The Monet Murders (34 page)

“Looks that way. I doubt we'll ever know.”

“Yeah, you're right. I'd like to haul him in and ask a few questions, but he's too well connected to the powers that be. He'd be back on the street in a second or two, and I'd be checking parking meters.”

“Even with your college education?”

“Especially with my college education.”

“What are you going to do about the newspaper boys? Tell them the truth?”

“Why? Right now, we got a murder/suicide between pissed-off lovers. Very simple. Then we got a mob hit on a guy who got mixed up with some bad boys he owed money to. Two separate crimes, both easy to understand and put to bed. The fact that two of the victims happen to be married is one of those coincidences out of Dickinson.”

“Dickens.”

“Him, too. We'll make a show of looking for the Watson hit men, but nobody expects us to come up with anything there. The moral of the Watson story is, you welsh on a gangster, you end up in a trunk. The end.”

“Nice and neat.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Not really.”

“Good. Now don't go selling your story to one of these gossip magazines. They'd love something like this, but it would make things untidy.”

“Untidy?”

“That's right. Cops like things to be tidy. Means less paperwork.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Glad to hear it. Well, as my old man used to say, ya done good. I appreciate the help. You may go far in this business.”

“I don't know. I'm thinking of getting out of it altogether. Maybe take up writing for the movies.”

“Well, nobody ever accused you of being short on bullshit, so maybe it'll work out.”

A week later I got the copy of the Monet. Bunny had it delivered to the office. As he said, there was a sheet of paper pasted firmly on the back saying that this was just a copy, worth next to nothing.

I hung it next to the Barbasol calendar and looked at it for a while, wondering.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he movie Myrtle was in was called
The Desert Prince
. They shot it outside Yuma, Arizona, where all those sand dunes are—just across the river on the California side. It took them a couple of weeks. Manny Stairs was the producer and Catherine Moore was one of the harem girls. Rita Lovelace was also in the movie. Myrtle stole the show, though. She played a White Russian princess who had been kidnapped by a desert sheik. Or something like that. It made no sense, but it didn't need to.

Manny was delighted with Myrtle. She smoldered on screen like nobody's business, and the rumor was that she
was so alluring that her co-star, Arturo Lopez (né Jimmy Gardner) was almost tempted to give up trolling for sailors. Manny was considering having the two of them become the studio's latest lovers, strictly for the movie-magazine crowd. I didn't mind. Nothing real would come of that.

When the movie finished shooting, we gave a party at the beach house in Malibu. Manny and Catherine came. So did Rita Lovelace. I invited Ethel and her husband, but they had something else to do. It was just as well. I really didn't need to have four former and current lovers at one clambake. Perry and Della were there, along with Hobey and his new flame, Hedda Gabler. Hobey and Manny got along pretty well, and Hobey even managed to extract a promise of a meeting to pitch a new movie idea. Of course, the ever-generous Catherine had a lot to do with arranging that. She told me she had a soft spot for Hobey, and she said it with a straight face.

I also invited Bunny, since he was between other men's wives at the moment, and I thought he and Rita might hit it off, which of course they did.

Bunny made quite a stir when he pulled up in a shiny new Rolls-Royce. The grille alone looked like something from Cartier's window. And the interior smelled like old money.

“Nice car,” I said.

“Isn't it?” He didn't seem in the least embarrassed. “Just picked it up yesterday. Of course, it is rather ostentatious for a university professor to be driving around in. But I couldn't resist. Such perfection of design. I think of it as a present from my dear recently deceased maiden aunt. She was kind enough to remember me in her will.”

“Lucky you,” I said.

“Yes. I agree.”

“You're about to get luckier.”

“Really?”

“Yep. This gal coming over here dressed in almost nothing at all is Rita Lovelace. She's by herself tonight.”

Rita was drawn to the Rolls like a moth to the proverbial flame. She sashayed up, her bathing suit a mere suggestion of cloth. Impure thoughts came to me, and to Bunny, from the look of him.

“Charming name,” Bunny said, as he kissed Rita's hand.

“Thank you,” she positively cooed. “I've heard so much about you. From Bruno.”

“Who?”

“She means me,” I said. “A professional nom de guerre.”

“A tautology, I think, my dear Thomas. All noms de guerre are by definition professional. But never mind.”

I didn't mind the correction. When you're self-taught, you take lessons however they arrive.

“Tell me, Rita,” said Bunny. “What role did you play in this excellent new movie?”

“I played Yolanda, queen of the Arabs.”

“Ah. How lovely. I never knew that the Arabs had queens.”

“These ones do.”

“What a wonderful business.”

“Is your name really Bunny?”

“I'm afraid that's what most people call me. Silly, isn't it?”

“No. I like it,” she said.

“Care for a drink, my dear?”

“Yes, please. A gin and tonic.” Rita glanced at me briefly and winked. I remembered our afternoon.

They walked off together, chatting amiably and flirtatiously, while I took one more look at Bunny's elegant new car, wishing that I also had such a generous maiden aunt.

While I was pondering life's inequities, Catherine came up behind me.

“Hiya, Sparky,” she said.

“Hello, beautiful,” I said. “Want to run away from home?”

“Smooth talker. I told you, don't go falling in love with me. I got enough on my plate.”

“I promise. Besides, you've met Myrtle.”

“Have I! She's going to be something special, you mark my words. Or Manny's. And if he knows anything, he knows raincoats and the movie business. He was in the raincoat business before he came out here, so he knows two things real well.”

“I understand.”

“She's so beautiful, I'm not even jealous.”

“You don't need to take any back seats.”

“I know. When you're really beautiful, you can be fair, you know? Like me. It's the ones who are not so beautiful that are bitchy.”

She looked at Bunny's Rolls.

“What a pretty car. Do you know what I heard him say just now? He was talking to Manny, so the subject naturally came around to money. Money and schtupping is all Manny thinks about. Anyway, this guy Bunny—and who goes by Bunny, by the way?—he said his old English maiden aunt left him twenty thousand pounds. How much is that in real money? It sounds like a lot, but it might not be.”

“It's a lot. I think the exchange rate is about five dollars to the pound.”

“So you multiply five times twenty thousand?”

“Yep.”

“Wow. He's lucky to have a dead aunt like that.”

“Isn't he.”

She looked at me beneath her astonishing eyelashes. Her green eyes were all innocence.

“Do you believe it?”

“Believe what?”

“That story.”

“About the dead aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, you know, when you're schtupping a big-time producer and you got a gangster on the side, you hear things.”

“I'll bet.”

“Well?”

Did I believe it?

Sure. Sure I did.

Also by Terry Mort

NON-FICTION
:

The Wrath of Cochise

The Hemingway Patrols

Thieves' Road

The Reasonable Art of Fly Fishing

FICTION
:

At Last!

The Fox and the Hedgehog

The Voyage of the Parzival

Showdown at Verity

The Lawless Breed

EDITED ANTHOLOGIES
:

Mark Twain on Travel

Jack London on Adventure

Zane Grey on Fishing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T
erry Mort is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Michigan. After graduate school he served as an officer in the navy. He is the author of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction, most recently
The Wrath of Cochise
. He divides his time between Arizona and Colorado.

THE MONET MURDERS

Pegasus Books LLC

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Copyright © 2015 by Terry Mort

First Pegasus Books edition September 2015

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

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ISBN: 978-1-60598-697-5

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