A half hour later, Drumm and Alex Donnelly, in Donnelly’s study, rose. “The first thing,” Drumm said, “is a phone call. To the lawyer.”
Alex Donnelly walked toward the door, Drumm at his side.
“The phone is in the hall. Scarcity of phones now, and I couldn’t get extensions. Ober Illman and Georgia arc living in a cottage on Linden Avenue. The number is 9211R. No dial phones here, just tell the operator.”
They walked down the hall, and Drumm put through the call. Ober Illman, the lawyer, answered. He bad a heavy, nasal voice that rumbled in Drumm’s ear.
Drumm introduced himself and said, “I’m a candid worker, Illman. If Georgia Donnelly is really Alex Donnelly’s daughter, he’s going to pay off, no matter what. If she isn’t. I’m going to find it out and reserve a room in the pen for you.”
Illman’s laugh boomed over the humming line. “This is no con game, Drumm. Do all the snooping you like.”
“Thanks. Donnelly says he wants to see you.”
“I’ll be right over,” Illman chortled; he hung up with a heavy hand.
Drumm turned to Alex Donnelly. “Thus far, thus fine. He’s coming over. Keep him occupied. I’m going to take a private look about his cottage and whatever papers he doesn’t bring in his brief case. I’ll look through the rooms and get a juicy picture of the guy. I hate dull jobs.”
The cottage on Linden, a street writhing around one of Asheville’s ever-present lulls, was a small, brightly white, frame affair. A few shrubs dotted the lawn. The afternoon was growing old and a soft north wind was beginning to blow. Drumm had heard that tourists in this altitude slept under blankets in August.
With a quick look at the comfortable, but inexpensive, sleepy neighborhood. Hector Drumm palmed the knob of the front door. It was unlocked. He eased inside. The blinds were drawn tightly. It was twilight in here. He blinked his eyes against it.
His vision focusing, he saw the girl. The back of her head was visible over the top of the maroon chair. Drumm grimaced, realizing he would have to make an excuse and get out and return later to prowl through Mr. Illman’s things.
But the girl said nothing so he walked forward. He bent over the (hair and looked her in the eyes. Her hair was jet black, her skin was olive. She was very beautiful, and dead.
Hector Drumm touched her arm. It was warm, which meant that she had been killed moments ago. Blood still seeped from the ugly place where a bullet had punctured her cheek. Pinned in the soft fabric of her homespun jacket was a glistening wooden monogram pin. The initials were C. D. Georgia Donnelly.
Drumm straightened, his face set. He hated it when they were young and lovely. He wiped beads of perspiration from his heavy upper lip and considered the local law. He was in strange territory, he decided. He picked up the phone, heard a conversation on the party line. Three minutes later he tried again and found himself talking to a drawling detective sergeant named MacGruder. Sergeant MacGruder was on his way over before Drumm hung up. Drumm looked back at the girl, sucked in a heavy breath, and went outside.
He sat down on the edge of the tiny excuse for a porch, his feet on the walk, and took out a cigarette. He pinched it neatly in two, lighted half, and returned the other half to his crumpled pack.
He kept remembering the girl inside, how bubbling with life she must have been, and he was making dire threats against somebody when the man came down the walk.
The newcomer was fat, fifty, bald, and explosive. His “Hello” was like a miniature clap of thunder. He stood over Drumm. He was well-dressed, Drumm thought, if you liked green slacks, tan sportcoat and open-throated shirt. The late rays of the sun struck the man’s bald pate obliquely, and as he bent to squint closely, Drumm saw that the top of the man’s head had been sunburned and was peeling, giving it a scalelike appearance.
“I’m Rick Elwyn,” the heavy man said, nodding ns Drumm mentioned his own name. Drumm mused, “Elwyn? Seems familiar. I had a cousin once who tried to get in pictures. Never made it, but she mentioned an agent...”
“Yes!” Elwyn said lustily. “Actor’s agent, adviser, creator of stars, that’s me.”
He didn’t like himself — much. Drumm eyed him thoughtfully. “Alex Donnelly’s agent?”
Rick Elwyn nodded, beaming. “I’ve done miracles for him.” Then he said in a more sober tone, “I’ve rented a cottage three blocks over for as long as Donnelly, myself, and his wife will be here. I...”
“Wife?” Drumm demanded.
Elwyn started a trifle at having someone else’s voice equal his own in intensity. “Why, yes. Viola Munday — that’s her screen name — if she ever gets a part. They’ve been married couple months.”
Drumm laboriously got one more drag from his fag. “I thought he had a wife in Mexico.”
“Yes, the Mexican woman. Beautiful creature, several years back. But when Donnelly and Viola decided to tie the knot, Alex hired a private dick in Mexico who found that his first wife was dead.”
“He’s got a passion for hiring private detectives,” Drumm said. “The dick found nothing about Georgia, Donnelly’s daughter by his first marriage?”
Elwyn hesitated. “The detective said nothing about a daughter ever having been born.”
“I guess the Mexican wife had pride.”
“Or the daughter is a fraud,” Elwyn said.
Their eyes locked and Hector Drumm said, “She’s no fraud. She’s as beautiful as her mother once was. And just as dead.”
Elwyn’s flabby chin dropped, quivered; his eyes squeezed toward the fronts of his sockets. “Dead...?” It was a very small voice now.
Drumm listened to sirens rising in the distance. He said softly, “Dead.”
MacGruder was a gangling, raw-boned hillbilly with stooped shoulders, a chin like an obstinate hound, and the eyes of a sly opossum. He carried a sizable quid in his left cheek, and never seemed to need to expectorate.
With him was the usual retinue: photog, fingerprint expert, coroner — since Asheville had not installed the more modern system of medical examiner’s office — a downy-faced cub hanging goggle-eyed to the sleeve of a bulky reporter from the Citizen, and three other individuals, one of them in a blue uniform, who took up a station at the door as the neighbors began to thrust heads out of windows and start across lawns.
Drumm sat in a corner and watched them. Rick Elwyn stood quivering like a puppet on a jerky string, wringing his hands.
MacGruder finally stood over Drumm.
“She was killed about an hour ago. She’d been dead about thirty minutes when you got here.”
Drumm made a mental calculation. He’d got mixed on municipal buses and it had taken about forty-five minutes for him to get from Alex Donnelly’s house. Which meant that the girl had been murdered about fifteen minutes after he had left Donnelly’s place. Someone with a fast car could have gotten from the actor’s house and done the job, leaving Donnelly’s house at the same time Hector Drumm had.
Drumm met MacGruder’s gaze. “I haven’t touched a thing, sarge. I waited on the porch until you got here.”
“You haven’t told me why you’re here yet.” MacGruder’s voice was sleepy, like a lazy fuse burning toward a keg of gunpowder.
Drumm got to his feet, dusting off his pants where he’d been sitting on the floor. He lighted half a cigarette. “I know local cops hate to have a private dick pushing his nose in. But I’m going to play fair hall with you, MacGruder. I want to get away front here. And since I found the body, I know I’m a material witness and am going to have to pay a hotel hill until this thing gets cleared up. I’ll lose work, time, and my boss ain’t going to like it a hit.” He sighed glumly. “The dead girl is Georgia Donnelly, Alex Donnelly’s daughter. Or that’s what she was supposed to be. Donnelly dished out a lot of dirt in the past, desertion and so on, and now when the gal got growed up, she haled him and was going to make him pay. I was supposed to find out if she really was his daughter.”