Then Zolta was killed in a hunting accident. He jumped up in Wally’s line of fire when a six point buck crashed out of the underbrush. It happens a hundred times every deer season. That didn’t make the Burkes feel any better about it.
Their marriage started to go to pieces. Maxine was drinking too much. Eventually there was a divorce, and Maxine blew up in the middle of a picture. That cooked her with the industry.
Marion had kept in touch, watched her drink herself destitute. It wasn’t pleasant, but as Marion told me: “Someone had to stand by her, and we had always been such close friends...”
Maxine’s situation had the same appeal to me. “There’s just one more thing.” I asked: “Did she have any enemies? I mean people who really hated her?”
Marion considered for a moment, then tossed me a joker. “There’s only one person I know of who might have felt that way about Maxine,” she replied in her even, husky whisper. “Johnny Clark was terribly bitter when she divorced him. When she remarried, I understand he wrote, threatening both her and Wally.”
Now how was I doing? I started out with a paying client and wound up with an ace suspect.
“Just a minute, Miss Trenton. Did you see that letter?”
“Why yes, I did.”
“When it was received — or recently?”
I was overplaying my interest a little. Miss Trenton’s frown tripped me off. It wasn’t a mean expression, just perplexed.
“When Maxine received it,” she replied, “but I can’t imagine what difference it can make now. She took her own life. It can’t matter what people thought of her.”
She’d figure it out for herself anyway, if she hadn’t already. So I took her into the firm. “Unless,” I suggested, “it wasn’t suicide.”
Her reaction was standard enough. “I didn’t know there was any question about it.”
“When a person dies violently,” I explained, “there’s always a question.” I stood up to leave. “Thanks a million, you’ve been very helpful.”
We said goodbye at her door. She said she would be glad to do whatever she could. I thanked her again and said I might take her up.
Chapter Three
Corpses, Corpses, Pretty Little Corpses
I trotted out to my car, feeling I’d been had. What kind of routine was this? Only one thing was clear to me. I could see now why Clark wanted a murderer found — before his letter turned up. But why hadn’t he told me about it? I wondered what I would do, if it developed my client had killed his ex-wife.
It looked as though the best move I could make in Clark’s interest would be in the direction of finding the letter before the police did. So I drove to the Outpost and added housebreaking to a growing list of minor crimes I have committed in the line of duty. It was a good night for it.
Like most hillside homes, Maxine’s was built upside down, the bedrooms being below the main floor. I found a back window unlocked and eased into what must have been a guest room — it was unfurnished. I explored until my flashlight found a room with a bed in it. That had to be the one I was looking for.
If she’d kept the letter at all, I reasoned, it would probably be somewhere around her bedroom — a dressing table drawer, or a hat box, anything she could stuff old letters in.
I wasn’t being particularly cautious, which makes a sucker out of my intuition. It cost me a lump on the head. When I stepped into Maxine’s bedroom, someone took a swipe at my skull. Fortunately, it was a glancing blow, but just the same it knocked me across the room. I hit the bed and kept going. There was room for me under the bed, and that’s where I got. Like the other man in a boudoir comedy.
For several minutes, the only thing I heard was the numb throbbing of my head. Then my chum moved. He came over to the bed to see if there was anything left of me. A board creaked by my hand.
It was my turn to get cute. Lunging out, I got both of his feet and heaved. He came down fighting, but I was on top. I hated to see him quit — I can’t slug an unconscious man.
I tossed him across the bed and felt around the room for my flash. When I illuminated his face, I was ashamed of myself. I had made an awful mess of what must have been a simply dreamy profile. The Wally Burke fan club would boycott me.
I lit a cigarette and sat down beside him to wait. Smearing glamor-pants hadn’t stopped my head from throbbing, but it made it endurable. While he was out, I went through his clothes and satisfied myself that he was unarmed.
His flashlight was on the floor. My head had put a dent in it — just call me Iron Skull Fowler.
He came to with a classic: “Where am I?”
I grabbed his collar and jerked him to the edge of the bed. He was comically terrified.
“What’s the idea of slugging me when I came in here?” I demanded.
“I... I didn’t know it was you.”
“You’re a little nervous, aren’t you? Who were you expecting?”
“No one. That’s why I...”
“Skip it. You’re just lucky you haven’t got a murder to answer for. Or doesn’t that make any difference to you?”
I had my flashlight in his face. He wasn’t having anything to say about my last question, so I asked him another: “Suppose you tell me what you were doing here. What did you want?”
He clammed.
“Now it couldn’t be,” I said, “that you were after Maxine’s diary?”
He didn’t comment, but I felt him stiffen inside his coat. I shook him. “No, you wouldn’t want the truth of the Zolta affair aired — even after all this time. It wouldn’t do to let a diary brand you as a murderer.”
He tried to squirm out. “That’s a lie! There isn’t anything like that in Maxine’s diary.”
“That’s what you think, buddy. I know better.”
“But there couldn’t be. She wasn’t within a mile of the accident,”
“Right,” I acknowledged, “but she had binoculars, didn’t she? She saw the whole thing.”
I shook him once more for luck, then let him wilt back on the bed, moaning it wasn’t true. I got disgusted. We weren’t getting anywhere.
“All right, shut up!” I told him. “If it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll admit I was lying about the diary. There isn’t a word in it about the Zolta accident. That’s what makes me think she saw you shoot him. She wouldn’t skip the whole thing unless she was protecting someone.”
I told him to relax, while I took a look around. We were leaving there together.
There wasn’t a word or a whimper out of him while I searched for Clark’s letter. If it was there, I satisfied myself, it would only be found by taking the house apart, plank at a time.
I took Burke out to his car, and handed him his flashlight. “Next time,” I advised, “pick a guy with a thin skull, and then start running like hell.”
My romp with “Kid” Burke had put an edge on my appetite. So I cleaned up at my apartment, then went down to Tip’s and put away a steak and some french fries.
Except for a headache, I was as good as new and ready to tackle Mr. Clark. I thought it Was time I heard about that letter from him, I called and got the office to come up.
Clark was sitting in a friendly little game of Red Dog — no deadly weapons showing on the table. I watched a couple of hands while he dropped about five hundred bucks and made back seven-fifty. He got out and took me in the bedroom.
“O.K., Fowler,” he said, sprawling across his bed, “what’s the scoop?”
I told him I had a hot lead, but didn’t know quite how to handle it.