Groucho Marx, Master Detective Page 7

  “Did Groucho Marx call me, Rita?”

  “This isn’t Rita, although you’re not the first one today who’s made that mistake. I’m Irene and I only started working here yesterday,” she explained. “Yes, Mr. Marx phoned you at eight-fourteen A.M.”

  “Any message?”

  “Here’s exactly what he told me: Those halfwits from the ad agency want to see you two early this afternoon and to give him a ring as soon as you can.”

  “Any other messages?”

  She hesitated a few seconds before saying, “Well, a Mr. Anderson phoned you at six twenty-two A.M.”

  I didn’t recognize the name. “What’d he want?”

  “I know I’m not supposed to get emotionally involved with our clients, nor am I to pass judgments,” she said apologetically. “But I got to tell you, Mr. Denby, he sounded kind of spooky.”

  “Spooky?”

  “Very cold and distant and … nasty,” she answered. “I guess he works for a travel agency, but he sure doesn’t have much of a telephone personality.”

  “What exactly did this guy say, Irene?”

  “That he was Mr. Anderson and he wanted to suggest that you ought to take a trip out of town right away. For your health’s sake, he said.”

  “I see, yeah. Is that about it for messages?”

  “That’s the lot, sorry. I know you were probably hoping that a zillion people phoned offering you jobs, but—”

  “I’ve got all the jobs I can handle, thanks.” After returning the receiver to its cradle, I leaned back and scanned the peach-colored stucco ceiling.

  “We’re not going to be able to spend the day together, are we?”

  “Afraid not.”

  Jane was standing in the doorway, looking very pretty in tan slacks and a green pullover. “But that’s not why you’re looking that way. What’s wrong, Frank?”

  “Nothing serious. Just one of those annoying death threats.”

  She came hurrying over and sat beside me. “Damn it, you’ve got to stop playing detective. You and Groucho both,” she told me, taking hold of my hand.

  “I don’t think we can stop, Jane,” I said. “We have to keep going now just to find out who in the hell is trying to do us harm.”

  “That’s a dumb attitude,” she commented. “And I really hate to believe I’m falling for a man who’s dumb.”

  I reached again for the phone. “I’d better phone Groucho.”

  “Tell him he’s dumb, too.”

  I promised I would.

  Fourteen

  When the handsome blond man in the crimson jacket and gold trousers walked up and sneered at my Plymouth coupe, I realized that the afternoon was going to be even worse than I’d anticipated.

  I could hear the babble of many voices and music, too. A group that was trying very hard to sound like Benny Goodman’s quartet was playing “Avalon.” Or maybe it actually was Goodman. Warren Stander, vice president for programming at NBN, could certainly afford the real one.

  Groucho had informed me, when I’d phoned him from Jane’s, that we’d been summoned to Stander’s new mansion in Bel Air for a reading of the latest draft of the Groucho Marx, Master Detective script. It seemed that Junior Orem, our sponsor, had just arrived in Southern California and was eager to have the script read to him. If it wasn’t too much trouble, it would be nice if Groucho and I would drop by Stander’s place at around one P.M. and run through the thing for him. Nothing formal, you understand, no real actors except for Groucho. I could do the rest of the parts. Just Stander and Orem and Jape Griffin, the account executive, and a few other toadies and hangers-on were going to sit in on the reading.

  “This whole thing is giving me a severe pain in the fanny,” Groucho had confided that morning. “But, foolish little thing that I am, I seem to have developed this morbid fascination with money. My ne’er-do-well brother Chico is always borrowing it to pay off a pack of gamblers, my wife requires heaps of it—and, hell, I can use the stuff myself, if you must know. I appreciate the fact that you’re reluctant to tear yourself away from Mistress Danner, especially in light of the lewd things you probably did to her all through the night and if you didn’t do lewd things you ought to have your head examined, which our organization will be more than glad to do for you if you will simply wrap the head in sturdy brown paper, tie it with sturdy brown twine and ship it to our Pasadena office. Mark it all over Musk Melons! Fragile! And then, in red crayon scrawl S.W.A.K. That means Sealed With A Kiss and will prompt Mr. Mulrooney in shipping to get off his … Where was I?”

  “About six miles out of Altoona, the last time we got a report from the weather bureau.”

  “Oh, it all comes back to me now,” said Groucho. “Meet me at Warren Stander’s new eyesore in Bel Air at about oneish. We’ll whiz through the script, take a bow, pass the hat and get the hell out of there. Unpleasant, to be sure, but one of the things that must be done. We’ll get back to the case later on today.”

  “Speaking of that, I—”

  “I must be going,” he’d said and hung up.

  At a few minutes shy of one that afternoon the big blond parking attendant was urging me out of my car. “I’ll park this behind some shrubbery so no one will see it, sir,” he said, taking my place at the wheel. “Save us both a lot of embarrassment.”

  From the sound of it, the group that had gathered to hear the script read had grown substantially. Giving a resigned sigh, I watched my car go rattling off down the white curving drive and disappear. Then I climbed up a twisting marble staircase, through a density of tropical plants and trees and along a broad path that skirted Stander’s vaguely Moorish mansion.

  It was Benny Goodman, as well as Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton. They were playing on a bandstand that had been set up on the wide expanse of extremely green lawn that went stretching away from the far side of the Olympic-size swimming pool.

  There were at least two hundred people back there, wandering the grounds, using the pool and patronizing the bar that had been set up in an ornate gazebo just to the left of the music.

  I noticed Jack Benny having a very serious conversation with Edgar Bergen. Joan Blondell was hugging somebody I think was a stuntman over at Warner’s. Cesar Romero was apparently demonstrating how to do a handstand for a circle of women that included Carole Lombard, Pauline Moore, Hedda Hopper and Patsy Kelly. Mickey Rooney, wearing a pair of somewhat droopy swim trunks, was climbing up on the bandstand and looked to be trying to persuade Krupa to let him sit in on the drums.

  Chester Morris, wearing a very handsome double-breasted pin-stripe suit, came up and shook my hand. “Good luck on the new show, kid,” he said.

  “You’re looking very dapper.”

  “It’s in my contract.”

  “Seen Groucho?”

  “Down by the gazebo a minute ago.”

  We shook hands again and I headed for the outdoor bar. There were no fewer than three red-coated bartenders up there mixing drinks for a crowd of about forty people. Groucho, however, was at the foot of the stairs leading up to the bar, a large yellow daisy tucked behind his left ear.

  A handsome middle-aged woman in a flowered tea dress and picture hat was on the first step, smiling down at him.

  I hurried down there. “Hello, Miss Dumont,” I said to the actress. “Groucho, I thought you told me we were going to do this for maybe a dozen people.”

  “The situation got somewhat out of hand.”

  “I can read that stuff in a meeting room with a bunch of executives maybe,” I told him. “But not in front of a show business crowd. I’m not an actor or—”

  “You could be,” he told me, placing both hands over his heart, “the noblest actor of your generation, sonny boy, if only you’d pay more attention to your elocution lessons. Or even your electrocution lessons for that matter.” He sighed deeply, batting his eyelashes. “Why I was chatting, tête-à-tête to be sure, with De Mille only the other day about you. That’s Abe De Mille who runs a
kosher delicatessen on Spring Street. ‘Gummo,’ he said, mistaking me for one of my less toothsome brothers, ‘that Denby lad has the makings of a great thespian if only he’d pay more attention to his elocution.’ I avoided the obvious plays on words connected with the word thespian and he continued his discourse. ‘Gumbo,’ he said, this time mistaking me for a bowl of soup, ‘you ought to get that lad to read from a radio script up on a platform in front of a horde of drunken, oversexed cinemactors.’ With which sentiment I heartily concur. I concluded our inspiring conversation by advising him that he’d never prosper so long as he tries to operate a delicatessen in the heart of Chinatown.”

  Margaret Dumont gave me a sympathetic look. “Nothing can be done about him,” she said quietly.

  Nodding, I asked him, “When are we supposed to stage this fiasco?”

  “As soon as Junior Orem arrives.”

  “He’s not here yet?”

  “I believe he went out for a cup of coffee and is expected back shortly.”

  “If Miss Dumont will excuse you, I want to talk to you in private, Groucho.”

  She made a dismissive gesture. “You’re more than welcome to him.”

  I started moving away from the gazebo and Groucho followed. “What’s bothering you, Rollo? You appear to … Ah, good afternoon, Myrna. Good afternoon, Eleanor. Good afternoon, Joan.”

  Myrna Loy, Eleanor Powell and Joan Crawford, each clad in a bright tea dress, came walking by arm in arm.

  Loy smiled at him. Powell smiled, too. But from Crawford there was only a fleeting and disdainful glance.

  Groucho pursed his lips. “Joan has never fully recuperated from that incident in the phone booth,” he remarked with a sad shake of his head. “There’s a mammoth greenhouse down behind that stand of pine trees yonder. Is this about Peg?”

  “About her and about me,” I said.

  “We’ll have oodles of privacy there,” he assured me. “Not to mention hay fever.”

  Fifteen

  “But that means we’re making progress,” insisted Groucho as we strolled along a lane between rows of potted flowers. “These scoundrels wouldn’t be harassing you if we weren’t getting closer to nabbing them.”

  “Harassing is maybe too mild a term to use in describing death threats,” I mentioned.

  He slowed, glancing up at the curved, glass-paneled ceiling far above us. “This is getting risky,” he conceded. “In fact, if you want to quit the team, why, I’ll carry on alone and you—”

  “I didn’t say a damn thing about quitting,” I told him. “But I have to admit that message from Mr. Anderson unsettled me.”

  “Be interesting to find out who Anderson really is.”

  We passed into the second section of the large greenhouse. They grew tropical plants in there, as well as potted palm trees and, all along one wall, a large thick stand of high green bamboo.

  “This smells like a Tarzan set,” observed Groucho. “Except there’s no monkey crap underfoot. Did you know that schmuck chimpanzee used to bite Maureen O’Sullivan when she was playing the apeman’s mate in those things?”

  “I also heard you were waiting in line right behind the chimp.”

  Groucho’s eyebrows rose and he assumed an innocent expression. “You should know better than to believe what you read in the gossip columns, Rollo,” he said. “Surely you don’t think I’d so much as flirt with a married woman?”

  “Um,” I replied. “We’d better get together after my public humiliation and work out what we’re going to do next on this case.”

  “Precisely what I was about to suggest,” he said. “I probably should be the one to call on that swish decorator, LaSalle. I can pretend I want my billiard room refurbished.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think he’d be interested in working on my place.”

  “Not unless he does fumigating on the side, no,” Groucho remarked. “It’s my hunch that LaSalle was just fronting for somebody else when he sprang for the cremation.” His slouch increased and his pace slowed. “Do you think it’s possible Peg was blackmailing someone?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “If she had some incriminating stuff hidden someplace,” Groucho suggested, “then that would explain … explain why she was tortured before she died. To make her tell them where.”

  “We’re already pretty sure they were looking for something like letters or photos.”

  Halting on the graveled hothouse path, Groucho absently tugged out a new cigar. “Did they ransack her cottage before or after they killed her?”

  I thought about it. “Probably before.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking,” he said. “They search the house, looking for something. But they don’t find it, so they … they try to make her tell them where it’s hidden.”

  I said, “Of course, there is the possibility that she refused to tell and then they tore the place apart looking.”

  “No, my theory is that they didn’t intend to kill her as soon as they did,” Groucho said. “Somebody hit her too hard and…” He looked down, sighed. “Jesus, Frank, listen to me. I’m starting to sound so damned matter-of-fact about her death, chatting about it like some stooge in a Charlie Chan movie.”

  “If we’re going to find out who killed Peg,” I reminded him, “then you can’t afford to get sentimental about her. Not this far along, Groucho.”

  He nodded and started walking again. After nearly a minute, he said, “Seems to me there’s a strong possibility that they never did find what they were looking for. That would explain their taking potshots at us and threatening you. They don’t have it and they’re afraid we’ll find it.”

  “We’d be a hell of a lot further along if we knew what it actually is.”

  “My vote goes for photographs, considering that her cameras and all her photo albums are missing.”

  “Yeah, incriminating photos is a good bet,” I acknowledged. “But it still could be something else. Or a combination of pictures and something else besides.”

  Groucho suddenly stopped in his tracks, putting out his arm to block my progress. “Over in that bamboo yonder,” he said softly. “I’m damned sure somebody’s lurking in—”

  A pistol was fired then. Twice.

  Glass shattered, somebody groaned.

  The high bamboo rattled and swayed. There was a lot of thrashing and crashing.

  A wide dark man in a gray suit came staggering out of the bamboo, a .45 automatic dangling in his right hand.

  “Dirty son…” He was muttering, blood starting to spurt out with his words. “Dirty son of a…”

  He dropped to his knees on the gravel of the pathway.

  He finally got the whole phrase out. “Dirty son of a bitch.”

  After that he let go of the gun, toppled forward on his face and died.

  * * *

  Groucho stood up and away from the body.

  Five or six minutes had passed since the two slugs went into the man’s back and killed him. Apparently the noise of the party a few acres uphill from the greenhouse had drowned out the sound of the shots and of the glass panels shattering. At least, nobody had come down here.

  “Not a speck of identification.” Groucho took out his pocket handkerchief and wiped at his hands. “Now I move we flee the scene of the crime.”

  “And just leave him here?”

  “You’d perhaps prefer to stick around, give this lout a state funeral and afterwards a twenty-one-gun salute?”

  I answered, “Nope, there’s no use in our getting mixed up with the police just yet.”

  “I’m content to let someone else find him, the later the better.” He turned on his heel and headed back the way we’d come.

  I caught up with him. “Still, it seems sort of callous to me.”

  “He was almost certainly the latest in what I hope won’t be a long line of goons sent to use us for target practice, my boy.” Groucho increased his pace. “Let me further point out, Rollo, that whoever shot him up may well still
be in the vicinity. Yet another perfectly good reason to hotfoot it elsewhere.”

  “It occurs to me that whoever shot this guy may have been doing it to keep him from shooting us.”

  “A gun-toting guardian angel, huh?”

  “Somebody looking after us, yeah.”

  He hesitated at the exit and then pushed the door slowly open. “There’s a decided lack of privacy in a greenhouse. Have you noticed that?” he remarked. “Also, if I lived in one I don’t think I’d do much in the way of throwing stones.”

  I followed him out into the bright afternoon, glancing carefully around us. There was no sign of anyone. From up near the mansion drifted the sound of Goodman’s group playing “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

  “Could that dead chap have been Anderson?” asked Groucho as we started up toward the noise of the party.

  “Might’ve been.”

  “Hell, he might’ve been Judge Crater.” Groucho scowled. “Little too young to be the Lindbergh baby, but you never can tell.”

  “Okay, let’s assume, whoever he was, that he was tailing us,” I said. “He may’ve had orders to shoot us or simply to scare us or—”

  “He succeeded in that. I’ve been scared for … oh, a good fifteen minutes now.”

  “What we have to figure out is who he was working for.”

  “Obviously the bunch who killed Peg.”

  “Then who killed him?”

  “One might also ask, especially if one wanted to drive one’s self stark raving bonkers, why there seem to be two different groups of thugs, at least, involved in this mess.”

  I said, “Of course, there’s always the possibility that this has nothing whatsoever to do with us or with Peg.”

  “Oh, so?”

  “I mean, maybe this guy ran into one of his creditors at the party. Or he was fooling around with somebody’s wife and the irate husband caught up with him in the hothouse.”

  “They don’t shoot adulterers in this town. If they did, I’d have more holes in me than a swiss cheese by now.”