The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery (10 page)

“Talk of the devil,” Mitzie said as Masuto sat down at the kitchen table again.

“He said he'll take care of the funeral arrangements,” Masuto told them.

“Alan's all heart,” Laura said.

“And you think he hated her enough to kill her?”

“You never think in those terms, do you?” Laura Crombie replied. “He was paying her five thousand a month, but he could afford it. Would he kill her? He knew she'd never marry Monte and let him off the hook.”

“Monte Sweet?”

“Yes. The comic.”

“Where is he now?”

“He was in Vegas.”

“Do you know when? Is he still there?”

“If you're thinking of Monte as a suspect, forget it. He couldn't kill a fly. Anyway, she showered him with gifts.”

“What about her will?” Mitzie said. “Who else would she leave it to? That house of hers has to be worth half a million.”

“Mrs. Fuller,” Masuto said to Mitzie, “who would want to kill you?”

Oddly enough, she began to giggle. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she apologized. Masuto found her enchanting, and silently called himself to order. He enjoyed beautiful women. They disturbed his objectivity, and Mitzie Fuller was very beautiful—orange-colored hair that did not come out of a bottle, large blue eyes, and a round figure that was five pounds short of being plump. “I don't know why I'm doing this, but your question—”

“I asked it.”

“I never thought of myself that way. Who does? Who ever says to herself, I'm being set up for a murder? Well, sure, Billy Fuller would like to kill me. If he could get away with it. If it wouldn't interfere with his career. If it could be written into his contract. In fact, he specified the act. But who doesn't? I mean married, who doesn't?”

“I'm not sure I know what you do mean,” Masuto said.

“Well, you know how it is. No, maybe you don't. Maybe the Japanese don't operate that way.”

“What way?”

“You know—you bitch, I'm going to kill you.”

“You're telling me that's what your husband said to you?”

“But it doesn't mean anything. First of all, I made the number one mistake that any woman can make. I married a film director. That's a very special kind of guy. You know, Sergeant, your sex is nothing to write home about, even under the best of circumstances, but if you were to list types of men from A to Z, with A being the very rare nice guy, Z would have to be a film director. They are power-ridden little tin gods—”

“Oh, come on,” Nancy Legett interrupted her. “I've known decent directors. Some of them are pussycats.”

“But seriously, does your husband hate you enough to kill you?” Masuto asked.

“Yes,” she said, flatly and bleakly. The laughter was gone.

“Why?”

Her lips came together and tightened. Masuto waited.

“His hatred,” she said finally, “is a personal matter that I don't intend to talk about. And it's not the lousy alimony he pays. He took on a picture for seven hundred thousand dollars, and after a month of pre-production, the producers found him so obnoxious they paid him four hundred thousand to break his contract. So the money's nothing.”

“Was he in the army?”

“The navy. He's a lieutenant in the naval reserve.”

“And where is he working now?”

“They tell me he's doing a film at Metro. I couldn't care less.”

“And what about you, Mrs. Legett?” Masuto asked, turning to Nancy. “Who would want to kill you?”

“That's a terrible thing to ask me.”

“But I must,” Masuto said softly.

“Why should anyone want to kill me? I've never hurt anyone. I never hurt my husband. Even when he told me he was leaving me, I didn't make it hard for him. I knew he had stopped loving me long ago. Perhaps I had stopped loving him too. I don't know. And I don't have any lovers to make him jealous or angry. Look at me. Do I look like a woman who has lovers?”

She began to sob, and Laura Crombie put her arm around her and said to Masuto, “Must you, tonight? We're all tired and frightened.”

“I'm afraid I must. Please, try to pull yourself together, Mrs. Legett. I promise you, there will be no more danger, no more hurt and fear—but only if you help me. You must help me.”

“I'll try.”

“You don't feel that your ex-husband hates you?”

“No.”

“That's no good, Nancy,” Laura told her. “You have to tell him the truth. Otherwise we'll never get to the bottom of this.”

“Why should he hate me? It's four months since he made any support payments. I don't dun him. I pay for the children's support. I don't ask anything of him.”

“Nancy!”

She sighed and nodded.

“Enough to kill you?” Masuto pressed her.

“No!” she snapped

“All right,” said Laura Crombie. “You won't, I will. Fulton Legett is a cold-blooded bastard. He has ice in his veins. His children do not like him, and for that he blames Nancy—”

“Laura, stop,” Nancy pleaded.

“No, I will not stop. Someone has to tell Sergeant Masuto, and you won't. Nancy wanted the divorce, because that bastard was destroying her. Cutting her to pieces, putting her down every time she opened her mouth, and do you know why? Because she has more brains in her little finger than he has in that stupid skull of his.”

“Please stop,” Nancy begged her.

“No, I will not stop. This isn't gossip. We've just seen Alice murdered, and we're sitting here fighting for our lives.” She faced Masuto. “He became a producer because Nancy made him one. That was twenty years ago. Nancy found a delightful story, emptied her own personal bank account to option it, and then talked Paramount Pictures into putting up the money to develop it and accepting Fulton Legett as the producer. That was a hit and his next three pictures were hits because Nancy chose them and supervised, even while she was pregnant. She still owns half of his company, and they have an agreement whereby if one dies, the other inherits.”

“Laura, how could you!” Nancy burst out. “You're practically accusing Fulton of being behind this whole thing, of killing Alice and three other people. Why would he?”

“I don't know why he would want to kill me,” Mitzie said. “He keeps calling and trying to take me out. I hate to say this, Nancy, but he does have the reputation of being bad news.”

“You never told me,” Nancy said.

“Why bug you? You're out of it and I have no intention of getting into it.”

“How do you happen to know him?” Masuto asked Mitzie. “I understood that you and Mrs. Crombie met only a few weeks ago.”

“He knows Billy, my own ex. He's been after Billy to do a film for him, but Billy follows the money and right now Fulton Legett is broke. I don't know how much you know about the film business, Sergeant, but the game is played like a jigsaw puzzle. If you can get a top-flight director and put him together with an important star and an important property, which is what they call a book in this business, a property, you're well on your way to getting a studio to finance a film. That's why Fulton Legett has been nosing around my Billy.”

Masuto nodded, and asked Nancy Legett, “Was your husband in the army, Mrs. Legett?”

“Yes. He was in Korea.”

“In the infantry?”

“No, he was an airplane mechanic.”

“Why are you so certain,” Laura Crombie asked Masuto, “that one of our ex-husbands is the man you are looking for?”

“I'm not certain. But whoever the killer is, he links the four of you together. Apparently, he knows all of you, what your tastes are, what your habits are. Now tell me, do you know William Fuller, the director?”

She hesitated just a moment. “Yes, I do.”

“Do you know Monte Sweet?”

“No, not personally. I never met him.”

“Do you know Monte Sweet?” he asked Nancy Legett.

She shook her head.

He turned to Mitzie Fuller.

She smiled and shook her head. “No; not really.”

“What does that mean, not really?” Masuto asked.

“You're worse than my analyst,” Mitzie said. “It means just that—not really.”

He turned back to Laura Crombie. “We have three women whose ex-husbands have motives, if not for murder at least for hatred. What about your ex-husband, Mrs. Crombie?”

She shrugged. “Since this is naked time, I'll let down my hair with the rest. When I married Arthur Crombie three years ago, he didn't have a red penny. I'm a very wealthy woman. Even then, I was not poor. I put Arthur into the real estate business. Oh, he isn't stupid. He's damn smart, but he just loused up everything he touched. This time, for some reason, it was different. He got into it just as property values out here began to skyrocket. He had been a real estate agent before, so he knew the ropes, and he specialized in very expensive homes. Today he has one of the hottest businesses in town. Then, six months after we were married, my father died. I was the only heir, and the estate came to something over seven million. Arthur got his share of that, since it was I who was pleading for the divorce, not him. In other words, today Arthur is a millionaire because the lady you are looking at is a damn fool. Murder me? He ought to erect a monument to me.”

Masuto nodded and waited.

“That's it.”

“Do you have any children, Mrs. Crombie?”

“No!” hard and short.

Nancy Legett was staring at her. Masuto watched her, then looked at Laura.

Beckman came back into the kitchen. Masuto guessed that he had searched every corner of the house. Beckman would do it that way. He looked at Beckman, and Beckman said softly, “Okay.”

Masuto waited. Finally, she said, “Yes. I told you. But what difference does it make? How does it come into this?”

“I don't know. I don't know how anything comes into this. I'm trying to find out.”

“I had a daughter,” Laura said bleakly. “She's dead. I told you that this morning.”

“Please tell me more about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm trying to save lives.”

“She's dead. It has nothing to do with this.”

“I don't want to go elsewhere and pick up shreds of gossip. I want you to tell me.”

“There's nothing to tell. My daughter was killed in an automobile accident. Have you ever lost a child, Sergeant Masuto? Would you find it amusing to discuss?” With that, she leaped to her feet and strode out of the room.

“She can't talk about it,” Nancy Legett said to him. “It was over three years ago, and it doesn't get any better. Kelly was a beautiful, wonderful child.”

“Kelly?”

“They called her Kelly. Her real name was Catherine. Laura lived for the child—especially after Laura's first husband died. We don't all make rotten marriages. Laura's first marriage was a good one,” Nancy said.

“Do you know whether Arthur Crombie was in the army?”

“Yes, he was a pilot in Korea. He still flies. He has his own plane now.”

“And did you know Arthur Crombie?” Masuto asked Mitzie.

“Yes—not too well. About a week ago, he called me and then came to my house.”

“Why?”

“You know what's going on in the real estate market here in California. It's even worse in Beverly Hills. The moment word gets around that you might want to sell your house, they descend on you like scavengers. Crombie heard that I wanted to sell my house, and he came by to look at it.”

“And do you want to sell it?”

“I think so. It's a huge barn of a place on Palm Drive, and it makes no sense for me to go on living there. My life with Fuller was quick and merry. We were married only six months. Things still aren't settled. As soon as they are, I'll sell the house.”

“And when he was there, did anything out of the way happen? Anything he might have asked you?”

“About my house?”

“About anything.”

She shook her head. “No. Nothing unusual. Just the general questions—you know, how is the plumbing and does the roof leak and that sort of thing. It's an old house, a big Spanish Colonial, so it's far from perfect.”

“And that's the only time you saw Arthur Crombie?”

Did she hesitate? Was there something in her large blue eyes? If it was there, it was gone instantly. She was an amazingly self-controlled young woman, Masuto decided.

“Yes. The only time.”

Laura Crombie returned to the room. “I'm sorry,” she said to Masuto. “I behaved like an emotional fool. But this has been a terrible day, Sergeant.”

“I know that.”

“There are pains that go away. The loss of a child is not one of them,” she said.

“I know that too.”

“How long are you going to keep us here in this house?”

“I'm not keeping you here. I have no authority to keep you here. I suggest very strongly that the three of you spend the night here, and that no one leave the house tomorrow until I see you.”

“And when will that be?”

“Some time tomorrow afternoon, I hope.”

“I have a luncheon date and a hairdresser appointment,” Mitzie Fuller said, “not to mention a date that I broke tonight and put off until tomorrow.”

“I hope you'll be able to keep your date. I suggest you cancel the luncheon and the hairdresser appointment.”

“Who's going to scragg me at Tony Cooper's?”

“Stop it, Mitzie,” Nancy said. “He's deadly serious.”

“Can you put up Detective Beckman? I want him to stay here tonight.”

“If I have to give him my own bed,” Laura said. “Right now, the only men in the world who interest me are oversized policemen. But must I have that uniformed policeman standing outside my door?”

“He'll leave,” Masuto told her. “Detective Beckman can take care of anything that might come up.”