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

She rolled over onto her back, stretched her arms above her head, and presented such a charming picture that I hardly heard what she was saying. But she told me she’d gone with “Daddy” to an out-of-the-way spot and worn some of her diamonds. Back home, after Mr. Osborne had gone, she’d left the stuff on top of her bedroom dresser alongside the jewel box.

She said, “And when I woke up yesterday morning the little pretties were just gone. I’d locked the doors when Daddy left and they were still locked this morning. Windows too. But it was all just gone. Some robbers stole it all.”

“You mean somebody walked right into your bedroom and lifted the rocks without your knowing anything about it?”

“Well, they must have. I sleep sounds enough, but if anybody was banging around and flashing lights and things it should have awakened me.” She giggled at me. “I wasn’t very tired, anyway.”

“Yeah. You know, I expected to find you all broken up, yanking your hair out and wailing. You sure you want these things back?”

“Well, I like that. You want me to run around bawling and yelling ‘My jewels, my jewels’?” She was still smiling and didn’t seem angry. “Now, wouldn’t that be silly, really? I really feel bad, but Daddy said you’d get them back... or else he’d get me some more. So it’s not like my little old pretties were gone forever.”

“I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be a big laugh if you still had those little old pretties around somewhere and I naturally can’t find the robbers and you get another hundred grand’s worth from Da — ah, from your father?”

She sat up straight on the couch. “Let me think about that a minute,” she said. Then she laughed, flopped back on the couch and threw her legs up in the air. “Oh, how funny,” she said. “That would be a scream. But I never thought of it — wish I had. And he’s not my father, you silly. You know what I hope?”

“No, what do you hope?”

“That those robbers didn’t see me.” She swung her legs around to the floor, got up and scooted across the room and curled up on the floor at my feet. She put her arms on my knees, leaned forward and said, “If they saw the diamonds, right in my bedroom there, and stole them, they must have been able to see me it seems like. And golly I hope they didn’t. I don’t sleep with anything on, nothing at all, you know, and I’m restless. I kick and turn and wallow around all night I guess. Almost always I wake up all uncovered.” She shook her head and let red hair fly around.

I said in a voice that was practically normal, “And if those robbers did see you, you’d better lock and bar all the doors tonight, because they’ll be here again come hell or high-water, jewels or no jewels. Now go back to your couch.”

She laughed and said, “You’re fun. You know, you’re lots of fun. And you know what I meant. Well, what else do you want to know?”

“You got any picture of you wearing some of the rocks?”

“Just a minute.” She got up, taking her arms and whatnot off my shaking knees, and trotted out of the room on bare feet. I hadn’t noticed before that she was barefooted, but then I’ve never been much of a guy to look at feet.

She came back with two snapshots and a nightclub photo in which she was practically sagging under the weight of diamonds and emeralds. The nightclub photo showed a necklace, pin, and bracelet clearly. The dress she’d been wearing was strapless, and the photo showed Diane clearly, and it was clearly all Diane.

“You can borrow the pictures,” she said. “Daddy took the first two snaps, and he was in the other — but he cut himself out. Well, what now?”

“Now I go look for these things. And I’d be awfully sad if there weren’t any robbers.”

“There you go again. Don’t be so nasty. Somebody stole them, all right. You have to go right away?”

“Immediately.” I stood up. I looked at her for a minute and said, “Aren’t you being a little rough on the guy? I mean this business of either you get the rocks back or it costs him another hundred G’s? The guy might collapse from anxiety, start selling his Cadillacs, get rocks in his head—”

“Wait a minute.” She got about half sober, raised an arched eyebrow and looked me up and down slowly. Then she said, “Come on now. You know better than that. I’m doing him a favor. A lot of men think price is value. Daddy wouldn’t have a Cadillac if it only cost five hundred dollars.”

I blinked at her, thinking that maybe her brain wasn’t as soft as I’d suspected. Then she went back to normal and wiggled a little and smiled at me, and I thought: Hang on, Scott, you’ll be out of here in a minute and Jules isn’t paying you for what you’re thinking. I started for the door and Diane walked along with me, hanging onto my arm, which also started getting hot.

“If you find them,” she said, “you bring them back to me. Don’t take them to Daddy. They’re mine.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not supposed to go within a mile of him. I’ll bring them to you — if I find them.”

She opened the door and slid around it again in that oddly interesting fashion. “All right,” she said smiling, “just you don’t sneak in at night like they did, and leave them on the dresser.”

I grinned. “If I do, Miss, I’ll look the other way.”

“Sure,” she said. “Away from the dresser.” She giggled. “I bet you make lots of money.”

“Not that much. And it all goes in taxes. Well, goodbye, Miss.”

“ ’Bye, Mr. Scotty.”

I went out onto the porch and just before she shut the door she said, “Don’t call me Miss.” I looked over my shoulder at her and she said, “Call me Diane.” She took one arm off the door and kind of waved it at me, letting her hand fall limp from her wrist, then winked at me and said, “And listen, you. I’m older than I look.”

Then she shut the door and I thought about sitting down on the grass and rolling around howling, and I thought about jumping up and running back and crashing through the door, but what I did was go out to the Cad and lean my head against the cool steering wheel for a couple seconds, then shiver spasmodically and put the buggy in gear thinking that Jules Osborne should have told me more about Diane, and offered me at least twenty thousand dollars.

At the office J reviewed what little I knew and phoned Burglary Division in City Hall to refresh my memory. Then I propped my Cordovans on the desk and thought for a couple minutes. Starting about three months back there had been a number of night burglaries in and near Los Angeles, ranging from Beverly Hills to Boyle Heights. This particular rash of burglaries totaled nine reported so far; the m.o. was the same in all of them and unlike any known gang which Burglary had any record of. The capers always came off between ten at night and two in the morning, there was never any sign that doors or windows had been forced. Nobody had ever reported any lights in the burgled houses though some of the jobs had been pulled off next door to houses in which parties were going on or in which the occupants were chatting or watching television. The doors were always still locked when the people got home to find their jewels, money, furs, silver gone. The jobs had been well cased and the hauls were always good ones, the loot taken from wealthy people. The burglars had never been seen or heard, and Burglary didn’t have a solitary lead.

Homicide was interested too, because on one job, which both Burglary and Homicide agreed was obviously the work of the same ten-to-two gang, a wealthy attorney named William Drake had been murdered. And in messy fashion. It was assumed that he’d left his wife at a party and come home alone while the gang was in his big house on San Vicente Boulevard — the coroner set the time of death at around midnight — and the attorney had been brutally beaten by what must have been an exceedingly powerful man. The attorney’s face was a pulp, and one blow had broken his neck. He’d also been shot, a bullet from a .45 caliber automatic blowing away much of his brain.