Lucky Stiff by Craig Rice (ebook pdf reader for pc TXT) 📖

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jake Justus strolled through the dark and empty Casino and reflected that it was the most beautiful place in the world. To some others, a night club seen in the early morning, with chairs piled on tables, only the most essential lights burning, and cleaning women moving around with their mops, pails, and evil-smelling cleaning fluids, was eerie and depressing. Jake felt otherwise. Day or night, morning or afternoon, crowded or empty, the Casino was beautiful.

He loved it almost one-half—well, almost one-quarter—as much as he loved Helene.

Nobody in the world was going to take it away from him.

He looked at the deserted and unlighted stage and thought about some of the people who had appeared there. Angela Doll. Gypsy Rose Lee. Lou Holtz. Milly Dale. Jay Otto.

The name of Jay Otto stirred an unpleasant recollection. A murder on the Casino’s opening night hadn’t been exactly a premonition of success. He remembered Allswell McJackson and his one appearance on that stage, after the murder of Jay Otto. It had brought down the house, but Allswell McJackson had never appeared again on that, or any other, stage.

The recollection brought his mind back to the present difficulties. Now, as then, there had been murder. Again the Casino was involved—though indirectly this time.

He walked slowly backstage to his office. It was a small, cluttered, shabby room. Helene wanted to have it decorated, but Jake liked it the way it was.

He wondered how Helene had made out with Eva Childers, and wished again that he’d been able to keep her out of this dangerous business. Fat chance he’d had, though. If there was excitement anywhere, Helene could unerringly find her way to it.

Jake sat down behind his desk, lit a cigarette, and tried to push the worries out of his mind. The morning papers were piled on his desk, a telegram lay on top of them. He opened it almost disinterestedly.

FLYING TO CHICAGO. DO NOTHING UNTIL YOU HEAR FROM ME.

LOU BERG

What the hell? Jake frowned at the wire. Lou Berg, one-time band leader, was now an important Hollywood producer. He’d made his first hit at the Casino. “Do nothing until you hear from me.” Do nothing about what?

He gave up trying to figure it out and turned his attention to the papers.

Anna Marie had landed on the front pages with even more splash than at the time of her arrest and trial. There were pictures of her as she had appeared when “Alive.” There were complete rehashes of the story of Big Joe Childers’ murder and of the trial. There was an interview with the pastor of an important church, with the head of an organization for the investigation of psychic phenomena, with a prominent medium, and with Dr. Ellsworth LeGeorge, the eminent psychiatrist. Jake grinned happily.

Anna Marie was doing all right for herself!

Again he stared at the wire. “Do nothing until you hear from me.” Had Lou Berg gone insane?

He was still worrying about it when Helene arrived. She’d done a very special job of dressing to lunch with Eva Childers, and he looked at her with appreciation. A wide navy blue felt hat framed her lovely fragile face and pale, shining hair. There was a scarlet scarf at her throat, and she carried an enormous scarlet handbag.

“There’s a smudge on your nose,” he said critically.

She made a face at him and sat down on the corner of his “Mrs. Childers did not hire Ike Malloy to murder her band,” she announced, “nor did she frame Anna Marie for crime. She has nothing to do with the protection racket.

The man in the tan raincoat is just a casual acquaintance. She never met Jesse Conway. She never has been in Anna Marie’s apartment in her life. There was a key to it among Big Joe’s effects, and she threw it away. And here’s the afternoon paper.”

“Wait a minute,” Jake said, pushing the paper aside. “How did you get her to say all that, none of which I insist on believing.”

“I asked her,” Helene said calmly. She lit a cigarette. “It might even be true. Except that she didn’t seem to be talking to a casual acquaintance when I eavesdropped on her yesterday.” She grinned. “It was really rather wonderful. I started right out by asking her very tactlessly if she believed in ghosts.”

“Does she?” Jake asked.

“No. Especially Anna Marie’s ghost. But she turned pale. And she said Anna Marie didn’t have any reason to haunt her. That’s when she slyly confided that she didn’t hire Big Joe’s murderer.”

Helene took out her compact and began powdering her face.

“For Pete’s sake,” Jake said, “go on.”

“I learned just one more important thing from Eva Childers,” Helene said. “She’s a very worried woman. Worried, and scared. The question is, what’s she scared of? Including or excluding ghosts.”

“Could be the police,” Jake said.

“Could be,” Helene agreed. “Could also be a murderer.” She snapped the compact shut and slipped it in her purse. “Don’t you want to read all about how two horrid men tried an extortion scheme on an honest undertaker named Rico di Angelo, and how the bright undertaker neatly trapped them and turned them over to the police?”

“No,” Jake said. “I’d rather wait and hear Rico tell it.” He added, “Have either of them talked?”

“Not yet,” Helene said. “According to the paper, they’re sitting tight and yelling for a lawyer.”

“Who will probably be Malone,” Jake said with a grin.

“Don’t you want to read how the late Jesse Conway’s body was found up a lonely alley, together with a nice shiny gun with no fingerprints on it, that hadn’t been fired and that, according to ballistics tests, didn’t shoot Jesse Conway.”

Jake sighed and reached for the paper.

“Von Flanagan,” Helene said, “must be having fits. It’s bad enough—”

She broke off at the sound of high-heeled footsteps in the corridor. “Hello, Milly.”

Milly Dale came in and sat down. Her face was very pale. “Mr. Justus, I’m through. I’m taking the six o’clock to New York.”

Jake stared at her. “Milly, you can’t do that to me. You’re the biggest hit the Casino has had in months.”

“I don’t care,” she told him. “I don’t even care if I never land another job. Not after last night.”

Jake groaned. It was a possibility he hadn’t figured on.

“Now, Milly,” Helene said, “you’re too sensible to let a thing like that upset you.”

“Besides,” Jake added hastily, “it was probably just a practical joke.”

“I saw her,” Milly Dale said firmly. “It wasn’t anybody dressed to look like her, it was her.”

“You can’t actually believe in ghosts,” Jake said in what turned out to be a hollow voice.

“I certainly do,” she said.

“But—” Jake picked up the paper. “Look at the publicity. Think what it’ll do for the Casino. Think what it’ll do for you. Look. Every one has your picture. ‘Milly Dale, lovely young singer, who was on the stage when—’ and so on! Two column cuts!”

He launched into a fervent speech about her future career, not forgetting to include Hollywood and vast sums of money.

“Well—” Milly Dale said.

“Besides,” Helen put in, “Anna Marie St. Clair didn’t have anything against you. You were her best friend. She wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

“No—” Milly Dale said. Then, “Only I won’t sing that song again. It was hers. And I won’t do that girl-with-the-gun number any more. I’m tired of it.”

Jake drew a long breath of relief. “Sing anything you want. I’ll get special arrangements made for you, that’s how much I like you.”

A little color had come back into her face. “Maybe it is good publicity at that.”

“You’re a very bright girl,” Jake said.

She smiled at him. “You know, that story they made up, that Anna Marie was jealous of me—it wasn’t true. Sure I knew Big Joe. I guess I was the best friend he had. But he adored Anna Marie.”

She sighed reminiscently. “He wouldn’t even let her know when he was sick.”

“I can’t imagine Big Joe ever being sick,” Jake said.

“He was. Some kind of trouble with his stomach. It worried him a lot. But he wouldn’t let me tell her. I tell you, he worshiped that girl. If he’d ever known she was two-timing him—”

Helene gasped. Her eyes were suddenly bright. “She was!”

Milly Dale shrugged her shoulders. “Anna Marie was human. Nobody could blame her if she fell for a guy.”

“Who was it?” Helene said.

“Why?”

“Listen,” Helene said. “It may be important. Terribly important. You’ve got to tell me.”

“I don’t know why I shouldn’t,” Milly Dale said, reaching for a cigarette. “Considering it’s all over and done with. It was—”

There was a sound in the corridor. There was a shot. Running footsteps and a door banging shut.

Helene looked at Milly Dale sprawled across Jake’s desk in a widening pool of blood, and her face turned white.

“That,” she whispered, “makes five.”