The Brass Cupcake Read online

  “I bleed for you,” I said.

  He smiled in a silky way. “Good-by, baby. You’ll be bleeding another way soon enough. I got a friend who maybe’ll let you help pick his oranges.”

  3

  THE CORAL STRAND—“Apartments for Vacation Living”—looked like a place where guests at the Tide Winds might leave their pets.

  It had been put up during the boom of the twenties, and at that time it had undoubtedly been bay-front property. But the lawyers couldn’t have been so good. The bay at that point had been filled in until the Coral Strand was a good two hundred feet from the water, and the view was blocked off by a mammoth raspberry-colored project of more recent origin.

  Once upon a time the Coral Strand, with its white stippled finish, must have looked like a bride’s cake. Now it looked like a dirty shoebox that had been crumpled and straightened out again. It was even devoid of neon, an oversight in Florida amounting to heresy.

  There was a wattled woman in the tiny office. She sat Buddha-like, amid a stench of mildew and rotting linoleum. She looked as though she had been a plump, jolly Mrs. Santa modeled out of wax, and then set too carelessly near a stove so that the wax had sagged.

  “You wanna room we’re full up.”

  “What room does Miss Chance have?”

  “She ain’t in.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear the question.”

  “You wanner, she’s gone over to the public beach. Anyway, she said she was going there when she left here at ten o’clock this morning, maybe an hour ago. A fine thing I call it, her aunt layin’ dead and her prancing around in that naked swimming suit she’s got on. It ain’t decent. Any decent girl’d be sittin’ with her aunt and wearin’ black insteada whorin’ around town.”

  “I don’t know her, but I want to go over to the public beach and look for her. What does she look like?”

  “Who are you?”

  I stared at her. She flushed and finally said, “All right. She’s got a gray Chevvy business coupe with Massachusetts plates. She’s wearin’ a yella two-piece suit and a short yella coat. She’s tallish and wears her hair long and it’s a sorta silvery yella color. She’s gotta snotty go-to-hell look.”

  “Was she in the other night when her aunt got killed?”

  “Her!” the woman sneered. “Likely. She comes in three-four o’clock every night, for the whole two weeks she’s been here. She gets out and I can rent to decent people.”

  I’d had about all I could take of her and the smell of that place.

  “You’ve been too nice,” I said.

  The public beach was what you would expect of public beaches. A couple of hundred square inches of one’s unclad beloved is charming. But when human hide comes in measurements of square acres, 99 per cent of it far from attractive, it is a bit overwhelming. Like the little French boy who lived in the forest and came home to find Mamma and Papa and his thirteen brothers and sisters all dead of eating poisoned mushrooms. For the death of any one of them he would have wept his heart out. But to see all fifteen of them there made a fantastic farce of death, and the little French boy laughed and laughed and laughed.

  I stood by the parked cars and looked down across the slope of sand and flesh and gay colors. In thirty seconds I saw fourteen tall blonde girls in yellow suits. So I went back to the gray Chevvy with the Massachusetts plates. It was unlocked and the windows were rolled down.

  We are prone to forget that a car is as responsive to its owner and to his personality as a pet would be. I slid behind the wheel. Sherlock Bartells. The seat was far enough back to prove she was long-legged. A yellow thread on the seat proved that I probably had the right car. The cigarette butts in the ash tray had smudges of red-orange lipstick, a shade that would suit a dark-skinned blonde. There was enough sand on the floor boards to show that she came to the beach often. The wear on the pedals showed that she rode the clutch too much. By finding where the rear-vision mirror was focused, I checked her dimensions even further. A short-waisted, long-legged blonde. I found a long silvery-blonde hair on the seat back. I pulled it through my fingernails and it coiled into a tiny perfect spring. A healthy blonde.

  Feeling pleasantly fatuous, I went back onto the beach. I narrowed the fourteen down to three. I stepped around the prone bodies. Closer inspection narrowed the three down to two. A small brown creature came rocketing up to one of the two, yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” And then there was one.

  I sat on my heels beside her. She was on her face on a dark blue blanket, her head turned away from me. Wide slim shoulders tapered down to a small waist and tender concavity before the convex flaring curve of hip. The hand at the end of her long, round, brown arm had a square, stubborn, childish look. You have your superstitions; I’ll keep mine. Long-fingered women are feline. Stubby-fingered women with square hands are open and eager and frank.

  She must have felt someone near her. She rolled away from me, onto her side, propped up on her right elbow. A sheaf of the long ripe-wheat hair was across her face and she threw it back with a quick motion of her head.

  “You wouldn’t be nearsighted,” she said. Her voice was low and husky-hoarse, the kind of voice that Bankhead and Dietrich have. In it was a thin trace of finishing schools and Beacon Hill. Her face was a long oval, with good and well-pronounced bone structure of brow. The mouth was hers alone. The lip shape had that odd squareness which looks harsh and bold. But at the same time it hinted of vulnerability. The sun glare had diminished the pupils of her eyes, and their smallness emphasized the shifting gray-green of the irises.

  “I wish,” I said, “I had a nice infallible line. Something that would work good. Then you wouldn’t even have to be Melody Chance.”

  “Why don’t you take a nice long walk down the beach? Go feed the sea gulls.”

  “I’m a citizen with business to transact. I want to discuss the policy on Aunt Elizabeth’s jewels.”

  “You can still take that walk.”

  We glared at each other. Sweat was running down my chest under my shirt. Defiance was shining bright in her large eyes.

  “It’s a hell of a lot easier for an ugly woman to be pleasant,” I snapped.

  “Meaning?”

  “You’re all carried away with yourself.”

  “When I want a personality course, friend, I’ll go to somebody who hasn’t got a mad on at the world.”

  “I never found anybody so remarkably easy to dislike, Miss Chance.”

  “All you need…”

  “I’ll decide what I need, and…”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  I wanted to throw a handful of sand in her face. We kept glaring. The corners of her mouth twitched. I felt the laughter coming up in my throat. I fought to keep it back. Then, like two fools, we were grinning at each other.

  “Maybe it’s the heat,” I said.

  She stood up. “We can’t talk here. You take the blanket. I’ll get the other stuff.”

  I shook the blanket out and folded it. She walked ahead of me up to her car. Her carriage was like that of the Mexican women, all movement from the waist down, head high, shoulders squared, hip-tilt in the direction of each limber stride.

  At the car she put her things on the front seat and turned to face me. I had been trying to decide about her.

  “I was going to make noises like an insurance man,” I said, “and make a point of not trusting you any further than absolutely necessary. Now I’ve got a new angle.”

  “People who want to trust me make me suspicious.”

  “Stay suspicious. It’ll be healthy. Have you got plans for tonight?”

  “Let’s not try to parlay this insurance deal into a lonely-hearts project.”

  “Damnit, drop your guard for a minute. If I feel like making a pass later on, you can apply the brush, but give me a chance to do my job first.”

  “So I’m free tonight.” The hostility faded suddenly and her face was empty. An almost frightening emptiness. As though nothing in this world cou
ld ever touch her again.

  “I know where you live. Be out on the curb at six-fifteen. Light dress and some kind of jacket, because it may get cold later on.”

  By the time I had got into my car she was already headed back for the beach, carrying the blanket.

  A harelipped young man in a shirt decorated with tropical fish told me that the Franklins were in Number 8, and he thought they were both in. Eight was around in the back.

  Horace Franklin, it turned out, was the man in bathing trunks washing a big long black Buick in front of Number 8. His shoulders were sunburned and his torso was hairless, smoothly muscled. His black hair had a gleam like the Buick. His face was a smooth expressionless oval and his eyelids were so heavy that they gave him a slightly sinister look, a hooded, watchful look. Faces mean nothing. I found that out once when we brought in a guy who had killed three small children for laughs. He was the nearest thing to Van Johnson I ever saw. When he smiled his eyes danced. And he had a deep, warm laugh.

  This Horace Franklin looked at my card without taking it. He turned off the hose, wrung out the sponge, and laid it carefully on top of the car. The screen door slapped as his wife, Letty, came out of the court apartment. She wore a pale blue bare-midriff sun suit. She was a stocky, hard-muscled blonde with thick thighs, big firm breasts, and a flat-footed stance. Without the long, thin, high-bridged nose she could have been attractive.

  “What does he want, Horace?” She slurred the word so that it sounded as though she were calling him Horse.

  “From the insurance company. The one insured the jewelry. Name’s Bartells.”

  “This stinkin’ town,” Letty said. “Jesus, this stinkin’ town. Mr. Bartells, when that lawyer gets down here you tell him that we demand transportation back to Boston and a letter of reference.”

  “Shut up and get in the house,” Horace said tonelessly.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Franklin, I’d like to have your wife included when I ask these questions.”

  He smiled tautly. “Maybe we’re sick of answering questions, Mister.”

  “I know that you’re being given a bad time. This was a most unfortunate thing.”

  “Hah!” he said.

  “Under the terms of the policy,” I said, “Miss Stegman agreed to use reasonable care in protecting the insured gems from theft.”

  “Hell,” said Horace, “I would have thought it was easier to get gold out of Fort Knox than it’d be to…”

  “Horace!” Letty said sharply. We both turned and looked at her. The end of her pointed nose quivered. She moved out toward me and lowered her voice. “You work for a living like we do, don’t you? All the old lady did was clip coupons. She was loaded. And it all goes to that night-club tramp, doesn’t it?”

  “What are you getting at?” I asked, knowing well what was in her mind.

  “Maybe we can’t remember so good. Maybe the old lady was so careless with that stuff we had to go along behind her picking it up. Maybe she never locked the safe at night. Would you people still pay off?”

  “That’s hard to say, isn’t it? The executor of the estate could probably find some of her friends who’d be willing to swear that she used reasonable care.”

  “He might not want to go to all that trouble,” she said, smiling.

  There was plenty of larceny in her heart. Horace looked moodily at her. “Shut up,” he said.

  She leaned toward him, her hands on her hips. “Listen to you, and I spend the rest of my life doing somebody else’s housework. You’re a real smart one, you are.”

  His palm bounced off the side of her face. She staggered heavily. He followed her up, backhanded her across the mouth, turned her around, and pushed her toward the door. She trudged in meekly like a punished child and the door slapped shut behind her. I could barely hear the thin noises she was making.

  Horace looked mildly at the back of his hand. He wiped it on his swimming trunks. “Miss Stegman was a fine woman to work for. We’ve both been with her for nearly six years now. She was careful about the jewelry. Mrs. Franklin is pretty broken up over all this. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “It seems funny to me that Miss Stegman wouldn’t have rented a place that had servants’ quarters adjoining it.”

  “It troubled her, sir, that she couldn’t locate such a place. But this arrangement worked out very nicely.”

  “Up until night before last.”

  His lips tightened. “Yes, sir. Up until the night before last.”

  “It leaves you in an unfortunate position, doesn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “We’re dependent on Miss Chance. I took the liberty of consulting a lawyer this morning. He advised me to stay right here. We have wages coming, of course, but her obligation to send us back home is moral rather than legal. We hope that Miss Stegman’s lawyers will advance money to Miss Chance in anticipation of her inheritance so that she can… provide for us.”

  “The inheritance is large?”

  His tongue flicked across his underlip. “Quite large, I believe. There’s the big house at Dedham, of course, and the summer house at the Cape, and then she always seemed to have an ample income for everything. She was… generous with us. That’s not counting the jewelry, of course. I should say, the insurance money for the jewelry.”

  I watched him closely as I said, “Oh, I think we’ll make a hundred-per-cent recovery on the insured items.”

  One eyebrow went up. “What’s that?”

  “We generally buy the items back from the thief. If not, we either replace the jewelry in kind or pay off on the policy, whichever is cheaper. We’re paying the sum of four hundred thousand for the jewelry.”

  He glanced toward the door and then back at me. “You’ve made a contact?”

  “We will soon. We always do.” I smiled. “Naturally, this is confidential information.”

  “Naturally,” he said.

  “You see,” I said, “it’s good business for us to offer more than a fence would offer. It cuts our potential loss quite a lot.”

  “I see.”

  “I suppose Miss Stegman was on good terms with her niece?”

  He glanced sharply at me. The corners of his mouth turned down. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “If I get a chance I’ll put in a word for you with Miss Chance.”

  “We’ll appreciate it.”

  Before I rounded the corner I glanced back. He stood with the sponge in his hand, kneading it in his strong-looking fingers, looking off into the distance. I slowed down as I approached my car. A prowl car was hemming it in, angled sharply across my bows.

  Chief Powy stood nibbling on a kitchen match. He’s a butter-soft hulk of a man with a frog voice, tombstone teeth, and little, vague, wandering eyes. Gilman and De Rider, both in gray uniform, stood near him.

  Chief Powy nodded at them. Gilman and De Rider are Powy’s pets. They’re so much of a type that they look related. Big and heavy and young, with leather faces and faded blue eyes and brutal mouths. Southern storm troopers.

  I walked into it. There wasn’t anything else to do. They enjoyed their work. Locally, it’s called “the rough search.” The idea is ostensibly to frisk a man for weapons, but to do it in such a way that you rumple and tear his clothes and jar him up a little with the heel of the hand, the elbow under the chin, the knee jacked up lightly into the crotch. To the bystander it looks like the man is merely being searched. In case of a serious kickback, a bystander can usually be found who will testify that the suspect was only being searched and suddenly he tried to strike one of the arresting officers.

  When the customer being jostled loses his head and fights back, Gilman and De Rider really go to work.

  I kept the lid on. Buttons snapped off my shirt and the sun glasses shattered on the street. I turned away from the expected kick. A crowd had gathered. I fell back against my car and grinned at them. Gilman looked at me with contempt. De Rider spat on my fender.

  “Did I park overtime?” I as
ked Powy.

  “Let me really cream that bastard,” Gilman grunted.

  “Both of you get in the car,” Powy said lazily. “Cliff’ll ride me back over town.”

  He sat beside me. His big belly rested comfortably on his thighs. I started up and drove out as soon as the prowl car was out of the way.

  “The boys don’t like you much, Cliff,” he said regretfully.

  “That’s a shame.”

  “If I have to pull you in, they’re going to give you a hard time. You rode ’em too hard when you were on top.”

  “They were better cops then than they are now, Chief.”

  “They didn’t have as much fun. But they still got a lot of spirit. Yes, sir, it’s good to see the spirit of those men. They’re going to leave no stone unturned to revenge that poor woman and get them jewels back. The whole city’s behind us, Cliff. Yes, sir, the whole city. Any man damn fool enough to even be suspected of having dealings with them murderers is going to be spittin’ teeth from now on in.”

  “So?”

  “We shut our eyes when that insurance company you work for made deals around here in the past. But this time we ain’t goin’ to play that way. This is a brutal murder, son. We got our lines out in places you wouldn’t even think of. I happen to know that a right big piece of money come into the local account of the insurance company in the Florence City Bank first thing this morning. And within a half hour from the time it’s drawed out, son, you’re going to be a guest of the city. Can I make it any clearer?”

  “That’s real bright, Chief. Freeze out any chance of a payoff here and they’ll leave town and market the stuff someplace else.”

  I could tell by the way he bit down on his kitchen match that he hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “Maybe,” I said, “if you were a smart cop, you’d let me make the deal, if, as, and when I get in contact, and then work on me to cross them up.”