Cash requested
The D.A.’s office has its own copyrighted brand of double talk. “An arrest is imminent” usually means the Prosecutor doesn’t have a suspect in sight. “Painstaking detective work has resulted in a roundup of the entire gang of criminals” can be translated to “a stool pigeon talked plenty.” Same with “inside job.” That’s police-ese for “no clues.”
But that last term is poison to any security man. We hear it enough. Countess Falsiebra accuses a floor maid of stealing a dinner ring, positive it must have been an “inside job.” I search around, find the ring where the countess left it, on the edge of the tub behind the shower curtain.
Calling an employee “thief” is bad enough. But if word got around we had a killer on our payroll, in twenty-four hours we’d have more empty rooms than all the unheated Maine motels in midwinter. If Ruth Moore could point the finger in some other direction, even in the direction of a fabulous guest like Tildy Millett, that was better than having one of the staff under suspicion.
But apparently she wasn’t sure it was the thing to do. To cover her indecision, she mumbled, “Excuse me,” slid into the bedroom at the left.
I followed as far as the door. A killer who’d wanted to observe the goings and comings in 21MM couldn’t have had a better watchtower than that particular bedroom. Its corridor door was exactly opposite Tildy’s bedroom. As I’d just told Hacklin, it wouldn’t have been difficult for any well-dressed lad with jaunty assurance to get a key to the suite paid for by Lanerd, Kenson & Fullbright.
It wouldn’t have been too much of a trick for such a person to keep out of sight; few of the visitors to the suite would have spent much time in that bedroom. The beds were littered with attaché cases, cartons of cigarettes, stacks of purple and yellow studio tickets bound with rubber bands.
“I ought to get Mister Lanerd’s permission before saying anything, Mister Vine.” She went to the bureau, turned her head to frown at me, reached into the drawer without looking, and pulled out a man’s monogrammed hanky. “But it’s no secret Tildy has a disposition that’s as unpredictable as a woman driver at a yellow light. She can be so-o-o sweet one minute, poison the next.”
“Why would she carve a man who was protecting her?”
“Maybe he wasn’t. If he’d been making a pass at her—”