Date with Death

Book 0: An Ivor Maddox Mystery

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune Ronnie and Ruth, a young couple engaged to be married, are shot dead. Someone hated their guts so bad he reloaded and pumped nine shots into their car. Maddox was stymied. Why should anyone kill two nice, respectable young people? Who was the funny man playing practical jokes all over the neighbourhood? And what was the band of American Nazis doing with an arsenal of deadly weapons?

Release date: October 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

It was half past eight in the morning of the second of November. Blessedly, though it was a nice warm sunny day, the real heat had gone with October, which in southern
California it didn’t always do.

Lieutenant Eden was on vacation, and nominally the Detective Bureau at the Wilcox Street precinct was in the charge of the senior sergeant, Ellis. Sergeant Ellis was fussing and fuming over a
vice case—or rather a thing he hoped to turn into a case by some means; and a new homicide had turned up overnight. The couple of men on night tour who’d gone out on that had left notes
on it on Maddox’s desk. Maddox had, in fact, just come into the office at ten to eight, read over the notes, and begun to discuss it with Detectives D’Arcy and César Rodriguez,
when the squad-car man called in about the pig.

The pig was something entirely offbeat, and anyway they couldn’t go questioning people on that homicide until at least nine o’clock, so they’d all come up to Higman Avenue in
Maddox’s Fraser-Nash, to look at the pig.

Rodriguez was about halfway through The Reader Is Warned, and read a few more pages on the way.

‘A pig!’ said D’Arcy. ‘I tell you, Ivor, I used to think Hollywood had kind of settled down. But some of the stuff we’ve been getting lately—’

They found the address. The squad-car man was waiting for them in the drive: it was a modest little frame house, well kept up, lawn trimmed, and neatly tended flower beds near the house. Sounds
of altercation came from the back yard. The squad-car man was Stoner.

‘It’s the damnedest thing I ever saw,’ he said. ‘What do we do about it, Sergeant? It’s round back.’

They all walked down the drive, and there was the pig. Inside the fenced back yard. There also were Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Endler, arguing loudly.

The pig was placidly munching on a bunch of asters in full bloom. It was quite a large, well-grown pig, with bulging sides, a sullen expression, and rather malevolent little eyes. Somebody had
painted the pig a bright pink all over, and then carefully stenciled blue polka dots all over the pink pig. It was, to say the least, a remarkable sight.

Maddox, D’Arcy, and Rodriguez stared at it and burst out laughing.

‘That’s right!’ said Mrs. Endler bitterly. ‘Go ahead and laugh! Cops! Can’t you get it out of here? Oh my God, now it’s eating my
violas!’ She turned on her husband. ‘And you know whose fault it is, don’t you? Well?’ Mrs. Endler was a little, thin, dark woman, not bad looking; he was a big gangling
fellow going a little bald. They were both somewhere in the late thirties.

‘Hell, I didn’t bring the damn thing here, Mae!’ he protested. ‘How the hell should I know who—’

‘Mr. Endler just found it here awhile ago when they got up,’ said Stoner to Maddox. ‘I didn’t know— I mean, it just looks like a practical joke of
some—’

The pink pig moved ponderously away from the flower bed, stood a moment as if in rumination, grunting softly, and then plodded over to the raised bed round a young apricot tree and began
sampling the ivy geraniums there. ‘My God!’ said Mrs. Endler passionately. ‘Look what it’s doing. Can’t you get it out of here, that’s all
I—’

Maddox managed to control his mouth and said, ‘You just—er—found it in the yard like this, sir? When you got up?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Endler. ‘How the hell should I know who’d do such a crazy thing? I thought I had the D.T.’s, I saw it, I swear to God!’ He mopped
his face with a handkerchief. ‘Well, I mean—a joke’s a joke, but—’

‘Get it out of here!’

‘—the Humane Society,’ said Stoner sotto voce.

Rodriguez looked at the pig and began laughing again.

‘Cops!’ said Mrs. Endler.

The pig grunted and without stopping its sampling of the geraniums began to relieve itself copiously onto the lawn. ‘My God,’ said Mrs. Endler, ‘look at it. I just put
nine dollars’ worth of fertilizer on this grass—’

D’Arcy walked up and inspected the pig closer. ‘It’s a white Poland China, I think,’ he said.

‘How d’you come to know that?’ asked Maddox.

‘I went to the County Fair once.’

‘I don’t care what brand it is,’ said Mrs. Endler. ‘I just don’t give one damn. All I’m asking is, you should take it away.’

Maddox looked at Rodriguez. Rodriguez looked at D’Arcy. The pink pig grunted again and swung around ponderously and started for D’Arcy. D’Arcy retreated hastily. It was a very
large pig.

‘I thought the Humane Society maybe,’ offered Stoner.

‘By all means,’ said Maddox. ‘If we could use your phone, Mrs. Endler?’

‘Use it, use it, for God’s sake! Just—’

Maddox nodded at Stoner, who started for the house with Endler. ‘Do you have any idea who might have left the pig here?’ he asked the woman. ‘It was a joke, you think? I
don’t exactly see—’ After all, he thought, a somewhat elaborate and pointless one. He, whoever, had had to get the pig some place, go to a lot of trouble decorating it, and
somehow transport it here to the middle of Hollywood—

‘Joke, joke!’ she said impatiently. ‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake!’ The pink pig was now rolling, luxuriously and with sensual hip-swaying motions, in the bed of asters.
Mrs. Endler shut her eyes and said, ‘My God. Oh well, of course you don’t know Clyde. It was somebody who does know him, that much I can tell you, and I hope you find out
who because I’m going to sue him for his last cent. My roses! I—’

‘Oh-oh,’ said D’Arcy. The pink pig, thoughtfully munching on a rose, evidently had got hold of a thorn. It grunted loudly, spat out the mangled rose and stalk, pawed at its
mouth with a front hoof and nearly lost its balance. It swung around again and stared evilly at D’Arcy, who retreated some more.

‘I really don’t think they’re dangerous,’ said Rodriguez, amused.

‘Well, it doesn’t look very friendly.’

‘Why, Mrs. Endler?’ asked Maddox. ‘I don’t see—’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she said crossly, ‘it was somebody who knows how the whole family’s been after him about his drinking—heaven knows
I’ve tried every way I can think of—it’s all those drunken friends of his down at that tavern, he’s never been a real drinker but since he’s got in with that bunch,
tie one on six nights a week—’

‘I do not!’ said Endler defensively, coming up in time to hear that. ‘Well, gee, Mae, not really. I mean, just a few drinks with the guys—’

‘Bunch of drunken bums! And I had to put you to bed last night and the night before, didn’t I? What do you call that, just social drinking like they say?’

‘Well, gee, Mae—’ Endler had a pleasant, weakly boyish face; he gave her an ingratiating smile. ‘I didn’t mean—’

The pig was rolling again. ‘Some of the pink’s coming off,’ said Rodriguez. ‘I’ll bet it’s just that food coloring, something like that.’ The pig was
even odder-looking parti-colored. Maddox stifled another laugh.

As a practical joke—

‘Oh, it’s just side-splitting, that’s what it is!’ said Mrs. Endler. ‘Somebody’s real subtle little way of saying you better watch out or you will be
geting the D.T.’s! I wouldn’t put it past your Uncle Henry—he was talking pretty sharp about it to you on Sunday.’

‘May I have his name and address, Mrs. Endler?’ Maddox got out his notebook.

‘Why, d’you think it could’ve been him? Well, I don’t know, but— Well, it’s Henry Endler, out on DeLongpre. Come to think, though, I don’t see
how he could have—’

‘How did anybody?’ asked Endler. ‘That’s a hell of a big pig. God, I’ve still got a headache.’

Indeed, how had anybody? The practical joker must, Maddox thought, have a pickup truck, something like that, because—

Stoner came back. ‘They said they’d come get it, after I got them to believe I wasn’t kidding. I mean, a pig.’

And such a pig, thought Maddox. And what kind of charge would it be, anyway? Malicious mischief at least, he decided, looking at the havoc the pig had made of Mrs. Endler’s carefully
tended garden. The pig was now rooting about the lawn; chunks of grass fell under its heedless hooves.

‘When are they coming, for the Lord’s sake? Look at it.’

‘Well, they said as soon as they could, ma’am.’

‘Mrs. Endler,’ said Maddox, stifling another strangled laugh as the pink pig waddled over to the redwood fence and began rubbing against it, shaking the fence dangerously,
‘could you suggest anyone else who might have—’

‘I don’t know,’ she said sulkily. ‘Anybody knows Clyde and how he’s got to drinking lately. Listen, you find out who brought that—that
animal here! I don’t think it’s so damn funny, and I’m going to sue.’

‘What do you think?’ asked D’Arcy. ‘Malicious mischief, I guess. My God, that pig.’

‘At least,’ agreed Maddox, grinning. ‘But hell, D’Arcy, it might be anybody. How’d we trace him?’

‘Where did he get the pig?’ asked Rodriguez. ‘Some lead there, I’d say.’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Maddox. ‘We’ve got this homicide to look at. And something a little funny about that too, ask me.’ Stopped for a light, he adjusted
the rear-view mirror and stared absently at himself in it. Yes, and a party at Dulcie’s tomorrow night, and in the middle of a real case (which the homicide looked like being) he
oughtn’t to go, damn it—Because, knowing Dulcie— Well, that whole bit was a mystery he’d never solve, that was all. Why practically every female he met found Ivor Maddox so
entirely fascinating—ordinary, under-average-height, thin dark Maddox who was anything but handsome. And of course, same like advice to the young lady getting raped, Relax and enjoy
it—if he hadn’t been an L.A.P.D. man. This force had some pretty puritanical rules about that sort of thing.

At least, he reflected philosophically, one of the females chasing him wouldn’t be around for a while. That poor lush Maggie McNeill. The family had stashed her away in a sanatarium. If
they thought she’d be cured they were just fooling themselves, but at least she wouldn’t be hanging around Maddox while she was in.

He was thinking about the new homicide when Rodriguez started to laugh again. ‘That pig! Of all the damn fool practical jokes—A painted pig!’

‘The fellow from the Humane Society said it was just vegetable dye,’ said D’Arcy. ‘I suppose we ought to have a little look around, try to find out who. No kind of
charge, but—’

‘Oh, I suppose so.’

‘This homicide,’ said Maddox. ‘Just a little bit more important, hm?’

They agreed to that. Not that most homicides posed any real mystery; in real life, as opposed to the paperbacks, the X responsible for homicide usually showed up rather soon and obviously. The
work that had to be done on it was pure drudgery: questioning witnesses, looking through Records, getting statements.

The new homicide that had turned up at one forty-seven this morning offered, at first glance, plenty of places to look for X and plenty of dull routine legwork to do.

Ronald Morgenstern had been twenty-seven, evidently a bright and ambitious young man; he would have graduated from his law course, at L.A.C.C. next June. From the fact that he was going to
low-tuition L.A.C.C., which offered numerous night courses, it could be deduced that he had been working his way through school, and that was backed up by the information from Ruth Evans’s
parents that he’d had a job, he’d worked part time keeping books at a couple of different places. Most of what they had on it, this early, had come from the Evanses last night.

Morgenstern and Ruth had got engaged about six weeks ago. Joe Rowan, who’d done most of the first questioning, said in his notes that the Evanses looked like Money, nothing ostentatious,
but solid substantial people—it was an address on Franklin Avenue, which told the story. Not a brashly new exclusive residential section, but an older, old-fashioned street of old-fashioned
two-story homes, where Money—of the quiet conservative kind—lived.

Rowan hadn’t been able to press the Evanses much, of course, but he’d got what he could, at the hospital. The Evanses had liked young Morgenstern, approved of the engagement. Ronnie
and Ruth had intended to be married after his graduation next year. His parents were both dead; his only relatives here were an aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Goldfarb, who lived in Duarte.
He’d had a small bachelor apartment on Ardmore Avenue. Everybody, said the Evanses distractedly, liked Ronnie.

Apparently there’d been somebody who didn’t.

Or it could, of course, have been somebody who didn’t like Ruth. You paid your money and you took your choice.

Ronnie and Ruth had gone out on a date last night. He had picked her up at home at seven o’clock, and they’d intended, as far as the Evanses knew, to have dinner somewhere and then
go to see the new Disney at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. You could figure some times there, working back from the time the call came in. Dinner, call it an hour, an hour and a half, depending
on where they’d gone, if they’d lingered over drinks beforehand—say they got to the theatre for the second running, which would be anywhere from eight forty-five to nine fifteen,
and out at around, what, midnight or a bit after. No telling yet whether they’d stopped somewhere for a snack or a drink: no telling how long they’d been parked in the drive of the
Evans house on Franklin, before X appeared. Or had X been waiting for them? Evidently.

It was approximately one fifteen when the Evanses, and a number of neighbors, had been awakened by a fusillade of shots. Evans had got up and looked out, had seen nobody moving, but had spotted
Morgenstern’s car (’56 Chevy two-door, said Rowan’s notes tersely) in the drive, with the driver’s door open and what looked like a body sprawling half out of the
car. He’d gone down in a hurry to investigate, and found both Ronnie and Ruth apparently shot—Ronnie dead, sprawled head first out of the car, and Ruth unconscious and bleeding.

Ruth Evans, when Rowan had left his note, was still alive but in serious condition at the Hollywood Hospital. The surgeon had recovered two slugs from her body which had been dispatched to
Ballistics downtown. Morgenstern’s body had been sent for autopsy.

A lot of places to go looking, you could say. Some former boy friend of Ruth’s, jealous? Some former girl friend of Ronnie’s? That looked likeliest. Question the parents some more,
question Ronnie’s relatives, his friends, at school, at work. Ask around about Ruth. Had she held a job?

Everybody agreed the shots had been ‘very loud.’ A heavy caliber? See what Ballistics said about the slugs.

Maddox sighed. Always plenty to do.

They climbed the creaking stairs of the old precinct house. Maybe someday the city fathers would get around to appropriating enough money to paint the place, at least. And maybe not, too.

In the second office across the hall, as they came by, Sergeant Ellis was leaning across his desk talking earnestly to Sergeant Daisy Hoffman and Policewoman Carstairs. ‘Listen,’ he
was saying, sounding annoyed, ‘there’s not one goddamn bit of usable evidence on the bastard—the way the damn judges interpret the law—and this new law about
resorting—My God, tie both hands behind our backs and expect us to—’

‘I suppose Rowan stationed somebody at the hospital,’ said Rodriguez, ‘in case the girl comes to and can talk.’

‘Fisher,’ said Maddox. ‘Look, D’Arcy, you chase over there and see the parents again, will you? And, César, let’s you and me try to chase down people who
knew Morgenstern—at work, at the college.’

‘Pues sí,’ said Rodriguez, shrugging. The deadly routine bored him; it was a lot more interesting and complex in print, in the detective novels. He put The Reader
Is Warned in his jacket pocket. ‘I’ll check the college, O.K.?’

‘O.K.,’ said Maddox. Contact the aunt and uncle, but he hadn’t been living with them, would they know much about his friends? Better check where he’d worked first.

‘What about the pig?’ asked D’Arcy gloomily. D’Arcy was always gloomy these days. Margaret Talmadge had just got engaged to an American Airlines pilot.

‘The pig,’ said Maddox, ‘for God’s sake. Oh well, I suppose we have to look, where we can. Malicious mischief—’ He laughed. ‘Send out an inquiry to all
the hog breeders in the county, have you lost a pig recently. You know, that was a hell of a lot of trouble to go to, just for a silly joke. I wonder—’

The outside phone rang on his desk and he picked it up. ‘Maddox.’ Dulcie’s party—did he dare go? Knowing just how it would go, her inveigling him to stay on, and damn it,
he wasn’t any Trappist monk, so the office trying to get him, and— Oh, damn.

‘Fisher, sir. I’m at the hospital. We just got the word—Ruth Evans died.’

‘Oh. So, a double homicide,’ said Maddox. ‘Nice. Thanks. Parents there? Of course.’ Difficult to question the parents, but it had to be done.

‘Jealous boy friend,’ said Rodriguez with a grimace. ‘Want to bet? Human nature, human nature.’

‘What we’re here to cope with,’ said Maddox sourly.

That pig . . . Silly damn thing, but have to do a little work at it, he supposed. The homicide came first.

‘I just can’t take it in—who’d want to—to hurt Ruth or Ronnie?’ George Evans had said that before, breaking off his answers to
Maddox’s questions, shaking his head dumbly. ‘I can’t believe anything like this has happened, is all. Ruth—’

‘I know, Mr. Evans,’ said Maddox gently. ‘And I’m sorry to have to bother you at a time like this, but we want to get on it and find out who, you know.’

‘Yes,’ said Evan. . .