Helen Tattersall was on my list. I had no idea what questions to ask her, but sooner or later I would have to get a look at her, if only to see whether I had spotted her at the club. Tulip’s building was in the neighborhood; I could just walk over there and invent a story.
Except that I didn’t really want to. Treasure Chest was also in the neighborhood, and Tulip had said that they were open afternoons so that businessmen could stop and goggle at some breasts before heading home to their wives. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to look at breasts, but I had to talk to Gus Leemy and he could give me a line on the other waitress and supply Jan’s last name and address. He could also pin my aims behind my back while Buddy Lippa beat me to a pulp. I decided to chance it.
Nine
“THEY DIDN’T BEAT me up,” I said. “What they basically did was ignore me. I had a lot of trouble making them believe I was a detective. They thought I wanted the girls’ names because I was trying to make out with them, for Pete’s sake.”
“They seem good judges of character,” Haig murmured.
I ignored that. “The barmaid is Jan Remo. She’s been working there for almost a year. She’s divorced, and has a two-year-old kid. The other waitress—not Maeve—is named Rita Cubbage. She just started there about a week ago. I can see them both late tonight if I’m awake because they’ll be working their usual shifts.”
“The club will be open, then? In spite of the tragedy?”
“Leemy doesn’t think it’s a tragedy. He thinks it’s a bonanza. He’s got a sign in the window that you’d love. ‘See the stage where Cherry Bounce was murdered! See the show so hot it might kill you!’“
“You’re making this up.”
“I am not.”
“Heavens,” Haig said.
We were in his office. It was almost five-thirty and I had just finished summing up my day in my inimitable fashion. I had wanted to rush my report so that I could see Tulip, who had finally been sprung from jail by one of Addison Shiver’s underlings and had been conveyed directly to Haig’s house after a quick stop at her apartment to shower and change her clothes and feed her fish. Haig had spent about an hour grilling her, and then when I got back I hardly had time to say hello before he’d banished her to the fourth floor so that he could hear my report privately.
She hadn’t seemed to mind the banishment—she’d been itching to study Haig’s operation up there—but I minded. So I tried to hurry my report but Haig wasn’t having any. He made me go over everything in detail and then he sat there with his feet up and I wanted to yell at him.
I said, “So far I’m putting my money on Haskell Henderson. His motives aren’t entirely rational, but no one who eats like that is going to behave rationally. You wind up with alfalfa on the brain. Here’s what happened. He resented the fact that Tulip’s fish ate a better diet than she did. He kept giving her wheat germ and she kept feeding it to the fish and this infuriated him. He figured if he poisoned her fish she’d have to eat the wheat germ herself because there wouldn’t be any fish to feed it to and she wouldn’t want to let it go to waste. So he made himself some strychnine. I looked up poisons in the encyclopedia, incidentally. Strychnine and curare are both neurotics, which would give them something in common with old Haskell.”
“That means they act on the nervous system.”
“I know what it means. I was making a funny. I learned that strychnine is extracted from the seeds and bark of various plants. Henderson’s got seeds and bark of everything else at Doctor Ecology, so why not Strychnos Nux-Vomica? I’ve been training my memory, that’s how come I remember the name of the plant. I hope you’re proud of me. He extracted the strychnine and poisoned the fish.”
“Phooey.”
“Is that all you’re going to say? I thought it was a brilliant theory.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And Miss Abramowicz? Why did he murder her, pray tell?”
“Give me a minute. I’ll come up with something.”
“Bah. This is childish. Call Miss Wolinski and—”
“Wait, I just figured it out. Tulip was his girl because he was crazy about her and enjoyed having a warm physical relationship with her, but Cherry was more experimental about nutrition. So he kept bringing health food to Tulip and what the fish didn’t eat Cherry ate. So he killed Cherry for the same reason he killed the fish. All in the interest of getting Tulip to stop eating cooked meat and other poisonous things. What’s the matter? I think it’s neat the way I tied it all together. Why don’t you call Gregorio and tell him to pick up Henderson? I won’t let on that it was all my idea. When I write up the case I’ll give you all the credit.”
“Fetch Miss Wolinski,” he said. “Perhaps she’d like a cocktail before dinner.”
“Maybe some carrot juice,” I suggested. “Alcohol’s bad for the vital bodily fluids.”
He gave me a look and I went upstairs to fetch Tulip.
I don’t know exactly what dinner consisted of but I’m sure Haskell Henderson would have turned green at the thought of it. Wong had marinated squares of beef in something or other, then sprinkled them with toasted sesame seeds and mixed in some stir-fried vegetables, and the whole thing came together beautifully as always. During the meal Haig talked with Tulip about the problems of breeding the Ctenayom species. I didn’t get the hang of more than a third of their conversation, and I won’t plague you with any of it.
Afterward the three of us sat in the office. Tulip and I had coffee. So did Haig, who also had two Mounds bars in lieu of dessert. I picked up the phone and dialed Andrew Mallard’s number again, and I got the same odd busy signal as before.
“Sometimes he just leaves it off the hook for long stretches of time,” Tulip said. “He gets into these depressed states where he decides that there’s no one on earth he could possibly want to talk to. It was really aggravating when I was living with him. I’d get calls for jobs and I would never know about it.”
“What does he do if somebody rings his doorbell when he’s in a state like that?”
“He generally answers it. But not always.”
“That’s great.”
Haig said, “Miss Wolinski, you formerly shared that apartment. Do you still possess a key?”
“I think so. Yes, I’m sure I do. I think it’s still on my key ring.” She fumbled in her purse and detached a key from the ring. “This is it,” she said.
“Might he have changed the locks? You moved out some time ago, I believe.”
“It was five months ago.” She thought for a moment. “No, he wouldn’t change the locks. He’d think of it but he would never get around to it.”
I wondered why she had ever set up housekeeping with Mallard in the first place. He wasn’t all that much to look at, and the more I heard about him the less enthusiastic I got about seeing him.
“You had better take that key,” Haig said. “You needn’t see Miss Remo or Miss Cubbage until late tonight Mrs. Henderson can keep until tomorrow. Miss Tattersail can probably keep throughout eternity as far as we are concerned. A cranky old woman might be capable of harassment. Such persons frequently poison other people’s dogs and cats. It’s a form of paranoia, I believe. I cannot imagine her flipping curare-tipped darts at a topless dancer.”
“She wouldn’t even walk into Treasure Chest,” Tulip said. “Not a chance.”
I felt like a character in a comic strip with a little light bulb forming over my head. “Just a minute,” I said. “Earlier today you said the person who poisoned the fish was someone different from the person who poisoned Cherry.” Tulip gaped and started to say something but I pressed on. “Does that mean the Tattersall woman poisoned the fish? And how do you know that, and why don’t I talk to her and find out why? Because we already decided the two things tied in, they had to tie in, and—”