The Topless Tulip Caper

to watch me because I’m such a sensational dancer. I’m a pretty rotten dancer, as a matter of fact. They come to see me and they pay two dollars a drink for watered rotgut because they enjoy looking at my tits.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all it is, really. Tits.”

“Uh.”

“If it weren’t for my tits,” she said, “I’d be teaching high school biology.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that one, but as it turned out I didn’t have to because we had reached her door and she was fishing in her purse for the key. She got it out, then rang the bell. “In case Cherry’s home,” she explained. We stood around for a while, long enough for her to conclude that Cherry wasn’t home, and then she opened the door and walked inside. I didn’t follow her, and she asked me what I was waiting out in the hall for.

“Just a minute,” I said. I dropped to one knee and examined the lock. There were two cylinders but one was just a blind to confuse burglars. The other was a Rabson, a good one, and I couldn’t find any scratches on the cylinder or on the bolt. That didn’t necessarily mean the killer had had a key; if he had a good set of picks and knew how to use them he could open the lock without leaving evidence behind. “Of the nine people you mentioned before,” I said, “how many have keys?”

“Oh. He got in with a key?”

“It’s possible.”

“So you want to know who has keys?”

I got out my notebook and went through the nine of them. Cherry had a key, of course, it being her apartment. Glenn Flatt, the ex-husband, had been to the apartment a few times but had never been given a key. Haskell Henderson, the current boyfriend, had a key. Mrs. Haskell Henderson hadn’t been given one, but she could have swiped or duplicated her husband’s, assuming she knew anything about it. Leonard Danzig had a key, as did any number of past and present boyfriends of Cherry’s. Helen Tattersall, the neighbor, didn’t, but there was always the possibility that she had access to the building’s master key. There was a chainbolt on the inside of the door, but when nobody was home it wasn’t locked and the master key would open the other lock.

Andrew Mallard did not have a key and had never been to the apartment. Maybe Tulip was afraid that if she ever let him in she would have to move again. Simon Barckover might well have a key, since Cheny gave them out rather indiscriminately, but Tulip wasn’t sure one way or the other. And Gus Leemy probably didn’t have a key.

“But anybody could have one easily enough,” Tulip said. “The thing about Cherry, she tends to misplace things. Especially keys. I think she’s borrowed my key four times in the past five months to have duplicates made, and she always has several made at a time. Anyone could have borrowed her key to have a duplicate made, and if he didn’t put it back when he was done she would just assume she lost it again. It’s sort of a nuisance.”

“It must be.”

“And then sometimes she sets the latch and doesn’t bother taking a key, and it’s even possible that she came back here Friday night to change or something and left the door unlocked, and then came back again and locked it. So anybody at all could have walked in. Just some ordinary prowler, trying doors and finding this one unlocked.”

“Just some ordinary prowler looking to find an open apartment with a fish tank he could pour strychnine into?”

“Oh.”

“I think we can rule out the Ordinary Prowler theory.”

“I guess you’re right. I’m not thinking very clearly.” She dropped into a chair, then bounced back up again. And bounced is precisely the word to fit the act. She bounced, and her breasts bounced, and I’d just about reached the point where I was able to look at her without being very close to drooling, and that little bounce she did put me right back at square one again.

“I’m a terrible hostess,” she said. “I didn’t offer you a drink. You’ll have a drink, won’t you?”

“If you’re having one.”

“I am, but what does that have to do with it? What would you like?”

I tried not to look at the front of her tee-shirt “I’ll have a glass of milk,” I said.

“Gee, I don’t think we’ve got any.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I don’t even like milk.”

“Then why did you ask for it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The words just came out that way. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Great. I’m having bourbon and yogurt. Do you want yours on the rocks or straight up?”

“I guess on the rocks. What’s so funny?”

But she didn’t answer. She was too busy laughing. Most women tend to giggle, which can be pleasant enough, but Tulip put her head back and gave out with a full-scale belly laugh, and it really sounded great. While she stood there laughing her head off I rewound some mental recording tape and played back the conversation, and I said, “Oh.”

“Bourbon and yogurt!”

“Very funny,” I said.

“On the rocks!”

She actually slapped her thigh. You hear about people I doing that but I didn’t think anybody really did. She laughed her head off and slapped her thigh.

“I guess I got distracted,” I said.

“A glass of milk!”

“Look, Miss Wolinski—”

“Oh, Chip, I’m sorry.” She came to me and put her hand on my arm. I didn’t want to react because I wasn’t feeling sexy, I was feeling mad, but what I wanted didn’t have very much to do with it. She put her hand on my arm, and it was as if I’d stuck my big toe into an electrical outlet.

“I was just teasing you a little,” she said.

“I hope you never tease me a lot. I don’t think I could handle it.”

“How about a beer?”

“Great.”

I told her I’d like to look around the apartment while she poured the beer. She said that was fine. There was the living room, fairly good sized, and there were two small bedrooms, each furnished with a platform bed and a night table and a chest of drawers. The first bedroom I entered looked like an ad for disaster insurance. The bed was unmade, assuming it had ever been made to begin with, and there was so much underwear scattered around that it was hard to find the floor. I sort of hoped that was Cherry’s bedroom because I didn’t want to learn that our client was that much of a slob. When I looked in the other bedroom I established that it was Tulip’s. It was immaculate, and there was a fish tank in it.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked in the tank. There was a glass divider in the middle and an African Gourami on each side of it.

“Here’s your beer,” she said from the doorway. “Hey, did anything happen to those guys?”

There was real alarm in her voice. “They’re fine,” I said. “What species are they? I mean I know they’re Ctenapoma but I don’t recognize the species.”

Ctenapoma fasciolatum. I don’t suppose he’s started building a bubble nest, has he?” She came over and looked over my shoulder. “He hasn’t, darn it. That’s the third female I’ve had in there with him. He killed the other two. I used the divider when I put the second female in, and I waited until he had a nest built, and I figured that was a clear signal that he was madly and passionately in love, so I lifted out the divider and I the little bastard charged right at her and killed her.” She sat down on the bed next to me and gave me a glass of beer. I took a long drink of it. “So I don’t really I know what to do,” she went on. “This time he’s not even building a nest. He just ignores the poor old girl completely. And you can see she’s ready to spawn, I She’s positively bursting with eggs, the little angel must be doing something wrong.”

“Mr. Haig might be able to tell you.”

“Has he bred fasciolatum?”

“No, but he’s had results with some of the other Ctenapoma species. He has some