Stewart Sterling - Dead of Night

The D.A.’s office has its own copyrighted brand of double talk. “An arrest is imminent” usually means the Prosecutor doesn’t have a suspect in sight. “Painstaking detective work has resulted in a roundup of the entire gang of criminals” can be translated to “a stool pigeon talked plenty.” Same with “inside job.” That’s police-ese for “no clues.”

But that last term is poison to any security man. We hear it enough. Countess Falsiebra accuses a floor maid of stealing a dinner ring, positive it must have been an “inside job.” I search around, find the ring where the countess left it, on the edge of the tub behind the shower curtain.

Calling an employee “thief” is bad enough. But if word got around we had a killer on our payroll, in twenty-four hours we’d have more empty rooms than all the unheated Maine motels in midwinter. If Ruth Moore could point the finger in some other direction, even in the direction of a fabulous guest like Tildy Millett, that was better than having one of the staff under suspicion.

But apparently she wasn’t sure it was the thing to do. To cover her indecision, she mumbled, “Excuse me,” slid into the bedroom at the left.

I followed as far as the door. A killer who’d wanted to observe the goings and comings in 21MM couldn’t have had a better watchtower than that particular bedroom. Its corridor door was exactly opposite Tildy’s bedroom. As I’d just told Hacklin, it wouldn’t have been difficult for any well-dressed lad with jaunty assurance to get a key to the suite paid for by Lanerd, Kenson & Fullbright.

It wouldn’t have been too much of a trick for such a person to keep out of sight; few of the visitors to the suite would have spent much time in that bedroom. The beds were littered with attaché cases, cartons of cigarettes, stacks of purple and yellow studio tickets bound with rubber bands.

“I ought to get Mister Lanerd’s permission before saying anything, Mister Vine.” She went to the bureau, turned her head to frown at me, reached into the drawer without looking, and pulled out a man’s monogrammed hanky. “But it’s no secret Tildy has a disposition that’s as unpredictable as a woman driver at a yellow light. She can be so-o-o sweet one minute, poison the next.”

“Why would she carve a man who was protecting her?”

“Maybe he wasn’t. If he’d been making a pass at her—”

“—and Lanerd walked in? That what’s in your mind?”

“It — is — not!”

“Lanerd’s been playing kneesie with her?”

She flapped the handkerchief derisively. “Mister Lanerd doesn’t keep me informed about such things. She might, as you so daintily put it, have been trying to get him to — play kneesie with her. He’s very attractive—”

“Can imagine.”

“He’s so naive about women. They take advantage of him!” The fiercely defensive way she said it, it didn’t sound silly.

“Maybe he had a notion this bodyguard was taking his duties too literally?”

“Mister Lanerd wouldn’t ever be jealous. He hates that sort of thing. That’s why he was so angry when Mrs. Lanerd—” She put the handkerchief to her mouth as if she’d said more than she meant to.

I thought she’d intended to let the innocent remark slip out.

“Mrs. Lanerd was disturbed about her husband’s relations with the skating star?”

She puckered her forehead dubiously. “If you say I told you so, I’ll say you lie.”

“’Kay. Say.”

“Marge — Mrs. Lanerd — was here. Over there, I mean.” She pointed toward the MM suite. “This afternoon. She raised hell. Told off our Mystery Miss, but good. You could hear ’em clear out in the corridor.”

“You could?” Then it hadn’t been her first time with her ear glued to the panel, a few minutes ago. “What’d you hear?”

“Names. Threats.” Suddenly the secretary seemed miserable. “You can’t blame Marge. Dow’s always—” apparently she realized for the first time she’d been using her employer’s first name, was confused for a moment, “getting tangled up with skirts — and having trouble getting untangled.”

“Way it goes. What time was this?”

“Around five. Mister Lanerd wasn’t here then.”

“He know his wife came to the hotel?”

“I don’t think so. Marge didn’t wait for him. Or leave any message. She didn’t know I was here, either.”

“The threats, now. They what you meant by Miss Millett’s having another reason for running away after the show?”

There was a knock on the living-room door. She hurried out of the bedroom.

I called, “Come in.”

A tall, wedge-shouldered, ruddy-faced individual in full tails and white tie smiled affably at me, at Miss Moore.

“We’re waiting for our principal speaker—”

The secretary stepped in. “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, Mister Yaker. Mister Vine, Mister Yaker.” She made the introduction with nice timing that didn’t allow for either of us to learn anything except the other’s name. “But I’m afraid Mister Lanerd won’t be able to make the banquet.”

“Oh, now!” The Yaker person smoothed back short, sandy crew-cut hair which needed no smoothing; he screwed up his pleasant, weather-reddened features into a grimace of disappointment. “I’ve been holding those hundred and fifty men to their chairs on the strength of Mister Lanerd being able to—”

“He’s so distressed about it.” Ruth Moore made him feel she was distressed, too. “He asked me to have you extend his personal apologies to everyone at the dinner and to say that if he is asked again he will certainly be delighted to make up for the—”

I left her soothing him. The phone was burring. When I picked it up and said, “Hello,” the earpiece replied:

“How y’ doin’, lovey-duck?” An oddly agreeable, throaty, feminine drawl.

“Just fine.” If she didn’t recognize it wasn’t Lanerd on the line, she couldn’t know him very well.

“This is Edie, honey-pie.”

“Good ole Edie,” I said brightly. “What’s th’ good word?”

“You know what the good word is, shugie.” The throaty voice giggled. “Cash is th’ bes’ word there is.”

“Might have something there, Edie.”

“I’ll have it when you give it to me. That little matter’s been taken care of. When do we talk payment?”

“Any time at all.” I knew of only one piece of recent business concerning Dow Lanerd that a canary like this might be interested in, but, of course, I didn’t know all of Lanerd’s current doings. By any means. Ruth Moore was still pouring syrup on the disappointed Crew Cut. “Come on up.”

“No, ’deed. You come on down here. I want to get this deal closed right hasty.”

“Where you now?”

“High in the saddle, down here at the Steeplechase. C’mon down an’ take a hurdle with me.”

“Be along in a minute.”

“Don’t make me wait, sugar-pie.” She hung up. Before I did, Ruth Moore was hanging on my arm. Trying to get the phone away from me.

“It’s my job to handle his phone calls.” Ruth Moore was disturbed. “Who was that?”

“Not your boss. Or his wife.”

“Tildy?” The cat-green showed in her eyes.

“No.” Seemed to me, no matter how private a secretary she was, there’d be no need for her to know about a call like that. “Why’d Crew Cut have to call in person? Couldn’t he have phoned?”

“Roy Yaker?” She gestured, annoyed. “That false alarm! He’s staying here — floor below, I think. He said he had telephoned from the Crystal Room but there was no answer. He thought Mister Lanerd might have been — taking a shower — so he came on up here.”