Death Was the Other Woman (18 page)

The Aubusson rug under the Regency sideboard and next to Dempsey's modern glass-and-chromium desk? I could not think of the circumstance that would have brought them together. They shrieked that they belonged apart. I knew that for the cost of the rug, Marjorie, Marcus, and I—and perhaps Dex as well—could eat for a year. And the cost of the break-front? That would buy a new house.

And that was the point. It had to be. Not how one item complemented the other or completed the look. But that this piece was expensive, and that? So much more.

There was a davenport-type contraption in a corner under one of the windows. Though it was nothing so mundane as a davenport, I felt sure. A recamier, I decided, or perhaps a chaise. It had beautifully carved legs that came to the floor, with the paw of a griffin clutching a ball. The settee itself was the color of wine, and the fabric was fine, but not so fine that it didn't look inviting.

I allowed myself to sink onto this piece of furniture, though I kept one eye on the door. I was ready to jump to my feet and hide at the slightest sound. But I needed a few moments just to gather myself and to work through my thoughts. Here I was, after all. Yet I knew I'd not thought it through fully, and if I hadn't known it fifteen minutes ago, I knew it now. It wasn't as though I'd had a plot or a plan going in. Just to come here initially. Test the water, test the air. Beyond that. . . and now here I was.

Back at Dex's office, I'd just felt that something was missing. I still did. Something about the picture Dex and I had put together was incomplete. More and more I felt that the only part of the picture available to us that we
hadn't
examined was right here in the Banks-Huntley Building, in the office where Harrison Dempsey had spent most of his time.

There was a hammered gold clock on the breakfront. When it read five thirty and no one had come into the room, I got off the recamier and quietly started to work. I only hoped that I'd recognize what I was looking for when I found it.

HARRISON DEMPSEY'S OFFICE
was a wonder. Or it would have been on a day when I could just indulge myself and enjoy it, the way you enjoy a walk through a museum or even a zoo. The office was filled with many fine things. Objets d'art and beautiful books, the latter probably chosen more for their bindings than for what was between two covers.

A quick look through the desk revealed nothing out of the ordinary, nor did it do much to illuminate the nature of Dempsey's business, at least not to me. The center top drawer was locked, and I resolved to keep a lookout for the key, though I doubted I'd come across it. The top right-hand drawer held a bottle of good scotch and four clean glasses. I wondered if that were the universal booze drawer, because that's where Dex kept his office stash as well.

The two bottom desk drawers held files. At a glance, they all seemed to be plans of one kind or another: a house at Lake Tahoe, an office building in Long Beach, and some sort of gambling palace in the desert. Whether these were plans for clients or for Dempsey himself, I couldn't tell. In any case, nothing about any of these files struck me as off or wrong. I realized that didn't rule them out. On the other hand, since I had no means of either duplicating or removing possibly incriminating files, I really had no choice but to move on.

A file marked Personal at first didn't reveal much of interest to me. The receipt for the green Packard, a bill for a new hat from a haberdashery in San Francisco. One thing stuck out though. Something that hit me like a jolt of recognition. It was a bill from a dressmaker addressed to “Mr. Harrison Dempsey, the Banks-Huntley Building, 630-634 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles.” The bill was for a “gold lame dress in the style of Mainbocher” that had been “made to order for Mrs. Jergens” some two months earlier. I could almost feel the room spinning as I read this because it so altered my view of everything I'd learned so far.

Try as I might, I could think of no good reason that Dempsey—husband of Lila, lover of Rita, indebted to Lucid Wilson—would have for buying a dress for Brucie, the wife of the right-hand man of Lucid's archrival. I didn't know what it meant, but a part of me just wanted to stop now. Just stop and cry. Instead I filed the information mentally and pressed on. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, and even though I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, it hadn't been this.

The breakfront revealed a similarly eclectic assortment of things. More glass, more booze—neither of which was surprising in that particular piece of furniture—and still more benign-looking files. And though these seemed to do with finance, since none was marked “Large Amount of Money Owed to Lucid Wilson,” I had no choice but to keep going.

After another half hour, I began to feel really silly and not a little afraid. After all, what I was doing could hardly be more illegal. And why was I doing it anyway? Maybe close proximity to a private detective for a couple of years had made me overconfident. And like a lot of employees, I suppose I'd been guilty of watching my boss and thinking I could do what he did, only better. I sat back down on the recamier with a quiet sigh and thought about what to do.

That's when I again noticed the bookshelves that had tempted me when I first entered the room. I moved across to them and ran the tips of my fingers across the beautiful spines, occasionally pulling a volume out more or less at random and sampling the prose. I wished I could select a few to take with me, but I wasn't about to add theft to my growing list of crimes.

I noticed that Dempsey had a copy of
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
on the shelf. The binding was perfect, the spine uncreased; in fact, it didn't look like it had ever been read. I knew that the book I'd been reading,
Revolt in the Desert,
was an abridged version of this longer work. And, yes, I was on a mission. I had things to do and probably not a lot of time left to do them. But I wondered when I'd get the opportunity to see another copy of T. E. Lawrence's original work. Maybe not for a long time. Maybe never. And I'd been enjoying
Revolt
so much. It was impossible not to wonder about what I was missing.

That moment stands out. It was delicious. A stolen moment in a forbidden situation, and that tiny slice of time was intended just for me, to satisfy my curiosity about a book I'd been wishing I could lay my hands on. Now here it was.

I lifted the book off the shelf carefully, almost reverently, and before I could even open it, a piece of paper fluttered out. It landed on the thick rug, a pale white streak against an Aubusson sky.

I bent to pick it up. It was a receipt from the Los Angeles Steamship Company. What had been purchased was itemized. The week before, Dempsey had paid cash for two tickets for first-class passage on a south sea islands cruise aboard the steamship
City of Los Angeles.
One was in the name of John Harrison. The other was for Mrs. John Harrison. And both were dated for a ship that was due to depart tomorrow.

I tried to tell myself that the find was meaningless. That there were any number of reasons Dempsey would have tucked a recent receipt into a book that looked as though it had never been read. But I couldn't think of one. It seemed likely to me that the receipt had been secreted there. And if that was the case, the next question was why.

I replaced the receipt and resumed my search with renewed vigor, checking book after book, but I didn't find anything else. At a little after six, when the sounds of the outer office had faded to practically nothing, I decided to call it a night.

When I peeked out, Miss Foxworth wasn't at her desk. I made the best of the situation and beat it out of there while I could, my heart rate approaching something like normal about the time I got back out onto the street. I hadn't known what I'd hoped to find, but I had the feeling I'd gotten more than I'd bargained for. Maybe much more.

IF SOME GENIUS INTERIOR DESIGNER
had been commissioned to create an office that was the polar opposite of the one that housed Harrison Dempsey's extensive operation, it would have looked like the place where Mustard did his business.

Over a garage on Alameda, you accessed Mustard's office by way of a narrow stairway that clung spiderlike to the outside of the building. Inside, the office was surprisingly tidy, with three wooden desks, each with its own phone. One wall was lined entirely with filing cabinets, giving the whole place the look of some low-rent accountancy firm. And though the office appeared clean—the floors swept, the windows not grimy, the ashtrays emptied when necessary—the smell of automotive excrement from the establishment below permeated the small space.

I'd never been here in full dark before, and the atmosphere wasn't helped by the absence of daylight.

“Hey, kid,” Mustard said, putting down the phone as I entered. There was a racing form on the desk in front of him. It looked well thumbed. There was a notice for a fight to be held at Wrigley Field on Saturday night. Other than that the desk was bare. “This is sure a surprise. I don't see you down here very often. What's up?”

I took one of the empty chairs opposite his desk and wondered where to start. “You never told me how you know Brucie,” I said without preamble.

He looked at me carefully before he replied. “I never did, did I?”

I shook my head.

“Why should I now?” he asked.

“I dunno. Maybe you're just interested in telling me.”

“Am I, kid? Well, maybe I am. Since you seem to have an interest, and I've got nothin' to hide. Me and Ned, we went way back,” Mustard said. I could hear him choosing his words. “We'd kind of fallen out of the habit of seeing each other since he married Brucie, but I'd met her all right. I was even there when they got married.” His eyes looked past me, and I could imagine what he saw. “She was beautiful, even then. She kind of... she kind of took my breath away.”

“Is that why you saw less of Ned?”

Mustard shrugged his broad shoulders. It was a motion that put me in mind of a caged bear. Like there was more to Mustard than what could be contained in an office or even in his well-cut suit. “In a way, but not really. Once he got married and then got in tight with Chummy, I guess our lives didn't really have room for each other anymore, you know? A job like the one Ned had? That's not like working in a gas station, Kitty. Not even like working in an office. You don't go home and just forget about it for a few hours. You live it an' breathe it and never really leave it behind. It's your life.”

“But Brucie didn't mind the life?”

“Not that I could see. I'd see them out sometimes at different nightclubs. We'd smile and wave, maybe have a drink. I might even get Brucie to give me a dance, you know. Not real friendly, the three of us, but friendly enough.”

“Like not unfriendly?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Mustard said. “Not unfriendly. But not a lot more.”

Mustard didn't say anything for a while, but I knew he wasn't done.

“Something happened,” I prompted.

“Well. . . no. That is, yes. Well, nothing really
happened,
Kitty. Just one day I saw them and I knew something had changed.” He closed his eyes for a moment and I was fright-ened. He looked so sad. What if Mustard started crying, right here, right now? What would I do if Mustard burst into tears?

I needn't have concerned myself because, of course, he did not. But I saw the sadness on him just the same. That sadness was deep and velvety and familiar. Most of all, familiar. I recognized it when I looked. “And I...” His voice broke slightly, but he controlled it, dropped down to a whisper, and went on. “I was glad, Kitty. I was
glad.
Because I thought that meant maybe they'd break up, and if they did, maybe I'd have a chance with her.”

I understood. “So when he died . . .”

“Right. When he died, I felt so bad, you can't imagine. It felt like my fault almost, you know?”

“But it wasn't,” I said.

“You're not asking?”

I shook my head. “No. I'm not. I know it wasn't your fault. But who
did
kill him, Mustard? The story Brucie told . . . the park, the lake ...”

“You don't think it was true?”

“It just didn't feel right somehow. Guys like that, they kill a guy like Ned Jergens, a guy used to handling himself, of knowing what's what. . .”

“But they don't get the missus? Yeah, I guess when you put it that way, it feels a bit fishy, all right. But Brucie . . . she's a sweet kid, Kitty. And it's like she just can't catch a break.”

“Sometimes we make our own breaks.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Mustard demanded hotly.

“You ever hear anything about Brucie and Harrison Dempsey?” I said, not answering his question. Or maybe my question answered his too well. I avoided his eyes, looked instead out the window over his shoulder. I could see an oil derrick in the distance, lit from beneath. The easy rhythm of its rocking was hypnotic. Only right now I wasn't in the mood.

“What are you saying?”

“I'm not saying anything, Mustard. I just think maybe there's more here than we think.”

“You're saying that Brucie was stepping out on Ned? That she was seeing Harrison Dempsey behind her husband's back?”

I thought about it. Was that what I was saying? I could see why the implication would be upsetting for Mustard. It would upset everything he'd believed about Brucie. More importantly, everything he'd believed about Brucie and himself. I pressed on. I just didn't have any other options.

“I found a bill at Harrison Dempsey's office.”

“What were you doing
there?”

“It was for a dress exactly like the one Brucie wore to the Zebra Room the other night.”

“Exactly? C'mon. There must be a million dresses like that in the city. Two million.” He said it with confidence, but I could tell he did not believe it to be true. Just in case, I set him straight.

“No, Mustard. Not a million. Probably not even a hundred. It was gold lame, for cryin' out loud. And she told me it was a Mainbocher, but not a real one. That's what the bill I found said too: ‘in the style of Mainbocher.' And the bill was sent to Dempsey, but it said it was made to order for a Mrs. Jergens.”

“So he bought her a dress. So? That doesn't mean anything.”

I didn't contradict him. I didn't have to. We both knew there was no reason for Harrison Dempsey to buy Brucie a dress.

“I think maybe it does mean something, Mustard. I'm just not sure what. Think about it. Lucid Wilson and Chummy McGee don't exactly pal around, do they?”

Mustard shook his head. I could see he'd thought of this already. “If anything, they hate each other,” Mustard said miserably. “They're not at war, but you could say that their operations are close to that at any time.”

“And Harrison Dempsey was into Lucid for a lot of money.

A dangerous amount. And he's buying dresses for the wife of Lucid's biggest rival?”

“Ned wasn't Lucid's biggest rival.”

“No,” I agreed, “but it almost amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? Ned was as close to Chummy as anyone, from what you've said.” I paused for a minute, thinking. Then, “We need to talk to Brucie.”

Mustard ran his hands through his ginger hair. “I need to talk to Brucie,” he said finally. “You can just stay put. I'll drop you off at home on my way.”

As Mustard drove, I protested, wanting to go along. But the look on his face deterred me in the end, even more than the fact that he'd pulled up in front of the house on Bunker Hill. His face was thunderous, even tortured. And I know one thing: a man looks like that, he needs to go his way alone.