Fowl Prey (13 page)

“Oh!” exclaimed Maria. “My earring!” She reached out to pick up the spaceshiplike bauble on the coffee table. “Wherever did you find it?”

“Under the bed,” replied Judith, semi-truthfully. “Where did you lose it?”

Maria was looking puzzled. “I took them off before we went to dinner. They're quite heavy and they hurt. I thought I put them on my dressing table. But this morning, this one was gone.” Her forehead creased as she looked at Judith. “Do you suppose a maid picked it up and then dropped it in here?”

Judith considered clarifying the situation, but decided against it. “Maybe. I suppose the Clovia can have light-fingered help like any other hotel.” Seeing Renie start to protest, Judith tightened her lips to silence her cousin. “The main thing is that you recovered it.”

With some effort, Maria stood up. “I must get back to the bar. Max will think something has happened to me.” She gave a lame little laugh. “It has. It did.” She reached a thin hand out to Judith who had also stood up. “My dear, I don't know what to say! I can't bind you to keep my secret, and yet…”

“Does Spud know?” Renie asked bluntly.

Two spots of color showed up on Maria's high cheekbones just below the dashes of blush. “No. My parents wouldn't let me tell him. That's why I went away so soon after graduation. And he was moving to Nebraska with his family about that same time. He had his football scholarship and I had been accepted at the academy in Paris. It seemed the best way to handle the matter. At the time.” Her voice took on a wistful note.

“It must have been difficult later, though,” said Judith, taking Maria's hand and giving it a squeeze, “seeing each
other in the theater, and all that Sacred Eight togetherness.”

“It was, at first. But I was married to Max by then.” She smiled tremulously. “I love Max very much, you see. What I felt for Spud was what we used to call puppy love.”

Judith let go of Maria's fingers. “Don't worry about your secret as far as we're concerned. We could use the money, but we're not much good at blackmail. Frankly, if I were you, I'd tell Max and get Mildred off your back. You could have her arrested, you know.”

Maria cringed. “I couldn't! It would break Max's heart!” She recovered some of her pose and again attempted a smile. “Thank you for being so kind about all this. Perhaps I'll see you tomorrow before we leave.”

It was only after the rustle of taffeta and the closing of the door that it occurred to Judith that Maria had been unclear about what would break Max's heart—revealing the existence of an illegitimate child, or sending Mildred to prison. She said as much to Renie.

“You're right, coz,” Renie agreed. “Mildred is a real piece of work. And Maria is living in a fool's paradise if she thinks she's leaving on schedule.”

Another knock sounded at the door, and this time it was dinner, served on a small trolley with covered silver dishes and a red carnation in a white porcelain vase. The cousins pushed Joe's floral extravaganza to one side and allowed Brian to serve them on the coffee table.

“Not bad,” remarked Renie, digging in.

“Not bad? You just ate the carnation.” She saw Renie's startled look, and laughed. “I'm kidding, coz. But I wouldn't put it past you.”

Again, there was a rapping on the door. Judith and Renie stared at each other. Judith got up, wondering which member of their cast of characters was calling on them now. To her surprise, it was not one of the Sacred Eight, but Angus MacKenzie, looking wet, windblown, and out of sorts.

“I'm interrupting dinner, it seems,” he said in a voice
that made the intrusion sound like a capital crime. “My sergeant just went to get his. I'm taking over the search.” He produced his warrant with an air of apology.

“Go ahead,” sighed Judith, refraining from mentioning that they'd already been searched once in the past couple of hours. “But why us?”

MacKenzie had taken off his hat and was poking about in the escritoire. “The only way we could convince the management that we didn't intend to insult any of their guests was to insult all of them. A lot of good it's done us, I might add. Six Americans are threatening to sue, and one of the Aussies has called the Canadian ambassador in Canberra.” He ambled about the room, pulling out drawers, looking behind and under the furniture, shaking the drapes. At last his gaze came to rest on the big bouquet of chrysanthemums. “Pretty. Somebody's birthday?”

“No,” Renie answered before Judith could. “Just one of Judith's admirers among the homicide squad down home. They always send her flowers when she finds a dead body.”

MacKenzie looked askance before wandering off into Renie's bedroom; Judith glowered at her cousin. “Big mouth,” breathed Judith, spearing a shrimp out of the salad.

Renie lifted one shoulder in an indifferent manner. “It's sort of true, isn't it? As true as a lot of the stuff you tell people, anyway.”

MacKenzie returned, looking long-faced and empty-handed. It struck Judith that his search had been perfunctory. “Thank you, ladies. I'll be on my way. Your dinners look good.” He spoke with longing.

“Have a roll,” offered Judith, handing him a small wire basket. “How's the strike coming?”

MacKenzie accepted the
petit pain
, but didn't bother to butter it. “Nothing. They won't even sit down to talk about talks until tomorrow.”

Judith sighed. “I don't suppose you're on the track of the killer yet?”

“No.” MacKenzie chewed lugubriously. “We ought to be turning up some heirs, if there are any.” His doleful eyes rested on Renie. “What do you think, Mrs. Grover?”

“Huh?” Renie had been caught with her mouth full.

“We were just trying to help,” said Judith. “you
are
shorthanded, after all, and we want to go home.”

“So you've said.” MacKenzie was looking quite stern. “But you're interfering. That won't do.”

“It was harmless,” insisted Judith. “And, I might add, we weren't the only ones.”

“So I hear,” said MacKenzie, a gleam of amusement returning to his eyes. “Mrs. Wittelstein has had quite a raft of visitors. Everybody seems to want to go home. The only difference between you and the others is that you, Mrs. Jones, actually posed as a relative.”

“I could have posed as a model, but my legs are too skinny.” Renie looked up from her cream of mushroom soup long enough to take in the severity of MacKenzie's charge. “So what? It was only an act to get information out of his landlady.”

“Really.” MacKenzie had put his hat back on and shoved his hands in his pockets. The skeptical note in his voice didn't get past the cousins, who were now both regarding him quizzically. “It wouldn't have been an attempt to inherit that million dollars in his savings account, would it, eh?”

Judith and Renie gaped at the detective. It was Judith who finally recovered sufficiently to ask a strangled question: “Bob-o was rich?”

MacKenzie nodded. “Rich—and eccentric. Or maybe just tight-fisted. It's not just we Scots who are a saving people. It seems he preferred to live the way he did, and push that popcorn wagon up and down the Esplanade. It gave him something to do. Actually, there's over a million dollars in his account at the Bank of Newfoundland. There may be more elsewhere. We haven't had the manpower to go beyond making one phone call,” concluded the detective on a melancholy note.

“Where'd the money come from?” Judith inquired, unable to believe that anyone could get wealthy wearing a bird suit.

MacKenzie shrugged. “It was deposited at regular intervals from a bank in New York. We're looking into it. When we have time,” he added mournfully. He expelled a deep breath, then shambled toward the door. “Please, ladies, behave yourselves. Amateur detectives are not better than no detectives. Trust me.” On that note, he took his leave.

Judith and Renie regarded each other with amazement. “So money may be a motive after all,” Judith murmured.

“But there aren't any heirs,” Renie pointed out. “His daughter died young.”

Tapping her fork against the edge of the coffee table, Judith seemed sunk in thought. “So we're told,” she said at last. “But what's the truth? And heirs or not, where did Bob-o get all that money?”

“More blackmail?” suggested Renie.

Judith gave a derisive laugh. “I don't know,” she replied musingly, “but a million bucks is an awful lot of popcorn.”

T
HE PHONE RANG
, startling both cousins. Judith picked it up, and a broad smile spread over her face. It was Joe. Renie stopped stuffing spinach into her mouth long enough to let out a little groan.

“What's the death count up to by now?” Joe asked by way of greeting. “I'm surprised I got through. Your line was busy for over an hour a while ago.”

“Yeah, well, we're busy people,” replied Judith, her eyes fixed on the flowers. “We've been crank-calling the Mounties.”

“I've got some news for you,” said Joe. “Paul called me back about five, our time. That's the middle of the night in London, so I hope you appreciate this.”

“You didn't wait to call him until morning?” inquired Judith, surprised.

“No, I decided it would be more fun to annoy him. Of course he had to show off, so he got some poor junior diplomat to run all over London annoying other people.” Joe didn't bother to keep the irritation out of
his voice. “Okay,” he went on, all business, “you got a fax machine at the hotel?”

“A fax machine?” Judith glanced at Renie, who shrugged, “I don't know. Let me check.” She pulled out the plastic card from under the telephone and scanned the directory of services. “I'll be darned, they do. Here's the number.”

Joe took it down. “It should be there in about ten minutes. I don't know how much help this stuff will provide, though. I take it you haven't cracked the case on your own?”

“We're working on it,” replied Judith. “Did Paul—or his flunky—find out anything juicy?”

“You'll be seeing it all shortly. Hey, Jude-girl, I've got to run. I'm meeting a friend at Mick O'Flaherty's for dinner. Let me know how this all turns out.” Joe hung up.

“The son of a bitch,” muttered Judith who had turned very red in the face. “I hate him!”

“Huh?” said Renie, breaking open her third
petit pain
. “What now?”

“That big creep was in such a rush to get off the phone that he couldn't even talk about the case! He had a dinner date! At Mick O'Flaherty's! Damn his rotten Irish hide!”

Renie raised her eyebrows. “Mick's? Or Joe's?”

“Never mind,” fumed Judith, in one of her rare pouts. “He's scum, that's what. My mother is right.”

“I guess you didn't even get a chance to thank him for the flowers, huh?” Renie was giving Judith a sly little smile.

“What?” Judith stared at the huge arrangement, then assumed a prim expression. “No, I didn't. This thing is probably just a joke.”

“About a hundred-and-fifty-dollar joke, from the looks of it. Who's his dinner date?” inquired Renie in a more serious vein.

“Who knows? Some…friend.” Judith's pout lessened a bit. “To be honest, he didn't say it was a woman. But I know it was,” she added hastily.

“You don't know any such thing, you twit,” declared Renie, licking salad dressing off her fingers. “The guy knocks himself out for you calling London, puts himself on the line with his brother, sends you flowers that are worth a day's wages to a lot of folks, tries to get through to this stupid phone and can't because we're yakking with our mothers and Mabel Frable, then goes off with Woody Price or some other guy he knows to get a bite to eat. Jeeeez!” Renie would have thrown up her hands, had she not been ripping a leg off her roast pheasant.

The phone rang again. A chastened Judith answered it, half hoping it was Joe calling back. But it was Doris, informing her that there was a fax message at the desk. Should Brian bring it up?

Judith hesitated, considering the margin for a disaster en route. But despite what she had said in deception to Maria about the Clovia's staff, she basically trusted them, if only because Renie did. “That would be great,” she told Doris, automatically reaching for her purse to find a tip. “Thanks.”

Five minutes later, the cousins had the fax in hand. “You read,” said Renie. “I'm eating.”

Judith complied, though she'd just discovered that the poached salmon was delicious. “Okay, here we go—Bob-o was born…we know all that, it's a match. Son of Sean and Katharine O'Rourke, Irish music hall performers. Robin made his debut at the age of three as a toadstool in Carlisle.” She stopped, scanning the list of youthful credits that appeared to have been garnered in the company of his parents. “He played the Palladium for the first time in 1936, doing a comic bird imitation routine. In 1939, he married a dancer named Estelle Roth. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1940 to 1944.” Judith glanced up from the fax. “Flew without a plane, no doubt. Where was I? Hey, wait a minute!”

“What?” asked Renie, polishing off a wing.

Judith dug through her purse for the notes they'd made that afternoon at the library. “Here—Max's half-sister was
named Estelle. She was born in England in 1921. What do you bet she shortened her name from Rothside to Roth, and went on the stage?”

Renie's brown eyes widened. “Good grief! That would mean that Bob-o and Max were brothers-in-law! Or half-brothers-in-law,” she amended, trying to sort out the relationship. “Max's connection with Bob-o is clear enough. Which also ties him in with Maria.”

“They're all connected somehow,” asserted Judith, still studying their earlier notes. “I saw Maria talking to Bob-o on the street. Since she's not my idea of a junk food freak, I should have assumed she had other business with him. That was a lot of guff about her not knowing Bob-o. If he—or whoever sent those notes—didn't sign anything but the bird, then how would she know it was meant to be him unless she also knew his first name was Robin?”

“What about Birdwell?” Renie asked on a sudden inspiration.

Judith lifted her curved eyebrows. “Birdwell? I never thought of him. Somehow, it doesn't sound like his style. But we can't rule him out.”

“MacKenzie said that Bob-o's money came from a New York bank,” said Renie, polishing off the last morsel of pheasant. “Could that mean Max?”

“It could.” Judith digressed from the fax long enough to eat some of her salmon before it got completely cold. “But why? And how? Max and Maria are well-off, but I doubt that they're fabulously rich. Let's face it, she retired thirteen years ago, and I suspect that one of the reasons Max has gone into other ventures is because there simply isn't that much money to be made in the theater these days.”

“The American stage has been moribund for over two decades,” said Renie. “Bill says one of the biggest problems is that too many of the younger playwrights concentrate on social issues which don't make good drama. Just the other day, he was saying that if Shakespeare had been
born four hundred years later, he'd have gone straight to Hollywood, not to—”

“Hell in a Hand-cart,”
said Judith, cutting short Renie's latest recital of Bill's interpretation of social and cultural issues. “Sorry, coz, that's the name of a revue Bob-o was in after he got out of the service. Estelle was killed in May 1941, the raid in which Parliament was hit. Their daughter, Helen, was born in January of that same year.”

Unoffended by her cousin's interruption, Renie chewed her asparagus and made an observation: “If Bob-o wasn't demobbed until 1944, someone else must have taken care of the child. Got any candidates?”

“Not in this crew,” replied Judith after a pause to reflect. “None of them were in London then. Or would have been old enough if they were. The only outsider would be Carmela Finch, and I don't see that grande dame of the stage playing nanny to Bob-o's baby.”

“A lot of people in England did a lot of unusual—and selfless—things during the war,” Renie pointed out. “What about Max's other sister?”

Judith again consulted her notes. “Suzanne? She would have been only a kid. Besides, she was born in Toronto, same as Max. I don't suppose his parents are still alive,” Judith added doubtfully.

“They could be,” said Renie. “We could check a Toronto phone directory. There's one in the lobby.”

Judith tucked the suggestion in the back of her brain. “Okay, let's see—more revues, a tour to Australia and New Zealand in '46 and '47, more music hall appearances in London and other cities in the U.K., also some TV work in the early fifties.” She went silent for a few moments, reading through the fax. “His credits are listed in fairly minute detail, lots of those blasted bird imitations, including one of a kiwi that must have been a scream. No doubt he picked up that idea in New Zealand. Ah! Here we are! Oh, coz, I think we've hit paydirt!”

Renie actually flew off the sofa to land on the floor next to Judith's chair. “What is it?”

“In 1974,” Judith read slowly, a faint tremor betraying the excitement in her voice, “his daughter, Helen O'Rourke Brookes Smith died in a tragic fall at the May-fair flat she shared with her husband—the noted American playwright, Alabama Smith! Eureka!”

“Wow!” Renie grabbed a corner of the fax to see for herself, but forgot she wasn't wearing her glasses. “This is terrific! Hey, that's right, the article on Alabama said he was married first to somebody named Helen. She must have had a first husband named Brookes. We shouldn't have been so disinterested.”

“We were interested, we just couldn't make it fit.” Judith's black eyes were riveted to the fax. “Listen, it gets better. Joe has included something that Paul must have said off the record—‘Judith: Here's a bit of information that might be of help. At the time of Helen's death, Robin O'Rourke suspected foul play, but nothing was ever proved, and the case was subsequently closed several years ago. However, this item may be worth noting in view of your current situation.'” Judith glanced up from the page. “Gee, that Joe sure can write the most romantic notes!”

“Screw Joe,” said Renie, then frantically waved her hands. “No, no, I didn't mean that. Just get on with the fax.”

“That's about it,” said Judith, trying to get rid of several disturbing images that had suddenly surfaced and had absolutely nothing to do with the murder case. “Within six months, Bob-o had retired from the stage, and in early 1975, he emigrated to Canada.”

The cousins were both very quiet for a long time. At last, Renie got up from the floor and returned to her place on the sofa. She poured coffee from a silver carafe into two matching Royal Worcester cups and passed one to Judith. “Except for Alabama, there's no other mention of the Sacred Eight, is there?”

“That's enough, especially if we think Max is Bob-o's brother-in-law. That ties in Maria, Mildred, and Desiree.” Seeing Renie's brow cloud over, Judith tapped at
the fax. “Desiree was married to Max and then to Alabama. The only ones who aren't directly connected are the Frobishers and Birdwell.”

“So why have they all been so stubborn about admitting they knew Bob-o?” inquired Renie.

“Probably because he got himself killed,” reasoned Judith, deciding that even cold, the Clovia's poached salmon was a treat. “Why get involved if you don't have to? They're ten thousand miles and fifteen years away from their association with him. Every one of them—with the possible exception of Mildred—is in the public limelight. They don't need a scandal like that if they can avoid it.”

“If that was her picture at Bob-o's, Helen was very beautiful,” Renie mused. “I can see why Alabama married her. Of course Desiree is a real knockout, too.” She stirred sugar into her coffee, and turned an inquiring gaze on Judith: “When did Alabama marry Desiree?”

Judith didn't need to check their notes; she'd already thought of that particular question. “On January 2, 1976. A decent interval, I might add.” Putting the covers back on their plates and tidying the tray, Judith was vaguely aware of a noise somewhere that had nothing to do with the wind. “We need to get somebody in this crew to talk to us.”

“Spud?”

“He talks a lot, but I'm not sure he says much.” Judith removed the coffee carafe, the cups, and the sugar from the tray, then carried the remnants of their dinner to the door to put outside for room service to collect. “I'd opt for Evelyn. She's indebted to us for not squealing on her about the visit to Mrs. Wittelstein.”

Just as Judith opened the door, a shrill scream pierced the peace of the Clovia's corridor. Across the hall, Birdwell de Smoot was hopping up and down like an outraged pigeon, venting his ire on Angus MacKenzie.

“You have no idea who you're dealing with! I have privileged information in my possession! Newspapers all over the world are sitting on edge, awaiting my latest piece on
underground theater in the Western Provinces! My readers can't be contained!”

Judith didn't hear MacKenzie's low reply, but she saw the long-suffering expression on his face. She was torn between staying put and sneaking back into the room when Birdwell swiveled about and shot a finger in her direction.

“Aha! A witness! Will you come forward and note how this odious policeman is abusing me? He just spat on my head!”

Judith, who had now been joined by a curious Renie, ankled over to the two men. “Hi, Mr. de Smoot.” She nodded at MacKenzie, giving him a swift look of commiseration. “What's the trouble?”

Angus MacKenzie started to open his mouth and make a reply, but Birdwell sprang between Judith and the detective. “Trouble! He's ransacked my suite! He's gone through my most private papers! He may even have
smoked!
”

“Now, now,” interjected MacKenzie, “I never smoke in the line of duty. See here, Mr. de Smoot, I have a warrant, and I assure you, everything is in place. We're through with this floor now, and if you don't mind, I'll be on my way. If you have any complaints, please call this number.” He handed the still enraged Birdwell a card. “Don't expect anyone to answer, of course. They're on strike, too.” Doffing his hat to Judith and Renie, he ambled over to the elevator.