Murder Is My Dish Read Online Free PDF Page A

telling you where to deliver the money. Then what? Where do I come in?”
    â€œYou deliver it,” said Frances.
    I said, “They wouldn’t go for that.”
    Eulalia lurched toward me. If motor responses meant anything, she was very drunk now. “Frances will draw out the money,” she said, leering. “They’ll tell her where to deliver it. She’ll get a migraine. She’ll ask me, if Rafael means anything to me, would I please? Then she’ll ask you to go with me or follow me to see I don’t keep the money or put it back in the bank where it belongs. Then I’ll ask you to come along and follow them after I give them the money. Then—”
    â€œYou’re drunk,” Frances said.
    If I stayed there much longer, I would get down on my hands and knees and gnaw a table leg. I headed for the door. “Call me,” I said. “When they call you. I’m at the Commodore.”
    â€œBut what are you going to do?” Eulalia cried.
    I closed the door softly behind me. I didn’t want to jar anything. There was a lot in there that could be jarred. I didn’t answer Eulalia’s question. Out loud I didn’t, not right away. I went down the hall and rang for the elevator.
    In a few seconds Eulalia opened the apartment door and peered out into the hall. “Well?” she said.
    She was drunk. What she’d said sounded cockeyed, unless you saw her, and Frances Caballero, and a ransom note pasted on brown wrapping paper by people who knew all about the Fund for Parana Independence.
    â€œWell?” she said again as the elevator arrived.
    â€œYou and Nostradamus,” I groaned.

Chapter Four
    I TOOK the subway downtown and walked a couple of blocks over to Bellevue and found my way to the morgue. The attendant on duty was a plump little fellow whose bald head was almost hidden behind the cover of an exposé magazine. The cover showed a close-up of a nationally prominent TV and movie personality and promised to tell you things about him you couldn’t discuss with mother or the kids or man’s best friend, the dog.
    â€œYes sir?” the plump man said without looking up.
    â€œA man named Dineen died here last night,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here to make arrangements sooner, but I don’t want him given a pauper’s burial. What steps do I take?”
    His nose sank back toward the pages of the exposé magazine after coming up maybe half an inch for air. He droned, “Prove you got a claim to the body, then authorize a mortuary to … did you say Dineen?”
    â€œYeah. Dineen.”
    The nationally prominent TV and movie personality went face down on the desk. The bald pate swung up and I was staring at beady little eyes and a small nose and fat pale cheeks and a puckered prune of a mouth. “Just a minute,” he said, and dialed a phone, and grunted, “He’s here.”
    I was waved to a chair and sat down and stared at a pair of swinging doors with portholes in them. Pretty soon they swung in and a guy came through reluctantly, as if he’d been shoved. He wore a gray ready-made suit that did not quite hide a potbelly and shoulders a bit narrower than the double swinging doors. He was tall too and had a sad and unsurprisable face with a long nose, a stubborn jaw and meanly alert wide-spaced eyes. I didn’t like him on sight and knew he would confirm that snap judgment for me.
    â€œYou Drum?”
    â€œYes, Officer.”
    â€œOh, expecting trouble, was you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen you one of those guys thinks he can smell a cop?”
    I let that one blow over. The bald morgue attendant caught it and grinned.
    â€œNice of you to show up. We only been combing every hotel in the city for you.”
    â€œI’m registered over at the Commodore.”
    His voice went sweet all of a sudden. “Say now, it’s all right with you if we plan on