Talmage Powell
Murder on the Expense Account

Hector Drumm, roving operative for Speare “We Hit The Target” Private Investigations, Inc., arrived in Asheville late Friday afternoon. He came out of the smoky, domed terminal, leaving his bag checked inside, and asked a cab driver the fare to Kimberly Avenue. It was a dollar, and Drumm drew in his shoulders, boarded a municipal bus and dropped six cents in the fare box. In his seat, he took a small black notebook from his pocket and under the heading “Expenses” he jotted carefully: “Cab fare, one dollar.”

This he regretted; the closest bus stop was seven block from Alex Donnelly’s house, up a long sweeping hill that drained the strength from Drumm’s short legs. It was a hot summer afternoon with a glaring sun lying low over the ragged hills in the west. When Hector Drumm rang Donnelly’s bell he was sweating.

An ancient Negro came around the side of the house, a garden trowel in his hand. “Yassuh?”

“I’m looking for Mr. Donnelly,” Drumm said.

“He inside,” the servant said. “You jest go right in. These heah summah folk are infoamal. Jest open de doah.”

Drumm shrugged, opened the door. He was in a short hallway. A door opened just past the walnut table with its fragile looking vase and wilted flowers. Without being told. Drumm had a hunch that the man coming toward him was Donnelly.

Drumm introduced himself. Donnelly was stiffly slim, as if he wore, beneath his soft gray, drape model suit, a supporter to keep his stomach muscles from bulging, his figure trim. Drumm didn’t like the faint smell of perfume about the man, and he wondered how much longer Donnelly could hide those loose layers of skin under his eyes from a movie camera.

Without preamble. Drumm said, as they went toward the open door. “I don’t mind telling you. This had better be good. Old man Speare — my boss — chased me six hundred miles down here. Couldn’t you find a detective closer?”

“No,” Donnelly said. His face was suddenly lined, his liquid eyes mirroring something that might be fear. “The job I hired you for, Drumm, is for you. I’m in a helluva mess.”

The last statement brought Drumm’s quick, keen gaze. His jet black eyes reflected light as he studied the evident fear on Donnelly’s face.

Donnelly closed the door behind them. They were in a room that had been used for lots of drinking. Several empty bottles were in evidence. Through the wide window in the other side of the room, Drumm could see the magnificent sweep of the Smoky Mountains, rolling away into the blue, hazy distance.

But he saw all that only in a flashing glimpse. His attention was held by a girl in a huge white leather chair. She was wearing white shorts and a blue sweater, and had one long brown leg curled up under her. She was deeply tanned; her hair was glittering blonde. She had eyes like blue ice, and Drumm compared her to solidified carbon dioxide; smoky, subzero dry ice. Then he remembered that he had held a piece of dry ice once and it had burned his hand with its cold.

She nodded at him as Alex Donnelly said, “Miss Viola Munday, Mr. Hector Drumm.”

She said, “Hiya, Heck,” and went on with her drinking.

Drumm said, “Well, what’s the turkey?” He sat down, and when Donnelly offered him a drink, Drumm said, “Never touch it.”

Donnelly drank nervously. Drumm guessed there’d been a party the night before. Seeing Donnelly in the flesh, it was hard to think of him as a movie idol in those dashing western roles where he personified everything that was noble and conrageous.

Donnelly said, “I came to these widely-advertised hills for a rest, and I end up hiring a private dick. Your boss soaked me plenty for getting you down here, Drumm. The situation is plenty ticklish, and you sure as hell better earn your money.”

“I’m a member of proletariat,” Drumm said glumly, “so don’t start giving me orders. Speare investigations never miss — no pun intended. Just spill your brains. Or if you want to lecture. I’ll be getting along.”

The blonde smiled, and she didn’t look so icy.

Donnelly’s face darkened, but he bit back his hot retort and said, “My daughter came to town yesterday.” He looked at Drumm expectantly, but the sandy-haired detective’s face was blank.

With a sigh, Alex Donnelly continued, “Imagine yourself in my position, Drumm. Every week, with the full sanction of their parents, hundreds of thousands of kids flock to theaters to see my pictures. I’m the sort of man in those pictures parents would like their kids to be.”

“A model man,” Viola Munday supplied, “strong, good, kind.” Donnelly looked at her darkly, and she added seriously: “Alex really is that sort of man, too, Mr. Drumm. His face might look a little soggy, but except for a very human bender now and then. Alex believes in the same code he lives in his roles.”

Drumm wasn’t so sure about that: but he’d learned long ago not to judge by appearances alone. “I didn’t know you bad a daughter,” he said.

“That’s just it,” Donnelly said morosely, “neither did I.” He laughed shortly, harshly. “You see, Drumm, years ago, when I was just starting, I married a woman in Mexico. I got a break, made a little dough, and played the rat. The marriage didn’t last. My wife went back to Mexico. I’ve never heard of her since — until day before yesterday, when a beautiful young creature came here with her lawyer and informed me that she was my daughter, Georgia. Her lawyer, a butter-tub, bald-headed character named Ober Illman, told me a pathetic tale of starvation and grief.” Donnelly sat down shakily. “Can’t you imagine what it would do to me if I was smeared all over the country as the sort of man who would let his wife starve to death in a foreign land while I — through the years — greedily clutch bigger and bigger contracts?”

“The studio would drop you like a hot potato. I guess,” Drumm said.

“Not to mention,” Viola Munday said, “what the mamas and papas of all those kids would do if they could get their hands on you.”

Donnelly nodded, and Drumm thought he looked sick. Drumm said, “You want me to scare the girl off?”

Donnelly shook his head vigorously. “If she’s not my daughter, yes. But if she is my daughter. I’m going to pay. I can understand how she might hate me. She wants a small fortune that’ll clean me for sometime to come. But if she actually is my daughter and I’ve abandoned her these years to the sort of life she told me about, I want to pay.”

For the first lime, Drumm’s thin lips cracked in a smile. It was apparent he didn’t do it often. “Since you put it that way, Donnelly, I’ll do what I can for you. Maybe Miss Munday is right about you. You want me to determine definitely whether she is your daughter?”

“That’s it,” Donnelly nodded. “Ober Illman — her lawyer — has pretty convincing proof. But I called you here to be positive. I’m not going to be rooked by a slick scheme if I can help it.”

Drumm stood up. “You’ll give me the address of Georgia, your daughter, Ober Illman, her lawyer, and anything else you can think of that might be pertinent, and I’ll get started right away.” He smiled again, thinly. “You made arrangements with my lord and master, Mr. Speare, about the finances?”

Donnelly nodded.

“Well,” Drumm said, “there might be incidentals come up. A palm to lie greased, you know or something like that. I might need, say, a couple hundred.”

Donnelly looked at him shrewdly, and Drumm’s smile became bland. Finally, taking a pigskin wallet from his pocket, Donnelly said, “All right. I’ll play hall with you. But you get results, Drumm, or I’ll show you those action scenes in my pictures are not all done by stuntmen.”

Hector Drumm warmed his pocket with the two hundred, took out his black notebook, and under the heading “Bonuses”, carefully wrote; $200.00. The grand total of the column of figures brought a mellow sigh.

A half hour later, Drumm and Alex Donnelly, in Donnelly’s study, rose. “The first thing,” Drumm said, “is a phone call. To the lawyer.”

Alex Donnelly walked toward the door, Drumm at his side.

“The phone is in the hall. Scarcity of phones now, and I couldn’t get extensions. Ober Illman and Georgia arc living in a cottage on Linden Avenue. The number is 9211R. No dial phones here, just tell the operator.”

They walked down the hall, and Drumm put through the call. Ober Illman, the lawyer, answered. He bad a heavy, nasal voice that rumbled in Drumm’s ear.

Drumm introduced himself and said, “I’m a candid worker, Illman. If Georgia Donnelly is really Alex Donnelly’s daughter, he’s going to pay off, no matter what. If she isn’t. I’m going to find it out and reserve a room in the pen for you.”

Illman’s laugh boomed over the humming line. “This is no con game, Drumm. Do all the snooping you like.”

“Thanks. Donnelly says he wants to see you.”

“I’ll be right over,” Illman chortled; he hung up with a heavy hand.

Drumm turned to Alex Donnelly. “Thus far, thus fine. He’s coming over. Keep him occupied. I’m going to take a private look about his cottage and whatever papers he doesn’t bring in his brief case. I’ll look through the rooms and get a juicy picture of the guy. I hate dull jobs.”

The cottage on Linden, a street writhing around one of Asheville’s ever-present lulls, was a small, brightly white, frame affair. A few shrubs dotted the lawn. The afternoon was growing old and a soft north wind was beginning to blow. Drumm had heard that tourists in this altitude slept under blankets in August.

With a quick look at the comfortable, but inexpensive, sleepy neighborhood. Hector Drumm palmed the knob of the front door. It was unlocked. He eased inside. The blinds were drawn tightly. It was twilight in here. He blinked his eyes against it.

His vision focusing, he saw the girl. The back of her head was visible over the top of the maroon chair. Drumm grimaced, realizing he would have to make an excuse and get out and return later to prowl through Mr. Illman’s things.

But the girl said nothing so he walked forward. He bent over the (hair and looked her in the eyes. Her hair was jet black, her skin was olive. She was very beautiful, and dead.

Hector Drumm touched her arm. It was warm, which meant that she had been killed moments ago. Blood still seeped from the ugly place where a bullet had punctured her cheek. Pinned in the soft fabric of her homespun jacket was a glistening wooden monogram pin. The initials were C. D. Georgia Donnelly.

Drumm straightened, his face set. He hated it when they were young and lovely. He wiped beads of perspiration from his heavy upper lip and considered the local law. He was in strange territory, he decided. He picked up the phone, heard a conversation on the party line. Three minutes later he tried again and found himself talking to a drawling detective sergeant named MacGruder. Sergeant MacGruder was on his way over before Drumm hung up. Drumm looked back at the girl, sucked in a heavy breath, and went outside.

He sat down on the edge of the tiny excuse for a porch, his feet on the walk, and took out a cigarette. He pinched it neatly in two, lighted half, and returned the other half to his crumpled pack.

He kept remembering the girl inside, how bubbling with life she must have been, and he was making dire threats against somebody when the man came down the walk.

The newcomer was fat, fifty, bald, and explosive. His “Hello” was like a miniature clap of thunder. He stood over Drumm. He was well-dressed, Drumm thought, if you liked green slacks, tan sportcoat and open-throated shirt. The late rays of the sun struck the man’s bald pate obliquely, and as he bent to squint closely, Drumm saw that the top of the man’s head had been sunburned and was peeling, giving it a scalelike appearance.

“I’m Rick Elwyn,” the heavy man said, nodding ns Drumm mentioned his own name. Drumm mused, “Elwyn? Seems familiar. I had a cousin once who tried to get in pictures. Never made it, but she mentioned an agent...”

“Yes!” Elwyn said lustily. “Actor’s agent, adviser, creator of stars, that’s me.”

He didn’t like himself — much. Drumm eyed him thoughtfully. “Alex Donnelly’s agent?”

Rick Elwyn nodded, beaming. “I’ve done miracles for him.” Then he said in a more sober tone, “I’ve rented a cottage three blocks over for as long as Donnelly, myself, and his wife will be here. I...”

“Wife?” Drumm demanded.

Elwyn started a trifle at having someone else’s voice equal his own in intensity. “Why, yes. Viola Munday — that’s her screen name — if she ever gets a part. They’ve been married couple months.”

Drumm laboriously got one more drag from his fag. “I thought he had a wife in Mexico.”

“Yes, the Mexican woman. Beautiful creature, several years back. But when Donnelly and Viola decided to tie the knot, Alex hired a private dick in Mexico who found that his first wife was dead.”

“He’s got a passion for hiring private detectives,” Drumm said. “The dick found nothing about Georgia, Donnelly’s daughter by his first marriage?”

Elwyn hesitated. “The detective said nothing about a daughter ever having been born.”

“I guess the Mexican wife had pride.”

“Or the daughter is a fraud,” Elwyn said.

Their eyes locked and Hector Drumm said, “She’s no fraud. She’s as beautiful as her mother once was. And just as dead.”

Elwyn’s flabby chin dropped, quivered; his eyes squeezed toward the fronts of his sockets. “Dead...?” It was a very small voice now.

Drumm listened to sirens rising in the distance. He said softly, “Dead.”

MacGruder was a gangling, raw-boned hillbilly with stooped shoulders, a chin like an obstinate hound, and the eyes of a sly opossum. He carried a sizable quid in his left cheek, and never seemed to need to expectorate.

With him was the usual retinue: photog, fingerprint expert, coroner — since Asheville had not installed the more modern system of medical examiner’s office — a downy-faced cub hanging goggle-eyed to the sleeve of a bulky reporter from the Citizen, and three other individuals, one of them in a blue uniform, who took up a station at the door as the neighbors began to thrust heads out of windows and start across lawns.

Drumm sat in a corner and watched them. Rick Elwyn stood quivering like a puppet on a jerky string, wringing his hands.

MacGruder finally stood over Drumm.

“She was killed about an hour ago. She’d been dead about thirty minutes when you got here.”

Drumm made a mental calculation. He’d got mixed on municipal buses and it had taken about forty-five minutes for him to get from Alex Donnelly’s house. Which meant that the girl had been murdered about fifteen minutes after he had left Donnelly’s place. Someone with a fast car could have gotten from the actor’s house and done the job, leaving Donnelly’s house at the same time Hector Drumm had.