Homicide's Their Headache Page 2

  I got white around the lips. “Some of these days I'll divorce you from your teeth, chum. Me pickin' up the stuff didn't change it any.”

  “Keep your shirt on.” His eyes glinted. “The guy you traced for Dilweg? Is he around? Does he wear glasses?”

  “You're barking up the wrong tree,” I said. “The guy in the closet wasn't Joe Briggs. Briggs don't wear glasses. And Briggs misses on another count.”

  I didn't tell Morf, but the metal ring I grabbed was off an Army jacket, and so was the broken button. I know a little about them. I wore one.

  Morf passed the dirty crack without comment. “If you looked for the guy in the closet what kind of a guy would you look for?”

  “One about five-feet-eight. Medium build. Wears glasses. He's a war veteran. And he probably wears leather heels on his shoes. Rubber ones wouldn't crush an eye-glass lens to powder. And if you see him, you better move fast. He can run plenty fast.”

  “That story fit in with yours?” Morf growled at Carson Roberts.

  Roberts had quieted down a lot. He nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Why'd you come here to see Dilweg?” “I had an appointment with him,” Roberts said.

  “What about?”

  Roberts' answer surprised Morf so much he nearly swallowed his tonsils.

  “The purpose of my visit is none of your business, but I have nothing to conceal. It had to do with Handicap Haven, Incorporated. Mr. Dilweg has been very generous to the project.”

  Morf's face was red as a spanked baby's behind. “What's Handicapped Haven, Incorporated?”

  “A charitable rest home in East St. Louis for the needy blind, deaf, epileptic and crippled. We take them in and try to rehabilitate them and make it possible for them to learn to take care of themselves.”

  He said it with a gleam in his eyes and a flush on his face like it was something swell and he was proud of it. Morf s looked ashamed of himself, and for Morf, that was quite a job.

  To save face, and keep his rep as a tough mug he whirled on John Elkins and punched the butler's thin chest with a stubby hand for emphasis.

  “Where's the old man's housekeeper? This Mrs. Lilli Franner. Where is she?”

  “I don't know,” the skinny butler said. He backed away from Morf's threatening face and he was trying to gulp down his Adam's apple.

  MORF dogged him and his heavy fist curled into a tight ball and he shoved Elkins roughly backward.

  “Come on. Skinny, don't act cagey with me. With one woman alone in a twenty-room house with you and Dilweg, you don't lose track of her. Where is she?”

  Elkins' face was green with fear, and his scrawny arms went up to shield his face. Morf's left hand jabbed hard at Elkins' chest and the skinny guy went backward on to the leather davenport. Morf glared at him.

  “Do I have to let the boys work you over?” Elkins cowered back, trying to squeeze his body into the cushions.

  “She's gone,” he got out. “Talk, Skinny! And you better make it good!”

  “Mrs. Franner. Mrs. Lilli Franner. She came here in answer to an ad I put in a matrimonial paper. I got her a job it with Mr. Dilweg as a sort of housekeeper. We were going to be married, and then go into business together with our savings.”

  Morf grinned as if he enjoyed Elkins' misery. “So you fell for that moth-eaten one? Now your savings have gone blooey, I bet. Along with the dame. Give me the story. From the beginning.”

  Elkins sat up, trembling. “She had six thousand dollars in cash. If I would put up the same amount, we'd put it in a safe deposit box I had at the bank. Then we'd get married and go on our honeymoon. When we got back—”

  Morf grinned some more. “Go on. This is gonna be rich.”

  “We went to the bank,” Elkins stammered. “I put my money in a big envelope. I asked for hers. She blushed, and said it was pinned inside her dress. She took the envelope with my money in it and went into a private booth, and when she came back the envelope was sealed and she'd written across it, 'Property of Mrs. and Mr. John Elkins'.”

  Morf said, licking his lips, “Go on.” “I wanted to buy a little delicatessen I know about, but she kept putting it off. I started to worry about it. I even wondered about the money. But the box was in my name and I had the only key. This afternoon I went to her room to talk to her about it. I found a note on her dresser saying that she'd been called to Duluth by the sudden illness of her sister. All of her things were gone, like maybe she didn't intend to come back. Then I remembered that she had told me once before that she had no relatives except a brother.”

  “You're slow on the up-take, Skinny. Then what did you do?”

  “I went to the safety deposit box at the bank. The envelope was there, just like I'd left it. But inside was only a thick pile of white paper cut to exactly the same size as paper money. There was a good bill on the top and the bottom of the pile—the rest was just paper.”

  Morf laughed, and I could have punched him in the nose.

  “The gal's plenty clever,” Morf said. “Switched the bills out and the dummy paper in while she had you buffaloed with blushes. She put a good bill on each side of the pile in case you got suspicious and tore the envelope.”

  He acted more like he'd found six grand than just learned that Elkins had been fleeced out of that much.

  “You're out six Gs, my skinny friend,” he said, “and I've got an idea that your blushing violet might have stuck Dilweg with them shears, too. Scissors come natural to women. And I ain't positive but what you and her was in cahoots.”

  “I want my six thousand dollars back!” Elkins said.

  I butted in. “I lost a client when Dilweg got himself punctured, and I lost two hundred bucks. What's it worth to you if I get back your six Gs, Elkins?”

  “Five hundred dollars! Five hundred dollars!”

  “Make it two Cs, chum,” I said. I got a stake in this now, showing up our muscle-brained Homicide here.”

  Morf grunted. “I'll get your six Gs, Skinny, at the same time I pick up the killer. And I got an idea that Duluth'd be a good place to start looking.”

  CHAPTER III. THE LADY IN THE LITTLE HOUSE

  A BUNCH of guys came in then—a couple of pencil boys from the Journal and a photographer. The flash bulbs popped with me and Roberts and Elkins and Morf looking down at Dilweg's body. The reporters talked to Morf for about ten minutes, then lifted the phone and called their city desks.

  While they were busy on the phone a couple guys came in with a big wicker basket and they dumped the millionaire in and carried him away. When you're a croppie, it don't make much difference to the coroner whether you got ten million or ten cents.

  Morf glared at the coroner. “A dame flew the coop. Think she could have eased that shiv into Dilweg?”

  “Nix,” the coroner said. “No soap. Whoever pushed that scissors had a lot of push. The wound was bruised where the handles sank into the flesh. I'd say it was a man did the job.”

  I had a different idea myself, but I grinned at the detective from Homicide.

  “You'd better hurry your bloodhounds to Duluth, Rover Boy.”

  I started for the door. “Hold it, Divorce Dick!” Morf said. “Where you think you're going? I haven't given you a clean slate yet.”

  “Are you goofy?” I said. “Dilweg owed me two hundred bucks. But that ain't motive enough for me frying in the chair. You've done your dirty deed for the day. You've got a corpse and you think you've got a suspect. Do your stuff. I'll be at my office any time you want to get me so you can four-flush some more.”

  I left Dilweg's mansion and hopped the Noble bus back to the loop. I went to the local library and spent an hour in the newspaper reference room. There wasn't too much stuff on Dilweg, because he hadn't gone much for publicity, but there was enough for me to piece together a few facts.

  Dilweg had been raised and educated to the law in East St. Louis. In his early days he specialized in corporation law and managed to starve to death. Then he got into politics and did
all right. He wound up as state's attorney for St. Clair County. Then he got into the oil business, and horse-shoes and four-leaf clovers rained all over everything he touched, and he got to be a millionaire.

  He had married young, he had no kids, and his wife had died about twelve years before. He had been about sixty-nine years old. He had traveled a lot and had seldom been at home in the big mansion. He had spent almost a year in Canada before he had returned to his mansion less than a month before. He hadn't been back to East St. Louis in more than ten years, although his only charity was the Handicap Haven, Inc. that I'd heard about from Carson Roberts. There was one item showing a picture of him writing a check for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in favor of Handicap Haven, Inc.

  I didn't know exactly what I had expected to find. I'd been looking for something— anything—that might tie up Briggs, or Elkins, or Roberts, or Mrs. Franner with a motive that would make sense in the killing of the old millionaire. I didn't find anything. I didn't even uncover any scent of a nameless guy who might have it in for Dilweg enough to stick a scissors in his heart.

  The only thing that intrigued me was the fact that everybody in the case seemed to be tied up in some way with East St. Louis. Carson Roberts had his Handicap Haven there, Dilweg had got his start there, Mrs. Franner lived there, and Joe Briggs ran a landscape engineering outfit there. Maybe it might pay off to check the East St. Louis angle.

  By the time I got back to the office, the Journal extras were on the street and Marge's eyes were bugged out as she read the big black headlines:

  MILLIONAIRE MURDERED!

  She was wriggling that top-flight torso of hers in ecstasy and I wished I had been a better salesman for the idea of eggs and toast with her across a breakfast table.

  “Mr. Starch!” she warbled at me. “Isn't it thrilling?”

  “Your grandmother's antimacassar,” I said. “Slip your gears into high and get me the police commissioner of East St. Louis, pronto. Mr. John Webster, otherwise known as Jawn.”

  In five minutes I was talking long distance to a guy that knew more crooks than you could shake a stick at. And the tough ones tried their best to steer clear of his bailiwick. I knew a trigger that beat up his gal because she drove him through the burg once when he was drunk and not able to sit behind the wheel.

  “Jawn,” I told the commissioner over the phone, “do me a favor and keep your eyes peeled for the three-fifty I.C. There might be a jackpot on it. Forty years old, looks thirty-five; shape like Sheridan, gams like Grable, and a yen for men. The old matrimonial racket. Six Gs and a millionaire murder. Elsberry Dilweg. The name the dame used here was Mrs. Lilli Franner.” I gave him a full description I'd got from John Elkins, then I said, “I'll be seeing you in a few hours, Jawn, and buy you a short beer.”

  I TALKED Marge into loaning me her jaloppy. I pointed the radiator south on 66 and kept her perking until I pulled up in front of the city hall down in East St. Louis. Jawn Webster was glad to see me, but he sloshed cold water all over my hopes of finding Lilli Franner so I could collect two Cs from Elkins.

  “My boys,” he told me, “have covered every train and every bus into this burg. We've worked the hotels and the motor courts. We had men on bridges into Saint Looey, just in case she by-passed us. No soap. Where'd you get the brainstorm that she'd hightail it down here?”

  “The butler she flimflammed says she came from here in answer to an ad in a matrimonial magazine. And she left a note for her amour saying she'd gone to Duluth. So, with six Gs in her poke, I figured she might go in the opposite direction.”

  A guy came in the office, chewing on a toothpick.

  “Boss,” he said to Webster, “the boys tell me that Lilli Mason is back in town. Just got back in a car, with a guy. You don't suppose Lilli could have taken a flyer in high finance? One name or another wouldn't make any difference to Lilli.”

  Webster grinned. “Lilli is put together pretty good. Could be. With a chassis like hers, she could even make Starch thaw out. We might make a call on her.”

  “You intrigue me, Jawn", I said. “You're the second guy that's described her wheelbase as out of this world. Maybe I better take a gander.”

  Jawn didn't like the idea. “Better let my boys bring her in. She runs a call joint and I think there's a few crap tables in some of the back rooms. There might be some blackjacks around.”

  “Tell me where, Jawn. I know this burg pretty well. No use of you flushing out quail if we haven't located the right bush.”

  He told me, and I got in Marge's jaloppy and rode about eight blocks.

  Lilli Mason's place was a two-story frame, clean and tidy and freshly painted. It had a little patch of lawn in front, where a stone Negro was aiming a stone hose in the direction of the front gate. The little porch was nearly hidden with climbing green vines.

  The door opened to my push on the bell and a tall gal with chalk-white skin smiled at me.

  “Come in", she said, and she made a casual effort to pull her skin-tight wrapper together.

  I walked in and took a gander around. It was clean and nice but the air smelled like maybe the windows hadn't been open for twenty years.

  I grinned. “Sister,” I said, “you can go right on with your other work. I want to see Lilli Mason.”

  “You're a cop,” she said, like she'd say “You're a worm.” Her eyes got wide and her smile went down the drain.

  “You catch on quick. Where's Lilli?” “Upstairs. Second door on the right side of the hall.”

  The gal left me like I was a leper and went into a big room that was evidently a reception room for customers and left me to walk up the carpeted stairs. I heard a buzzer pop off above me, and I wondered if my wrapper-clad friend had warned Lilli that trouble was on the way up.

  I walked down the hall to the second door on the right. It was in a little jog and just beyond the door was a sharp angle in the hall. It was pretty dark and awful quiet. I looked around for any rubber-heeled guys with blackjacks, then I rapped my knuckles on the door panel.

  A voice—a real nice voice said, “Who is it, please?”

  I listened to a little devil in me and said, “Open up, baby, and feast your hungry eyes on Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

  The door opened and I caught my breath. A guy just don't expect to see stuff like that just by opening a door.

  I took hold of the door jamb. Lilli Mason was quite a package. She was tall and willowy and her skin was white and firm. Maybe what she had was forty years old but she'd taken pretty good care of it. She had dark hair and dark eyes.

  That wasn't all she had. It was the way she was put together. All she had on was a bra and a pair of panties, only partly concealed by a robe that was as effective as barbed wire. It protected the property but it didn't obstruct the view.

  She smiled at me and her teeth were something, too.

  “Put your eyes back in their sockets, mister, and come in. We're all friendly here.”

  I said, “I'd rather you'd put on some more clothes and come with me, Lilli. Lilli Franner. We got a little talking to do about six Gs and a pair of paper shears and a dead millionaire.”

  She was scared. Her right hand went to her throat and her robe fell open. Maybe that's what took my mind off my business. Maybe that's why I didn't hear anybody on the carpet behind me.

  Something slammed against the base of my skull. Red and green lights and paper shears and girls in loose robes danced a dizzy jig in my brain. I felt myself folding up at the knees. The floor came up and hit me, hard. A vision of September Morn shivering ankle deep in blood stamped my brain.

  Then I passed out, cold.

  CHAPTER IV. HANDICAP HAVEN

  BEFORE I saw Lilli Franner again, a couple of hours had passed. It was five minutes of eight and the lights in the ceiling hurt my eyes. I was sitting in a leather chair in Jawn Webster's office in the city hall, rubbing my fingers over a bruise on the back of my skull, near my right ear.

  Webster told me I had been sl
eeping in that chair, after they dragged me in from my encounter with the sap in Lilli Mason's boudoir. I was all right, he told me, according to the doctor.

  Fleming Morf had come down to East St. Louis in a squad car at eighty miles an hour when Webster had notified him that they had picked up Lilli Franner and her boy friend. And one of Webster's plainclothesmen, a guy he called Dave, stood by the hall door now, his strong white teeth gnawing on a toothpick.

  There was a rap on the door and Dave opened it. Lilli Franner walked in, escorted by a uniformed cop. I knew that shape and that face, even if it was the first time I'd seen her with so many clothes on.

  She came in and Dave closed the door behind her, grinning.

  Lilli saw me. Her eyes laughed. Her lids had a kind of reptilian look to them. Lilli could be plenty tough, even when she was laughing.

  Tough enough to stick scissors in anybody.

  “You can put your eyes back in your sockets, mister,” she said to me.

  I knew what she meant. I got red in the face and I felt of that bruise on my dome.

  “Lilli,” Webster said, “you're facing some tough raps. Not only theft, or working a con game, but murder. Changed your mind? Want to come clean?”

  “Copper,” Lilli said, “you're missing the head pin. I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “You're too polite, John,” Morf broke in. “Slap her teeth in!” Then he said to Lilli, “Listen! You lifted six grand off John Elkins. We expect to get it back. And we want a good alibi or we'll put you in the clink for killing Elsberry Dilweg. First off, where's Elkins' six grand?”

  Lilli didn't scare easy. “I told Webster and I'm telling you. I ain't talkin' till I get a lawyer. Put me in the clink and see if I care. I'll get sprung so fast it'll curl your hair.”

  Webster spread his hands wide in resignation.

  He looked at me. “Got any ideas, Bill?”

  I felt the bump on my head. “Let Morf take her back and put her in the hoosegow. Along with the guy that conked me. Whoever he is.”

  Webster grinned and explained to Morf, “Our impetuous friend here got himself conked on the noggin while he was enjoying an eyeful of Lilli. Lucky I'd put Dave on Starch's tail. Dave nabbed Lilli and her boy friend before Starch had hit the floor.”