was what was left of the American middle class: the manufactured and manipulated man. Batteries not included.
“Terrible tragedy, Munroe’s death,” he said, with the proper amount of gravity in his voice. “He was a prince, he really was. You’d have liked him; everybody did.”
“Except the people in Musket Creek,” I said.
“Well, they’re an odd bunch. Misfits. I mean, you can’t stop the tide of progress, can you?”
“Might be better if you could, sometimes.”
He gave me a blank look. That kind of comment just did not compute for him.
I asked him if Randall had any personal problems that he knew about, and he said, “Munroe? Heck no. Life was his oyster. And the ladies… well, he was a swordsman if I ever knew one. Guy who got as much as Munroe did, how could he have problems?”
“Was there any particular woman in his life?”
“No sir. Like I said, Munroe played the field. A real swordsman.”
“His most recent girlfriend, then. Would you know who she was?”
“Well… that’d be Penny Belson, I guess. I’m not sure, though. He traded them in pretty fast.”
“Uh-huh. Where can I find Penny Belson?”
“She owns a beauty parlor in the downtown mall,” Zemansky said. “Fancy place, high-priced; my wife goes there sometimes when she thinks we can afford it. Penny’s for Beauty, it’s called. Which is kind of ironic. Because it’s such a high-priced place, I mean.”
I asked him if he thought Randall’s death was an accident, and he said, “Definitely. Couldn’t be anything else. I mean, that’s what the police decided, isn’t it?”
I asked him about Martin Treacle and Frank O’Daniel, and he said, “Princes, both of them. I play golf with Frank; I’m just a duffer, you know, but Frank, he shoots in the eighties. He had back-to-back birdies the last time we were out on the old links.”
I gave it up finally, thanked him for his time, let him pump my hand another time, and got out of there. The Stan Zemanskys of the world made me feel as if I were either very bright and very sane, or edging my way toward a private room in a twitch bin. Not that it mattered much; I liked my perceptions a hell of a lot better than theirs, either way.
“Life was his oyster,” he’d said. “Out on the old links,” he’d said. Jesus Christ!
CHAPTER FOUR
From the outside, Penny’s for Beauty didn’t look like much-just another storefront, except that its front window was curtained instead of open for display, in the middle of an attractive new downtown mall that covered several blocks. But the reception room inside was pretty ritzy: walls painted in cool blues and greens, lots of potted plants and latticework and white wrought-iron furniture. There were half a dozen women in it, five occupying various pieces of wrought-iron and the sixth ensconced behind a reception table with a telephone and an appointment book on it.
All of the women looked at me when I came in. I felt like an idiot standing there under their scrutiny; I always felt like an idiot in places like this, the more or less exclusive domain of women. I also felt myself grinning fatuously at the six females, none of whom grinned back. The smells of shampoo and other beauty salon concoctions were in the air, a mixture that was vaguely reminiscent of disinfectant; it made my nose twitch and I wanted to sneeze. I got that under control, wiped off the stupid grin, and went over to the reception desk.
The woman behind it was a well-groomed blonde, dressed in an outfit that matched the blue-and-green color scheme; she was about forty and made up to look thirty, and you were supposed to believe that her secret was in the various bottles and tubes and decanters on the display shelves at her back, and in whatever was going on- buzzings, clickings, murmurings-beyond a lattice-bordered archway to one side. She gave me the same kind of look a bum might get if he wandered in off the street for a handout, and asked, snootily, if there was anything she could do for me.
I wasn’t in a mood to tolerate being sneered at, so I leaned over in front of her and said, “I’m a detective, here to see Penny Belson,” in a tough-guy voice. “If she’s in, sister, trot her out here so we can talk. Pronto.” Philip Marlowe, circa 1940.
But the blonde wasn’t a Chandler fan; she blinked at me a couple of times, gnawed her underlip a couple of times, asked my name in a much more polite tone, and then used her telephone to talk to somebody I assumed was Penny Belson. When she put the receiver down she said, “Miss Belson will be right out.” Then she sat stiff-backed and stared at me.
The waiting customers were staring at me too; they’d overheard my exchange with the receptionist. But the stares were of a different kind now and I felt better about the whole thing. I put on a little more tough-guy for them, in the form of a glower, and it would have worked out fine if the damned salon smell hadn’t been so strong in there. I sneezed right in the middle of the glower, none too quietly, and scared hell out of them and me both.
Another blonde came through the latticed archway, this one about the same age as the receptionist and just as attractive and well-groomed. But she had more poise, a kind of icy self-possession; and her eyes were an odd, striking gray accented by makeup. A very sexy number, if you like them chipped and chiseled and sharp around the eyes and mouth. She was wearing a sort of tailored smock in the same colors as the reception room and the receptionist. She was also wearing an expression as unrevealing as a snowfield in a blizzard. I wouldn’t have liked to play poker with her. Or anything else with her, for that matter.
She looked at me and said, “I’m Penny Belson. Come with me, please.” That was all; no fuss of any kind. It was in deference to the customers, no doubt-never make a scene in front of customers-but she handled it with aplomb.
So I went through the arch into another room full of women, this batch evidently being tortured in various ways. Most of them were sitting under big hair dryers that looked like hunched, helmeted aliens devouring their heads; a few of these were reading magazines like Vogue, a few were having their nails done by manicurists, and a few were either asleep or dead. None of them paid any attention to me as I followed Penny Belson on a course to another door at the far end.
This one led to La Belson’s private office, a room in marked contrast to the other two. Flat white decor, a mostly bare desk, some file cabinets, three chairs, a bowl of cut flowers on a small side table, and a still life on one wall. Sterile. No frills, no nonsense. A room where business was transacted and the take was counted assiduously at the end of each day.
She shut the door, went to the desk, sat down behind it, waited for me to take a chair uninvited, and said, “Now then. You’re with the Redding police?”
“No, ma’am.”
“The county sheriffs department?”
“No. Actually, I’m a private investigator.”
That got me a flat, contemplative look. “You told Miss Adley that you were a policeman,” she said.
“No, ma’am. I told her I was a detective and that’s what I am.”
“I see.” She smiled faintly and wryly, without humor. “I suppose you’re here about Munroe Randall.”
“Yes. I’m working for his insurance company.” I had my wallet out, for the purpose of showing her my ID, but she made a dismissive gesture. I put the wallet away again.
“You’re wasting your time and mine,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything about his death. As I’ve already explained to the police, I hadn’t seen him for over a month before he died.”
“Oh? Why is that, Miss Belson?”
“If you’d known Munroe, you wouldn’t have to ask that question. He liked women-lots of different women. He got bored very easily.”
“Does that mean he’d broken off your relationship?”
“That’s what it means.”
“Suddenly?”
“Very. But I wasn’t surprised.”
