The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories
- Автор: Деминг Ричард
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 9781479423507
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“Because if the Feds ever checked to see it he’d been got to, it would look bad if they turned up that somebody from the organization had been inquiring around for him. Big John told me to make it look like an accidental meeting.”
After consideration Ross decided the story was logical. Though Horton hadn’t mentioned it, obviously a death threat would have accompanied the instructions to the bookkeeper to “say the right things,” and just as obviously Big John Quinnel wouldn’t want anyone other than Stoneman to know there had been a contact.
“I guess that’s all for the moment,” the gambler decided. “If I think of any more questions, I’ll be back.”
Chapter 6
As it was now near the dinner hour, Ross dropped Sam Black off at the club to attend to business, and made his next call alone.
Seven thirty-four East Stoyle was a neat one-story frame cottage in a middle-class residential district. A woman of about twenty-eight came to the door.
She was a brunette, dark and torrid-looking in a skin-tight black dress which no one could have guessed was supposed to signify mourning, for it outlined every curve of her finely-developed body. A rather full lower lip, an attractive but slightly flat nose and dark eyes which seemed to slant a trifle upward gave her a slight oriental flavor.
Ross was startled when he saw her, but it didn’t show in his face. Now he knew why the woman he had seen with Quinnel had looked vaguely familiar. Benny Stoneman had once showed him his wife’s picture.
“Mrs. Stoneman?” Ross asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Clancy Ross.”
“Oh,” she said. “Come in.”
She led him into a small but well-furnished front room and asked him to sit. After a standard expression of sympathy from Ross and an equally standard expression of thanks from the woman, she examined him with bright interest.
“Benny spoke of you a lot,” she said. “He had a good deal of admiration for you.”
“I liked Benny too. Which is one of the reasons I’m here.”
She looked a question and the gambler explained, “This isn’t entirely a sympathy call. I’m playing cop. Trying to run down Benny’s killer.”
“Oh? Well, I’m afraid I told the police everything I knew.”
“I know. But maybe if we kicked it around a while, you’d remember something you didn’t tell them. A clue to the identity of this mistress you think he had, for instance.”
She hushed slightly. “I see you’ve been talking to the police.”
“Some. Had dinner yet?”
She shook her head. “We... I usually eat about seven.”
“Then suppose you have it with me. We can talk while we’re eating.”
“In public?” she asked. “With my husband dead less than twenty-four hours? Oh, I couldn’t.”
The objection struck Ross as more a sop to convention than a symptom of grief. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t detect any grief in the woman.
“We’ll pick a quiet place where you won’t be known,” he said.
She considered. “You think it would be all right? Maybe your being Benny’s employer and all...”
“It will be all right,” he assured her.
He took her to Romaine’s, where the only illumination was candlelight and the clientele was small but select. He learned her first name was Helene, and before dinner was over he was calling her Helene and she was calling him Clancy.
After dinner Ross ordered drinks, and it developed that Helene Stoneman had an affinity for double bourbons and soda. As Ross drank only his usual weak scotch and water, by ten p.m., when they finally left Romaine’s, Ross was still dead sober, but Helene Stoneman was hilariously drunk.
By now she had completely forgotten her widowhood. As soon as they were seated in the Lincoln, she leaned against him, gave him a moist kiss on the cheek and then nestled her head on his shoulder.
When they reached her home, he had to help her from the car. Though he steadied her with one hand gripped to her bicep, she staggered all over the walk on the way to the front porch. Leaning her against the door, he took her purse and searched it for her key. He gripped her bicep again when he opened the door, to prevent her falling inward with it.
The gambler was a little irked with himself for letting her get so drunk. When he had discovered her liking for bourbon, he had deliberately shelved talking about her husband’s murder in the hope that he could first loosen her tongue with alcohol. But in her present state it was unlikely he could get any sense out of her at all.
Leading her into the front room, he switched on a lamp and steered her toward the sofa. But instead of sitting, she suddenly spun against him, threw her arms about his neck and dragged his mouth down to hers.
He found it wide open.
For the next few moments Ross merely hung on while the woman’s body undulated against his and her mouth greedily worked at his lips. Finally he forcibly broke the kiss and held her away by the shoulders. She fought his grip, attempting to struggle back into his arms.
“Hold it, Helene,” he said. “I’ll play with you when you’re sober, but I don’t take advantage of drunken women.”
“I am sober,” she said in a strained voice. “That sobered me like a jolt of electricity.”
Looking down at her, he realized with astonishment that she was telling the truth. Only moments before she had hardly been able to stand, but she had sobered as abruptly as she had managed to get drunk.
“Don’t just stand there looking at me!” she said. “For God’s sake, kiss me!”
And hanging his detaining grip from her shoulders with an outward movement of her hands, she was back at him like a wildcat, twining her arms about his neck and moving her body passionately against his. Ross made another halfhearted attempt to disengage himself, but her almost animal abandon was too much for him.
Giving up the fight, he grabbed her as roughly as she was grabbing at him and threw her onto the couch.
Chapter 7
Later, as they sat side-by-side on the sofa quietly smoking cigarettes, Helene seemed impelled to offer some explanation for her startling performance.
“I’m not a nympho, Clancy,” she said in a subdued and entirely sober tone. “But you don’t know how long I’ve been pent up. Benny and I... Well, there just wasn’t anything there any more. I knew he had another woman, so I wouldn’t...” She let it trail off. “Did you expect the evening to end like this?”
“It got a little off the track,” Ross admitted. “All I planned was a bit of discussion about Benny.”
“Do we have to talk about him?”
He looked down at the top of her head. “Don’t you want your husband’s killer caught?”
She shifted a little uncomfortably. “Well, yes, I suppose. But you must know I wasn’t in love with him.”
Ross asked casually, “What were you doing with Big John Quinnel this afternoon?”
Straightening up, she looked at him. “What?”
He repeated the question, then added, “I happened to see you together at the Park Plaza. At the time I didn’t know who you were.”
Helene frowned. “Why did you wait so long to ask me?”
Ross shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t think it was important. Is it?”
The question made her pause. “Of course not,” she said finally. “Big John was Benny’s employer in Chicago, you know, so I got to know him quite well. When he saw about Benny’s death in the paper, he phoned to offer sympathy. Then he asked me to drop by the hotel because he wanted to talk to me. I met him in the bar for one drink. All he wanted was to know if I needed help. Money help, he meant. I said no and he brought me home.”