Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

“Thing is,” said Crumley, “we got nothing to go on. Empty house. Old records playing. No suicide note. No sign of violence. We got to wait for her to come back. And if she doesn’t, there’s still no case, no corpus delicti. I bet you a bucket of beer shell—”

“Let me take you to the upstairs apartment at the carousel tomorrow. When you see that strange man’s face—”

“God. Do you mean who I think you mean?”

I nodded.

“The airy-fairy?” said Crumley. “The fag?”

There was a tremendous flop in the water just then.

We both jumped.

“Jesus, what was that?” cried Crumley, peering out over the midnight waters.

Constance, I thought, coming back.

I stared and at last said, “Seals. They do come and play out there.”

There was a series of small flops and splashes which faded as some sea creature departed in darkness.

“Hell,” said Crumley.

“The projector’s still running there in the parlor,” I said. “Phonograph’s still playing. Oven’s on in the kitchen, something baking. And all the lights in all the rooms.”

“Let’s shut some off before the damn place burns down.”

We followed Constance Rattigan’s footprints back up to her fortress of white light.

“Hey,” whispered Crumley. He stared at the eastern horizon. “What’s that?”

There was a faint band of cold light there.

“Dawn,” I said. “I thought it would never come.”

Constance Rattigan’s footprints blew away off the sand in the dawn wind.

And Mr. Shapeshade came along the shore, looking back over his shoulder, cans of film under his arms. Far off there, at this very moment, his movie house was being trashed by huge steel-toothed monsters that had risen, summoned by real estate speculators, out of the sea.

When Shapeshade saw me and Crumley standing on Constance Rattigan’s front porch, he blinked at our faces and then at the sand and then at the ocean. We didn’t have to tell him anything, our faces were that pale.

“She’ll be back,” he said again and again, “she’ll be back. Constance wouldn’t go away. My God, who would I run films with, who? She’ll be back, sure!” His eyes spilled over.

We left him in charge of the empty fort and drove back toward my place. On the way, Detective Lieutenant Crumley, in a burst of invective, using harsh epithets like cow-chappatis, Bull Durham, bushwah, and watch-out-you’ll-step-in-it, refused my offer to go ride on that damn carousel questioning Field Marshal Erwin Rommel or his pretty pal, dressed up in rose petals, Nijinsky.

“In one or two days, maybe. If that goony old woman doesn’t swim back from Catalina, sure. Then I start asking questions. But now? I will not shovel horse-flops to find the horse.”

“Are you angry with me?” I asked.

“Angry, angry, why would I be angry? Angry? Christ, you drive me out of my skull. But angry? Here’s a buck, go buy ten rides on that calliope racetrack.”

He dropped me, running, at my door, and roared off.

Inside, I looked at Cal’s old piano. The sheet had fallen off the big white ivory teeth.

“Don’t laugh,” I said.

Three things happened that afternoon.