Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

“Reasons, if any?”

“That’s as far as we got when he had to go preach the merits of the fresh-roasted morning cup of joy.”

“He suggested that Kelsey was behind those fires?”

“No. Is he?”

“No savvy.” He patted her knee, casually. “No ketch-um one piece evidence. You findum.”

“That leather thingumabob Barney mentioned?”

“Pandora’s box. Belongs to Leila.”

Olive leaned toward him. “Is she really as stunning as they make out?”

He nodded solemnly. “Only female I ever met who can hold a candle to you.” He bent over and kissed her ear. “Keep on with that illicit romance. I haven’t checked little Wesley off the list yet. I’m going down and ask him a couple of leading questions now.”

The quartet was laying into some four-part harmony; nothing but the rhythm section was playing when he came into the studio again. Wes Toleman sat on a folding chair beside the stage, reading Radio Daily.

Pedley walked up behind him, laid a hand on his shoulder. The announcer’s eyes swiveled to the left, his head and neck remained rigid. When he caught sight of the marshal’s overcoat, he relaxed, turned around.

“Did you find my pencil?” he whispered.

Pedley shook his head, pointed toward the control room. “You don’t have to spiel for a few minutes, do you?”

“No.” Toleman followed him to the passageway leading to the control room.

After the soundproof door had closed behind them, Pedley said, “What’s with this Kelsey lad?”

“That’s one for ‘Information, Please.’”

“Hasn’t called up to say what’s delayed him?”

“No!” The network man was vehement. “And if anyone should ask me, I don’t believe he will.”

“Think he’s flew the coop?”

The announcer flashed his eyes nervously at the control-room door. “It’s just one man’s opinion. I really haven’t a thing to go on except I know Hal’s been eager to be top dog in the show and it was Ned who always threw him for a loss.”

“Why wouldn’t he put Leila out of the running instead of lighting a fire under her brother?”

“That wouldn’t have done any good,” Toleman explained earnestly. “Ned would still have the contracts with Winn. It isn’t Leila who matters. I probably wouldn’t have thought anything about Hal if it hadn’t been that he and Kim Wasson got along so badly. But when she got so terribly burned, too—”

“If Kelsey was in on that one, he must have one of those dual personalities. He was up at the Starlight Roof when the blaze was primed.”

“He could have had someone helping him, couldn’t he?”

“Wouldn’t put it past him. What are you holding out?”

“Sir?”

“You’ve some reason for tying Kelsey into these crimes. What is it? Does he have the ax out for you, too?”

Toleman held himself primly erect. “It’s a matter of complete indifference to me what Hal Kelsey thinks. Whether he likes my announcing or not won’t affect my standing with the network. It isn’t that at all!”

“You’re warming up. Get hot.”

“Well, there is something. It didn’t seem of any particular importance at the time. But since he hasn’t seen fit to come to the studio today—”

Pedley controlled an impulse to swing on the announcer’s chin. “I’m tuned in. Proceed.”

“Everybody on the show knew better than to offer Ned Lownes a drink of anything stronger than root beer. It’s been kind of an unwritten code that when the folks stop at a bar before rehearsal, they’d all avoid taking Ned with them. He always wound up with a jag and nearly always caused trouble. Yet yesterday afternoon Hal was at the Telebar with Ned, buying liquor for him as fast as Ned could put it away.”

“You were there?”

“Yes. I saw them. And my personal opinion is that anyone who’d pull a filthy trick like that would do anything. And if he’s gone further with his schemes than he originally meant to, he’ll be afraid to show up again.”

As Pedley Opened the control-room door, the announcer’s voice came through the speaker. “Until next week at this time, when Winn’s, the Coffee of Connoisseurs, brings you another great show featuring Leila Lownes, the Barber Shop Boys, and Hal Kelsey and the Gang — this is Wes Toleman saying ‘So-long’ for Winn’s — the coffee you find on the better breakfast tables from Coast to Coast.”

The music swelled up to a final crescendo. On the stage, the sweatered man’s baton quivered with the final downbeat. Faces turned toward the control room.

Gaydel glanced at the figures his assistant was making on the script, pushed the talk-back button.

“Nice knittin’, kittens! It comes up good. Everybody back at six, sharp.” He took his finger off the button so his voice couldn’t carry outside the control room. “Holy jumping—! You’d rock ’em — in a deaf and dumb asylum. You’d be a beg-off — in Timbuctoo. We can’t go on with a turkey like this!”

The engineer said, “Patsy’s not bad.”

“She’s not good.” Gaydel snorted. “She’s not Leila. Cliff Etting isn’t Hal. The whole show’s a hash-house special.” He wheeled about dejectedly, saw the marshal, groaned. “All I need now is to have you mucking around for a while.”

“Might not take up too much of your valuable time.” Out in the studio, Pedley could see Toleman talking animatedly to Ollie. “Place around where we could get a quickie?”

Gaydel took him to the Telebar, on the ground floor; ordered a double-gin buck.

“Set a bonded bottle right here,” Pedley told the waiter. “And leave the rest to me.” He poured a drink. “Your program’s jinxed, seems like, Gaydel.”

“I won’t go on tomorrow without Kelsey.”

“Then, according to Toleman, they’ll play recordings during your time.”

“Wes is a blubber-mouthed yawp. Hal will turn up.”

“Toleman thinks your band-boy has taken it on the lam because he’s responsible for Lownes’s doing a shuffle-off.”

“Horse-radish! Hal wouldn’t have touched a hair of that dipso’s head, much as he may have wanted to.”

“How about you?”

“I’m in no mood for jesting.”

“Give me a quick panorama of your whereabouts last night, after I shooed you out of Ned’s suite.”

“Pleasure. I beat it home, had dinner with my wife and youngster. We went over the plans for our new house up in Westchester, quit along about one o’clock. I went to bed. Period.”

“Ought to be able to verify all of that. Where you live?”

“Marble Hill.”

“Ten, eleven miles down to Horatio Street. If all is according to Hoyle, you’d be excluded from the Wasson thing.”

Gaydel brooded into his drink. “Kim’s getting hurt like that hit me a hell of a lot harder than Ned’s getting killed.”

“All part and parcel. Same bug, same motive. Don’t suppose you could do what Miss Wasson was about to, before she landed in the hospital.”

“What?”

“Tell me something about Leila’s past. That leather case you were looking for — that must contain something out of the clear, dead days beyond recall. Obviously it’s something she’s anxious to hush up.”

The producer held out his right arm, touched the bicep.

“I’d cut it off, right up to there, before I gave you anything to use against Leila.”

“Take off your armor, Sir Galahad. Don’t put a girl’s reputation ahead of her life. Or other folks’ lives. This fire-setter’s going to keep on until he kills somebody else. Once he’s started covering up one crime with another, he won’t be able to stop. Lownes, Wasson — maybe, you.” Gaydel ordered another double-gin buck, put half of it under his belt before he made up his mind.