Say Yes to Murder - Todhunter Ballard (book club recommendations .TXT) 📗

“This makes it tough,” he said. The words had an inane sound. That did not trouble him too much. He realized that anything said under the circumstances would sound inane.

“Why did you kill him?”

She said: “I didn’t,” and left the words hanging between them in the still air.

“Who killed him?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Lennox said: “Now listen. He brings you home, he’s dead, hidden under your bed, and you don’t know who killed him?”

She began to cry. He hadn’t known she could cry, and there was nothing soft in the way she did it. It was more like a rapidly gathering storm, the sobs shaking her slim shoulders.

“I don’t know. He brought me home and he wouldn’t leave. So I did. I went over to a friend’s place. I spent the night there. When I came home less than an hour ago I found him there, just where you found him. All I did was pull the cover down so that… so that it would hide his feet.”

“You didn’t do a very good job.” Lennox sounded cynical. He didn’t believe the story. It was too absurd, too fantastic. Even a ten-year-old child should be able to think up a more convincing one.

She was far above the average mentally, and anyone who would recite Chaucer when drunk…. It might just be true. Truth always sounded more incredible than lies. He remembered that from his legman days.

“Who is this friend? Can she alibi you?”

Jean Jeffries shook her head. She had regained control and the sobs had stopped. “No….” Hopelessness had replaced the mask of self-confidence with which she had first greeted him. “She’s out of town. At Big Bear for the week. She left the key to her apartment with me. That’s why I went there.”

He watched her reflectively. He wasn’t considering her as an individual. Nor was he interested in Heyworth. Death, when it did not touch him directly, meant little. Three years on a Chicago police beat had immunized him to violence. He considered the murder only from the effect it would have on the studio, on the picture. And yes—on Mary Morris.

Mary was important, both in herself and as General’s best current box-office attraction. Some publicity was very helpful—some worse than none—and the word murder connected even remotely with a player had marked the finish of more than one promising career.

“The first thing we’ve got to do is get that body out of here. It will be bad enough with Heyworth dead, but worse if he’s found here.”

She looked startled as if the possibility had not occurred to her. “Move his body? But how?”

He said: “That’s my problem,” and was already reaching for the bedside phone. He dialed a number and said to the man who answered: “Let me talk to Jake.”

The girl’s dark eyes had lost some of their starry expression. There was hope in the set of her shoulders, hope in the way she came toward him.

“Thank you. I didn’t think…”

But he was talking into the instrument. “Jake, this is Bill. Get a truck. No, not from the prop department. Better rent one and wear whiskers when you do. Find an empty piano box. No. Come alone, and for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut. Yeah. A Dig radio packing case will do if it’s big enough. But make it fast.” He gave the apartment number and hung up.

She tried again to thank him, and he looked at her as though he couldn’t recall seeing her before.

She said: “I didn’t know where to turn—what to do. I was like a child, praying—promising that if I ever got out of this jam I’d never, never do anything out of the way again. You’re swell, Lennox. I’ve heard of you ever since I came to town. I didn’t believe the stories I heard. I thought it was the same old malarkey—the old Hollywood needle. If I can ever do anything for you…”

He told her harshly: “You’re on the wrong wave length, sweetheart. I’m not doing this for you, or him”—he jerked his thumb toward the dead man—“or even for your grandmother. I’m just saving myself as much trouble as I can. The cops and the papers will ask plenty of questions even if that body is found in Heyworth’s own garden.”

He turned to look again at the murdered man. The knife stood out at right angles from the breast, not slanting either up or down. The handle was curiously carved, and he bent to examine it, saying over his shoulder. “Your prints aren’t on this, are they?”

She caught her breath. “You mean, you think that I killed him and you’re willing to move the body, anyway?”

He exploded. “I don’t care who killed him. If your prints are on that knife, say so and I’ll wipe them off.”

“They aren’t.”

“All right. Go into the other room and sit down. When Jake shows up, send him in here.”

Without a word she disappeared and Lennox looked around. There was no stain on the beige carpet, but there was a place on the polished floor which looked as if it had been wiped up. And the knife was in the wound so tightly that Heyworth had probably not bled much.

He wanted to be certain that there were no telltale marks left, so he moved the bed. No blood here. He couldn’t find anything that might have given a clue that there had been murder save the wiped-up place on the polished floor.

He used his handkerchief on it, just in case, and then started for the connecting door intending to ask the girl if she had cleaned up the stain and what she had done with the cloth or with whatever she had used to wipe the floor, but he had another thought. He turned and went into the bathroom.

There were no indications of the tragedy here, no soiled towels or stains of any kind. Someone had done a neat job of cleaning up.

He returned to the bedroom, crossed it, and went on into the white and gold living room. The girl had been sitting straight-backed on the divan in an attitude of waiting. She turned her head quickly.

“Where was the body when you found it?” Lennox demanded.

“Under the bed,” her voice was steady. “I tried to move it, to shove him back farther out of sight, but he was so heavy.”

“Did you clean up that bare floor beside the dressing table?”

She looked startled. “Why, no, I didn’t clean up anything…. I didn’t see anything that needed cleaning up.”

Lennox frowned. If she was telling the truth, someone else had been at pains to clean up the apartment, yet they had left the body under the bed.

The girl said, nervously, “This… this Jake. Mightn’t he call the police?”

Lennox shook his head. “Jake would do a stretch if I told him to. He’s one man I can trust.” He turned without further words and disappeared into the bedroom.

2.

Jake Hertz was small and wiry, with a black mop of hair so curly that it defied the efforts of the stoutest comb. Barbers complained that Jake’s hair turned the edge of their scissors and that his beard dulled the sharpest razor—a complaint Mr. Hertz accepted as a personal compliment. “Even me hair is too tough for ‘em,” he was apt to remark after the third beer.

The box which he juggled into the room was bigger than he was, and he set it down with an air of proud proprietorship. “A honey, huh?”

Lennox nodded his approval. “Bring it in here.” He led the way to the bedroom.

Jake followed, and his expression did not alter when he saw the corpse. “Heyworth! Neat job. The bird that handled that knife knew how.”

“Think we can get him in?”

“Cinch,” said Jake, and went to work. “He won’t mind if he’s a little cramped.”

“No,” Lennox agreed. “I don’t think he’ll mind. Where are you parked?”

“In the alley,” Hertz said. “I came up in the freight elevator and no one saw me.”

The truck was a U-drive-it, rented in the name of Abraham Washington. For some reason he did not trouble to explain, Jake thought it sounded like a respectable name.

Outside the late afternoon sun beat strongly on Lennox’ back as they loaded the box onto the truck. He gave Jake instructions explicitly. He was to stay out of the way until dark, then leave Heyworth in the lower garden at the foot of the actor’s hillside lot. He was to take the box away with him and burn it in his own fireplace. That done, Lennox went back to the apartment and had the girl vacuum the rugs to remove any chance splinters.

When it was finished he told her: “That’s all, kid. Forget it happened. And if you want advice—which you probably don’t—head east.” .

They were standing facing each other, and he did not know what she was going to do until she suddenly came up onto her tiptoes and pressed her mouth tight against his. It startled him. It wasn’t unpleasant. He’d kissed women before and enjoyed it less. He fumbled, not knowing quite what to do, and the sound of the apartment buzzer made decision unnecessary.

“Better see who it is,” he told her, and took a careful seat at the end of the divan.

He couldn’t see the door from where he sat. He heard a rumble of voices and thought there was something familiar in the sound, but he couldn’t place it until the two men followed the girl into the room.

The first was a heavy-set man with a red beefsteak complexion and rather small, round blue eyes. The lower lip was a little too long, giving his wide mouth a discontented look under the shadow of his bulbous nose. Lennox couldn’t have