“You’re worried about your own damned scrawny neck.”

“I only have the one.”

She changed the approach. “My husband didn’t make a will. Do you know how much money he has? Had.”

“Better that you do, probably. You can’t spent it when you’re dead or in the pen.”

“No, you can’t. But you’re willing to send me there.” Her mouth drooped in self-pity.

“Not for long; probably not at all. You can cop a manslaughter plea, or stick to self-defense. With the kind of lawyers you can buy, you won’t spend a night in jail.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“No.” I stood up facing her. “I wish you well.”

“If you really wished me well, you’d take me out of here. We could go away together. Anywhere.”

“I’ve thought of that, too. No go.”

“Don’t you want me?” She was distressed and puzzled. “You said I was beautiful. I could make you happy, Lew.”

“Not for the rest of my life.”

“You don’t know,” she said, “you haven’t tried me.”

I felt ashamed for her. Ashamed for myself. The Acapulco movie stirred like a brilliant snake at the back of my mind.

“There’s a phone in Melliotes’ office,” I said. “You call the police. It’s better, if you’re going to plead self-defense.”

She burst into tears, stood sobbing violently with her mouth open and her eyes tight closed. Her wild urchin grief was more touching than any of her poses. When she groped for something to cry on, I gave her my shoulder. And eased her down the corridor to the telephone.

Chapter 24

The studio guard was a big ex-cop wrapped in crisp cellophane refinement. He leaned toward the hole in his plate-glass window. “Who was that you wanted to see?”

“Mildred Fleming. She’s secretary to one of the producers or directors.”

“Oh yes. Miss Fleming. One moment if you please.” He talked into the phone at his elbow, looked up with question-mark eyebrows: “Miss Fleming wants to know who it is.”

“Lewis Archer. Tell her Maude Slocum sent me.”

“Who sent you?”

“Maude Slocum.” The name had unexpected reverberations in my interior.

He talked into the telephone again and came up smiling. “Miss Fleming will be with you shortly. Have a seat, Mr. Armature.”

I took a chromium chair in a far corner of the big, airy lobby. I was the only living person on the secular side of the plate glass, but the walls were populated by giant photographs. The studio’s stars and featured players looked down on me from a lofty unreal world where everyone was young and hugely gay. One of the bright-haired fillies reminded me of Mavis; one of the dark young stallions could have been Pat Ryan thoroughly groomed and equipped with porcelain teeth. But Pat was huddled somewhere on a slab. Mavis was at the Hall of Justice talking to her lawyers about bail bond. The happy endings and the biggest oranges were the ones that California saved for export.

A short woman in a flame-colored blouse came through a plate-glass door that shut and locked itself behind her. Her short bobbed hair was blue-black and fitted her small head like a coat of Chinese lacquer. Her eyes, dark brown and experienced, carried a little luggage underneath.

I stood up and met her as she came toward me, her girdle-sheathed body moving with quick nervous energy. “Miss Fleming? I’m Archer.”

“Hello.” She gave me a firm cold hand. “I thought Al said your name was Armature.”

“He did.”

“I’m glad it isn’t. We had an assistant director called Mr. Organic once, but nobody could take him seriously. He changed his name to Goldfarb and did right well for himself.” Her rate of speech was a hundred words a minute, timed to the typewriter in her head. “Al also said Maude sent you, or is that another of his famous blunders?”

“He said that, but it isn’t exactly true.”

The smiling crinkle left her eyes, and they raked me up and down in a hard once-over. I was glad I’d changed to a fresh suit on the way from the Hall of Justice. In five or ten years she’d still remember the pattern of my tie, be able to pick my picture from a rogues’ gallery.

“Well,” she said with hostility, “you tell me what you’re selling and I’ll tell you how much I don’t want whatever it is. I’m busy, brother, you shouldn’t do these things.”

“I sell my services.”

“Oh, no, not that!” She was a natural clown.

“I’m a private detective. I worked for Mrs. Slocum until last night.”

“Doing what?”

“Investigating. A certain matter.”

“It’s funny she didn’t tell me.” She was interested again. “I saw her at lunch the day before yesterday. What happened last night, she fire you?”

“No. She resigned.”

“I don’t get you.” But she understood the finality of my tone. Emotion flowed into her eyes as dark as ink.

“She committed suicide last night,” I said.

Mildred Fleming sat down suddenly, perched stiffly on the edge of a green plastic settee. “You’re kidding.”

“She’d dead all right.”

“Why in God’s name?” Some tears spilled out of her eyes and coursed down her cheeks, eroding the heavy makeup. She wiped them with a ball of crumpled Kleenex. “Excuse me. I happened to be pretty fond of the girl. Ever since high school.”

“I liked her too. It’s why I want to talk to you.”

She moved like a hummingbird, toward the outside door. “Come on across the street. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

The drugstore on the opposite corner contained everything a drugstore should except a pharmacy. Newspapers and magazines, motion picture projectors and pogo sticks, sunglasses and cosmetics and bathing suits, and twenty assorted specimens of human flotsam watching the door for a familiar face. There was a lunch bar at the rear, with booths along the wall, most of them empty in the afternoon lull.

Mildred Fleming slipped into one of the booths and held up two fingers to the waitress behind the counter. The waitress came running with two heavy mugs, and fussed over my companion.

“Silly girl,” she said when the waitress had bounced away. “She thinks I’ve got a pull. Nobody’s got a pull any more.” She leaned across the scarred table, sipping at her coffee. “Now tell me about poor Maude. Without coffee, I couldn’t take it.”

I had come to her for information, but first I told her what I thought was fit for her to know. What water had done to Olivia Slocum, what fire had done to Ryan, what strychnine had done to Maude. I left out Kilbourne and Mavis, and what they had done to each other.

She took it calmly, except that toward the end she needed her makeup more. She didn’t say a word, till I mentioned Knudson and the fact that he had run me out of town.

“You shouldn’t pay too much attention to what he said. I can imagine how he feels. I don’t know whether I should tell you this—”

“You don’t have to tell me. Knudson loved her, it was pretty obvious.”

I was probing for a gap in her defenses. Most good secretaries had an occupational weakness: they gathered inside information and after they had gathered it they had to tell it to somebody.

She was piqued. “If you know the whole story already, why come to me?”

“I know damn little. I don’t know who drowned Olivia Slocum or why Maude Slocum took strychnine. I came to you because you’re her closest friend. I figured you had a right to know what happened and that you’d want to help me get to the bottom of it.”

She was gratified. “I do want to help you. I’ve always been in Maude’s confidence, and I can tell you she’s had a tragic life.” She called for more coffee, and turned back to me: “As far as her mother-in-law is concerned, didn’t you say that this man Pat Ryan killed her?”

“That’s Knudson’s theory, and most of the evidence supports it. I’ve taken an option on it, but I haven’t bought it yet.”

“You don’t think Maude—?” Her eyes shone blackly in the dim booth.