Crime Noir by Anthology

Author:Anthology [Anthology]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

BUILD ANOTHER COFFIN

by HAROLD Q. MASUR

He’s crazy!” she said. “Stark, raving mad! How can they let such a man be a private detective? I never saw anybody act like him in all my life. Why, it’s ridiculous! He simply hasn’t got all his buttons. Do you know what he did, Mr. Jordan?”

“What did he do?”

“He made faces at me and told me to go home.” She expelled a short gasp of utter frustration.

“Please, Mrs. Denney,” I said, “try to relax.”

“Relax?” Her voice went up a full octave. “How can I after talking to such a lunatic?”

What she needed was a shot of brandy to quiet her nerves. I reached behind me into the telephone table and got out the office bottle and poured. “Say when.” But she seemed to have lost her voice, or else she was very thirsty, because I had to quit pouring in order to save my good Napoleon brandy from slopping over the rim of the glass onto the lap of my gray tweed pants.

She drank it like water, with no perceptible effect. Her nostrils were still distended, her bosom continued to heave, and she couldn’t find a comfortable spot in the red leather client’s chair. She had walked unannounced into my office ten minutes before. Her name was Grace Denney and she was married, which seemed a bit unfair, since an architectural design like hers isn’t constructed every day and ought not to be taken out of circulation, though I couldn’t blame any man for wanting an exclusive on it.

She was tall, a lithe, sleek, supple item, slender at the hips, rising like an hourglass to emerge burstingly from the square-cut neckline of a simple dress, wondrously and sumptuously assembled. When you came to her face, reluctantly, you saw luminous brown eyes and cherry-red lips, full and shining. From Cleopatra on down, she had them all stopped. Whatever you might need, wherever you were, she had it, in spades. It made no difference, your age or your physical condition, here was a girl who could put spring in an old man’s legs and fire in a young man’s blood.

Emotional pressure had made her story a little disjointed. I had gathered only that she was from California, that she had written to a private detective named Lester Britt, asking him to find out why an aunt of hers never answered any letters, that she had arrived yesterday, paid a visit on Mr. Britt, and found his behavior most unorthodox, to say the least.

The brandy, I saw, was beginning to work. She settled back in the chair, breathing easier.

“That’s better,” I said. “Now, Mrs. Denney, let’s get the facts untangled. This aunt of yours, tell me about her.”

She moistened her lips. “Aunt Paula. Mrs. Paula Larsen. She’s a widow, about eighty, I’d say, maybe more. She lives at the Vandam Nursing Home on Long Island.”

“Who supports her?”

“Supports her?” Grace Denney snorted politely. “Aunt Paula has annuities that pay her at least five hundred dollars a week. Her husband was my mother’s brother.

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