Bimbo Heaven by Marvin H. Albert

Author:Marvin H. Albert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: detective, mystery, sleuth, investigator, private eye
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

“The tone of your last message,” Fritz told me, somewhat stiffly, “was hardly polite.”

“I was worried about you,” I told him. “Where have you been all day?”

“Out working.” His stiffness eased a bit. “I can’t always carry my part of our partnership with telephone calls. In this case it required a good deal of leg work.”

“What have you got?”

“Fatigue.” Humor brought his own tone back to its normal warmth. “A heavy case of fatigue.”

He paused. Fritz’s pauses often meant a teasing stretching out of the suspense before he hit you with something juicy he’d turned up. I waited—refusing to let myself be drawn into asking what it was he’d found. A small reprisal for my afternoon of worry. Unreasonable but human.

When he spoke again I could hear that he was still holding off the juicy part: “I had a discussion with the lawyer who represented Ilona Szabo’s claims against the heirs of Marius Lejon. He gave me nothing useful. Except that he dislikes her. He says her expectations were unreasonable, and that he had to threaten to take her to court before she would sell most of her jewelry to pay what she owed him.”

“Think he was in collusion with the Lejon attorney?”

“Almost certainly. Which would explain his dislike of her. A common emotional response to wronging someone. A transformation of one’s guilt into righteous anger—until the guilt is buried deep and forgotten.”

Fritz paused again. I waited again.

“I had a much different time,” he said, “with the doctor Ilona Szabo worked for before she went off with Marius Lejon. He speaks of her with remembered fondness. I believe he was infatuated with her.”

“A lot of men would be.”

“So I gather. The doctor took her out to several dinners. At the time she was sharing a small apartment with two other young women. He was able to remember their names. The first one I found hasn’t seen or heard of our Ilona Szabo since she quit their shared apartment.”

Another pause. This time I gave Fritz the satisfaction of my prodding him: “But the other one has.”

“A lovely woman. Her name is Suzanne Fayard. I have a feeling she was somewhat smitten by my elderly but appreciative charm.”

I didn’t doubt it. There were few people, male or female, young or old, who were impervious to Fritz’s brand of old world charm when he wished to turn up the voltage. That was one quality age hadn’t dimmed at all.

“She happened to run into Ilona Szabo again only two weeks ago,” Fritz went on. “In a Paris restaurant. With a distinguished, good-looking man of about sixty. Ilona introduced him as Raymond Hayes. An American, but he spoke fairly good French.”

It sounded very much like Madame Chaplet’s cultured, handsome foreign gentleman. “The name doesn’t say anything to me,” I told Fritz. “Should it?”

“Not yet,” he said, with a certain relish. Fritz was a man who enjoyed his work; especially when it paid off. “I made enquiries about Raymond Hayes. He is a retired businessman from Atlanta, Georgia.

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