Maid for Murder by Ozaki Milton

Author:Ozaki, Milton [Ozaki, Milton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Publisher: ACE
Published: 1955-12-21T11:14:48+00:00

9.

I awakened Wednesday morning feeling like I’d spent the night on the spiked cot of an Indian dervish. The sun was blazing through the venetian blinds, the air felt muggy; the day looked like a scorcher. I showered, dressed, and walked over to the Commonwealth drugstore for breakfast and the papers. The late Trib had a page two story headed: KISS KILLER OUT ON BAIL. It consisted of a mere statement of the facts, that Carl Guard, accused killer of Ella Shaw, had been released on $50,000 bail. Reading between the lines, I could see the fine political hand of Hara and Dockeray, for neither the police nor the state’s attorney’s office was mentioned. I half-expected to find an editorial condemning the state for allowing an indicted sex-killer his liberty pending trial, but the editorial columns were full of The Soot Menace and The Guaranteed Annual Wage. For once, I felt grateful to the UAW and CIO, There was nothing about Gloria Steen.

I drove down to my office, glanced through the mail, and made a few phone calls, one to Morrie telling him he might be getting a new client named Camille Chad. I didn’t give him any details because he was in a rush to prepare for a court appearance. Ideas were gnawing at me, but Hara’s stripping me of my P.I. card made me as vulnerable as a fish on dry land. No matter which way I flopped, I was bound to get jumped, and the record looked bad enough without adding deliberate non-compliance to the list. Finally, to keep from going nuts, I made out a deposit slip for Ability’s check for $500, dropped it off at the Cosmopolitan bank, and smoked cigarettes on the corner of Chicago and Clark until a Sun-Times truck came along and dropped a load of papers at the newsstand.

The banner head on the tabloid’s front page was:

MOVIE QUEEN ROBBED OF $100,000 IN JEWELS HERE; SECRETARY SLAIN!

Below the black, blaring headline was a large cut of Lisa Lincoln, showing the curvaceous redhead in a skin-tight bathing suit and a nighty-night version of her famous open-mouth smile, and a smaller cut of a plain-faced girl with sad eyes and a page-boy bob. The caption beneath the large cut read: Lisa Lincoln, star of Strike-Out, whose suite at the Ambassador Hotel here was ransacked early this morning by daring thieves who escaped with $100,000 in jewels. The other cut bore a shorter caption: Gloria Steen, 23, secretary of Metro-Urban star, who met death in attempt to prevent robbery. (Story on Page 3.)

Incredulously, I turned to page three.

The story ran for two columns and boiled down to this: Lisa Lincoln had retired early with a headache. She had awakened at three in the a.m., when the effects of a sleeping potion she had taken wore off. Intending to find a book and read awhile, she had turned on the lamp beside her bed, thrown on a robe, and gone into the adjoining room, which served as a combination parlor and study.

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