The Screwball King Murder by Kin Platt

Author:Kin Platt [Platt, Kin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4049-3
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1978-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-two

Shirley Vance was just like regular people and had her name and number in the phone directory. She answered the phone in her unmistakable teeny-weeny baby-doll voice. I explained who I was and why I was calling. She didn’t put on airs about it.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said simply. “You can drop over if you like.”

She gave me the address. West Los Angeles. Between West-wood and Santa Monica, out of the high-rise and high-rent district.

Her apartment was like mine, a modest one-bedroom, although we differed on our obligations to neatness and furniture polishing. You could have eaten off Shirley Vance’s floor, or even the lady herself with her looking delectable in a one-piece tight-fitting jumpsuit, pink and with a lot of zippers leading to all the strategic places.

“I saw you at Hondo’s funeral,” she said. “Why would a detective go there? Were you a friend of his?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I had to be there to get an idea of some of the people he knew. I’m working on the theory that Hondo wasn’t accidentally drowned, as the newspapers have it, but that he was murdered.”

Her eyes were the lovely shade of cornflower blue and took your mind off her little-girl voice. “But that’s so silly,” she said. “He wasn’t a mean person at all. Why would anybody want to kill him?”

“That’s where I’m having trouble with my theory. I don’t know. I understand you were a friend of his, and I’d appreciate any of your impressions. If he was worried about anything, or had enemies.”

She leaned back on her sofa and closed her eyes. “Let me concentrate a second,” she said. “Then I can picture him just the way he was.” I waited for the briefest pause, and her eyes opened. She shivered, rubbed her arms, and then smiled. “For a moment, he was right here, with me. It’s real spooky when I do that. I could hear Hondo talking to me.”

“What was he saying?” I asked.

“He was telling me that the reason he does so many crazy things was, if he didn’t, nobody would know he was alive.”

“You’re telling me Hondo was insecure? An in-turning person, not the true extrovert type?”

She bobbed her pretty blond head without disturbing a silken strand. “That’s why he always felt so comfortable with me. He didn’t feel as if he had to do anything to prove who he was. He could simply be himself.”

“Okay. What was the real Hondo Kenyon like as himself?”

“Like many people,” she said. “He was afraid of high places. He didn’t like crowds, and he was terribly afraid of water. He told me he was always afraid of drowning.”

“He used the pool,” I said. “He must have liked to swim.”

“He didn’t like to,” Miss Vance corrected. “He only did it because he was afraid. He made himself do it.”

I leaned the weary old noggin back against the chair. “How did he feel about pitching? Did he have any personal revelations about that part of his life?”

Miss Vance seemed to bristle at the touch of sarcasm in my question.

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