Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
The Escalade pulled into the lot, parking two spots over from me. I made it out before she did. “Morning, Mira.”
“Oh, Trevor. I thought that was you.”
The Escalade was Belle’s idea, it had to be. Left on her own, Mira probably would be driving around in a VW Beetle. By far, she wasn’t the ugliest woman I’ve ever encountered. And by the same measurement, she wasn’t the prettiest either. Skinny, homey, or mousy came to mind. She’d dyed her hair since the last time I saw her. It was black now, cut short and pasted to her head like a curly skullcap. The hair and the heavy eye makeup took away from her overbite. She wore tan tailored slacks and a darker brown satin windbreaker zipped low enough to expose the triple strand of pearls around her neck. Someone had been working overtime on her wardrobe.
“What brings you out this way?”
She was smiling, coyly perhaps; there was even assertiveness in her stance. But that all went away when I pulled the photograph out of my pocket. The pale blue eyes encased in the heavy makeup grew large and piercing.
“Where did you get this?” she snapped, grabbing the photograph out of my hand with such force she lost her balance, taking a step back to right herself.
“I took it off of Dennis Rimmey’s body. Somebody put a couple of bullets in him last night. He died on my doorstep.”
“I... I, uh.”
“Maybe we better go in your office and talk.”
“Yes...” she said, folding the photograph and jamming it in her purse.
She started toward the door to the Helping Hand, stopped, then looked back at me. “I think Lucky’s would be better.”
Lucky Frank’s — booze, food, and gaming — anchored the right corner of the strip mall. It was a dimly lit joint. A stab at trying to appear intimate, I guess. From the smell of the place, the low lighting probably also helped when they served their food.
There were only two people at the bar when we came in, both sitting far enough apart they could do their drinking in solitude. We grabbed a back booth, and I went up to the bar and got us a couple cups of coffee.
Mira dumped a lot of cream in hers, stirring it vigorously without looking up at me.
“We can start whenever you’re ready,” I said.
She stopped stirring, raised the cup, then put it down, took a deep breath. “I’m being blackmailed.”
Her statement confirmed what had been playing in the back of my mind. I didn’t think Mira had posed for the picture for her family album. There had been a glassy look in her eyes. My first guess had been three or four extra cocktails.
“How did Rimmey fit in?”
“He was my go-between. He was to pay the blackmailer last night and get the rest of the pictures and negatives. Fifty thousand dollars. It cleaned out my personal account. I’ve been up most of the night waiting for him to call. I... I was afraid something had gone wrong. I guess it did.”
“Where was the exchange supposed to’ve taken place?”
“In some warehouse out by the auto junkyards in North Las Vegas. Rimmey said he knew the area. You said he’s dead? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, Mira.”
“I’m sorry. It was a dumb question to ask.” She shook her head. “I’m just, I don’t know... Did he have the other pictures with him?”
“Just that one,” I said, trying the coffee. It was hot, and that was the best thing that could be said for it.
A noticeable shiver went through her. “I don’t know what I’ll do if my grandmother sees those pictures. I’m not the strong person she is. She knows it, but she’s put a lot of trust and hope in me anyway. I’ve been trying, Trevor. I don’t want to disappoint her again.”
I was sure the “again” referred to Mira’s first encounter with love. The chauffeur slash handyman turned murderer. Shy Mira, not used to male attention, had been an easy target. The chauffeur slash handyman had turned to murder to protect his interest in Mira when Mira’s cousin came to town and it looked like the cousin might well take over running Belle’s business holdings. Belle might’ve even been on his list of intended victims.
Belle Navilone was a tough old bird. I didn’t have any doubts that she could handle the fact that her granddaughter was being blackmailed. Nor did I have any doubts that she would clamp down on Mira for getting in such a vulnerable position in the first place.
“I’ve got to ask, Mira. How willing a participant were you when that photograph was taken?”
“I wasn’t. At least not consciously, anyway. It had to’ve happened two weekends ago. I went to a party and woke up in a motel room the next morning not knowing how I got there.”
“Have you any idea what had happened then?”
“Not really. I mean, my clothes were all over the floor. I... I figured I’d had sex with somebody... but I didn’t know who. And I had an awful headache.”
She wouldn’t look at me as she spoke, and her voice had gone almost to a whisper. I had to ask her to repeat herself a couple of times before I got the full story out, including the trip she’d made to the family doctor to make sure the evening hadn’t left her with anything unwanted.
“The party. Whose was it?”
She shrugged. “Friend of a friend’s birthday bash. Sort of a girl’s night out.”
“How well do you know this friend?”
“Alicia? We roomed together at Nevada-Reno. She’s a partner in a dress salon at the Fashion Show Mall.”
“Any chance it might have been a setup?”
“You think Alicia could be involved? I hadn’t thought of it before. I don’t know. I don’t want to believe she would do something like that.”
“It could happen. Friends betray friends all the time.”
Her thin lips were set in more of a grimace than a smile. “Rimmey said the same thing about you.”
“How so?”
“The picture you had, I got one in the mail with the blackmail demands. I told Rimmey about it. The first thing he asked was if I thought the black man in the photo was you. I told him no, of course. He wanted to see the picture for himself, but I’d already destroyed it. Not that I would’ve let him see it anyway. He went on about the possibility of you being the man in the picture. Said he had never trusted you.”
“The feeling’s been mutual between us for years,” I said, wondering if it was possible to distrust a dead guy. “The photo you got in the mail, a copy of the one you took from me, or a different pose?”
She shrugged. “I... ah...” She dug in her purse, taking out the crumbled photo and looking at it for a moment before jamming it back into her purse. All the time shielding it from me in case I wanted to take another look. She shrugged. “It could be a little different. I can’t be sure.” She paused, then finally looked at me directly. “Trevor, can you help me?”
“You should’ve come to me first, Mira.”
She nodded. “I know that now, but with the working relationship you’ve got with my grandmother, I thought if I went to you, you’d go to her, and...”
“Yeah, well, for future reference, I wouldn’t have.”
Me Lady’s Attire was on the upper level of the Fashion Show Mall, sandwiched between All Time Watch Emporium and Precious Bath and Beauty. Before my sitdown with Mira ended, I’d gotten her friend’s full name and the name of her dress shop. Also, to the best of her recollection, the location of the money drop.
Alicia Perkins had a model’s figure: tall, willowy, with enough meat on her bones to make it interesting, but not enough to get in the way of how the clothes would drape on her. She was a fiery redhead with deep green eyes. The creation that draped her was gold satin, sleeveless with a wide neckline, and stopped abruptly at her knees, which allowed for a decent display of shapely legs and bareback high heels.