Case Pending - Dell Shannon by Dell Shannon Read Free Book Online Page A

tried to bring him up. Not
that I'm not sorry for the poor thing, the girl I mean, and one
shouldn't speak ill of the dead. I try to take a Christian view I'm
sure and after all people can't help being born what they are, but
when it comes to accepting them into one's family' It was something,
however, to have embarrassed such a woman even momentedly: her
belated furtive glance at his card, her ugly pink flush, almost
ludicrous. "And of course," she had added hurriedly,
"there's all the difference in the world between people like
that and the real high-class old Spanish families, everyone knows
that, I understand the peasant class is actually mostly Indian and
the real Spaniards wouldn't have anything to do with them. But I'm
sure you can see how we, my husband and I, felt'
    Mendoza sighed into the dregs of his coffee. It did
not, apparently, cross Mrs. Wade's mind that she had perhaps, in a
sense, contributed to the girl's death. The boy had been strictly
forbidden to see Elena again ("really such strong measures were
necessary, though he is nineteen and ordinarily I don't believe in
iron discipline"), and when it was discovered, through a
garrulous acquaintance of Ricky's, that he had not borrowed the
family car to go to the movies last night but to take Elena to that
awful skating place—Well, I said to Mr. Wade, when it comes to
lying to his own parents, something drastic must be done! You can see
how she corrupted him, he'd never done such a thing before—I said
to Mr. Wade, you'll go right down there and, So Mr. Wade (could one
conjecture, breathing fire, or were the men married to such women
capable of it?—at least he seemed to have acted effectively) had,
by bus, sought out the Palace rink, publicly reprimanded the erring
Ricky, and fetched him ignominiously away. After this soul-scaring
experience, nineteen-year-old Ricky had probably been in no state to
consider how Elena would get home, and if it had occurred to the
Wades, presumably they had thought a girl like that would be used to
going about alone at night.
    As, Mendoza conceded, she had been: she had probably
got home alone before. He pushed his coffee cup round in a little
circle, aimlessly; and of course the girl would also have been angry,
humiliated—quite possibly she might have let a stranger pick her
up, a thing she wouldn't ordinarily do. Someone at the rink?
    He wondered what Hackett would find out there. He
paid the bill, redeemed the Ferrari from the lot attendant, and
instead of turning back downtown for headquarters, negotiated his way
through the bottleneck round the Union Station and turned up Sunset
Boulevard. It had begun to rain steadily, after long threat.
    The address Teresa had given him was close into town,
along the less glamorous stretches of that street. It proved to be
the upper half of a small office building, not new. A narrow door and
a steep stair brought him to a landing and a sign: THE SUNSET SCHOOL
OF CHARM. A mousy girl with a flat figure and harlequin glasses was
scrabbling among papers at the receptionist's desk.
    "Miss Weir?"
    "Oh, dear me, no." She moved the glasses up
to focus on him better. "No classes on Saturday, sir, and we
don't enroll gentlemen anyway."
    "Which is not what I am here for," said
Mendoza, annoyed at the implication. "I want to see Miss Weir on
private business."
    "Not here on Saturdays. . . . .Of course I have
her home address, but I don't know—oh, well, I suppose it's all
right."
    New directions took him, tediously, several miles
into Hollywood, to a street of solidly middle-aged apartment
buildings, a little shabby, thirty years away from being fashionable
addresses, but neatly kept up. The row of locked mailboxes in the
foyer of the Blanchard Arms informed him that Miss Alison Weir lived
on the fourth floor. A hand-lettered placard further informed him
that the elevator was out of order.
    Mendoza said mildly, "Damn," toiled up
three flights of dark, dusty-carpeted stairs, pressed the bell of