Meat for Murder by Lange Lewis

Author:Lange Lewis [Press, Wildside]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

SPEAKING OF POISONS

RITA CALLENDER lived in St. James Place, the most exclusive street in Los Angeles, exclusive in the literal sense of the word, for it is just two blocks long, with wrought-iron gates at each end. Tuck parked the black car near the sign saying, All Deliveries Must Be Made via the Alley, and he and Brigit passed through the portals. The deliberately splendid, haughtily ugly old houses faced each other across the sunny street like grandes dames at a dinner table.

“I haven’t seen lace curtains since I was a little girl,” marveled Brigit.

“Keep your eye peeled for a pair of spanking bays,” advised Tuck.

The house where Rita lived was colonial and red brick. The white door was opened by Rita’s mother, a stumpy woman with mournful eyes. She told them that Rita had risen at twelve and departed with a young man for lunch. The death of Falkoner did not move her one way or another. “She will go around with odd people,” said Mrs. Callender. “I don’t know why. She has really everything. But she will do it. I’ll tell her you called.”

* * * *

Larry Harvers also lived in Los Angeles, on a vigorously middle-class street where every other house was a stucco box containing four flats. The houses that weren’t flats were tan and clapboard with deep eaves and small lawns, or else brown-shingle, two-story places that did not seem to belong at all to the squat palm trees on each half of the front lawn which was inevitably bisected by a cement walk leading uncompromisingly to the front door. Larry Harvers, they found, lived in a trailer parked beside the driveway at the rear of one of these. He peered at them through a small square window which just held his face, and opened the door.

“I’m Lieutenant Tuck, of the Los Angeles Homicide Squad,” Tuck said. “I have to ask you a few questions.”

“Come in,” invited Harvers. They did, and Tuck felt the walls pressing in on his brain. The little room would be well peopled with Harvers alone inside. With Tuck and Brigit there too, it gave him the distinct feeling of burial alive.

When Tuck told him of Falkoner’s death, Harvers’s little eyes went round with surprise. “No! Really!” He leaned forward almost avidly. “How did he die?”

“Poison.”

Harvers thought for a minute. “Say. Maybe you can tell me. Aren’t I right in believing that you can sue the estate of a dead man?”

Tuck was mildly startled. “Yes. You’re right.”

“Whee!” said Harvers, bringing his plump hands together in a soundless clap. “We collect.” He looked straight at Tuck. “He owes a friend and me $500.”

“I know. There’s something else I want to know. What did you do last night?”

“I didn’t move a muscle. I lay right there on that bunk on which you’re sitting rather uncomfortably, I fear, and finished reading The Dove’s Nest. Have you read it?” They shook their heads, and he said earnestly in a voice full of interest and respect, “Katherine Mansfield’s one of the great modern writers, I think.

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