Read Online The Case of the One-Penny Orange: A Masao Masuto Mystery (Book Two) by Howard Fast - Free Book Online Page B

in debt, and they have a quarter-of-a-million bank loan callable in about thirty days. Unless they have resources not listed, it’s questionable whether they can meet it. Maybe they can float another loan to cover, maybe not. One doesn’t know. If you’re going to lend them money, think twice.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œLook, Masao, if you’re on the pad and you got money to burn, come around and see me. Stay away from places like Holmbey’s.”
    â€œVery funny. Goodbye.”

6
    ELLEN BRIGGS
    Driving to North Camden — north being north of the railroad tracks, the line through Beverly Hills that separates the middle class from the rich — Masuto recalled that he had not only seen Ellen Briggs play Major Barbara but he had also seen her play Hedda Gabler at the Huntington Hartford Theatre, which was quite different from the little shack on Las Palmas where she had performed in the Shaw play. The part was notably different as well, for while he had never cared for the Ibsen play as a dramatic work, he was always intrigued by the character of Hedda Gabler — the frustrated, hate-filled woman whose morality had disappeared under the pressure of her anger, who could kill and destroy without compassion or regret. He had always wondered whether there could be a great performance of the Hedda Gabler role without the actress sharing some part of the nature of Ibsen’s character.
    Well, he knew very little about actresses; but why hadn’t Ellen Briggs mentioned the Hedda Gabler role? How could any actress resist saying, once he had complimented her on the Major Barbara role, “But did you see me as Hedda Gabler at the Huntington Hartford?”
    Of course, there were the circumstances. Her mother’s death, the funeral, and then the breaking into her house and the senseless chaos visited upon it. Perhaps the additional misery of the talented actress who does not make it. She was at least forty now, and Masuto had spent his life close enough to the entertainment industry to know that, with a few incredible exceptions, the actor who does not make it by forty will never make it.
    It was half-past ten in the morning when Masuto parked his car in front of the Spanish Colonial house on Camden, and he had that strange feeling — not unusual when one is awake most of the night — that somewhere he had lost a day. Also, he had missed his regular early morning practice of meditation. Well, a day like today is not so different from a koan; he smiled a bit at the thought. He himself practiced in the Soto School of Zen, but in the Rinzai School one meditated upon a thing called a koan, a proposition that defies reason; and Masuto had always felt that murder, the destruction of one human being by another, defied both reason and civilization. It was certainly not an apt comparison, but it amused him.
    When he rang the doorbell, Ellen Briggs opened the door for him, and the change in her appearance from the day before was so marked that he had to look twice to make sure it was the same woman. She wore old blue jeans that fit her slender figure tightly and a blue work shirt open at the neck, and her hair was drawn back and tied behind her head. She looked twenty years younger than the grief-stricken woman he had seen the day before, and the lack of makeup added to her attractiveness.
    She stared at him blankly for a moment, then smiled. “Of course — Detective Masuto.”
    â€œGood morning, Mrs. Briggs. May I come in?”
    â€œPlease.”
    The living room was back in place and orderly. “I’m working in the kitchen now,” she explained. “It’s good for me to have all this to do. You know, I don’t suppose the thieves were in the house for more than an hour, but it will be three days before I clear up the wreckage.”
    â€œIt’s always easier to destroy,” Masuto agreed. “Actors will rehearse a play for weeks, and a critic