bed seemed too small, and the room seemed suffocatingly hot. I got up and walked into the living room, snapping on an end-table lamp. I debated putting on the Late Show , decided against it, and mixed myself a very stiff whiskey sour instead. I ate the cherry and chewed the slice of orange, and then I mixed another one, minus the fruit cocktail this time.

I was sitting down again, ready to drink myself to sleep dead blind when the doorbell chimes sounded.

I said, “Oh, hell,” and shoved myself up out of the chair. I walked to the door, and shouted, “Who is it?”

“Just me,” the voice answered softly. I’d have recognized that voice through the door of a bank vault. I opened the door on the smiling face and half-clothed body of Martha Findlay.

“Hello, dearest,” she said, breezing past me into the foyer. I got a whiff of her breath, and the aroma wasn’t Eau de Cologne. It was more like Vat 69, and I’d have to demolish a good many whiskey sours before I came anywhere near Martha’s lofty position on cloud nine. She walked directly to the liquor cabinet, rooted around among the bottles for a while and came up with a full fifth of bourbon. She broke the seal expertly, poured a water glass half full and then plopped down onto the sofa.

“I’m happy as hell,” she announced.

“I can see that.”

“I put the little louse to bed early,” she explained, “and I’ve been pedaling from bar to bar.” She looked around fuzzily. “What bar is this, darling?”

“Why don’t you go home, Martha?” I said.

“Home? The party’s just started. Tomorrow’s Saturday. No goddamn show, no goddamn noses to wipe. Brother, this is my night to foul.”

“Howl.”

“Foul. I’m not that drunk.”

“What brought you here, Martha?”

Martha did a disappearing liquid act with the bourbon in her glass, and then filled the glass again. “You, darling,” she said.

“I know I’m irresistible, but...”

“You’re no more irresistible than any other jerk in town, except you own a typewriter. Even that doesn’t make you different than the rest.”

“What does?”

“You write Rocketeers.”

“I told you...”

“I’m not as stupid as I look, Jon,” Martha said.

“I never thought you looked stupid, Martha.”

“Are those pajamas you’re wearing?” she asked, as if noticing them for the first time.

“Yes.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “How cosy.”

“How.”

“I got to thinking, Jon. I sniffed around and found out why you were leasing the show. With Cynthia dead, you won’t have to leave it any more. You’ve been writing it since B.C., and you can go on writing it just the way you like.”

“I’m still leaving, I think.”

“You won’t leave. Rocketeers is in your blood. If you went over to Captain Jet, you wouldn’t be able to sleep nights.”

“I can’t sleep nights, now, anyway.”

Martha Findlay grinned recklessly. “Have you tried a hot water bottle?”

“I’ve got an electric blanket, thanks.”

She stood up suddenly, smoothing her skirt over her wide hips. “You’re being dumb, Jon, real dumb. I’m not exactly ready for the glue works.”

“No one said you were.”

“Damn right, no one said it. They’d have to be blind to say it.”

“Martha, why don’t you go home? I’ve got enough headaches without worrying about your son’s career.”

“You think I’m worrying about my son’s career? You think that’s it?”

“Well, you don’t leave much choice.”

“I’m worrying about one little number, and that number is pretty big, and that number is Martha Findlay. That’s who I’m worrying about. Look, Jon, let’s face it. I’ve got a lot of it now, all in trumps. I’m not going to have it forever, like the diamonds song says, and pretty soon that brat’ll grow up and take unto himself a spouse. That leaves Martha Findlay with a figure like a hippo, and a son with another woman to worry about. There’s nothing worse than a big girl who turns to fat, believe me.”

“You’re not turning yet,” I said, truthfully.

“I know. Give it time. That’s why I want Richie to hit the gravy train now, when I can still get something out of it. It’s been no picnic raising him alone, believe me. I’ll be damned if his wife is going to get all the dessert. Where’s that bourbon?”

She poured herself another glassful, trying to recapture the wearing-thin edge of her stupor. She swallowed that, and then poured and consumed another glassful, and I expected her to fall flat on her face. She didn’t. The two glasses hit her like a ton of nitro, and her eyes glazed, and her tongue thickened, but all she did was stagger towards me and throw her arms around my neck.

“That’s why you’re being silly, Jon baby. Very silly. That’s why you are.”

“Why, Martha?”

“Because all you got to do is give the show to Richie for two weeks or so, even a week or so, that’s all, Jon baby, that’s all. And then Martha Findlay shows her gratitude. Jon, I’m the most gratuitous girl in town.”