Having Wonderful Crime by Craig Rice

Author:Craig Rice [Rice, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781558821255
Google: qHfXAQAACAAJ
Amazon: B000DEMVYG
Publisher: Tower Books
Published: 1944-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

GETTING INTO Gloria Garden's apartment hadn't been as difficult or expensive a task as Jake had anticipated. It was just a matter of getting acquainted with the janitor.

The janitor, one Carl Burns, was sufficiently impressed by Jake's Chicago Herald Examiner press card not to notice that it was eight years old, or to remember that the Herald Examiner was no longer in existence.

He was even more impressed by the fact that a copy of The Nation protruded from Jake's coat pocket. After all, he had no way of knowing that Jake had hung around the corner bar long enough to get a line on one Carl Burns, janitor, and on Carl Burns' political preferences.

When Jake whispered to him about the social significance of the Gloria Garden slaying, and the articles that could be written about it, he nodded wisely, and uncapped one of the bottles of beer Jake had brought along. Only, he said, shoving a glass of beer across the oilcloth table in the basement kitchen-apartment, it should be a book, not a series of articles. Now he, Carl Burns, had always planned to write a book—

When Jake confided that he, too, planned to write a book, Carl Burns came through with the key to Gloria Garden's apartment. When Jake unobtrusively left a ten-dollar bill under one of the beer bottles on the table, Carl Burns ignored it and offered to keep an eye out for intruders.

Jake took the key and went up the carpeted stairs. It was a small, three-story building, in the East Sixties, with an antique shop on the ground floor. Someone announced as “Detweiler, Dress Designs, Closed until May 15th” had the second floor; Gloria Garden had lived on the third. Carl Burns inhabited the rear basement.

Jake listened for a moment outside the door before he thrust in the key and opened it. Not a sound. He went in, closing and bolting the door behind him.

Gloria Garden, nee Hazel Puckett, had been a person of bad and expensive taste. The beige carpet was thick and spongy as June grass; over it were tossed, with an unsuccessful air of carelessness, bright little scatter rugs that pretended to have been made by hand in colonial looms. The heavy lace curtains would have done credit to an expensive boarding house, and an immense oil painting of a tired-looking man in a red coat and plumed hat hung over the fireplace. There was maple furniture everywhere, so much that Jake found himself wondering if he should have brought along a bucket to collect sirup.

There were glass ash trays and tiny china figures everywhere, and a magnificent pipe stand designed to look like a startled owl. End tables were placed strategically beside every chair, and glass-topped coffee tables turned up everywhere. In one corner, looking lost and incongruous, was a big, well-worn, red-leather armchair, with a footstool before it.

The effect was of much money spent, frantically, in an attempt to buy comfort and luxury. Jake looked around the room

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