The Topless Tulip Caper by Block Lawrence

Author:Block, Lawrence [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780850315721
Publisher: London Allison & Busby 1984, c1975
Published: 1984-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

Nine

“THEY DIDN’T BEAT me up,” I said. “What they basically did was ignore me. I had a lot of trouble making them believe I was a detective. They thought I wanted the girls’ names because I was trying to make out with them, for Pete’s sake.”

“They seem good judges of character,” Haig murmured.

I ignored that. “The barmaid is Jan Remo. She’s been working there for almost a year. She’s divorced, and has a two-year-old kid. The other waitress—not Maeve—is named Rita Cubbage. She just started there about a week ago. I can see them both late tonight if I’m awake because they’ll be working their usual shifts.”

“The club will be open, then? In spite of the tragedy?”

“Leemy doesn’t think it’s a tragedy. He thinks it’s a bonanza. He’s got a sign in the window that you’d love. ‘See the stage where Cherry Bounce was murdered! See the show so hot it might kill you!’“

“You’re making this up.”

“I am not.”

“Heavens,” Haig said.

We were in his office. It was almost five-thirty and I had just finished summing up my day in my inimitable fashion. I had wanted to rush my report so that I could see Tulip, who had finally been sprung from jail by one of Addison Shiver’s underlings and had been conveyed directly to Haig’s house after a quick stop at her apartment to shower and change her clothes and feed her fish. Haig had spent about an hour grilling her, and then when I got back I hardly had time to say hello before he’d banished her to the fourth floor so that he could hear my report privately.

She hadn’t seemed to mind the banishment—she’d been itching to study Haig’s operation up there—but I minded. So I tried to hurry my report but Haig wasn’t having any. He made me go over everything in detail and then he sat there with his feet up and I wanted to yell at him.

I said, “So far I’m putting my money on Haskell Henderson. His motives aren’t entirely rational, but no one who eats like that is going to behave rationally. You wind up with alfalfa on the brain. Here’s what happened. He resented the fact that Tulip’s fish ate a better diet than she did. He kept giving her wheat germ and she kept feeding it to the fish and this infuriated him. He figured if he poisoned her fish she’d have to eat the wheat germ herself because there wouldn’t be any fish to feed it to and she wouldn’t want to let it go to waste. So he made himself some strychnine. I looked up poisons in the encyclopedia, incidentally. Strychnine and curare are both neurotics, which would give them something in common with old Haskell.”

“That means they act on the nervous system.”

“I know what it means. I was making a funny. I learned that strychnine is extracted from the seeds and bark of various plants. Henderson’s got seeds and bark of everything else at Doctor Ecology, so why

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