Corpses in the Cellar (7 page)

“I haven’t had a chance to check out everyone yet. I want to see the families of the waiter and bartender, see if they knew
anything.”

“And that’s it?” Gray asked, aghast. “My God, Bill, it sounds as if you—”

“It sounds as if I haven’t finished speaking,” Lockwood snapped. “We’ve got enough suspects already. Grand himself could have
done it. I looked over his books while I was at the club, right after the fire. He was just hanging on.”

“Ah! So he could have done it for the money!”

“Easily. Besides, he’s got a young, beautiful wife. Men like that with women like that don’t usually take them for granted.
They shower them with presents, try to keep them happy with diamonds, mink coats. And the kind of money Grand was taking in
over the last six months, there’s no way he could do that.”

“So then you think Grand did it!” Gray exclaimed, silently clapping his hands, and then rubbing them together with quiet glee
and anticipation.

“I think it’s a possibility, that’s all,” Lockwood said, enjoying the look of frustration and disappointment the words worked
on his employer.

“All right,” Gray sighed. “Who else?”

“Grand’s wife.”

“She did it for him, you think?”

“Possible. But it could also be she thought he was in the club, and tried to kill two birds with one stone, making herself
rich and a merry widow at the same time.”

“Does she seem the type?”

“No, but when did that ever stop anybody?” Lockwood asked, remembering all those in the past who’d fooled him—for a time.
Gray was obviously remembering, too.

“All right, who else?” the pallid-skinned man asked.

“Vinnie Griese.”

“The—ah—mobster?” Gray asked, a little nervously. Lockwood had once stashed a gangster with him for a few days, and the experience
had left him with nerves that since then had never quite stopped jangling.

“The same. Since I came on the case, he’s tried to have me killed. It may have been only because he caught me with his girl,
but I’d be inclined to think he wanted me out of the way for more serious reasons.”

Gray was distracted again. “His girl. Ah, I hope—ah, trust—that she was worth taking whatever risks were finally entailed?”

Lockwood considered bringing Tawny Tourette, naked, up to the office. His guess was that there was no way Gray could take
the shock. He was a man of dreams, lurid, sickening dreams, but when confronted with reality… the detective felt sorely tempted.
Instead, he said, merely, “That’s unimportant. More to the point, she’s also suspect. Grand fired her and she hates him. So
does another employee, a fellow named Len Claypool. He’s embittered enough as it is, a frustrated actor, an invalid wife,
an all-out crush on Grand’s wife…”

“My God, Bill,” Gray protested, “it sounds as if everyone you’ve come across looks like a suspect to you.”

“Including the cop who discovered the fire,” Lockwood admitted.

Gray’s fingers, which had been darting birdlike over his pince-nez, stopped in midflight. “Why?”

“I don’t know. There’s just something…” Lockwood mused. “Something about the whole thing that doesn’t quite add up…”

Mr. Gray looked disheartened. “I was counting on you, Bill…”

Lockwood stubbed out his cigarette in Gray’s pristine ashtray, rather than in the tray on the table near his own chair. He
enjoyed watching the older man flinch. Germs. Lockwood’s germs. The disinfectant would be out the minute he left the office.
“You can still count on me,” he said. “For the time being, you can count on me finding out about the bartender and waiter
who never got out that locked front entrance.”

The family of the waiter, Charlie Papadapolous, was able to tell him nothing. The wife, the three kids stood there, sad-eyed,
and made him regret he’d ever gone into the business. He could see that every word he asked was a knife in them, a reminder
of the husband and father they’d lost.

It was the same with the bartender’s parents. Mr. and Mrs. McMahon. They sat there politely, offering him tea, a drink, answering
every one of his questions fully and with utter politeness, doing all they could to conceal the abject misery his visit was
putting them through.

McMahon had had a girl, they said, and he was grateful for the information, rushing through the final questions, eager to
get out of there and leave them alone.

She lived in a crumbling apartment house in Brooklyn on Martense Street off Rogers. It was a lower class neighborhood where
the people lived as if they were middle class, quietly and with propriety. He found the name, Mary Clarke, on the battered
buzzer panel in the outer lobby, and pushed the button below it. In a moment the front door click-clicked, and he was able
to enter. She was on the second floor so he climbed the worn marble stairs to her apartment. The smell of nutmeg permeated
the building.

“Yes?” She had opened the door almost all the way, and in the half-light of the hall, he was stunned by what he saw. He’d
expected someone mousy, someone frightened, but there she was, tall and erect, shining black hair framing her face, dark blue
eyes direct and unafraid. His own eyes involuntarily traveled her body. Hardly a mouse, he decided. Panther would be a more
appropriate description.

He introduced himself, and she unhesitatingly invited him in. It was a small apartment, nondescriptly furnished. In the light
flooding in from the street, he saw she was young, quite young, about eighteen.

“May I ask what you do?” he said.

“I work at Woolworth’s. I’m an assistant manager. Church Avenue. Why?”

“It’s just that—” he hesitated, “that you seem awfully young. Most women your age are still living with their parents.”

“My parents are dead,” she said simply. “This was their apartment.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“It’s all right,” she said. “They lived dreary lives. I don’t feel much changed for them when they passed away.”

Lockwood looked at her, a little startled. She obviously meant it. Cold cookie, maybe. He switched to another topic. “Had
you known James McMahon long?”

“Since the second grade,” she said, shifting her face so that it was caught and illuminated by the sun. He saw her lips were
full, her teeth white.

“Then you knew him well.”

“I suppose so,” she said. “Beechie—everyone called him Beechie—Beechie didn’t talk much. They say still water runs deep. I’ve
always wondered if still water was still water because there was nothing much going on there.”

No question. She
was
a cold cookie. “Do you have any idea of why he was at The Palms so late that night?”

She looked at him, and said nothing.

He tried again. “Had he ever talked to you about staying late at the club; any reason why he would do so?”

She crossed her legs, and he saw they were long and graceful. He settled back a little more in the battered easy chair. He
decided he was in no rush to leave here.

“Yeah,” she said, finally. “He did.”

He wondered if she were playing a game with him. It didn’t much matter. He’d always been good at games. “Care to tell me about
it?”

She gave him a lazy look. “Not particularly.”

He took out a pack of Camels. “But I suppose eventually you will.” He offered her the packet and she took one. She waited
till he lit the two of them up before she answered.

“I suppose so. It doesn’t mean much to me, one way or the other.”

He waited a moment. “Well?”

She blew a cloud of smoke and watched it trail away. “Beechie was always a hustler. He’d get the edge here, play an angle
there. Anything to come out ahead, that’s the way he thought of it. Most of the time he came out behind. Right behind the
eight-ball.”

“What about at The Palms?”

“Big loser there, right?”

“I mean before he died.”

“He wasn’t there long enough, probably. Anyway, he had this little scheme that worked as long as I knew about it.”

He waited for her to go on, but she’d decided it was his turn. Gameplayer. Her rules. But he’d beat her, he knew that. “And
that scheme was—?”

“Once, maybe twice a week, Mack Grand, the owner, would beat it early. So Beechie and one of the waiters, they’d stick around
and sell booze to anyone who was still in the club, or fell in after Grand left.”

“I figured,” The Hook said. “But Grand’s sister—why didn’t she squeal?”

“Sister?”

“The bookkeeper.”

Her brows knitted. “You’ve got me. I guess Beechie paid her off. Or maybe threatened her—” she grimaced. “That was part of
his style, too.”

“So it’s likely, if it was an arson job—that Beechie was just an innocent victim.”

“Victim, yeah. Innocent, hardly.”

“You know what I mean,” he said. Something occurred to him. “You say Mack Grand would leave the club early, once, twice a
week. That doesn’t square up with what I’ve heard.”

She laughed, and it was throaty, and sensual. “I’ll bet it doesn’t!”

He looked at her. “A girl?”

“Yeah,” she said, putting out her cigarette. “Sort of a girl.”

“Meaning?”

“The kind you hire to be a girl.”

“Grand was seeing a prostitute?”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“The same one?”

“So Jimmy said.”

“I’d heard Mack Grand was a happily married man.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“You’re an awfully cynical young woman.”

“If you keep your eyes open, you can learn a hell of a lot in eighteen years.” She sighed, and he watched her breasts strain
against her sweater. There wasn’t a part of her that wasn’t worth watching, he found himself deciding.

“Did Beechie tell you anything about the girl? Her name, where she lived?”

“Manhattan, I think,” she mused.

“And name?”

“He told me once. I remember it was something funny. Sort of odd, you know?”

“Do you think you could remember it?”

She looked at him. “I can try.” She closed her eyes, “It was something like a song. Stardust… Melancholy Baby… It Had To Be
You… wait!” her eyes snapped open. “I’ve got it! Melody!”

“Melody?”

“Right. Melody… uh, wait, I’ve almost got it—yeah! Melody O’Houlihan!”

Lockwood nodded, and smiled. “You’re right. Not exactly an everyday, hum-drum sort of name.”

She smiled back, and then her brow clouded. “The rest of the people who died—who were they?”

“Three tourists, the waiter—Charlie Papadapolous, two chorus girls.”

“The chorus girls—” her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “Who were
they?
”

He looked at her. He had an idea of why she was asking. “Wanda Winninger. Joy Mellon.”

“Joy. That bitch!” Her eyes flared. “That two-timing—” and then, for the first time, the strength went out of her, and she
started to crumble.

Uncomfortable, he sat there watching her cry. Finally he rose, and walked over to her. “If you can use a shoulder—” he offered.

She looked up and for a moment her eyes were like an onrushing thunderhead. And then the storm broke, and she reached out
for him, head against his hip, arms around his waist.

He sat down slowly beside her, and let her cry herself out, her head now against his chest, her bosom heaving with sobs.

Finally, she looked up—empty.

He knew what he saw in her eyes. “You’re all alone in the world, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “It’s okay,” she said. “I get along.”

“You’ll always get along,” he told her. “You’ve got grit. I can see it.”

She shrugged. “I know.”

His arm tightened against her and she responded.

“Beechie was just someone to pass the time with. He was all I had, but he wasn’t much. Not enough for me, anyway.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No. And yes. Mostly yes,” she said, and looked up at him, eyes soft now. “He was a man. I was a woman. That was important.
But compared to you”—her eyes were unflinching, locked with his—“he wasn’t very much of a man.”

“I’m more than twice your age,” he told her.

She shrugged, and her eyes half-closed. “I’ve never been much for arithmetic.”

Her lips were hungry when they met his. The strength and even fierceness of her character was in them, too. He felt her breasts
against him, full and warm. She was only eighteen, but she was already a woman. No doubt of that.

She pulled back from him. “I’m not fooling myself,” she said. “I know you’re from another world. I don’t expect to see you
back here a second time.”

He said nothing, just kissed her again, and ran his hand over her, feeling her quicken to his touch.

He found his lips covering her all over, lips, eyes, cheeks, forehead; all of it was enticing, begging for attention, worthy
of that attention.

After a while, he heard her sigh, and felt her body capitulate yet further. Surrendering, in any shape or form, was hard for
her, even when she wanted to, he could tell. She wasn’t yet ready for him, even if she thought so, he knew. He ran his hand
over her thigh, and felt her yield just a little bit more, her breathing speeding up, deepening.

“Beechie would have been on top of me by now,” she told him.

“Am I too slow for you?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“No. Nooooo…” she answered, writhing against him as he caressed her. Her mouth was on his neck, devouring him.

Her sweater unbuttoned down the front, false pearl buttons falling away as his fingers worked over them. The breasts cupped
by her brassiere were full and responsive to his touch, the nipples hardening even in their confinement.

She shifted on him, grinding her pelvis against him, slowly, body hard against his. She shuddered as he removed her sweater,
then her brassiere, and fell back against the couch as he caressed her breasts, milk-white and round, tipped by red, firm
and young and delectable. He had to force himself to hold back, to keep from mounting her now, now before she was completely
ready.

She thought she was. “Take me,” she breathed, but instead his lips began to cover her, annexing each square inch of her, down
to the waist, then reannexing her, feeling more and more of her defenses give way. She was moaning now, almost incoherently.