Obit Delayed (3 page)

“What’s that to you?” Dave scowled. “I didn’t come in here to shoot the breeze with you. Where’s Sunshine?”

“That’s what I mean. It seems you ought to know about Virginia being murdered last night. Everybody else does.”

What Mitch would remember for a long time was the way Dave Singer took Pinky’s news. A wet towel across the face might have had the same result. He might have turned the same sickly color and made the same gasping sound before he choked, “Murdered! Why that dirty sonova—”

And then Dave stopped. Behind the counter was a gleaming chrome coffee urn that reflected a couple of faces, one of which belonged to a suddenly alerted Mitch Gorman. Dave whirled about and stared at him, and then rushed off without even saying good-by.

A TRUCKER, a salesman—any merchant on the block could have made that unfinished accusation and Mitch would be interested; but when it came from Dave Singer, whose associates were not averse to murder if it served their purposes, interest was too mild a word. He started for the doorway, but it was too late. The underslung, imported speedster Dave had parked at the curb was already buzzing off like an infuriated hornet, and Dave’s sudden shyness was understandable. The discussion of murder was frowned upon in his profession.

Behind the counter Pinky’s face was beginning to match his hair. “What was the meaning of all that?” Mitch wanted to know, but he wasn’t going to get an answer. Just a shrug.

“What did Singer want with Virginia?”

“Lots of customers ask for Virginia,” Pinky muttered.

“That’s why she had this job.”

“Isn’t Dave a little fancy to be taking his meals here?”

“I get all kinds.”

That could be, but Mitch was still unsatisfied. When Dave Singer was in the money—and that speedster hadn’t come out of relief checks—he liked his eateries on the plush side. It wasn’t likely he’d be patronizing the hamburger circuit without reason.

“Was Dave a friend of Virginia’s?” Mitch tried again, but this time Pinky had enough. He slapped the steak on a plate and shoved it under Mitch’s nose. “I told you,” he snapped, “I don’t know anything about Virginia’s friends. I paid her wages; I didn’t hear her confession!” After that Pinky turned deaf and dumb.

Imagination could be a dangerous thing, that’s why Mitch kept his on so short a leash. If he didn’t he could dream up all kinds of sinister implications from that scene at Pinky’s. Boys like Dave knew better than to display emotions. Either he was hit hard by Virginia’s death or was trying to give that impression, and either possibility was more interesting than the forlorn face on the front of the
Independent
. Mitch had a very vivid recollection of Virginia’s body. Sheer savagery had killed her, and Frank Wales didn’t look dangerous enough to butcher a lamb chop.

But pictures can lie, and nosy people could get hurt asking too many questions in Dave Singer’s circle. It was much wiser to go back to the office and pretend to be useful. It was much easier to go home at night and plan on nothing more exciting than a cool bath and a long session with the mattress.

But what about Norma Wales? Was she relaxing in that room at the El Rey? Was she all stretched out on the bed waiting for sleep to put out the lights? Neither was Mitch. An overdressed dandy who had to worry about how to file his income tax return had sounded off, and because of that Mitch couldn’t stay put. Maybe Dave had been leaping to conclusions, but what he’d almost said gave the distinct impression that he could tab the murderer if properly persuaded.

There were two ways to proceed with such a problem. There was the direct approach, or “who needs two eyes anyway” method, and there was the more cautious means of learning more about Frank Wales. He might have been the man Dave had in mind, although that made the fast exit a bit ridiculous, and his wife might know a lot more about that mysterious letter than she claimed to know. Of course this was no time to be bothering Norma Wales. She had a rough night and day behind her, and God only knew how many more to come, and certainly wouldn’t welcome the press even if it was rooting for her side. But by the time Mitch got through telling himself all these things, he was all dressed up in his best tropical worsted and last year’s two-tone Oxfords and heading the coupé toward the El Rey. She couldn’t do any worse than slam the door in his face.

A knock on the door means just one thing to a woman waiting for the police to capture her husband. “Oh, it’s you—” Norma said. It wasn’t anger in her voice; it was relief.

“I know I don’t have an invitation,” Mitch began, “but may I come in for a few minutes?”

“I—I was just going to bed.”

Norma Wales was too nice a girl to lie convincingly. Over her shoulder Mitch could see the empty coffee cup and full ash tray on the radio table, and that little still life told a more poignant tale than the one a newscaster was telling.

“What did you have for dinner?” Mitch demanded.

“Dinner?” she echoed.

“That’s right. That meal people eat every evening unless they’re tired of living.”

This wasn’t the way Mitch had intended to open the conversation, but the walls were crowding together in that room and there wasn’t much left of the brave front Norma Wales had paraded in Ernie’s office. Mitch marched in and silenced the newscaster with a twist of the wrist. “This can wait,” he said. “If you put on a new mouth and combed your hair you might have a date.”

“Really, Mr. Gorman!”

“Yes, really, Mrs. Wales. And I know how you feel about newspapermen, but I’ll take you to dinner anyway.”

Mitch turned around to find Norma glaring at him, and that was good. Anything to bring the color back to her pale face and light up the fires in her dark eyes. Her husband might be as guilty as sin, but this was no time to play Camille.

“Look at it this way,” he argued. “You think your husband is being accused of somebody else’s crime, but isn’t that what you’re doing to me?”

“It’s your newspaper!” she blazed.

“Not quite. I only work for wages like the rest of the peasants. You’d be amazed at how unimportant I am. But even if it were my newspaper, wouldn’t it be a good idea to let me hear your side of the story? I’m neutral you know. I only want to print the truth.”

She was weakening. He could tell by the way she’d started picking at one of the buttons on her pin-checked suit.

“Maybe there’s a good reason why your husband made that trip to see Virginia. Maybe she asked him—”

Just a word of encouragement and Norma Wales forgot all about how much she didn’t like Mitch Gorman. “Did you know her?” she asked eagerly.

“Well, I’ve seen her around,” he admitted.

“She was beautiful, wasn’t she? And young?”

The last question sounded a bit strange coming from a woman who must have been playing jacks and getting acquainted with long division when Virginia became the first Mrs. Frank Wales. Norma almost smiled. “She seemed young, I mean,” she added. “Younger than she was. That’s what Frank always said. She was just a kid who never grew up, and he couldn’t get over feeling responsible for her.”

“Even after the divorce?” Mitch asked.

“They were married for twelve years. It’s hard to forget something that lasted that long.” Norma’s eyes were grave again until she saw how they were being watched. “If she’d been in trouble and asked him to come, he would have come. That must be what happened. Can’t you see?”

Mitch could see. He couldn’t help feeling that he could see even more than he was supposed to; but he still had a sale to complete.

“After dinner,” he reminded. “My vision always improves after dinner.”

What Norma Wales wanted was a quiet, semidark restaurant where no curious eyes could peek at her from behind the menu cards—or maybe even a drive-in at the edge of town where the highway touched Main Street and then went on its way. But Mitch had his own idea of therapy for a worried wife of a hunted husband. He didn’t stop at the highway. He took it on out to a corner where a string of neons put the starlight out of business and an attendant in a white jacket welcomed all comers to the parking-lot of the Club Serape. A blast of trumpets met them at the doorway, along with a headwaiter in a tight tuxedo. Valley City wasn’t without its touch of night life even if you did have to leave the city limits to find it. The Club Serape had a dining-room, a dance floor, a cellar-dark bar, and other attractions not advertised along with the floor show. But Mitch wasn’t on an inspection tour for the vice-and-gambling detail; he was just a guy buying dinner for a girl. When she shied at the entrance to the dining-room he veered off and tagged a booth in the bar. Quiet and intimate, and crowded enough for everybody to be alone.

“Name your vice,” he said, after a soft-footed waiter had taken their order. “We can dance, get drunk, or try our luck at the tables in the back room. All the conveniences of the big city, Mrs. Wales. Nothing provincial about us.”

This was just so much conversation to get her talking but it almost backfired. Norma appraised the scene with a disapproving stare.

“You sound almost proud,” she said. “It seems to me you might serve your community better by exposing places like this than trying to make a murderer out of my husband.”

“Exposing?” Mitch grinned. “If Vince Costro wants publicity for his club he can pay for it at regular rates. The
Independent
has ethics, Mrs. Wales. We take a firm stand against communism and sin, providing the sin isn’t too popular. But a lot of important people have a finger in this pie.”

“And Frank Wales isn’t important, is that it?”

“Ernie Talbot seems to think he’s important.”

Maybe it wasn’t a tactful way to change the subject, but Mitch always got restless when anybody started making sounds like a reformer. “That reminds me,” he added quickly, before she could remember to dislike him again, “you were going to explain why your husband left home. Does it happen often?”

The waiter returning with a pair of Martinis tempered her answer to that one. “Are you being deliberately insulting, or does it just come natural?” she asked.

“Neither one,” Mitch parried. “I’m being realistic. If you want to help your husband, Mrs. Wales, you’ll have to get used to leading questions. There’ll be plenty of them if he turns up without a good excuse for being absent from school for so long. Now let’s just suppose I’m a prosecuting attorney and you’re trying to give testimony in the defense of Frank Wales. First of all, why did you take it for granted that he’d gone to Valley City when he turned up missing?”

“Because of the letter—”

“But you didn’t read the letter. How could you know it would have such a result?”

Norma didn’t look happy. She twisted the stemmed glass around and around on the smooth table top and then sighed in submission. “It happened once before,” she said. “I haven’t told Captain Talbot because I was afraid it would only make things worse. Last fall Virginia wrote to Frank saying she needed help. He came to see her and found her very ill. We, I mean, Frank, sent her money until she was able to work again. After all, she had been his wife.”

For twelve years. Mitch remembered and tried to understand. “And you thought she was putting the bite on him again,” he suggested.

“Something like that. I wouldn’t mind if we had plenty, but Frank has a responsibility to himself, too.”

“And to his wife,” Mitch said.

Norma didn’t comment on that. Maybe she didn’t trust herself that far. “I know what everybody thinks after reading that insinuating story your Mr. Delafield wrote,” she said bitterly, “but it just isn’t true. Except for that one time, Frank hadn’t seen Virginia since the divorce; in fact, they hadn’t lived together since before the war. I didn’t know Frank then, of course, but he told me all about it before we were married last year.” She paused and smiled in remembrance. “I practically had to do the proposing myself. Frank was afraid of marriage after what had happened the first time.”

“Was it that bad?”

“It wasn’t bad at all. It was just—well, just no marriage. Virginia was very young and Frank was very poor. He did all the working and she did all the playing. The war finished off whatever little was left between them by that time. Does that sound like the making of a triangle, Mr. Gorman?”

A question like that wasn’t to be answered on the spur of the moment. Mitch finished his drink and mulled it over. Norma Wales had still left a lot of things unsaid, but part of her argument made sense. That dance trophy still didn’t fit with the groom on that wedding picture, and Virginia’s feet would have danced away from him as naturally as water running downhill. In all these years they could have danced a long way and in all kinds of company. That music blaring in the next room, for instance—they could have danced to that. It was expensive music for a waitress from a downtown hash house, but there were plenty of wallets fat enough to pay the piper.

“Mrs. Wales,” he demanded suddenly, “does your husband know a man named Dave Singer?”

He could see the name was new to her. Her negative was just the way it had to be.

“And there was really just that one trip to Valley City?”

“Just the one,” she nodded, “but I don’t see—”

But Mitch didn’t have time to explain now. They were sitting in a back booth far enough from the bar not to be seen, and the boy Mitch had just spotted wasn’t in much of a condition to see well anyway. He couldn’t very well miss Dave Singer, not in that Scotch plaid dinner jacket that must carry a Hollywood tailor’s label. As if that wasn’t decoration enough, he was wearing on his arm a Swedish blonde (Swedish only because it was fashionable this season) who was just barely wearing a black sequined gown. Both of them were doing a fair job of holding up the bar when Mitch left Norma staring into her Martini and cut in.

There were smarter tactics than trying to beard Dave in his own habitat, but all that intimate conversation about Frank Wales’s love life had only served to increase Mitch’s curiosity. He nudged the full-bodied blonde aside—not an easy task—and met Dave’s glassy glare with his very best public-relations smile.

“Well, if it isn’t the newsboy!” Dave said, once he’d managed to get Mitch into focus. “What’s on your mind, Gorman? Has my subscription run out?” “Not yet,” Mitch answered, “but it happens. It happened to a friend of yours last night.”

“I don’t have any friends!”

Drunk or sober, Dave was careful. That was a must for anybody in Costro’s palace guard.

“Sure you do,” Mitch reminded. “You have lots of friends—take Rita, for instance. That is the name, isn’t it? I seem to remember it from some police blotter.” (He could roast in hell for that remark, the blonde’s eyes said. But it backed her up so he could close in on Dave.) “And then there was poor Virginia Wales. You remember Sunshine, don’t you? I don’t blame you for drowning your grief after what happened to her.”