Read Online Death After Breakfast by Hugh Pentecost - Free Book Online Page B

mention him to you last night?”
    “I don’t recall that she did.”
    “Think,” Hardy said. “Did she tell you he was coming to see her. She might, since you were such an old friend.”
    “I’m sure she didn’t.” Mayberry’s eyebrows rose. “My God, you’re not suggesting that Jim Kauffman—?”
    “I cover every possibility, Mr. Mayberry.”
    I suddenly thought about Shirley. I was very late for the lunch I’d promised her. From what she’d told us about Laura Kauffman, and what Janet Parker had told us about Mayberry, I had the feeling he wouldn’t have hung around the lady for fifteen years just to spend a weekend at Acapulco. Hardy was right with me.
    “Were you one of Mrs. Kauffman’s lovers?”
    Mayberry sat straight up in his chair as though there was an electric charge in it. “That’s none of your goddamned business!” he said.
    “All of Mrs. Kauffman’s lovers are my business today,” Hardy said.
    Mayberry mopped at his face with his handkerchief. “She was a widow for the first ten years I knew her,” he said. “We—we may have had a few intimate moments, but that was long ago. She was a damned attractive woman.”
    “Not any more,” Hardy said, his voice grim. “I’m going to get the man who butchered her, Mr. Mayberry.”
    “I certainly hope so.”
    “So let’s go back to Chambrun,” Hardy said. “You met him in the hall outside Mrs. Kauffman’s suite. You discussed the camera-at-the-ball situation?”
    “I told you. He was unreasonably stubborn about it.”
    “What else did you talk about?”
    “Nothing, that I can recall.”
    Jerry got into the act then. “Mayberry had been offensive to Miss Parker,” he said in a flat voice. “She asked Cardoza for help and Cardoza called the boss. Chambrun went up to Twenty-one C to assure Miss Parker she didn’t have to worry about Mayberry any more. Surely Chambrun must have brought it up. When he saw Mayberry in the hall he told Miss Parker that the fates were doing away with delay.”
    “You really must hate his guts,” Hardy said.
    “The whole thing is absurd,” Mayberry said. “Actresses like Miss Parker expect to have passes made at them. Disappointed if you don’t. She’s a—”
    “—damned attractive woman,” Hardy said.
    “All she had to do was say no!” Mayberry said.
    “Maybe not,” Jerry said. “She was being pressured by Herman and Duval to be nice to you, at least until after the filming.”
    “I don’t need help from anyone!” Mayberry said.
    “I have a feeling you may need a hell of a lot of help before we’re through here,” Hardy said.
    I went down the hall to my apartment It was nearly three o’clock and I wasn’t surprised to find Shirley gone. There was a note propped up on the mantel.
I’m not mad, luv, [it read] but with big stories all around I just couldn’t sit here. Later I have to get dolled up for the ball so that you won’t be able to look at anyone else. I hope Chambrun will show up with some simple explanation, otherwise I may not be able to seduce you. Love, luv. Shirley.
    That one is special. I was just about to leave to make the rounds of the governors and the fashion show and the preparations in the main ballroom when there was a heavy knock on my door. It was Doc Partridge, the house physician. He is a craggy, shaggy old gent, but a friend, particularly a friend of Chambrun’s. He looked shaken.
    “What’s this about Pierre?” he asked.
    I told him. No word, no sign of Chambrun since his “no” more calls” to Miss Kiley at two fifteen. No message, no demands from potential kidnappers. And now, after hours of grinding search, no trace of him so far anywhere in the Beaumont, nor any response to the all-points bulletin Hardy had put out on him.
    “If he had wanted to disappear, he’d be delighted at how perfectly he’d managed it,” I said.
    “Of course he didn’t want to disappear! That’s nonsense!” Doc nodded toward a chair. “Mind if I sit down,