Lucky Stiff - Craig Rice (good book club books .TXT) 📗

he wanted to have the whole building. Not that he was so damned exclusive, but you never know what you may draw in the way of neighbors.”

“Did he rent it just to keep it vacant?”

“That was the main reason,” she told him, “but he did use it. He had a few odds and ends of furniture up there, and once in a while if he wanted to talk business with someone—in private—he’d arrange a meeting upstairs.”

Malone scowled. “Let’s go up there and take a look.” He led the way into the hall and up the stairs.

There was dust everywhere, thick gray dust, and cobwebs. Helene touched the stair rail once and drew her hand away, shuddering.

The door to the upstairs apartment was not only unlocked, but partly ajar. Malone pushed it open a little wider and peered in cautiously. Beyond was a dark and frightening cavern. The little lawyer felt Anna Marie’s fingers tighten, ever so lightly, over his own. He turned his head and saw that Helene was very pale.

“Come on in,” he said cheerfully. “Remember, it’s four of us against none of them. Only,” he added wistfully, “I wish we’d brought along a flashlight.”

Anna Marie said, “The lights must be on here, if they’re on downstairs. The whole building is on one meter.”

She reached around the doorjamb and clicked the switch. Lights blazed. She went on into the apartment, Jake and Helene close behind her.

Malone gripped the edge of the door and stood there for a moment, his stomach contracting, his hands suddenly ice-cold. It was like seeing a stage set from which the furniture and props have been removed, the actors long since gone. Because it was the twin of Anna Marie’s apartment—and completely empty.

After coming up from the rooms downstairs, it was like looking at the corpse of some familiar friend. There were the windows, there was the little fireplace, there were the alcoves above the bookshelves. But there were no draperies at the windows, no logs in the fireplace, no books on the shelves, no amusing little ornaments in the alcoves. And Anna Marie—he glanced at her.

He shut his eyes and held tight to the edge of the door.

“Malone!” Helene said sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I—nothing!” He realized he’d started to say, “I thought I saw a ghost!” He opened his eyes, looked around and said, “Somebody has been doing a very nice job of searching.”

There was dust here, too, but it had been recently and thoroughly disturbed. The drawers had been yanked out of the built-in window seat, and there were knife marks along its top. Similar knife marks showed around the window frames and sills and the edges of the doors.

They went into the bedroom. It, too, was empty of furniture, but there were the same signs of a recent and desperate search. A built-in mirror had been wrenched off its frame. The pale green carpet had been ripped up from the floor. Malone noticed that the carpet looked new and unused. Anna Marie must have been telling the truth about the two apartments.

In the bathroom the medicine cabinet had been pried from the wall. The toilet tank cover had been removed and not replaced.

The kitchen was a shambles.

“Someone has done a very nice job of searching,” Malone repeated admiringly. “Look, he even pried along the edge of the baseboards to see if any of them came loose.” He finally lit the cigar he’d been carrying. “Too bad he didn’t find what he was looking for.”

“Do you know,” Helene demanded, “or are you guessing?”

“With me,” Malone said, “a guess is as good as a gander.” He blew out his match, dropped it on the floor, and looked at it thoughtfully. “I might add, the guy in the raincoat didn’t do the searching job. He just stopped by to inspect it.”

Jake sighed and said, “If you keep this up you’ll be competing with Dunninger. Or do you expect us to read your mind?”

“It’s perfectly simple,” Malone said indignantly. “Mr. Raincoat, to give him a name, was only here a few minutes. This searching job must have taken a couple of hours, at the least. If whatever had been looked for had been found, no one would have come back. The guy who did the searching wouldn’t have come back, because he’d already done everything except tear the paper off the walls.”

“Malone—” Helene began.

“Shut up,” the little lawyer said pleasantly, waving her aside, “Don’t derail me when I’m on a train of thought.” His eyes narrowed. “Mr. Raincoat came back here to make sure that Mr. Searcher hadn’t missed a trick. As anyone with half an eye can see, he hadn’t. Therefore, Mr. Raincoat decided that the downstairs apartment should also be investigated.”

He knocked a little ash off his cigar and said to Anna Marie, “What the devil did Big Joe have hidden around here? The Great Mogul diamond, a complete set of plans for blowing up the Tribune Tower, or a life pass on the El?”

“I don’t know what he was hiding. It was none of my business.” Her white little face seemed to have turned to stone.

Malone looked at her thoughtfully and said, “All right, the defense rests. Let’s go downstairs, where there’s a corpse to keep us company and a nice comfortable place to sit down.”

“Wait a minute,” Helene said. “Malone, why did your Mr. Searcher come up here first?”

“Maybe he believed there’s always room at the top,” Malone said. “Or maybe he was smart enough to have a better reason.” He flicked a nonexistent ash from his cigar by way of gesture. “He may have reasoned that Big Joe was a smart enough cookie to have his hidey-hole where his girl friend wouldn’t stumble on it accidentally or intentionally.” He shot a glance at Anna Marie and added, “Am I right?”

“You’re right,” Anna Marie said harshly, “but he’s wrong.” She leaned against the doorjamb. Her face was like a shadow against the darkness. “Maybe you just don’t understand about guys like Big Joe. If a dog gets a bone there’s ten dogs after him. If a guy gets a sweet racket there’s fifty guys after him. And if he happens to have the kind of nature Big Joe had, he’s got to trust somebody, and if he can’t trust his girl friend, then who the hell—” She broke off suddenly.

Malone said hastily, “We understand.” He chewed savagely on his cigar for a moment. “Then Big Joe did have a hiding place, and you do know where it is.”

“Know!” Anna Marie laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “I should know. Because I made it for him.” She sighed. “He told me that he wanted a good safe place to keep valuable papers, and sometimes money, a place nobody could find. He didn’t trust wall safes or movable floor boards or any of the usual places!”

“From the looks of this room,” Jake said, “he had the right idea.”

A wry smile crossed her face briefly. “This whole damn building could be torn apart, roof to basement, and no one would ever find what he was looking for. When Big Joe told me that, I remembered—in grandmother’s house, back in Grove Junction—”

She paused. Her eyes softened. She smiled.

“O.K., come downstairs. I’ll show you where it is.”

“The important thing isn’t where,” Helene said, “but, what’s in it?”

They all looked at Anna Marie.

“I think he used to keep important business papers there ” she said, almost in a whisper. “And sometimes I think e kept money there, quite a lot of it. For a while he kept a diary and he kept it there. But not long before he—before Ike Malloy shot him—he burned the diary. As far as I know, he never put anything else in the hiding place.”

“As far as you know,” Malone repeated. “Didn’t you ever look?”

“Of course not,” Anna Marie said. She sounded shocked. “Whatever he put there wasn’t any of my business.”

Malone revised his opinion of Anna Marie. She was, he decided, one in two million.

“Look, my dear,” he said. “It is your business now. There may be something there, something important. It might tell who murdered him and tried to frame you. That’s something you want to know.” He added, “You don’t need to show what you find there to us, or to anybody else, if you don’t want to.”

Helene sighed and said, “This is a very pleasant tea party. But tempus is fidgeting, and someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts may decide to search that downstairs apartment. And while this is no time to bring it up, Malone, you really ought to ring up von Flanagan and tell him you’ve found his murder victim.”

“Business before pleasure,” Malone told her. “A place for everything, and everything in its time. I say, let’s get the hell downstairs and find the missing emeralds. Besides, Anna Marie has to pack her other toothbrush.”

At the door to Anna Marie’s apartment he paused and looked at her, one hand on the doorknob. He was remembering the fleeting expression on her face when she’d realized that Jesse Conway had tried to hush up the confession that had saved her life. It hadn’t been anger, or shock, or even surprise. It had been a kind of anguished sympathy for the once brilliant man who had been forced into a deal like that. And right now, Jesse Conway was lying dead on her pale blue carpet.

“Maybe,” he began hesitatingly.

“Don’t be a sentimental fool, Malone,” Helene said in an unexpectedly sharp voice.

He glanced at Helene, saw that her blue eyes were very-wide and bright, and that she had one arm linked through Anna Marie’s. He flung open the door and said, “Ladies first,” as he ushered them into the room.

Anna Marie hurried into her bedroom and began tossing things into a suitcase, talking about the house in Grove Junction while she packed. It had been Grandmother’s house once. Grandmother’s husband had been a wealthy farmer, and the house was a good substantial one, with fine woodwork and the best of hardware. Glass knobs on the downstairs doors and furnace heat. Aunt Bess used to take her there to visit. Then Grandmother died, and Aunt Bess had expected to inherit a lot of money. But the old house was heavily mortgaged, and the hiding place had held only a garnet necklace and a pair of silver earrings.

“Aunt Bess got the jewelry,” she finished, “and I learned how to make a hiding place nobody could find. Frankly, I think I got the best deal.”

Malone had been prowling silently and restlessly around the living room, chewing on his dead cigar and being careful not to touch anything that would register a fingerprint. He took the suitcase she handed him and carried it out to the hall. Then she took a footstool to the kitchenette door, climbed up, and ran her fingers along the top of the door. A thin strip of wood lifted up.

“It’s very simple,” she said. “The top of the door is hollowed out. Then a piece of wood is fitted in. If anyone runs his fingers along the top of the door, it feels perfectly smooth.”

She climbed down from the footstool. There was a piece of notepaper in her hand.

“This is all there was.”

“Put it in your handbag,” Malone said, “and read it later. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait,” Helene said. There was a thoughtful look in her eyes. “There’s no hurry. Maybe we ought to look at that paper before we leave. It may not be as easy to break in here a second time.”

“The key!” Anna Marie said unexpectedly. They stared at her.

“That’s right,” Malone said scowling. “The