Even the Butler Was Poor

  EVEN THE BUTLER WAS POOR

  By Ron Goulart

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2012 / Ron Goulart

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

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  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Born in 1933, Ron Goulart has been a professional author for several decades and has over 180 books to his credit, including more than 50 science fiction novels and 20 some mystery novels. He's twice been nominated for an Edgar Award and is considered one of the country's leading authorities on comic books and comic strips. Ron lives with his wife Frances, also a writer, in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

  Book List

  A Graveyard of My Own

  After Things Fell Apart

  Even the Butler Was Poor

  Hellquad

  Nemo

  Now He Thinks He's Dead

  The Enormous Hourglass

  Upside Downside

  For a more complete bibliography visit his page at ISFDB on the Internet.

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  Even the Butler Was Poor

  Chapter 1

  The Eastport mall was less than a month old and still had a fresh, not quite finished look. No one had as yet died in it.

  At about ten minutes before the first death, H.J. Mavity was glancing at her wristwatch yet again. Muttering, "Schmuck," she gave an impatient shake of her head and then started another circuit of the sputtering fountain on the ground level of the new mall.

  She counted the mosaic tiles underfoot for a minute or two. Sniffed, with something less than pleasure, the mingled odors wafting out of the various open air restaurants—Señor Gringo's Mexi-Takeout, My Man Chumley Fish & Chips, Mother Malley's Oat Muffins.

  Now he's eighteen minutes late, she said to herself after checking her watch again.

  H.J., which stood for Helen Joanne—both names she was not particularly fond of—was a pretty, auburn-haired young woman of thirty-one. Thirty-two in June, a little less than two months from now. She was wearing faded jeans—faded by time, not the manufacturer—an emerald green pullover, and scuffed tennis shoes.

  Twenty minutes late. Well, what can you expect from a man who intends to take you to dinner in a shopping mall?

  This wasn't a date actually. She didn't date Rick Dell. Not anymore.

  Rick Dell. You should've known that anybody who'd stick a name like that on himself was only going to cause you grief and trouble. Plus an occasional migraine headache.

  H.J. walked by Fritz the Furrier's, the Horizons Unlimited Travel Service, Niknax, Inc., the House of 1000 Candles. She hesitated in front of the Tanglewood Book Shop, then decided not to go in again. The fat boy who was on duty tonight had eyed her suspiciously when she'd browsed in there—exactly fourteen minutes ago.

  What she liked to do was turn all the paperbacks that had covers she'd painted face out on the shelves. Quite naturally your average fat boy was going to be dubious about someone who came in to fiddle with novels having titles such as Princess Glitz, Sweet Pirate Lover and Passion in Manhattan. But that was her specialty right now. Romance.

  As far as book covers went. In real life, especially the past year or so, the romances had all been disappointing.

  Godawful, in fact.

  Topped off by Rick Dell.

  How'd you ever allow a man who changed his name, legally and not under duress, to Rick Dell get close enough to touch you? she asked herself. A comedian at that.

  The fat boy in the book store was eying her through the window, peering over a stack of half-price calendars. H.J. moved on, dodging three small teenage girls with hair the color of cotton candy. She slowed as she passed the travel agency.

  "Maybe I ought to go in and inquire about the rates to Devil's Island."

  Three plump older ladies with hair the color of weak ginger ale almost walked into her.

  H.J. returned to the fountain.

  "What did you throw in there?" a plump blonde mother was asking a forlorn little boy in a chocolate-stained warm-up suit.

  "A coin."

  "A coin, my ass. I see it floating there. The dollar Nana gave you."

  The boy commenced crying. He did it in a very enthusiastic way, eyes scrunching shut, mouth opening wide, smudgy fists clutching against his narrow chest.

  "Hush, shush," warned his mother as she leaned to try to retrieve the lost dollar from the blue-tinted water.

  H.J. walked over to the escalators. That was when she saw Rick Dell.

  Quite a few people noticed him at about the same time. He was stumbling his way down the upgoing stairway, coming a few steps at a time, slipping and being carried back. He was a tall, lean man of forty, dark-haired, wearing a grey suit. At that moment his face was stained with blood from cuts on his forehead and cheek. His necktie was undone and dangling, and several of the buttons on his blood-spattered white shirt were missing.

  Dell kept fighting his way down against the current, bumping into shoppers who were heading in the opposite direction.

  H.J. didn't move, didn't speak. She stood watching him struggle down to her. It bothered her that she didn't seem to feel anything. Not compassion or fear, not even embarrassment. It was as though she were watching this all on a television screen. The neighbor's screen, seen through a distant window.

  Finally Dell reached her. He came staggering off the wrong way escalator, his skin almost dead white and his blood a glittering crimson in the harsh mall lighting.

  He caught at her arm. "Sorry. . . I'm . . ."

  The first thing she said to him was, "Where's my money? You promised to pay back the $5,000 tonight, Rick."

  His eyes were glazed, not quite seeing her. "Money . . . thought I'd get it . . . and a lot more . . . but they screwed me up . . ."

  People were starting to gather, muttering and murmuring. Dell became aware of the crowd growing around them. He put a hand on her arm, a hand that was splotched with small raw burns. "Listen, H.J., you can . . . if you're careful . . . got to be careful . . . not like me . . . you can make a lot of money . . . what I owe you . . . and more . . ."

  She finally thought to ask, "Rick, what's happened to you?"

  "You have to get hold of what . . . I have . . . and use it . . . understand?"

  "Are you telling me you have my money stashed away somewhere?"

  "Too many people . . . too many ears . . . All you have to do to find it is . . . remember this." His grip on her arm tightened. "Ninety-nine clop clop."

  "What?"

  "Ninety-nine clop clop."

  His hand started sliding down her arm and, just shy of her wrist, let go.

  "What the hell, Rick, does that mean?"

  Dell sagged, then knelt. He swayed a few times, coughed twice, toppled over onto the mosaic tiles and was still. H.J. knew at once that he was dead.

  Someone else was saying something to her.

  "What?"

  "Do you know him?" asked a frail old m
an, pointing down.

  Momentarily distracted by the old man's glaring Hawaiian shirt, H.J. glanced from him to the sprawled body of Rick Dell. "Why, no," she answered, shaking her head a bit too vigorously. "I don't, no. He simply came up to me and started talking, poor man."

  "I think he's hurt bad," observed a pudgy teenage boy, starting to squat beside the dead man.

  H.J. suggested, "We'd better get the security guards to help him."

  "Good idea," agreed the old man, wiping his spectacles on his shirt tail. "I saw one over yonder by the hot dog stand."

  "I'll go fetch him," volunteered H.J., pivoting and pushing her way through the bystanders.

  She reached the stand in less than three minutes and kept going. She headed from there to the ground level parking lot and her second-hand Porsche.

  She didn't run, but she walked very fast.

  Possessing not a shred of extrasensory perception, Ben Spanner wasn't at all anticipating what was about to befall him.

  He was in the large white kitchen of his recently acquired house in Brimstone, Connecticut. A sandy-haired, almost plump man of thirty-seven, just a fraction short of five-foot eight, Ben, who wore a navy blue apron over his denim slacks and candy-striped shirt, was seated on a stool and consulting a paperback cookbook "Okay, Ceylon Chicken Curry, here we go," he said aloud. "One teaspoonful of ground turmeric." He left the stool and crossed over to the as yet unused spice cabinet and the wall near the sink. "Oregano, dill, anise. . . Where, sahib, is my cursed turmeric?"

  He delivered this last in a singsong Indian voice, one he'd adapted from an old Peter Sellers characterization.

  He'd have to watch that tonight. Some women didn't like voices.

  "Even my wife didn't."

  Although that wasn't the reason for the divorce. Well, not the main one.

  "Ah, here it is. Turmeric." He clutched up the small bottle.

  What was next?

  "One dessert spoonful of ground coriander or a handful of picked green coriander leaves.

  "Too late to trek out into the coriander fields to pick some tonight, old chap," he added in a clipped British Raj accent. "Better locate the bottled stuff. Righto, here she is."

  The door chimes sounded suddenly and unexpectedly.

  According to the bright brass clock over the handsome new stove, the time was just 8:15. A good fifteen minutes before his dinner date was due to show up. She was usually late besides, and you always heard her driving her Mercedes in.

  "Even so." Shedding the apron he went sprinting out of the kitchen and up the side staircase to the bathroom in the master bedroom. He grabbed the new aftershave, Jungleman, and slapped some on his cheeks. For good measure he tried a little in each armpit.

  Back down the stairs, two steps at a time.

  After brushing at his hair with his palm, Ben tried a few smiles out, settling for one that mingled surprise, sedate lust, and a bit of country squire. He yanked the wide, white front door open.

  "No, nope, not having any," he said when he saw who was standing out there on his welcome mat. "Shoo, go away, scram, begone." He slammed the door shut.

  Pounding started. "C'mon, Ben. This is important."

  Scowling, he opened the door an inch. "Mister Ben, him just leave for expedition to find the headwaters of the Orinoco, missy. Everybody in servant quarters gottum black plague, except me. I got blue plague with polka dots and moon—"

  "This is serious," H.J. Mavity told him. "I have to talk to you."

  "You had your chance."

  "Look, just because we've been divorced for two years doesn't mean we—"

  "Three years."

  "Two and a half exactly. The point now is—"

  "Three. See, this is just exactly how it was during our ten turbulent years of marriage, H.J. You were always arguing."

  "I don't consider it arguing to state the simple fact that we've been divorced for exactly two and a half years," she said. "I didn't track you here, though, to debate the—"

  "All you ever did during the bleak decade we were together was argue and sleep around."

  She held up a forefinger.

  "That's the wrong finger," he said.

  "I mean one."

  "What? You only slept with one guy at a time? Well, I suppose that's a bless—"

  "I mean I was unfaithful to you exactly once, Ben. Whether you care to . . . what's that awful odor? Did your cat die?"

  "My new aftershave. A very sultry sort of—"

  "I admit, sure, I did sleep with Guapo Garcia while you and I were married, but that was only because you—"

  "Guapo Garcia. Right, it's all coming back to me now. You always made me a cuckold with guys with silly names."

  "Guapo Garcia isn't a silly name for an actor, especially for an actor who happened to be starring in television show called Manhattan Eye at the time."

  "No more time for nostalgia, you have to depart. I'm expecting a—"

  "There I was, with one pitiful little affair. You on the other hand, Ben, were out cross-pollinating most of New England. You're the only man I know who went through his midlife crisis at the age of twenty-eight. I think you started philandering while I was paying off the minister who—"

  "I never philandered, not once. You simply got the demented notion that every time I had lunch with an agent or some lady from an ad agency who was interested in hiring me for voice work, I was actually in the sheets. Whereas I was really just furthering my career, struggling to earn enough to—"

  "Can you afford to live in this new place, by the way?"

  "I've been earning $200,000 a year since we parted three years ago. I'm just about the hottest voice man in—"

  "Buying or renting?"

  "Buying."

  H.J. shrugged. "It's pink."

  "I intend to repaint. Okay, it's been nice to see you again after all these years. Now scoot off my doorstep."

  "I have a problem."

  "Take it up with one of your many suitors. I am no longer—"

  "If I didn't have to come here to see you, I wouldn't have," his ex-wife informed him. "The thing is, Ben, there's a show business angle to this murder, a comedy angle I think. Since you know a lot about comedy routines and old jokes."

  "Murder?"

  She nodded. "Could I maybe come inside? Is the house pink inside, too?"

  He backed away, opening the door wider. "Mostly white," he answered. "What murder?"

  She walked into a big living room off the hall. After glancing briefly around, she settled in a low, black armchair. "This room almost shows taste."

  "That is another less than admirable habit of yours," he told her, stalking into the room. "You start a conversation and then drift off into—"

  "Okay, I'm sorry. It isn't every night my date falls dead in the Eastport Mall."

  "How was he killed?"

  "I don't know. But judging from all the blood and everything— well, he maybe was knifed or just beaten to death. Tortured, too."

  Ben lowered himself slowly onto his white sofa. "What did the police say?"

  "How should I know? I got the heck out of there as soon as he hit the tiles."

  He watched her for a few seconds. "You left the love of your life lying dead in the middle of a shopping plaza and just walked away?"

  "He's not exactly somebody I'm all that fond of," H.J. explained. "What I mean is—well, I did date him quite a bit a few months ago and then only infrequently. Back before I realized what a schmuck he was, I loaned him some money."

  "How much?"

  "A goodly sum."

  "In round numbers, H.J.?"

  She coughed into her hand. "Well, $5,000."

  "Where'd you get that kind of—"

  "I've been doing damn well since we divorced, too." She folded her arms under her breasts. "I usually don't go around loaning it out, though, but he said these loan sharks were going to break his legs or worse if—"

  "Obviously they did more than break his legs," he said. "A
s I understand commerce in this country, most loan sharks are connected with the Mafia. So maybe the best thing for you to do is forget all about this . . . what's his name anyway?"

  "Rick Dell. And he implied—"

  "That's even better than Guapo Garcia."

  "It isn't his real name."

  "It isn't anybody's real name."

  H.J. said, "Ben, will you sit absolutely still and just simply listen to me for awhile, please?"

  "Sure, okay. Except I'm expecting my date to arrive at any—"

  "Just sit and listen. Rick phoned me this afternoon, told me he was certain to have my money for me by tonight. He sounded very elated and pleased with himself."

  "And he arranged to meet you at that new mall to pay you?"

  "He said we could have a quick dinner there and then he'd hand over the money, yes."

  "Was he dead when you got there?"

  "Nope, but he was dying. He came down an up escalator. He looked really terrible and then he fell down. I knew right off he was dead, from the way he looked lying there."

  "Did he, do you know, have your money with him?"

  "He told me he didn't."

  "Then maybe the guy got jumped in the parking lot, mugged and—"

  "Not that parking lot, Ben. They have all kinds of security people prowling it."

  He leaned back in his chair. "What else did Rick Dell tell you before he died?"

  She said, "Now we're getting to the reason I came to you. I guess we've always had different opinions about your career. But you are, more or less, in show business and you do know quite a lot about comedy and jokes and the—"

  "Wait now." He held up a hand. "Did this guy give you some kind of dying message?"

  "That's what you could call it I suppose," she admitted, nodding. "See, I'm pretty certain he wanted me to have my money. He was trying to tell me where he'd hidden it." She crossed her legs, brushed at a speck on the knee of her jeans. "But he was uneasy about all the people, shoppers and all, who were gathering around. He tried to tell me, but he passed the information on in a way that only I would understand."