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Your casebook is your friend, your lover, your annoying next-door neighbor who constantly reminds you of chores.
~Lou Tanner, P.I., Notes for female Pemberton Graduates, 1935
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YOU’RE BEING WATCHED.
The Buick made a beeline for Jones Street at the bottom of the hill. With lights off? He might have killed someone.
“So,” I began, still watching the Buick until it was out of sight. “I gather the comment about eligible men was a swipe at you?”
Lockwood stopped walking.
“Elliott, I’m a detective. I’ll need to find out sooner or later. Her salons have a reputation.”
He shrugged and pushed his hands deeper into his trouser pockets, making him look like a child who’d been sent outside while the parents argued. “Perhaps. I probably shouldn’t consider them. Irenie had been the toast of the town, but these days, her so-called salons draw smaller crowds. As I understand it, the boys come out of curiosity, but the men are on the lookout for younger women.” Lockwood turned and stared up the street for a moment. “I don’t have a say in what she does anymore, though what she does has consequences she doesn’t care about.”
“Fits with what I watched. And the police?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have they raided any of these salons?”
His face squished up a bit. “No,” he said.
“She’s got someone,” I wanted to say, ‘by the short hairs,’ but decided against it. “She’s got someone either on the police force or at City Hall making sure her salons go on without any interference.”
“I guess I left just in time.”
Around the corner and down the hill from the Lockwood home was a popular watering hole, at the corner of Green and Powell streets. It wasn’t one of those fancy joints with a bandstand, sequined singers, and white table cloths. It was a beaten-up gin mill with a long bar and bar keepers dressed in button collar shirts with loose ties. Patrons didn’t bother to take off their hats. They swarmed around the stools and chairs, cheering a clarinet player and his band of two, with drums and big bass. Tonight’s player was a good reed-man and he energized the place.
From the look on Lockwood’s face, he’d never been in the joint. Four blocks from his house and you’d think it was six-hundred miles for him.
He settled his hat deeper onto his forehead, and unbuttoned his jacket, trying to fit in. Got to appreciate the effort. It didn’t work, but I appreciated it all the same.
I pointed to the telephone booth and he had the decency to order us a pair of drinks. I had no idea what he’d ordered but for some reason, I was willing to trust his judgement. For the most part. He wore good clothes, had good manners, and the house had been the epitome of excellent, upper-middle class design. He had lousy luck in women, but I had to admit Irenie was the sort who drew any and all men in. Yeah, I trusted him to order something alcoholic and useful. It was a hell of a day.
I dropped a nickel in the phone and asked for Klondike 7537. Marley said she’d stick around the office to about 10 p.m.
“Oh my God, Slim, I was hoping you’d call.”
She sounded a little panicky. Marley did not panic by nature.
“What’s happening? Are you safe? Are you okay?”
“Me? I’m fine. The police have been calling all night. Seven times. Some fellow named Rollins needs a call from you. Right now. He sounded serious and said it was urgent. I didn’t think he needed to have every detail on you, so I didn’t say.”
“Good egg. I appreciate it.”
She took a deep breath. “Discretion is my middle name. Here’s his number — so you don’t have to dig his card out of your purse.”
I listened and memorized the number, repeating it back to her. I told her she should go home, and I’d catch her up in the morning. I don’t think she liked the idea of having to wait for more details, but, she wished me luck.
Another nickel and a five-minute run around later, I managed to reach Rollins.
He was forcing his whisper through the phone line. “Hiya Lou. You still on that case, looking for Frannie Coventry?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any idea where either Elliott Lockwood or Irenie Coventry are?”
I sure didn’t like where this was going. “Both. Mr. Lockwood was with me from 8:20 to about 9:45 tonight. I met with Irenie from close to the same time to 9:00. What’s going on Bennie?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. I pictured him shifting, hiding that he was on the phone. His voice was even softer than before. “We found someone. A gal. It ain't good.”
My stomach knotted. “Frannie? She’s dead, isn’t she?” I looked out of the booth doors at Elliott Lockwood. He looked a little out of his depth in a brew house filled with Joe and Jane Average. But he was trying. He was genuine but not hip to this scene. And, I would have to give him bad news in a matter of a minute.
“Yeah. It's Frannie.” He paused. “Dead.”
“Ah hell, Bennie, you sure? One hundred percent sure it’s Frannie?”
“Yeah,” he sounded a little crushed. Maybe being jaded didn't always protect a cop. “We found her in the lot ...” Behind him, voices were shouting, and I swear I heard Somerset barking orders about guns and ammo. “... in the lot behind Willkie Valentini’s place. Grant and Green streets.”
“Good God.”
“We got a tip about a body behind Valentini’s place. Just when my partner walked in, too, we got that report. You can guess what happened after that. Pretty much everything exploded after that. He’s convinced Valentini killed her his-self. We’re heading over, now, to arrest him.”
“Bennie, that’s going to be a blood bath.”
“Yeah, yeah. But Somerset's the lead on this case and a guy has to stand by his partner.”
I snorted, “More like you need to hold him back.”
A flurry of noise and shouting erupted behind Rollins. “I got to go.”
“Bennie?”
He’d hung up.
Oh God, how was I telling Lockwood? There was a chapter in the Pemberton manual for this moment, but it didn’t occur to me that someone with first-hand knowledge wrote it.
Must I tell him now? Nothing was one hundred percent, I don’t care what Bennie said. Before I told Lockwood, I needed to see for myself. I had to be one hundred percent. Maybe, save him from the pain of grief if it turns out the police were wrong. That Somerset jerk-off was wrong about who and how — I sensed it — unless I was too hopeful it wasn't Frannie. Even if my gut was wrong, Somerset might be, since he was too dead-focused on Valentini not the dead girl. Hell, was Lockwood likely to grieve? He’d said he didn’t entirely like Frannie. He only felt responsibility for her.
Uncle Joe said he hated domestic cases. Now I understood why.
I set the receiver back in its cradle.
Notebook. I scribbled as fast as possible, every word, every mention. Bennie worried. Somerset arriving just in time to overhear the report and go nuts. Frannie dead. I checked my watch for the exact time of the call.
Any character James Cagney played would simply tell Lockwood. Straight up. No boo-hooing, no pity, no judgement. Man to man. But Cagney wasn’t here, and I was. My call. And I wasn’t putting Lockwood, my client, Lockwood, through the hell of learning his stepchild was dead until I can say so from my truth. Not until I lock eyes on her.
Pushing the glass doors open, I planted a smile on my face and joined him. He was watching the player waile on his reed. He’d ordered Scotch — neat. While he was watching the musicians, I downed my Dutch courage in a quick swallow and tried to keep as neutral as possible.
Elliott Lockwood looked at me with big blue eyes from under the brim of his Homburg. Damn, those eyes. His eyes were deep pools of ocean water. They were full of shadowy places to hide masculine emotion. They appeared hauntingly still, unemotional, yet screaming with every injustice they witnessed. Some injustices he may well mete out as the president of a business. Underpaying employees, halving women’s salaries, perhaps even blocking trade unions from forming, all the while serving the needs of profit and wants of the shareholders. What had those eyes witnessed? Why did I want him to be the bad guy? What was I afraid of? Intimacy with a handsome man? Or a man I was only now learning about by investigating a big mistake he’d made?
He’d said it himself; he was expecting something exciting to happen with his marriage to Irenie. She was a bombshell alright. Was his day-to-day life so dull he took refuge in the promise of the exotic? He wouldn’t be the first man to be taken in by beauty. I hoped I was wrong. I wanted him to be the good man he appeared to be.
He handed me his cigarette case and waited while I withdrew one. Dunhills. Imported. Nice. Before I asked, he held a lighter up for me. Did he blink? Or were those eyes still locked onto mine. We were about six inches apart, if that much, with smooth tones sliding down the length of a clarinet and rolling between the heart-beat rhythms from the bass.
Voices blended into a distant murmur.
I had to look away for a moment.
Staring back into his eyes, I wanted to stay put. To drown in that sea of blue.
But he was my client. And there were things that had to be done before I walloped him with the worst news.
“Listen, Mr. Lockwood.”
“Elliott.”
“I’ve got a lead I have to follow.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
“No.” I hurt him with that answer, damn it. “I need to do this. Only me. Can I reach you at your hotel later? I want to call you. Bring you up to date.”
“What kind of lead is it, at this hour, that you can’t take me?”
I gave him the PI-damn-serious look rather than a response.
He knocked the ash off his cigarette and left it in the ash tray. “I’ll be there. Do you want to drop by?”
“I prefer calling.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s late and it’s best I call.”
“It’s Frannie, isn’t it?”
With all the honesty in the world, I replied, “I need to find out.”
“Then let me go with you.”
I shook my head. “This sort of thing isn’t for the client but the Private Investigator. It’s my job.”
“You shouldn’t do this alone.”
“Why, because I’m a woman? A doll, a dame, a skirt? No Elliott. This is my job and I do it damn well. You hired me for reasons, none of which are that you think I’m a helpless damsel. Let me do my job.” He was still trying to protest. I put my cigarette down in the ashtray and got close — too close. “The one you hired me to do.”
He was thoughtful for a long time. Far too long. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
“You weren’t.”
“Lou?” He closed the distance between our lips to about three inches.
Oh God, if he kissed me, I will have blown it with my very first client. I couldn’t.
I wanted to.
But, I couldn’t.
And I didn’t.
“I will call you. One way or another, I’ll call you. You will hear from me tonight.” I wanted to run out of the place. That terror used to experience as a kid, when I’d jumped into a pool and water rushed up my nose, giving me a sensation of drowning. Yeah, I had that same terror. I had it. I had it big time.
I knew what I was about to find.
Dead was never pretty.