I shook the check dry, folded it and sat holding it. “What can you tell me about Linda?”
“Practically nothing. Before she married my son she shared an apartment with a girl named Lois Magic— charming names these people choose for themselves—who is an entertainer of some sort. They worked at a place called the Idle Valley Club, out Ventura Boulevard way. My son Leslie knows it far too well. I know nothing about Linda’s family or origins. She said once she was born in Sioux Falls. I suppose she had parents. I was not interested enough to find out.”
Like hell she wasn’t. I could see her digging with both hands, digging hard, and getting herself a double handful of gravel.
“You don’t know Miss Magic’s address?”
“No. I never did know.”
“Would your son be likely to know—or Miss Davis?”
“I’ll ask my son when he comes in. I don’t think so. You can ask Miss Davis. I’m sure she doesn’t.”
“I see. You don’t know of any other friends of Linda’s?”
“No.”
“It’s possible that your son is still in touch with her, Mrs. Murdock—without telling you.”
She started to get purple again. I held my hand up and dragged a soothing smile over my face. “After all he has been married to her a year,” I said. “He must know something about her.”
“You leave my son out of this,” she snarled.
I shrugged and made a disappointed sound with my lips. “Very well. She took her car, I suppose. The one you gave her?”
“A steel gray Mercury, 1940 model, a coupe. Miss Davis can give you the license number, if you want that. I don’t know whether she took it.”
“Would you know what money and clothes and jewels she had with her?”
“Not much money. She might have had a couple of hundred dollars, at most.” A fat sneer made deep lines around her nose and mouth. “Unless of course she has found a new friend.”
“There’s that,” I said. “Jewelry?”
“An emerald and diamond ring of no very great value, a platinum Longines watch with rubies in the mounting, a very good cloudy amber necklace which I was foolish enough to give her myself. It has a diamond clasp with twenty-six small diamonds in the shape of a playing card diamond. She had other things, of course. I never paid much attention to them. She dressed well but not strikingly. Thank God for a few small mercies.”
She refilled her glass and drank and did some more of her semi-social belching.
“That’s all you can tell me, Mrs. Murdock?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Not nearly enough, but I’ll have to be satisfied for the time being. If I find she did not steal the coin, that ends the investigation as far as I’m concerned. Correct?”
“We’ll talk it over,” she said roughly. “She stole it all right. And I don’t intend to let her get away with it. Paste that in your hat, young man. And I hope you are even half as rough as you like to act, because these nightclub girls are apt to have some very nasty friends.”
I was still holding the folded check by one corner down between my knees. I got my wallet out and put it away and stood up, reaching my hat off the floor.
“I like them nasty,” I said. “The nasty ones have very simple minds. I’ll report to you when there is anything to report, Mrs. Murdock. I think I’ll tackle this coin dealer first. He sounds like a lead.”
She let me get to the door before she growled at my back: “You don’t like me very well, do you?”
I turned to grin back at her with my hand on the knob. “Does anybody?”
She threw her head back and opened her mouth wide and roared with laughter. In the middle of the laughter I opened the door and went out and shut the door on the rough mannish sound. I went back along the hall and knocked on the secretary’s half open door, then pushed it open and looked in.
She had her arms folded on her desk and her face down on the folded arms. She was sobbing. She screwed her head around and looked up at me with tear-stained eyes. I shut the door and went over beside her and put an arm around her thin shoulders.
“Cheer up,” I said. “You ought to feel sorry for her. She thinks she’s tough and she’s breaking her back trying to live up to it.”
The little girl jumped erect, away from my arm. “Don’t touch me,” she said breathlessly. “Please. I never let men touch me. And don’t say such awful things about Mrs. Murdock.”
Her face was all pink and wet from tears. Without her glasses her eyes were very lovely.
I stuck my long-waiting cigarette into my mouth and lit it.
“I—I didn’t mean to be rude,” she snuffled. “But she does humiliate me so. And I only want to do my best for her.” She snuffled some more and got a man’s handkerchief out of her desk and shook it out and wiped her eyes with it. I saw on the hanging down corner the initials L.M. embroidered in purple. I stared at it and blew cigarette smoke towards the corner of the room, away from her hair. “Is there something you want?” she asked.
“I want the license number of Mrs. Leslie Murdock’s car.”
“It’s 2X1111, a gray Mercury convertible, 1940 model.”
“She told me it was a coupe.”
