The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs: A Masao Masuto Mystery by Howard Fast Page A

his ads for his string of stores. Since I’m talking, I’ll talk. Her alimony is five grand a month. I know some guys who’d murder their own mothers to save sixty thousand a year, and to add insult to injury she’s been having an affair with Monte Sweet, the comic. But they’ll never get married. They’d have to be crazy to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.”
    â€œMeaning her alimony.”
    â€œYou bet your ass. The best investment there is. You put in a couple of years, and not only have you got the community property law going for you, but you got a fat check coming in every month.”
    â€œAnd is that the case with Nancy Legett?”
    â€œNow there’s something else. She’s a quiet little mouse—the one in ten in Beverly Hills who just lets her hair go gray. I don’t know what to make of her—quiet, polite, no gossip. She was married twenty-two years to Fulton Legett, the producer. He’s a big swinger, and for a long time he was up on top. But the past few years, he’s had one bomb on top of another, and today they say he’s broke. That don’t mean he’s poor, but maybe he’s tired of keeping her in that big house up on Lexington Road. She’s got three kids. They’re away at school, the way I hear it, two of them in swanky Eastern colleges and one in a prep school back east. That don’t come cheap.”
    â€œAnd Mitzie Fuller?”
    Tony Cooper leaned back and grinned. “Mitzie. She’s a doll—she’s an absolute doll. Red hair—real, not from the bottle—a great face and the best pair of boobs this side of the Grand Canyon. Never heard a bad word out of her. She is the sweetest, nicest bundle that ever walked into this tonsorial cathouse. Tell you something, Sarge, if I was straight I’d break my ass trying to get next to her. One thing about broads you can bet your last dollar on, the nicer they are, the worse bums they tie up with, and Mitzie’s ex, Bill Fuller, is no exception to the rule.”
    â€œWilliam Fuller, the director?”
    â€œThat’s right. Now let me tell you something. I don’t run the biggest hair shop in Beverly Hills, but I like to think it’s the best, and I get the pick of the classy broads, and they talk and they talk and they talk. If I didn’t have trouble writing my own name, I could write you a tome on the habits of so-called straight men that would curl your hair, and I’d have a chapter on film directors. They are the meanest, most arrogant, egotistical set of bastards that ever lived, and Billy Fuller is one of the top runners. I’m still waiting to hear something nice about him. Now I don’t know why they got divorced, because Mitzie don’t talk. They were only married six months when it broke up, but Mitzie got the house on Palm Drive, which the real estate ladies tell me is worth three-quarters of a million on today’s market, and the word is that she gets a fat check every month. Well, she earned it. Six months living with Billy Fuller has no price on it. But you want a candidate, you got him. He’s a killer. He’d kill anything that got in his way.”
    Masuto was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I wouldn’t mention that to anyone else—for your sake, as well as mine.”
    â€œYou asked me.”
    â€œI know. And you told me. And for the time being, it rests with us. Right?”
    â€œRight.”

The L. A. Cops
    Masuto stopped off for a hamburger and a cup of coffee, and he had them wrap two and fill a container of coffee for Beckman. Knowing Beckman, he knew that it would make no appreciable difference to Beckman’s appetite if he had brought a sandwich to the vigil. For Beckman to sit in the car, preserving a sandwich for some future dinner hour, was unthinkable. He turned out to have been right.
    â€œI’m starved,” was the first thing Beckman said to