The Best American Noir of the Century

“When I got back to the office from lunch this afternoon,” she said, “David was out. He called me a little after three and told me to meet him at the corner of Fountain and Courtney. I was to take the Hollywood streetcar instead of a cab and wait for him there.”

“Did he say why?”

“No. He sounded nervous, upset. I was there within fifteen minutes, but he didn’t show up until almost a quarter to four.”

“Go on,” I said when she hesitated.

“Well, we went into an apartment building on Fountain. Dave took out some keys and used one of them to take mail out of a box with your name on it. Then he unlocked the inner door and we went up to your apartment. He had the key to it, too. He gave me the keys and we went into the bedroom. He told me to call you and what to say. Before that, though, he hunted up the vacuum cleaner and started it going. Then I talked to you on the phone.”

I stared at her. “You did fine. The cleaner kept me from realizing it wasn’t Donna’s voice, and I suppose at one time or another Helen must’ve found out Donna called me ‘Poopsie’ and told Dave about it. Big laugh! What happened after that?”

Her hands were clenched in her lap, whitening the knuckles. Her small breasts rose and fell under quick shallow breathing. Fear had taken most of the beauty out of her face.

“Dave opened one of the letters he had brought upstairs,” she said tonelessly, “and left it next to the phone. We went back downstairs and drove back to the office. On the way Dave stopped off and bought some cheap stationery. I used some of it to write that letter. He told me to mail at at the post office right away, then he walked out. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Secretaries like you,” I said sourly, “must take some finding. Whatever the boss says goes. You don’t find ‘em like that around the broadcasting studios.”

Her head swung up sharply. “I happen to love Dave…and he loves me. We’re going to be married — now that he’s free.”

My face ached from keeping my expression unchanged. “How nice for both of you. Only he’s got a wife, remember?”

She looked at me soberly. “Didn’t you know about that?”

“About what?”

“Helen Wainhope. She was killed in an automobile accident this afternoon.”

“When did you hear that?”

“David told me when he called in around three o’clock.”

I let my eyes drift to the gun in my hand. There was no point in flashing it around any longer. I slid it into one of my coat pockets and fished a cigarette out and used a green and gold table lighter to get it going. I said, “And all this hocus-pocus about signing my wife’s name to a phony letter, calling me on the phone and pretending to be her — all this on the same day Dave Wainhope’s wife dies — and you don’t even work up a healthy curiosity? I find that hard to believe, Miss Kemper. You must have known he was into something way over his head.”

“I love David,” she said simply.

I blew out some smoke. “Love isn’t good for a girl like you. Leave it alone. It makes you stupid. Good night, Miss Kemper.”

She didn’t move. A tear began to trace a jagged curve along her left cheek. I left her sitting there and went over to the door and out, closing it softly behind me.

VIII

At eleven o’clock at night there’s not much traffic on Sunset, especially when you get out past the bright two-mile stretch of the Strip with its Technicolor neons, its plush nightclubs crowded with columnists and casting-couch starlets and vacationing Iowans, its modernistic stucco buildings with agents’ names in stylized lettering across the fronts. I drove by them and dropped on down into Beverly Hills, where most of the homes were dark at this hour, through Brentwood, where a lot of stars hide out in big estates behind hedges and burglar alarms, and finally all that was behind me and I turned off Sunset onto Beverly Glen Boulevard and followed the climbing curves up into the foothills to the north.

The pattern was beginning to form. Dave Wainhope had known his wife was dead long before Sheriff Martell drove out to break the news to him. I saw that as meaning one thing: he must have had a hand in that “accident” on Stone Canyon Road. He could have driven out there with Helen, then let the car roll over the lip of the canyon with her in it. The motive was an old, old one: in love with another woman and his wife in the way.

That left only Donnas disappearance to account for. In a loose way I had that figured out too. She might have arrived at Dave’s home at the wrong time. I saw her walking in and seeing too much and getting herself bound and gagged and tucked away somewhere while Dave finished the job. Why he had used Donna’s car to stage the accident was something I couldn’t fit in for sure, although Sheriff Martell had mentioned that Helen’s car hadn’t been working.