Lucky Stiff by Craig Rice (best large ebook reader txt) 📕
This was their wedding anniversary. He couldn't even remember which one. It didn't really matter. All that mattered was the waking up every morning and seeing her long, silky hair spread out on the pillow, and her face, childlike in sleep, nestled in her arm. Coffee in the sunroom in the morning, Helene in her violet chiffon negligee, or her fluffy white robe, or her bandanna sunsuit, or, on special occasions, the blue satin house pajamas she'd been wearing the first time they met.
"Helene," he said, "every time I look at you I feel as if someone had just given my heart a hot-foot."
Her eyes warmed. "Darling," she whispered, "I didn't know you were a poet!" This time her hand reached out for his, and it wasn't icy cold.
Jake Justus, ex-reporter, ex-press agent, and, as he occasionally reminded himself, definitely ex-amateur detective, sighed again. Happily, this time. That unpleasant knot of anxiety in h
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One minute there had been darkness and shifting mist. The next, there was a ghost, pale gray, transparent, floating. It moved halfway across the lawn and paused.
Jake held Helene’s hand, tight. “Don’t believe it,” he muttered. “Shut your eyes. It’ll go away.”
“Perfect nonsense,” Helene said. “How can it go away when it isn’t really there?” She turned to look at the little lawyer. “Malone!” He was grinning.
“That black raincape with the hood was a wonderful idea,” Anna Marie’s voice came across the lawn. “Look.”
Jake and Helene looked, in spite of themselves. The ghost vanished. A moment later it appeared again, and a silvery little laugh came echoing through the trees. “Goodnight, Malone,” Jake said. “This has been a lot of fun, but we have a very important engagement—”
“Wait,” Malone said.
Anna Marie walked through the mists, dressed in the gray suit and the little hat with the floating veil, carrying the black raincape over her arm. She paused where a ray from the street lamp struck her face, and took a cigarette from her purse.
“Go away,” Jake said, his teeth clenched.
“I won’t,” Anna Marie said pleasantly.
Malone lit a match for her cigarette and said, “She doesn’t have to go away. She’s my client.”
Helene choked on an indrawn breath. She said, in a dangerously calm voice, “Malone, are you—”
“Do I have bells in my battery?” the lawyer asked. “No. Please don’t be disturbed.” He lit a cigar, the glare of the match throwing a weird orange glare over his face. “Did I ever tell you about my apparition?”
“Damn you, Malone,” Jake said. He stared at Anna Marie for a minute and then demanded, “Are you real?”
“Sure I’m real. I’m alive, too. If you don’t believe it, pinch me.”
“My wife doesn’t like me to pinch girls or ghosts,” Jake said. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was losing a mind, and he hoped it was someone else’s, not his.
Helene said, “I don’t know just what this situation is, but whatever it is, it calls for a drink. There’s a bottle in the car. In the meantime, Malone, if there is an explanation—”
The explanation had been made, in detail, by the time they were comfortably settled in the convertible.
“So you really are a ghost.” Helene said at last. She reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a bottle of rye, uncorked it, and passed it to Anna Marie. “Why did you haunt us?”
“We had to have a rehearsal,” Malone said, gallantly holding the bottle for Anna Marie. “Besides, we need you.”
“I won’t be haunted,” Jake said stubbornly. “I won’t, understand? Go pick on somebody else. Go on, disappear, will you?”
Anna Marie obligingly pulled the raincape over her head and vanished. Jake groaned.
“Stop scaring my husband,” Helene said indignantly, “or else give me back my rye. Where to, Malone, and what next?”
“There’s a very nice club on Cicero Road,” Malone began, “where—” He paused, cleared his throat apologetically, and gave the number of Anna Marie’s apartment. “But we have a little burglary job to attend to first.” He added, “If a ghost can’t break into her own apartment—’
“First time I ever heard of a ghost needing a skeleton key,” Helene said. The convertible moved away from the curb and headed for the near north side.
Jake stole a glance in the rearview mirror. Anna Marie’s face was pale, but definitely flesh and blood. It seemed to him that several thousand tons had slid away from his conscience. A miracle—yes, it had been a miracle—had saved her life. Yet he wasn’t completely happy. He had an unpleasant premonition that there was going to be a lot of trouble before this business was finished.
As the convertible swung into Lake Shore Drive, the fog deepened. Cars crept along through the gray-white darkness.
“If you had to be a ghost,” Jake said, “you certainly picked the right weather for it.”
Anna Marie giggled. It was a warm, reassuring giggle, and it made him feel much better. “An old friend of mine works in the weather bureau.”
“Oh, of course,” Jake said. “And you got in touch with him via Ouija board.”
Helene turned right, then left, and stopped the convertible in front of the apartment building whose address Malone had given her. “What now, Malone.”
“Let me get out of this stuff Mick Herman lent me,” Malone said, going through his pockets. “Smart guy, Mick. Married the daughter of one of the best locksmiths in the world. She was thirty-eight, a spinster, and looked like the other side of a mud fence, but he treated her like a princess and gave her everything her little heart desired. The lock hasn’t been made his keys and tools can’t open.”
“Handy person to know,” Helene said. “But what do you want us to do?”
“Park here where it’s fairly dark, wait for us, and watch for trouble,” Malone said.
Anna Marie added, “The other apartment in the building is empty. If you see anyone going in, honk.”
“I’ll do this,” Helene said, “with the horn.” She drummed out the first eight notes of the “Habanera” on the steering wheel. “And if someone does go in, and if I do do this”—she repeated the rhythm—“what next?”
“Start your motor, hold the car in gear, and be ready for anything,” Malone said.
“Meanwhile, you’ll be doing what?” Jake asked.
“We’ll burn down that bridge when we come to it,” Malone said, helping Anna Marie out of the convertible.
A moment later they disappeared into the building. Jake snuggled close to Helene’s shoulder. “Why did I marry a girl who loves trouble?” he complained.
“Because I’m irresistible,” she told him. She sighed. “Jake, she is beautiful.”
“M’m-h’m,” Jake said. “Not like you, though.”
“I don’t blame Malone a bit.”
“Huh? What about Malone?”
“You mean you haven’t noticed?” Then a whisper. “Jake!”
A short, slender man in a gabardine raincoat and snap-brim hat had paused in front of the apartment building, and started up the steps. Helene played the “Habanera” on the horn, started the motor, and put the car in gear. Jake held open the door.
Moments passed. A lot of them.
Suddenly Malone came down the steps, in a hurry. His round face was pale.
“A man in a tan raincoat went into the house.”
“Hell,” Malone said. He scowled. “We didn’t see or hear anybody. Never mind that now. Come inside.”
Helene shut off the motor. They followed him across the sidewalk and into the building.
One dim light showed in Anna Marie’s parlor, making it look as half-real and ghostly as Anna Marie herself. But it was bright enough to show Jesse Conway lying on the thick, pale blue carpet, a bullet hole in his forehead.
“He’s been dead a long time,” Malone said.
Jake stared at the body, and then at the little lawyer.
“In case you don’t recognize him,” Malone added, “it’s Jesse Conway.”
“No it isn’t,” Jake said suddenly. “That isn’t Jesse Conway. That’s— Ambersley!”
Helene said, “Never mind the guy’s name and address right now. As far as I’m concerned, he can be Judge Crater.” Her voice was calm, but Malone suspected that her teeth were getting ready to chatter. “The B of I boys are pretty efficient. Let them find out who he was. We saw someone come in this house, and I have a hunch we ought to find out where he is, and what he’s doing.”
“She’s right,” Malone said. He had an unpleasant feeling that in another minute his own teeth were going to chatter. “Jake, you want to go upstairs and take a look around?”
“No,” Jake said firmly. “Do you?” He added, in a milder tone, “All right. We’ll both go.”
The little lawyer said, “Well—but I think someone ought to stay here and protect the women.” Helene said one very rude word.
“All right, all right,” Malone said hastily. “But I’d feel better if I had a gun. Anna Marie, you don’t happen to have one tucked away somewhere here?” She shook her head.
“Gun!” Suddenly Helene’s eyes blazed blue fire. “Wait! Anna Marie! Don’t move!” She stood there for a moment, staring at Anna Marie. “Now I know!”
“What?” It was Jake and Malone at once. She shook her head. “Never mind. It can wait. I won’t forget it again. This isn’t a time to discuss, it’s a time to act.
And as soon as—”
She stopped almost in the middle of a word. There were soft, slow footsteps coming down the stairs, and just a faint creaking of the stairs themselves. The footsteps came down the hall and paused just outside the door.
“Duck!” Anna Marie hissed, pointing to the bedroom door. Jake, Helene, and Malone ducked, just as Anna Marie switched off the light.
There was the sound of the door being slowly and cautiously tried, then of a key being slowly and cautiously inserted in the lock. They held their breaths.
Through the crack in the bedroom door they could see the hall door opening, letting in a faint greenish light from the hall outside. They could see Anna Marie, a misty, pale gray figure. She seemed to be suspended in the air, almost a foot above the floor.
The man in the tan gabardine raincoat shrieked, then fled. They could hear his racing footsteps on the sidewalk outside as he tore past.
Anna Marie stepped down from the footstool, shut the door, turned on the light, and prophesied calmly, “He won’t be back. Not for a while.”
“You have great presence of mind,” Jake said, wiping his brow. “Who was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” said Malone.
Helene said, “I do. He’s the young man who was in The Happy Days saloon this afternoon with Mrs. Childers. But what was he doing here? And why did he go upstairs first, instead of here?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Jake said. “All I know is we promised von Flanagan a corpse, and we’ve found him one. The one that called up and said he was being murdered, and added ‘Tell Malone—Anna Marie—’.”
“That’s right,” Malone said. He took out a cigar, started to unwrap it, glanced at the late Jesse Conway, and put it back in his pocket. “It can’t be anyone else. Jesse Conway knew that Anna Marie was alive. He knew she was going to get in touch with me. Furthermore, he tried to phone me and couldn’t reach me.”
He scowled and said, “I never liked Jesse Conway much, but now I wish that he’d succeeded.”
“Nobody could have saved his life,” Anna Marie whispered. “Not even you, Malone.”
“I might not even have tried,” Malone said. He took the cigar out again and managed a nice compromise by unwrapping it and holding it unlighted. “But anyway, his fingerprints are probably on the telephone receiver and”—his eyes narrowed for a moment—“there’s even a chance that his murderer’s will be.”
“I tell you, his name was Ambersley,” Jake said, a little wildly. “The guy I—” He started to say, “Paid off to,” caught himself in time, and finished, “—met that time I told you about.”
“One and the same man,” Malone said, quickly and smoothly. “I should have recognized him from your description this afternoon.” He added, “But why did he get himself murdered in this particular apartment? Why was he here, and why was his murderer here?”
“And why did the man in the tan raincoat go upstairs?” Helene demanded. “We’re getting a lot of whys and no wherefores, Malone.”
The little lawyer turned to Anna Marie. “What was— what is—upstairs? Whose apartment?”
“Nobody’s.” She sat down on the arm of a pale rose brocade chair. “Big Joe rented it. With me here,
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