Devil's Garden by Ace Atkins

Author:Ace Atkins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Trials (Murder) - California, Hammett, Fiction, Trials (Murder), Espionage, Dashiell, Virginia, California, Fiction - Espionage, Thriller, Arbuckle, Private investigators, Noir fiction, Roscoe, Children's 12-Up - Fiction - Espionage, Biographical fiction, Historical, Motion picture actors and actresses, Thrillers, Intrigue, Mystery & Detective - Historical, Mystery & Detective, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Rappe, General, Suspense, American Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780399155369
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Published: 2009-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

CAPTAIN OF DETECTIVES Duncan Matheson checked the time on the wall clock and then flicked open his gold timepiece. Satisfied they matched and all was right in San Francisco, he clicked it closed and hung it back in his vest pocket. He took a seat across from Maude Delmont and smiled at her. He offered her coffee. He offered her a cigarette.

He wanted to know more about Cassius Clay Woods in Madera. She said it had been a misunderstanding. She said he’d beaten her.

And then he asked about Earl Lynn in Los Angeles.

“Come again?”

“Surely you know Mr. Lynn?”

“I may have met someone by that name.”

Griff Kennedy coughed behind her and the cough was so sudden and sharp that it made her jump a little. “According to Mr. Lynn, you bragged about carrying his child last year. Musta been a quick meeting.”

“That is a personal matter.”

Kennedy coughed again. Maude couldn’t see him, and his talking and coughing and general harrumphing was starting to piss her off. She turned in her chair to glower at him a bit.

“I have a speaking engagement at two,” Maude said.

“It can wait,” Kennedy said.

“Where’s your partner?” she asked.

“Tom? He’s in Los Angeles.”

“I see.”

“With Mr. Lynn.”

“Does the San Francisco Police Department normally poke into the affairs of taxpaying citizens? I find poking into the private life of a woman to be quite unsavory.”

“Un-what?” Kennedy asked.

“Unsavory.”

Harrumph.

Matheson walked. He twirled the end of his mustaches like a one-reel villain. He looked out from his glass wall into the pool of detectives smoking and talking with stoolies, con men, rapists, and robbers.

Maude straightened her hat and readjusted the black parasol in her hand. All her wardrobe was black now. She’s become known for it, her signature. She planned on buying a little black dog perhaps, a little dog that would attend the trials with her, and she thought about naming the little pooch Virginia after her poor, dear dead friend.

“Mr. Lynn claims you wanted five thousand dollars to make the baby go away,” Matheson said.

“That’s a fool’s talk . . .”

“Mr. Lynn has agreed to be a character witness in the trial.”

“He’s a liar.”

“He says he has documentation that you asked for money,” Matheson said.

“He told Detective Reagan that he was not or could not be intimate with you,” fathead Kennedy said. “That ring any bells?”

Maude remembered an old grifter adage, one she’d learned long before California from an old-timer in Wichita, but the rule was simple and everlasting. When they’re on to you, you brass the son of a bitch out.

Maude stood.

“I find this talk to be gutter talk and unfitting to a woman. While you two should be out finding women who have been ill-treated by that beastly Arbuckle, you are here questioning my character with lies and rumors. From what I recall, Mr. Lynn is a mixed-up little man who has no interest in women whatsoever. He is what is called in polite society a ‘sissy.’ Why would I have anything to do with a soul like that? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a speaking engagement with the fine women of this city.

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