Recipe for Homicide, page 13
That was an advantage, Gilmore mused, although there must be sweeter-smelling places that Chris didn’t frequent. He looked at Frankie curiously, wondering what was going on in her mind and how long it was going to take him to find out. She returned his stare with unblinking frankness.
“Does George Bayliss come here?” Gilmore asked abruptly.
“Him!” Frankie made a face, then lowered her long, dark lashes. “Why do we have to talk about him?”
“Where is he, Frankie?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said if I wanted to know what happened to Bayliss I’d better come to the Anchor at ten tonight.”
“Did I say that?” She smiled, but it was a prop smile. “You ought to wash my mouth out with soap, Gil.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Gilmore said.
Frankie leaned across the table until her lips almost touched his. “Gil, you don’t like me any more,” she said plaintively.
“I’m mad about you, Frankie. I told you so this afternoon. But I’ve got things on my mind.”
“Didn’t you like it when you kissed me the other night? I mean, you really do like me, don’t you? You didn’t get up this thing the other night, the Carrot Queen thing, just so—?” Her voice died.
“Just so what?”
Frankie waved away the question with a gesture that upset her glass. A finger of spilled liquid reached across the table as though beckoning to Gilmore. “Order me another drink, Gil. Rye and ginger. No more beer. Did Chris really say he’d kill you the other night?”
“He did. And I have a pretty good hunch that he’s tried to make good twice since then. You have a jealous husband, Frankie.”
“Pooh!” said Frankie. “I’d like another rye and ginger, waiter.”
“A small beer for me,” Gilmore said.
“Chris isn’t jealous of anybody. He thinks he can have any woman he wants, and maybe he can. He’s been to bed with half the girls in the local. He’s not jealous of me.”
“Don’t you think Chris cracked me in the eye, then?”
“Maybe,” Frankie said. “But he wouldn’t do that because he was jealous of me. He might, if he thought I was jealous of him!”
Gilmore picked up the beer the waiter brought and downed it at one gulp. He frowned. “Say that again,” he said. “The first time it didn’t make sense.”
“It makes sense, all right. Chris doesn’t like me making all that extra money and getting so much publicity. He always says he’ll break my neck if I get too damn’ independent and start free-wheeling. He thinks maybe I’m getting sweet on you just to get even with him for two-timing me with all those other girls. I guess he’s afraid I might talk in my sleep or something and spill the beans.”
“What beans?” Gilmore asked.
“I don’t really talk in my sleep.” Frankie’s eyelashes worked overtime to fan away any possible suggestion of such a waste of time in bed. “So of course I wouldn’t really spill any beans.”
“Naturally.” Gilmore hesitated. The picture was becoming clearer. “Does Chris know how Peggy Bayliss came to die?”
“Chris?” Frankie shrugged. “Pooh! Why should he? She was out of his class.”
“I thought maybe George Bayliss told him,” Gilmore said.
Frankie stuck her tongue into her highball. She looked at Gilmore through the fringes of her long lashes. After a slight pause she asked: “Did you get fired yet, Gil?”
“Not quite. Who told you I was going to get fired?”
“I heard. When you get fired, let’s go to Hollywood. The two of us. And why wait, anyhow? Let’s go now.”
“Not tonight, Frankie.”
“The other night you said I belonged in Hollywood. You said as soon as the newsreels came out, the Hollywood talent scouts would make a beeline for Northbank. Let’s go meet them halfway. You know I’d go with you, Gil. Anywhere. I like you an awful lot. And you said that with my legs and my face, I’d be a cinch for Hollywood.”
Gilmore said: “You’re a cute kid, Frankie.” She was, too. She was also smarter than her present line would indicate. She couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to think a newsreel clip was an open-sesame for movie stardom. She must know that she made the newsreels in Northbank because she could peel carrots faster than anyone west of Camden, New Jersey, but that in Hollywood she’d be lucky to make car-hop in a big-league drive-in. Her game was simple. And two could play …
She stretched her hands across the table and Gilmore took them. They were good hands—soft and graceful and well-cared-for. They were, Gilmore thought incongruously, a testimonial to Barzac’s amazing paternalism. Barzac’s women workers didn’t have to worry about the occupational hazards of ugly hands from peeling carrots or cleaning chickens or sorting rice. Feminine hands that worked for Barzac got free manicures regularly.…
Gilmore squeezed the hands and said:
“Tell me about Émile, Frankie.”
Frankie’s hands jerked back as from a hot stove.
“Emile?” Her echo was like a cry of pain. Her face seemed suddenly to decompose into its component features, coarse features, slack with naked fear. Her frightened eyes looked right through Gilmore—or was it over his shoulder?
Gilmore sprang up. He turned to stare into the expressionless mask of the one-eyed bartender.
“You call me?” the bartender asked. Both his hands were hidden under his apron.
“No,” Gilmore said. Frankie, fishy-eyed, was fumbling in her handbag. She dropped her compact.
“Funny,” the bartender said. “I could’ve swore I heard my name.”
“What is your name?” Gilmore asked. He glanced at Frankie. She was making clumsy gestures with her lipstick. The bartender’s hands were moving under his apron.
“Ed Neal,” said the bartender. “Everybody knows I’m Ed Neal.”
“Okay, Ed. Let’s have the check.”
“It’s two twenny.” The bartender glared.
Gilmore dropped money on the table and glared back. He pulled Frankie to her feet, and waited until the bartender retreated.
Their exit loosed the same flood of sullen silence that had greeted his entrance. The sweating line of men af the bar abandoned talk and drink to stare at the departing couple. The bartender’s one eye gleamed like the point of an icepick. Frankie Froley’s heels beat out a sinister tattoo on the linoleum as they ran the silent gantlet of hostile glances.
Once outside, even the hot night seemed cool to Gilmore. He breathed deeply, took Frankie’s arm, and headed for the corner where he had parked his car.
When he jabbed his key into the door lock, she slid her arm around his neck. “Where are we going, Gil?”
“To call on George Bayliss.”
“Pooh!” Frankie’s head-chancery tightened. She moved her cheek closer. “I know lots of better things to do than chasing after Bavliss. Besides, I don’t know where he is.”
Gilmore’s arms and hands came to grips with the physical facts of Frankie Froley. She sensed his involuntary response and snuggled closer. Her closeness was warm and exciting, but cold reality was still closer. He pushed down the door handle with his elbow, turned, and boosted Frankie into the car. “Let’s look for him,” he said.
He walked around the car, slid under the wheel, and stepped on the starter. The engine purred into action. He put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. “Tell me where to go,” he said.
“I don’t know where Bayliss is, Gil. Honest.”
“Okay. Then I’ll take you home.”
“Good” Frankie sighed happily. “I was hoping you’d take me home with you.”
“Home to your husband,” Gilmore corrected.
Frankie, who had begun to cuddle against him, suddenly stiffened. Then she went limp again, and a shiver ran through her. She leaned her head against him until he felt her hair on his cheek and her breath against his throat. “No, Gil. Please! I don’t want to go home to Chris tonight. I can’t. Honest!”
“Is Chris with George Bayliss?” Gilmore swung his car around a corner, heading in the general direction of the Froley domicile.
“I don’t know, Gil. Really, I don’t.”
“It’s up to you, Frankie.”
Gilmore drove in silence for a moment, then turned into the street that led to the Froley house.
“Stop, Gill Please. Stop here.”
Gilmore pulled over and set his brakes, but he did not cut the ignition. “Okay, Frankie, let’s talk turkey,” he said, “without cranberries. You want something from me. Come on, Frankie, give. What do you want?”
“I’ve already told you, Gil. I want to get away from here. I want to get away from Northbank. I want to get away from carrots. I’m sick of the whole business, and I want to get out. Help me, Gil.”
“And why should I help you, Frankie?” Gilmore purred. The purr produced an appropriate kitten reaction.
“Because—because I love you, Gil.”
Gilmore slipped his arms around Frankie’s shoulders. He kissed her. With a little sigh of surrender, she settled into his embrace. His hands slid up behind her head. As he pressed her against his lips, his fingers entwined themselves in her hair. He twisted.
“Ow!” Frankie disengaged quickly. “Gil, you’re hurting me.”
Gilmore tightened his twisting grip.
“Gil, what are you doing? What’s the matter, Gil?”
“You’re such a liar, Frankie,” Gilmore said.
“Stop! Stop it, Gil! What’s wrong? What do you want me to do?”
“Tell me the straight story, Frankie.”
“But I’ve told you the truth. Honest.”
“Maybe you have, in a way.” Gilmore let go of Frankie’s hair. His fingers caressed her throat. “But you haven’t told me enough. You didn’t tell me, for instance, that Chris was a Commie. Didn’t Chris say to you, ‘This Carrot Queen stuff is all horse-feathers. Gilmore is playing up to you just to try to pump you about me. Well, it works both ways. You make a heavy play for him and find out what’s in his belly. He’s probably a company spy or worse. For my money, he’s a cop. So make like a two-timing wife. Then, if anything has to happen to Gilmore, it’ll just be a case of the unwritten law.’ Wasn’t that the story?”
“I told you,” Frankie said, “that I was going to walk out on Chris.”
“That’s part two. After you saw the pictures in the papers and the newsreel clips, you began to think maybe I was on the level after all. And then this afternoon you must have found out that Chris was really in trouble, and there was no good missing a chance to get out from under. Probably Chris got word to you not to go home. Probably the police are camped on your doorstep. That’s why you were so jittery when I wanted to take you home a minute ago. Right?”
“I’m afraid to go home. I’m afraid of Chris—of everything. I want to get away—anywhere. I thought about it yesterday already, and took my money out of the bank. Chris found it and took it away from me.”
“Where would you go, Frankie?”
“I have a sister in New York.”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Gilmore said. “I’ll risk the Mann Act and being an accomplice after the fact—Are you a fugitive from justice?”
“I haven’t done anything, Gil.”
“All right. Then I’ll stake you to a ticket to New York. I’ll even drive you to the airport—if you’ll lead me to Émile.”
“I can’t, Gil. I don’t know anything about Emile. I don’t even know who he is.”
“Then why the big double-take back there at the Anchor when I mentioned Émile?”
“I’d heard Chris mention the name. Somebody called Emile has been phoning him.”
Gilmore weighed the credibility of this statement. He said: “I’ll settle for Bayliss, then. I’ll put you on a plane tonight, if you lead me to Bayliss. Can you?”
“I think so.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Turn around and drive straight ahead till I tell you.”
As Gilmore released his brakes, she continued, “I wasn’t trying to hold out on you. You were such a good friend of poor Peggy’s, I thought you knew about Bayliss. Really, didn’t you know he’s been working for Barzac this last week?”
“Barzac?” Gilmore gave Frankie a startled look, and immediately jammed on his brakes to avoid a mail truck that came careening out of a side street. “Here in Northbank?”
“In the tomato operation,” Frankie said.
Of course. Ritter had said Peggy’s so-called long-distance call from her ex-husband the day before she died had not been recorded by the Barzac exchange. It had been a local call wearing false whiskers. Bayliss had not gone back to Chicago the night Gilmore had found him in his garage.
“How did you know this?” Gilmore asked. “Has Chris been seeing Bayliss?”
“They’ve had their heads together. I don’t know what about, though. Turn left here.”
“Was Bayliss at your place tonight?”
“I doubt it. They always meet some place else. Turn right at the corner and then straight ahead.”
They were leaving the pleasantly proletarian part of North-bank—a quarter that had been settled by factory workers when property was cheap, when building costs were not astronomical, and a man could keep up payments on both a house and a car if his wife put in a few weeks at the cannery now and then when the seasonal crops were coming in. They left the streets of little lawns and trees and white picket fences. The streets ahead were badly lighted and lined with sagging, lop-sided, frame houses that even in the darkness showed their need for paint—a miserable slum district whose shanties would barely pay the taxes until they collapsed of senile decay
“Stop here,” Frankie said. “Right here, before you get to that street light. I don’t want anybody to see me.”
“Aren’t you getting out with me?”
“I’d rather stay in the car. It’s just around the corner. Look, Gil. Maybe I won’t be able to get away tonight. Maybe I won’t be able to get my clothes. If I call you later, or maybe in the morning, will you meet me somewhere?”
“Anywhere,” Gilmore said. “Where’s the house?”
“Right around the corner, the second house on the near side of the street. There’s a sign in the front window that says ‘Rooms,’ but don’t ring the bell, because I don’t know what name Bayliss gave the landlady.”
“How do you know he lives here, then?
“I followed Chris out here the other night in a taxi. I thought he had a date with that blonde hussy he used to be sweet on; you know, the bitch from the fourth-floor can line. Well, I followed Chris and I saw him take a little path that goes around the left side of the house. You pass a lilac bush, and you come to a side door that opens right into Bayliss’s room. I saw Chris go in the door, and I looked through the window and saw him inside talking to Bayliss. That’s all I can tell you.”
“That’s enough,” Gilmore said, “if it’s true.”
“See for yourself, Gil. I’ll wait in the car. I don’t want anybody to know I brought you here.”
Gilmore hesitated, but not long. There was only one way to check the truth of Frankie’s story. He got out of the car. “Right back,” he said.
When he reached the corner, he stopped. He thought he had heard the rapid click of high heels on pavement. He turned his head.
Peering into the darkness, he saw Frankie Froley running down the street in the opposite direction. As she disappeared into the night, he pondered going after her. He could probably catch up with her without too much trouble, but to what end? He would hear from her soon enough—too soon, very likely. Unless, of course, she had set the trap and was disappearing for good.
Gilmore drew a deep breath and continued his way to the second house from the corner.
XVII
Gilmore saw the rooms-for-rent sign in the front window, as Frankie had predicted. He also found the path she had described at the left of the house, as well as the tall lilac bush about thirty feet down the path from the cracked and undulating sidewalk.
As he started down the path, he saw a light gleaming through the thick foliage of the lilac. He slowed his pace, moved toward the lilac with steps that were groping and cautious—but not cautious enough.
His knee banged against a trash barrel invisible in the darkness. The barrel upset with a tinny clatter of empty cans. The light behind the lilac winked out.
Gilmore froze in his tracks. The furious thumping of his heart in his throat seemed to echo the cowbell rhythm of the spilled cans—probably Barzac cans, he told himself ironically. He remained motionless for an everlasting half minute. Then he groped with an exploratory foot, seeking a spot on which he might step without setting off another tin-can alarm.
After only one faint metallic murmur which in Gilmore’s ears seemed to reverberate like a fire gong, but which produced no visible reaction beyond the lilac, he negotiated the remaining distance to the side door without incident. For another long moment he stood several feet from the threshold, listening, staring at the door, watching the glint of starlight on the dark pane of the adjoining window. He heard no sound, saw no sign of life. Yet the fact that a light had gone out suddenly when he overturned the trash barrel was hardly reassuring. Another minute ticked by while he hesitated, wondering if he should knock. Then, impulsively, he grasped the knob, twisted, pushed. The door swung inward.
Quickly, so as not to present a tempting silhouette, Gilmore crossed the threshold and stepped briskly to the left. Instantly someone kicked the door shut.
The silence of the next few seconds was broken only by the renewed pounding of Gilmore’s heart, again beating in his throat. Then a man’s voice boomed peremptorily through the darkness: “Get your hands up! Keep ’em high, or I’ll let you have it.”
Gilmore swallowed twice before he could disentangle his heart from his vocal cords long enough to say: “Skip the theatrics, Bayliss. This is a friendly—”
Brilliance sprayed into Gilmore’s eyes, and he blinked. The voice behind the flashlight ordered: “Get those hands up—in a hurry.”
Then a second male voice, one that was pleasantly familiar, said: “Great stars! It’s Gilmore, Max.”
