Time of Terror (28 page)

“Missing?” Her eyes widened.

“He simply hasn’t turned up for work this morning,” I said. “Not having heard from him makes for concern.”

“But of course.”

“Can you tell us about his visit with you, Miss Parker?” Jerry asked.

She looked down at her slender hands.

“We know something about it, Miss Parker,” I said. “Chambrun answered a call from Mr. Cardoza who was your friend when you worked in the Blue Lagoon as Julia Parkhurst.”

“Mr. Cardoza is a very nice man,” she said.

“And Chambrun is a very nice man,” I said. “It was unusual for him to take on the kind of problem you evidently had. Mr. Mayberry?”

“It was very awkward,” she said.

“You don’t have to tell us, Miss Parker,” Jerry said, “but it might be helpful if you would.”

She looked up at me. “Mr. Mayberry is a disgusting creep,” she said.

“Amen,” I said.

“I’m not sure that you know,” she said, “that the group that owns the Beaumont is heavily into financing Claude Duval’s film.”

That was something Chambrun had kept to himself, but it helped explain the hassle he’d had with the owners’ syndicate over the filming. They undoubtedly felt they had the right to have one investment feed another. Chambrun’s only concern would have been for the Beaumont and its image. The compromise had been restrictions on the filming that were driving Claude Duval up the wall.

“I was told by Mr. Herman and Mr. Duval when we checked in here that I should go out of my way to be nice to George Mayberry. He had, they told me, the power to make the filming here go smoothly.”

I wondered what “being nice” to Mr. Mayberry meant. Janet Parker evidently read my mind, and there was a firm little set to her chin.

“Not what you’re thinking, Mark,” she said. First names came easy with her. “He called on me before I’d even gotten settled in these rooms. He brought flowers and a bottle of very old brandy. He said he’d been in love with me since he’d seen me in my first film. At first I thought it was cute, a man in his late fifties flirting with a girl young enough to be his daughter. Well, almost young enough!” Again the little jut of her chin. “After one pony of brandy he was all over me, trying to maul me. I tried to laugh it off and get rid of him. He insisted on dinner. I suggested the Blue Lagoon room. I knew Mr. Cardoza would be helpful if I needed help. In public the big ape would have to behave himself, I thought. I agreed to meet him there in half an hour. Once I was rid of him I tried to reach Mr. Herman, our producer. I found him in Duval’s suite.”

“You didn’t have to keep your date with Mayberry,” I said.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “I wanted Clark Herman to handle it for me. He sounded distressed. He said something to Duval I couldn’t hear and then he put Duval on the phone. Nothing in the world matters to Claude except having his own way. He made it very clear to me. He needed Mayberry’s help to handle the ‘stupid bastard of a manager’ who was throwing roadblocks in the way of filming. ‘Can it matter so much to let him have a few feels and maybe a little necking? You’re a big girl, Janet, and we need your cooperation. Play along. You have to be ready for shooting the ballroom sequences around midnight. You can stall him, promise him anything for later. Later we will have gotten our way with Chambrun and you can tell Mayberry to drop dead.’” She drew a long breath. “Starring in a Duval film, maybe others in the future, is very important to me. So—so I met Mayberry in the Blue Lagoon as I’d promised.”

“Nice business you’re in, Miss Parker,” Jerry said.

“Let’s face it,” she said, “there are hundreds of opportunities to advance your career by ‘being nice’ to someone, agents, directors, producers, male stars.” She gave me a bitter little smile. “I have managed to avoid most of that kind of thing. I wasn’t about to have any part of George Mayberry.”

“But you kept your date,” Jerry said.

“Yes, and you wouldn’t believe. The minute we were seated by Mr. Cardoza, who was very glad to see me, Mayberry was under the tablecloth, groping for my leg, my thigh, other areas. I think he expected me to light up and swoon with delight. I—I wanted to vomit in my soup. I kept telling him that a working night was ahead of me; I had lines to make sure of, the makeup people would need to prepare me a couple of hours before the rehearsal. Later, I told him, tomorrow, meaning today, when the filming was done—”

“Bastard!” I said. “But the filming isn’t until tonight.”

“Rehearsals,” Janet said. “I told him I wouldn’t be able to do anything but concentrate on my job until after the filming tonight. Then, I let him believe, my time would be my own—and his. He kept slobbering that he couldn’t wait, that he’d been waiting all his life for me—junk like that. Finally, mercifully, he had to go to the john. I signaled to Mr. Cardoza and he came over to the table. I told him what was cooking. He was very angry. He told me if I could stall Mayberry until ten o’clock he would call Mr. Chambrun. Chambrun, he said, was the one person who could handle Mayberry.”

Cardoza knew that Chambrun wouldn’t have finished his dinner till ten o’clock. You could tell time by that routine.

“At ten o’clock Mr. Cardoza came back to the table,” Janet said. “ ‘Mr. Chambrun wonders if he could see you in your suite for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘What the hell for?’ Mayberry wanted to know. ‘Something about the filming,’ I said. So I got away. A few minutes later Mr. Chambrun arrived here. He’s a charming man.”

“I know,” I said. That little knot was tightening in my stomach. Where the hell was he?

“He was very gracious,” Janet said. “He was angry, too. He told me not to worry about Mayberry. He’d take care of him, he said. Then he stayed and talked with me for about twenty minutes, about films, about music. I guess I’d acted as though I was in shock, but by the time he was ready to go, I was relaxed, had literally forgotten about my troubles. A delightful man. What can have happened to him?”

“I wish to God I could tell you,” Jerry said.

“There’s one thing more, quite crazy,” Janet said. “I went to the door with Mr. Chambrun when he was leaving. He had phoned the switchboard to say he was going to make rounds. Pleasant reassurances from him. Just then a door opened up the hall and Mayberry came out of Suite Twenty-one A. I didn’t know then that it was Mrs. Kaufman’s suite. Chambrun gave me a wicked little smile and said something about the fates doing away with delay. He called out ‘Mayberry!’ and I closed the door. I—I didn’t want to witness the encounter.”

Jerry glanced at me, his face tense. “You told this to the police?” he asked her.

She nodded. “They’ve questioned everybody on this floor.”

Lieutenant Hardy had taken over Chambrun’s office on the second floor. Chambrun would have wanted it that way. He would have been present had he been available. He and Hardy worked well together. The lieutenant was a slow, plodding, very methodical man who never missed a single inch of the trail along the way; Chambrun was instinctive, a brilliant hunch player, and he knew his hotel as no cop knew his own city. Unfortunately he wasn’t there to add his own kind of genius, let alone facts he must have that we all wanted desperately to know.

I almost felt sorry for George Mayberry when Jerry and I found him closeted with Hardy when we came down from Janet Parker’s suite. The big man was in real trouble. He must have been one of the last people to see Laura Kauffman alive. He had had a confrontation with Chambrun about two hours before Chambrun had disappeared off the face of the earth. He was the only lead Hardy had, and the lieutenant was bearing down hard.

Hardy turned away from Mayberry as we came in, and his unspoken question was answered without words. No news of Chambrun.

“We’ve just come from talking to Janet Parker,” Jerry said. “We know from her that she saw Mayberry come out of Mrs. Kauffman’s suite shortly before eleven last night. Chambrun was with Miss Parker, and he was headed for a talk with Mayberry.”

“I have been asking for explanations.” Hardy said.

The office was pleasantly air conditioned, but Mayberry was mopping at a very red face with a handkerchief.

“You are asking me about personal matters that I don’t have to answer,” he said.

“Let’s forget about Chambrun for the moment,” Hardy said. He knew that, whatever had passed between Mayberry and Chambrun, Chambrun had spent another hour or more in the Spartan Bar afterwards. “But you are a material witness in the Kauffman case, Mr. Mayberry. The Medical Examiner tells us she died between ten o’clock and midnight. You were seen coming out of her suite at about ten minutes to eleven. You can tell us about your visit to Mrs. Kauffman as any innocent man might, or you can force me to get a warrant for your arrest as a material witness, and you are entitled to have your lawyer present.”

“Laura—Mrs. Kauffman—was perfectly fine when I left her,” Mayberry said. “It was a social visit. She was an old friend.”

“I don’t have time for bullshit, Mr. Mayberry,” Hardy said.

Mayberry waved his hands like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver. “It had to do with the ball, and the filming that’s to take place tonight,” he said.

“So take your time, but tell it all,” Hardy said.

“Mr. Chambrun was being unreasonable about the filming tonight,” Mayberry said. He looked at me, and then at Jerry, as if he expected one of us to defend the boss. Neither of us said a word. “It had been agreed that the two stars, Mr. Randle and Miss Parker, could be filmed dancing at the party. But Chambrun refused to allow cameras on the floor, only in the gallery where the news cameras will be. There’d be no way to get good closeups that way, or move around to get the closeups from different angles.”

“Don’t they have something called a zoom lens that will take a closeup from a distance?” I asked.

“Duval won’t hear of it. This isn’t some action event. It’s a sensitive and artistic handling of a love story. He couldn’t get the effects he must get. Chambrun’s claim is that it would interfere with the pleasure of the guests who have paid high prices for their tickets as a contribution to the Cancer Fund. I went to see Laura—Mrs. Kauffman—to get her to use her influence to change Chambrun’s mind.”

“Your syndicate owns the hotel, doesn’t it?” Hardy asked. “Couldn’t you just give orders?”

“We have a contract with Chambrun,” Mayberry said. “It gives him a final authority on all details connected with management.”

“It makes it sticky,” I said. “It seems Mayberry and his friends have invested in Duval’s film.”

“Something like two million dollars,”’ Mayberry said. “Surely it’s not unreasonable to expect some consideration from Chambrun. If the ball people didn’t mind, why should he?”

“So you went to see Mrs. Kauffman,” Hardy said. “When?”

“I was dining with Miss Parker in the Blue Lagoon,” Mayberry said. “She had to leave about ten—to rehearse, or something. I called Laura when Miss Parker left and she invited me up.”

“A few minutes after ten?”

“Yes.”

“So you went up.”

“Yes. We had a couple of drinks while I told her about our problem with Chambrun. She’d already discussed it with her ball committee. Frank Herman and Duval had been to see her.”

“Last night?”

“She—she didn’t say. I didn’t ask. All that mattered to me was that the committee was perfectly willing to allow a movie camera on the dance floor. They thought people would be fascinated to be part of a filming. She agreed to talk to Chambrun.”

“And did she?”

“She tried to get him on the phone but they weren’t able to locate him.”

“You knew he was next door in Janet Parker’s suite,” I said. “The captain in the Blue Lagoon told Miss Parker he was on his way in your presence.”

“Yes, I knew that,” Mayberry said, giving me a murderous look. “I thought she might be using her influence for Herman and Duval; not a good time to interrupt.”

“But you met Chambrun just as you were leaving Mrs. Kauffman’s suite. You brought that matter up with him?” Hardy asked.

“He seemed to take delight in making things difficult. He said he didn’t give a damn what the committee felt about it. He said he’d have to have a clearance from every one of the hundreds of guests present before he’d allow a camera on the floor. He said if they’d paid money to be part of a filming that was one thing, but since they’d paid to attend a ball, a ball was what they were going to get.”

“He had a point,” Hardy said.

“But we own the hotel, and we have an investment in the film!”

“Probably a very shrewd use of your funds,” Hardy said. “Let’s go back to Mrs. Kauffman.”

“There’s nothing to tell except what I’ve told you.”

“I think there is. You say she’s an old friend. How long have you known her?”

“About fifteen years, I’d say. I’ve dined at her apartment here in town, visited her at her villa in the south of France, spent a weekend at her place in Acapulco. Old, good friends.”

“You know her husband?”

“Jim Kauffman? Of course I know him,”

“I understand they’re separated.”

Mayberry shrugged, as if the movement helped relax his personal tensions. “For some months now, I think. I’ve taken Laura to the theater a few times. She hasn’t wanted to talk about it, but I had the feeling the marriage was permanently on the rocks.”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“Jim? A pleasant enough fellow, but is was a little hard for him to keep up with Laura’s pace.”

“Pace?” Hardy asked.

“She had three or four houses, always on the move. Liked to play hostess to all the rich and famous. Jim, I think, would have liked to settle down and take it easy.”

“He had no money of his own?”

“I don’t think so; not when he stopped working on Wall Street. But, hell, Lieutenant, he didn’t need money. Laura was so rich it hurts to think about it,”

“We know that Kauffman has become an alcoholic,” Hardy said “He’s apparently without funds, down on skid row somewhere.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mayberry said.

“You didn’t know?”

“No.”

“Do you know if Mrs. Kauffman offered to make a settlement of some sort on him?”

“No.”