Show Red for Danger Page 4

  Neither Heimrich nor Forniss said anything for some minutes. The police car moved slowly down hill, around curves, generally toward the east, generally toward Van Brunt Center.

  “So,” Sergeant Forniss said, “why don’t you buy it?”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “Come off it,” Charles Forniss said, friend to friend, not sergeant to captain.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I think probably I’ll have to buy it. As you say, there’s nothing wrong with it. A little arranged, maybe. A little—”

  He did not finish immediately. Forniss edged the police car to the side of Sugar Creek Lane and a small, eager car went past it, driven by a young, eager man.

  “Teddy Barnes,” Forniss said. “Deadline Wednesday night and here it is Saturday already.”

  Theodore Barnes was managing editor—with two reporters to manage—of the Cold Harbor Weekly Chronicle, published every Thursday of the year.

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “He’ll cover for the New York papers. Until they can get their own men here. It’s going to make a stir, you know.”

  “And how,” Forniss said, and turned right off Sugar Creek Lane into Oak Road. “If you don’t buy it as it stands, they’ll love you. You know that?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “So—we buy it, Charlie.”

  “For now,” Forniss said.

  “For now,” Heimrich repeated.

  Forniss turned left into High Road and slowed and looked enquiringly at Heimrich.

  “Drop me at the drive,” Heimrich said. “You may as well start with Collins. I’ll pick you up at the Inn sometime around—” He looked at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock. “Around ten-thirty,” he said. “Get something to eat, Charlie.”

  Forniss asked if Heimrich had never known him not to and watched the captain walk up the driveway, between two ill-placed boulders. (A car coming out of that drive had to come out by inches or risk the loss of its ears.) A nice girl Heimrich had found. Forniss wished him luck and drove on toward the Center.

  She had been watching for him. She stood on the edge of the terrace and looked at him gravely. When he came up to her she held out both hands, and he took both her hands. He said he was sorry as hell, but that was the way things were. She said, “You’re going to have a drink. And something to eat. Lamb curry, which won’t take five minutes. And—it was the way it looked?”

  “It—” he began, but she said, “Wait a minute. The drink first. It runs to variety nowadays. Gin or bourbon.”

  They sat with martinis, not on the chaise; in terrace chairs on either side of a terrace table.

  “We haven’t found anything to change it,” Heimrich said. “Murder and suicide. Only—she was his wife, Susan.”

  She said, inelegantly, with her eyes widening, “Huh?”

  “Had been,” Heimrich said. “Perhaps a better way to put it, he was one of her husbands. The first, apparently. I’d guess she was the wife he built the house for.”

  Susan said, reflectively, that she’d be damned.

  “One of the boys,” Heimrich said, “one of the troopers, is a fan. Reads movie magazines. Only—it wasn’t any secret, Susan. Apparently everybody knows about it.”

  “Everybody,” Susan said, “whose interests therein he. Not, for one, me.”

  He sipped martini, which was cold and almost innocent of vermouth. He said she could make it two. He said that the trouble with them was that they didn’t keep up with things.

  “With Hollywood marriages?” she said. “Does anyone? Including those involved?”

  It appeared that many did. Perfect marriages flowered amid cheers, withered to the accompaniment of universal sobs. It was another world. She agreed. She looked into the cocktail pitcher. She said, “This is ice water. Wait.” She went and returned. She poured and said, “Go on, Ricky.”

  He choked over his first sip. He looked at her wildly.

  “When I got back with your car,” she said, “I hadn’t anything in particular to think about that—well, that I wanted to think about. If you know what I mean? Up there wasn’t—” She shivered, in spite of the warmth of the July evening.

  “So,” she said, “I thought. He hates Merton. For no reason, but that’s his business. So, what? And I thought, there’s a man at the club named Robinson, but everybody calls him Robby. Including his wife. So—”

  She paused and looked at him. His blue eyes were very wide open.

  “So,” she said, “I decided on Ricky. Unless you mind?”

  “Including—” Heimrich said, as if from a great distance, and she waited, leaning a little forward. “I don’t mind at all,” he said. “I—I don’t mind at all.” He paused for a longer time, and she waited, did not prompt, did not say, “Including, you were going to say?”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said.

  She sighed, inaudibly. “About Peggy Belford?”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said. “I’m having it checked out in New York. My trooper doesn’t remember what happened back in the dim ages—eight years ago or so, apparendy. He thinks she was a dancer or singer in New York, and that Collins married her there. Lasted about two years, he thinks and then, probably, she got a Hollywood offer. She married two-three times after that. My boy thinks her last marriage ended about a year ago. It was to a man named Roland something.”

  “Brian was trying to get her to come back?”

  “Now Susan,” Heimrich said. “How would I know that?”

  “It could have been that. Only—”

  He waited.

  “Ricky,” she said, a little tentatively. He did not object. He did not even close his eyes. “Ricky,” she said, “I don’t believe it. It’s—it’s wrong.”

  There was only one question for that, and Heimrich asked it.

  “It’s no good saying he wasn’t the type, is it?” Susan said. “Because you’ll say, ‘Who is?’ Or, equally, Who isn’t?’ ”

  “Now Susan,” Heimrich said. “No. I like to see the character fit the crime. Why wasn’t he?”

  “Too—sure,” she said. “Of himself. I said he might have been trying to get her to come back. Implying that, when she wouldn’t, he got into a—a jealous rage, I suppose. And killed her. Only, that was just something to say. Something that leaped to the mind.”

  “Because,” Heimrich said, “it’s obviously the way—a way—it looked.”

  “All right,” she said. “I only met him a few times. I told you that. It isn’t enough to go on, and I realize that.”

  “Go anyway.”

  “A man who would do that would be—what? Not sure of himself, wouldn’t he? Emotionally unstable, to use a cliché for it. Not sufficient, of himself. So that, with something he wanted taken away from him, he’d go into a tantrum. Like a child. Say, ‘You give me what I want or else.’ Well—I don’t believe it. If a woman walked out on Brian Collins he’d—all right, he’d have been likely to think the loss was hers and the hell with it. I’m not very coherent, am I?”

  “Enough,” Heimrich said.

  “And you think I’m basing a lot on a few meetings. With other people, mostly. Once, as I told you, at lunch. Probably I am.”

  “My dear,” Heimrich said, “you’re an intelligent woman. Observant. Meeting a person a few times you’d get an over-all impression. Call it an outline of the person. Unless there was a deliberate effort to mislead—”

  “No,” she said. “He wouldn’t go to the trouble. Wait—that’s what I’m trying to say. He wouldn’t have gone to this trouble. He’d say, ‘Take it or leave it. Take me or leave me.’ ”

  She had grown more eager as she sought words for the intangible. And now, suddenly, what she had herself said seemed to deflate her.

  “Except,” she said, “that he obviously did go to the trouble. So I’m wrong. So I’ll go put the curry on to heat.”

  She went, and he watched her with pleasure. He finished his drink and picked up the glasses and fo
llowed her. They would, of course, have to find other people who had known Brian Collins—known him longer. But whatever they learned would be nothing to take to a jury, if anybody was ever brought before a jury, which seemed arrestingly improbable. (What was Brian Collins’s reputation in the community in which he lived? That of a man who would not kill himself. So? Was all physical evidence consonant with the theory that Brian Collins shot and killed Peggy Belford, once his wife, and then himself? Yes. So?)

  “Let it lie, captain,” the district attorney would say. “Let it lie, for God’s sake. Your girl friend says he wasn’t the type. Let it lie, captain.”

  And what have I got against its being the way it looks? Heimrich asked himself, carrying glasses into the small kitchen off the enormous living room. “In a minute,” Susan said, stirring. ‘Take Colonel with you.”

  Colonel was morosely occupying most of the kitchen, looking fixedly at what Susan stirred. Heimrich told him to come on, and he looked at Heimrich, and Heimrich said, sternly, “Come on,” and went back into the living room. To the surprise of everybody, Colonel went with him.

  Except, Heimrich thought, continuing his self-investigation, that it’s somehow too damned elaborate. Too made up. He went back to the kitchen door. “Was Collins’s composition good?” he asked Susan, who said, “Very,” without looking around.

  The curry was excellent; coffee after it was admirable. Heimrich sighed slightly, and said he was sorry about the evening and that he would have to get on with it. She walked with him to the door. It was dusk, now. They stood close. “Well,” Merton Heimrich said, slowly. “I’ll have—”

  He stopped. Car lights advanced up the steep drive. (Damn, Susan Faye thought.) A tall young man who wore glasses got out of a light panel truck. He came up onto the terrace and said, “Captain Heimrich?” and, when Heimrich nodded, “Fine. They said I might find you here.” He looked at Susan. “With Mrs. Faye,” he said. “Name’s Alder.”

  Heimrich said, “Good evening, Mr. Alder.”

  “Burt Alder,” the tall young man—the quite young man—said. “Press representative with the unit.”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said. “Sergeant Forniss will give you what we’ve got.”

  “Nope,” Alder said. “Not a reporter. Was once but there’s no money in it. O.K., make it press agent. Allied Pictures. Came along with the unit. Never tell when there might be an item. But this—God. They’re sending Framingham east on this. Company plane.”

  Heimrich raised his eyebrows.

  “Head of the publicity department,” Alder said. “Me, the boy who holds his thumb in the dike. Or was it a finger?”

  “Dike?”

  “Manner of speaking, captain. They’re going to make a thing out of this, if we aren’t careful. What I’m after is co-operation. Bad enough without making it any worse, don’t you see?”

  “I’m afraid,” Heimrich said, “that I don’t get what you’re talking about, Mr. Alder. Who’s going to make a thing out of— I suppose you mean out of Miss Belford’s death? Mr. Collins’s?”

  “I tell you,” Alder said, “the Inn’s swarming with reporters. And it’s going to get worse. M. G.’s not going to like it, captain.”

  “I’m sorry,” Heimrich said. “It’s nothing anybody likes particularly. Who, or what, is M. G.?”

  Burt Alder looked at Heimrich with utter astonishment.

  “M. G. Drisken,” he said, making it most distinct. And Heimrich shook his head.

  “My God,” Alder said. “That’s all I can say.”

  “Suppose,” Heimrich said, “we sit down over here, Mr. Alder, and you tell me whatever it is you’ve come up here to tell. Starting, at the moment, with the man you call ‘M. G.’ ”

  “The M. G. Drisken,” Alder said, in a final effort. He spoke as a man underneath whose feet the ground had shaken. He looked anxiously at Susan Faye.

  “Wait,” Susan said. “I think he’s something in the movies.”

  “Something,” Alder said. “Oh my—” He did not finish. He regained control. “Mr. Drisken,” he said, formally—rather as if Mr. Drisken were present, listening—“is head of Allied Pictures. You’ve heard of Goldwyn? Of—Zanuck?” He looked at Heimrich. Heimrich nodded. “Drisken,” Alder said. “He won’t like this, as I said. We’ve got to handle it. Minimize the damage.” He walked over to a chair and sat in it. Heimrich went to another, but Susan hesitated. Heimrich made a summoning motion with his head. “I may,” he said, “need an interpreter.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alder said. ‘The point is, we’re—well, we’re—well, say we’re all shook up. Marley particularly. It was he said, ‘Boy, you’d better get right out there. Arrange for co-operation.’ ” He paused, having learned his lesson. “Paul Marley,” he said. “He’s the producer. The man who—”

  “I know what a producer is,” Heimrich said. “Cooperation as to what, Mr. Alder?”

  “Captain,” Alder said, “they’ve got two in the cans. Starring—anyway, featuring—Belford. One’s going to be released next month and— All right. Listen. In it she’s this pure librarian type. Wears glasses, for God’s sake. Got no idea she’s beautiful, see? Demure. That’s the word. All the guys see her in it think, first, what a damned sweet little thing she is but, at the same time, that she’s a dish. Like maybe the girl next door. Only a dish. And so she gets killed in an artist’s studio—an artist’s, for the love of God. Without a stitch on,”

  “No,” Heimrich said, “she was wearing a bathing suit, Mr. Alder. If that helps.”

  “It’s something,” Alder said. “Not a lot.”

  “No,” Heimrich said, “it wasn’t a lot.”

  “Some of the babes,” Alder said, “it wouldn’t matter. Some of them—hell, you build them up that way. They get married a lot, or they go around a lot with somebody, but they’re stacked—that’s what you want. They get killed in a lover’s quarrel, so what? I mean, that is, that it won’t hurt box office. For what’s already canned, of course.”

  “Of course,” Heimrich said.

  “Babes like Belford,” Alder said, “you have their pictures taken wearing aprons. With a kid or two, if possible.”

  “Did Miss Belford have any children?” Susan asked, and was looked at in honest astonishment.

  “That babe?” Alder said. “And risk that shape? It’s the idea I’m talking about.”

  “Mr. Alder,” Heimrich said, “I’ve got quite a lot of things to do. What is it you want? To have us report that Miss Belford was wearing a tweed suit? And—spectacles?”

  “It’s nothing to joke about,” Alder said. “There’s a hell of a lot of money involved. And, listen—in this one they’re shooting now. She’s a milkmaid. Give you my word. An honest to God milkmaid. And this Dutch patroon, who owns half the Hudson River, meets her and she doesn’t realize how beautiful she is or what he’s up to, really, and she’s as innocent as—” He stopped for a simile, waited, gave it up. “You’re sure she was wearing a bathing suit?” he asked, clinging to that. “Down in the village the story is—”

  “She was,” Heimrich told him. “What’ll they do now about the picture? The one they’re making?”

  There, Burt Alder said, they had a break. They’d shot all the scenes Peggy Belford was important in. Finished with them the day before. There were still a couple of long shots, but for them they could use a stand-in.

  “One of them is with cows,” Alder said. “She’ll have had to have a stand-in for that one anyway. Scared to death of cows, La Belford was. Men, no. Cows, yes. What you’d call irony, come to think of it.”

  They allowed a brief pause to commemorate the irony of it all.

  “You’ve probably got out biographical material about her,” Heimrich said. ‘Tour office has, anyway. Mentioning she had once been married to Collins?”

  “In passing,” Alder said. “You want a fill-in? We co-operate. You co-operate.”

  “Start with you,” Heimrich said. “A brief fill-in, yes.”

 
“The way it was? Or the way we prettied it?”

  Heimrich sighed. He said, “Just an oudine, Mr. Alder.”

  In oudine: Peggy Belford—“her real name, far’s I know”—had been in a chorus line at a night club eight years ago. In New York. And Collins, who lived in New York then, met her and used her as a model and married her. “The way we had it,” Alder said, “they met because she was interested in art. Sort of a suggestion, without pinning it down, that she was studying art. Aspiring young artist. See what I mean?”

  “She wasn’t?”

  “Hell. How do I know? Aspiring, sure as hell. I mean—” They waited. “Never mind. So, she gets a screen test in a couple of years and a contract, and goes to Hollywood and he doesn’t. So it’s Las Vegas, or maybe Reno, and then Ricky Monterray. The band leader.”

  “Ricky?” Susan Faye repeated, in a distant voice.

  “Why not?” Alder said. “He marries damn near everybody, sooner or later. So she gets a part as a pure little salesgirl in a dress shop, demure as hell.”

  “Wearing glasses?” Susan asked, with interest.

  Alder looked at her, with some uncertainty. She did not amplify.

  “Probably,” he said. “Anyhow, there was something about an evening dress to be modeled and the model broke her leg or something and our Peggy steps into the dress, which is the kind of dress a dame sticks out of and—O.K. There you are. The start of a career.”

  “The perpetual Cinderella,” Susan said.

  “All right,” Alder said. “Show me a better story. House dress to sables, and all on the up and up. The men drool over Belford and the girls drool over what she wears.”

  “And take their own glasses off,” Susan said. “And go around bumping into things.”

  Alder laughed at that, and said she had it.

  “After this Ricky,” Heimrich said, and paused and did not look at Susan. “After this Mr. Monterray? I gather she didn’t stop there. Stay there?”

  “You don’t keep up with things,” Alder said.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Probably not. After Monterray?”

  “For the record,” Alder said. “For our record, he left her and she was brokenhearted and what have you. Poor trusting little thing, abandoned by a wolf. You keep the image.”