Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953

“This woman,” Jones said. You could barely hear him.

“What about this woman?”

“She’s the one asked me to do it.”

“What!” the chief said, sharply.

“She’s the one asked me, I tell you. I wouldn’t of told on her before if it cost me my life. I know her well. She’s Miss Marie Turner from the big insurance office up on the 14th floor. I’ve known her twenty years. Always give me a kind word and a fine expensive Christmas present. Always real kind to me and my family. Always kidded with me real chummy in the halls every chance she had. Three weeks ago she gave me a ten-dollar bill and handed me this telephone number and said I should ask for a girl named Phoebe. Said I shouldn’t stop calling until she gave me the word.”

The magistrate was searching frantically on the docket. “It’s Marie P. Turner, all right, chief,” he said, finally. “P for Phoebe.”

Jones went on as though he hadn’t heard, speaking right to the magistrate, anywhere but where Miss Turner’s eyes might be — glittering now at last with the same, fixed, hypnotized smile. He looked heartbroken, miserable, utterly demoralized. “She said this Phoebe was her good friend. Told me what kind of a girl she was, and told me lots of things about her past. Surprised me, her knowing her. But ten bucks is ten bucks. She said it would be a joke. She said there wasn’t any limits to what I should say on the phone. Oh, Judge, I never had an idea. I never had an idea at all. How can it happen? How can a thing like this ever go and happen ?”

Somehow Mr. Osborne didn’t look like the type. He was a tall, distinguished-looking guy of about fifty, with all his hair still on his head, rimless glasses over his blue eyes, and about three-hundred dollars worth of clothes on his short body.

He’d come in through the door marked “Sheldon Scott, Investigations” at ten this morning and he’d given me his whole story in five minutes, his sentences clipped and to the point. About every minute he’d gone to the window that overlooks Broadway and peered out to see if his wife were standing down there screeching.

I said, “Sounds O.K. I’ll get on it right away, Mr. Osborne.”

“Thank you.” He got up, found a thousand-dollar bill in his fat wallet and dropped the bill on my desk. “I hope that’s all right for now. I’ll give you the other nine thousand in cash too, if you’re successful. Is that satisfactory?” He went over to the window again.

“Perfectly.” I was admiring Cleveland’s picture and the number one and three zeros in the bill’s corner when he said, “Ohmigawd. There she is. She didn’t shop long. She can spend more money faster than anybody I...” He let it trail off, turned and went sailing out without another word.

In his haste he left my office door standing open. I shut it, then walked to the window where he’d been standing. I saw him appear beside a plump woman in a fur coat. She put her hands on her hips and yacked something at him.

It seemed likely she was asking him where in the hell he’d disappeared to, because Mr. Jules Osborne had sneaked away from his wife to see me. I went back to my desk and looked at the notes I’d taken while he’d talked. Mr. Osborne had spent $100,000 on jewelry which, unknown to his wife, he had given to what he described as “an, ah, er, young lady.” Two nights ago the jewelry had been stolen from the girl’s — Diane Borden’s — home. Diane missed her rocks so much that she brought forth an ultimatum: If Julie boy didn’t replace them, or at least get the “old” ones back, Mrs. Jules Osborne might start hearing from the little birds. So, with a possible outlay of $100,000 staring him in the wallet, Jules was quite willing to pay me $10,000 if I could recover the originals.

Osborne hadn’t gone to the police because he didn’t want any record of this deal anywhere. He’d checked on me, satisfied himself I could be trusted, and laid his problem in my lap. And time was important because he’d said to me, “I can trust the jeweler, I’m sure. The only one I’m worried about is Diane. She’s apt to go berserk any day. Any—” he groaned — “hour. If my wife finds out about this she’ll gouge me for a million-a-year alimony. What with alimony and taxes I’ll have to borrow money.”

Anyway, Osborne wanted action, Diane lived in a rent-free house on Genesee Street. I put the thousand bucks in my wallet, got my black Cad out of the parking lot, and headed for Hollywood.

As soon as I saw Diane I knew she must have given Jules his hundred-thousand-dollars worth. There were several things about Diane that were obvious, the first one being that she was a woman. A lot of women these days look like thin men, but not this kid. She was dressed in red-and-black hostess pajamas with a silver belt tied around her tiny waist. The pajama bottoms were the black part, with full flowing legs slit up the side to her knees, which I automatically assumed were dimpled and the red part was a thin, shimmering blouse which was crammed either with gigantic falsies or one hell of a lot of Diane.

She peered around the door and up at me, letting a strand of red hair droop fetchingly over one eye, and she said, “Hello, hello, hello.”

I looked behind me but there was nobody else around. “That all for me?” I asked her.

“Sure. You’re big enough for three helloes. You’re Scotty, aren’t you?”

“Shell Scott. How did you know?”

“Daddy phoned me. He said you’d come and see me.” She had the door about halfway open and she slid around it, one arm and leg on each side of it and her body pressed against the thin edge. She was silent for a few seconds, smiling at me, then she said, “He told me you were big, and your nose was a little bent, and you had real short white hair that stuck up in the air, and I should be nice to you and help you any way I could.” She laughed. “Come on in, Mr. Scotty. I’m Diane.”

There was a chance conversation with this gal was going to be difficult. I walked by her but before I got past she said, “He didn’t tell me about the funny white eyebrows. They glued?” She reached out and playfully tugged at one.

“No,” I said. “They are not glued. And I—”

“You bring my jewels?”

“What the hell—”

“I know you didn’t. I was just teasing. Don’t be mad. Come in and sit down. You want a drink or anything?”

“Nope. I want some conversation. You sit down in a chair clear the hell across the room from me and let’s talk. O.K.?”

She pretended to pout, which let me notice how full and sensually curving her lower lip was. While I sat down she plopped into a chair and crossed her legs. That black cloth parted at the slit and fell away from skin that looked white and soft as a cloud. Then she bounced up and sat on a long gray divan for half a second, then rolled over and lay on her stomach looking at me. She was a little fluffy bit of a thing, very young — maybe seventeen I figured, all curves and bounce and energy. She was beginning to make me feel decrepit and full of hardened arteries at thirty.

Finally we got around to the jewelry. On my way here I’d stopped at Montclair Jewelers, where Osborne had bought the stuff, and picked up a typed list and description of the missing items. Osborne had arranged to have it ready for me. The pieces were mostly diamonds, with a couple of emerald brooches thrown in. I checked the list against Diane’s memory, which was just as good as the list, then asked her to tell me what she could of the actual theft.