Murder Is My Dish Read Free Page A

filing cabinets. There was a closed door behind the desk and on the wall a large blowup of a Goya sketch savagely and pessimistically showing a blind beggar with a dog and a black cape and an empty hat.
    A boy in an open toggle-topper stood before the desk with his chin slumped almost to his chest. “But I think I ought to drop Spanish Sixty-seven,” he was saying. He added brightly, hopefully: “I could pick up Sixty-eight next semester.”
    The girl behind the desk said, “I’m afraid it’s much too late in the semester to even consider dropping a course.”
    â€œBut,” the boy challenged, “I’m going to flunk.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Mr. McLeod. Really, I can’t help you.”
    â€œMy flunking will be on your hands,” the boy said dolefully. “I want to see Mr. Caballero.”
    The girl looked up from the papers on her desk for the first time. She had long, lustrously black hair which fell straight as a well-pitched tent except where it coiled under at the bottom a couple of inches below her shoulders. She had a high forehead which called for but did not have bangs and which managed to tone down the hot dark eyes and the full, moistly red lips. Perhaps that was the idea. She wore a white cashmere sweater which clung with the tentative gentleness of an uncertain lover to the kind of torso which belonged, without any uncertainty, in a sweater ad. She was not a beautiful girl in the trite mode of beauty that Hollywood has proclaimed, but she was strikingly attractive and her easy, unaffected poise told you she knew it.
    â€œMr. Caballero is not in,” she said to the boy.
    â€œWell, when can I see him?”
    â€œI don’t know when he’ll be in. Why don’t you see Dean of Men?”
    â€œMaybe I will,” the boy sulked.
    â€œYou do that, Mr. McLeod,” the girl said frostily. Mr. McLeod left. The girl smiled at me with friendly curiosity.
    â€œI guess I go to the corner of the room too,” I said. “I’m looking for Mr. Caballero.”
    â€œWell, he really isn’t here.” Her lips were still smiling at me, but her eyes were troubled.
    â€œDrum’s the name. Primo Blas Lequerica, the Parana Republic’s permanent delegate to the United—”
    â€œOh, Mr. Drum!” she cried, before I could finish. She got up and came around the desk, flashing a hopeful, optimistic grin. Long legs were covered by a nubby brown tweed skirt and nylons and supported by heels which gave her two inches to add to her own five-six or seven. “Then you must be working with Mr. Dineen. You can tell us where Rafael—where Mr. Caballero is!”
    â€œNot me,” I said. She pulled up short, close enough for me to smell a very faint but musky perfume. The eager grin went the way of yesterday’s clear and sunny weather.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” she said. “But when you mentioned Mr. Lequerica, I thought—”
    â€œThat I was the private detective he recommended to Mr. Caballero? I was. A friend of mine took the job. I take it Caballero’s missing.”
    She was disappointed enough to say tartly, “Why don’t you ask your friend?”
    â€œMy friend is dead.”
    â€œDead? Dead?” She ran the gamut from joy to despair in a few seconds. It was too much for her. She turned her back and covered her face and sobbed. I touched her shoulder and she swung around as if we’d practiced this many times before, and she shoved her face against my chest and went on sobbing.
    After a while I asked, “The police know about Caballero?”
    Her head bobbed. Her glossy black hair tickled my chin. “No, no. He’s only been missing since the night before last … we couldn’t be sure that he … but if his bodyguard … dead …”
    She found my breast-pocket handkerchief and used it. She mumbled something about being a great big baby and I said