The Blonde Died Dancing (14 page)

“Just one. Do I look all right?”

“Damn it! You
want
to look all right!”

“No, but… do I?”

“You look too good! Don’t try so hard! Look, if that guy so much as lays a finger on you…”

“He won’t. I’ve learned a thing or two lately. You punch him in the stomach being careful to avoid his belt buckle.”

“What?”

“So long, darling. Don’t worry.”

I was quite a bit late for my date. It was almost five-thirty when I got to Washington Square and the Wellington. It was a sedate old apartment hotel. Its cocktail lounge had white linen on the tables, and a headwaiter. He met me at the doorway.

I said, “I’m meeting Mr. Wendell Kipp here.”

“You’re Miss Frost?”

“Why, yes.”

“I have a message for you from Mr. Kipp.”

“Oh,” I said hopefully, “he can’t make it.”

“Well, he’s had to change his plans. He wants you to join him in his apartment. It’s 12C. The elevator’s in the rear of the lobby.”

“Oh… thank you.”

I stood irresolutely in the lobby for a moment. Then I stopped being silly. After all, I was a big girl, I could take care of myself. Then, too, I shouldn’t be so selfish. I was doing this for my husband.

I got into the elevator.

Wendell Kipp opened the door of apartment 12C. I was slightly taken aback by him. He wasn’t at all the hideous ogre that my fears had twisted him into. Actually, he was quite attractive. His eyes… there was a softness about them that was warming. And the flattery in his welcoming smile was rather charming.

“Come in, Hester,” he said, and I noticed for the first time how deep and pleasantly masculine his voice was. “So nice to see you, come in.”

“Well, now that I’m here, I might as well.”

He closed the door after me. He didn’t lock it and put the key in his pocket. But then it wasn’t that kind of a door.

“May I take your coat and things?”

“Well, my coat.”

He helped me off with it. He didn’t breathe down the back of my neck. He led me out of the foyer into a large living room. There was a fire burning in the white fireplace. It was a cozy fire, but there were no burning candles. The room was brightly lighted with electricity. There was no exotic incense. The room smelled faintly of Bab-O.

He was saying, “Sorry to change our plans, but I’m afraid I mustn’t leave the apartment.”

“Have you been a bad little boy?”

He laughed delightedly, and for the first time I realized that Wendell had a gaiety about him, a sense of humor, I could feel myself relaxing.

“No,” he said, “I’ve been an angel. It’s my wife… oh, no, don’t be alarmed. She isn’t here. She flew to Florida this morning for the week end and I’m expecting a call from her. I thought I’d better be here. Won’t you sit down?”

“In a moment… what a lovely room!”

“Thank you. What would you like to drink?”

“Ginger ale.”

“Ginger… ale? Are you serious? I thought people just used ginger ale to baste baked hams.”

I laughed delightedly… and for the first time I realized that Wendell had a wit all his own. I sat down on a large, lush sofa. It was so very comfortable, heavenly, lovely. I relaxed some more.

“We’ll have old fashioneds. Scotch old fashioneds.”

“Nice,” I said.

But I surreptitiously watched him mix the drinks. He didn’t put any drops of anything in mine that he didn’t put in his. It was a delicious cocktail. One sip and I knew I wanted another one.

“Some music?” Wendell indicated a stunning record player-radio-television set. “I have all of Gershwin.”

“Oh, yes!” I said. “Play all of Gershwin.”

For a moment then the two of us, without feeling the nervous compulsion of strangers to talk to each other, just sat together listening to Gershwin, sipping our drinks. Wendell smiled at me, a surprisingly shy, disputing smile.

“Happy?” he asked.

“Mmmm,” I said.

“Is that lamp too bright for you?”

“A little,” I said.

Thoughtfully, he snapped it off, and the fire in the new softness of the room’s light seemed to extend its comfort toward us, enfold us.

“This is such a lovely, lovely room,” I said.

“Would you care to see the rest of the apartment?”

“Oh, yes!”

“I’ll fix us each another drink.”

While he did just that I strolled about, and a group of three small water colors hanging over the fireplace caught my eye. I said, “Wendell, these are charming. Who did them?”

“They’re nothing really…”

“But they are!” I stepped closer and saw the signature W. Kipp on each painting. “Why, you did them!”

“Well… yes.”

“Wendell!” I said, truly amazed. Each moment I was unearthing another facet of this fascinating man’s character. He was artistic, and he was modest. “Wendell, you are remarkable… do you know that?”

“Not really.”

“Yes, really!”

“Please,” he murmured, “let’s not talk about me.” We took our new drinks into the kitchen first. It was gleaming white, streamlined, a cooking laboratory.

Off it was a tiny breakfast nook with a window overlooking Washington Square. It was enchanting. We stepped across a corridor. Wendell opened a door and beckoned me through it.

“This,” he said, “is the bedroom.”

I gasped with pleasure. It was ultra-modern. I’m not a great admirer of the modern, but I admired this. The deep, soft rug begged you to take your shoes off. The sleek, handsome chests of drawers beseeched you to fill them. The tremendous, luxurious bed with its low tables and their graceful lamps extended an irresistible invitation to tumble into it. I wrenched my eyes away from it.

“Wonderful,” I murmured. “Merely wonderful.”

“And the closets,” he said. “Built in… custom designed.”

He opened one for me. It was a miracle of efficiency… shelves, drawers, cubby holes, clothes racks, shoe racks. The closet was almost empty. There were a few dresses in sight, two negligees, a few pair of shoes; that was all. Mrs. Wendell Kipp must have filled a lot of luggage for her Florida trip.

Wendell took down a negligee, held it up for me to see. It was daring, provocative, bewitching. It was ermine and black velvet; its split skirt was lined with scarlet silk. It was so sensational it make me blink.

Wendell said, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in this?”

“You mean… may I?”

“I want you to.”

“But…”

“I’m dying to see you in it. I’ll wait for you in the living room.”

He leaned toward me a moment, smiling gently, then drifted away toward the living room.

“Wendell,” I said.

He stopped at the doorway and turned back to me.

I returned his questioning smile with an answering one. “My purse, it’s on the sofa in the living room. Would you mind? My lipstick…”

“Of course.”

He was back in a moment. He gave me my purse without speaking a word, but his hand, as it touched mine and lingered, wrote a book. Then he was gone. I was alone… with the negligee.

Quickly, I put it back in the closet. Quickly, I looked through the closet, through the drawers in the chests. I went into the bathroom, looked around there. I spent a frantic moment trying to figure out a way to prove my hunch…

I went to the telephone on one of the bed tables. I spoke softly to the switchboard girl who answered. “Did Mrs. Wendell Kipp leave any message before she left?”

“Mrs. Wendell Kipp? Did you say Mrs.?”

I muttered something and hung up.

The perplexity in the girl’s voice had told me that my hunch was right. No woman had ever lived in this apartment and used that sterile kitchen or that barber shop bath. There had been no feminine clothes in the chests of drawers. No woman would take all her clothes, except those few things in the closet, on a mere weekend trip.

Wendell Kipp had no wife.

His wife was only a myth, created by him to aid and abet his career as this century’s Casanova. If a babe, having been informed by Wendell of his wife, still accepted his advances, she was a babe who wanted only to play, and not for keeps. Thus Wendell saved himself a lot of time and any threat of inconvenience. Wendell Kipp had seduction down to a science.

I got going; I had news for Steve.

I slipped across the corridor, into the kitchen and through its service entrance. I walked down the stairs to the next floor and rang for the elevator there. In the lobby I found the row of house phones. I picked one up. “Mr. Wendell Kipp, please.”

He answered immediately.

“Wendell,” I said, “can you talk now? Or is she with you?”

“What… who is this?”

“Hester.”

“Hester!”

“I heard your wife come in, Wendell, so I slipped out. I’m in the lobby. Look, I hope your wife didn’t…”

“What! Nobody came in! My wife’s in Florida!”

“But I’m sure I heard her…”

“Hester, you come back here this minute!”

“No… no, Wendell, it’s spoiled now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe you. Listen, what goes with you? Who the hell are you…”

“Wendell, your language!”

“You’re giving me some kind of run-around and I don’t like it! Listen, damn it, I want to talk to you… wait down there in the lobby for me…”

“All right, dear, I’ll wait.”

“I’ll be right down.”

He hung up; I hung up. I got out of the Wellington Hotel as fast as I could.

It wasn’t until
I stepped out of the Wellington into the raw wind pouring across Washington Square that I realized my coat was still folded neatly on a chair in Wendell Kipp’s foyer. It was an old coat, but so warm. I wondered if I would ever see it again. I wondered if I would ever see Mr. Kipp again. Then I decided to get a little pleasure out of my wonder hour, so I wondered, while I was looking for a cab, if I would ever see Steve again, and I found that definitely worth wondering about.

Steve might still be scouting the neighborhood of the West Twenties for Harriet Kroll and her drinking companion, Mrs. Zeigler; he might have found them and be in conference with them this very moment, or he might have completed his mission and be already home.

I climbed into a cab at Waverly Place. I would just have time to get home, see if Steve was there, pick up a coat and get back to school for my seven o’clock lesson. I asked the driver to hurry.

As we pulled around the corner, I looked back at the Wellington. I caught a glimpse of Wendell Kipp hurrying out of the lobby entrance. He was hatless, coatless, but he had a coat over one arm. Mine. But I wasn’t so cold that I wanted to face Mr. Kipp again. I repeated my request to the driver for speed.

Steve wasn’t at home.

I slipped into my Sunday coat and back into the cab. I got to the school in time to rate a nod of approval from Leone as I went through the reception room to Studio K.

I gave a dancing lesson.

I said goodbye to my pupil. Just as I was about to follow him down the corridor to the phone booths to call Steve again, a visitor stepped into my studio. It wasn’t a social call. As Jack Walston pounded across the dance floor toward me with that vibrant, jolting walk of his, I knew that this was strictly business connected with a murder.

Young Mr. Walston was grim. When he said that he wanted to talk to me I had the feeling that if I didn’t cooperate there would be hell to pay. Then and there, not on any installment plan. I cooperated. Not that I didn’t want to. I did; I was curious, jack’s voice lashed out at me.

He said, “What’s so fascinating about me?”

“That’s what is known as a rhetorical question.”

“You’re so interested in me. You go around asking questions about me.”

“Oh,” I said. “You’ve been talking to Hooray Rose.”

“You follow me all the way out to Kew Gardens…” “Did you find the car all right?”

“I found it.”

“Did you drive up to New Haven? Is that where you and Dottie are going to open your roadhouse?”

He didn’t answer. He was doing a little thinking. It didn’t seem to get him anywhere. He walked around me in a five-step square. He took a deep breath that heralded our return to speaking terms.

“I don’t know,” he said, “how the hell you figure in Anita’s murder… or any of this. I’m going to stop even thinking about it. All I want is the tape recording you have of Anita and me.”

“I have a tape recording?”

“At least you’ve heard it. You asked Hooray Rose about. Anita and me being dancing partners. I never said a word about that to anybody but Anita… and later to Dottie. I know that neither of them would have told you about it. So you heard the recording.”

“Why,” I asked, “are you so worried about that recording?”

“You do have it?”

“Yes,” I said. “All you did was ask Anita to be your dancing partner in a night club act. Was there something else between you two? Why did she turn off the recorder when she did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she expect you to make a pass at her?”

“Probably. Anita expected every man to make a pass.”

“She wasn’t disappointed very often. But you didn’t make a pass, so she couldn’t blackmail you by threatening to queer you with Dottie. What was on that tape that she could use for blackmail?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“You said you were going to stop caring about that.”

“Yeah,” he said. He blew a long, tired sigh into his cupped hand, then rubbed it all over his crew cut. “All I want is that tape.”

“Tell me about it and I… maybe I’ll give it to you.” He said slowly, “Are you thinking I might have killed Anita because she was blackmailing me?”

I shrugged; it wasn’t a very good shrug, but then they don’t make shrugs like they used to. “If I’m thinking bad thoughts about you,” I said, “prove to me I’m wrong. Go ahead.”

He took another one of those breaths; this was a boy who liked his air. Then he exploded in a rush of words.

“I love Dottie. I’m going to marry her. I want to make some money for the two of us, and not by being a damn dancing teacher…”

“You want to run a roadhouse.”

“Yeah, that’s for me. A combination of being in show business and living in the country. But it takes money to go into any business. A couple of months ago I finally got a chance at that money. Dottie’s sister talked her husband into loaning it to me. It was a struggle. Phil… that’s her husband… he hated the idea, he still hates it. He’s sensible… to him show business, night clubs, roadhouses… no. But a butcher or a baker or run a little store like his. He thinks I’m a dope…”