I drove the agency car to the parking space we rented by the month, got out, locked the bus and started towards the building where our office was located.
I saw a flicker of motion from across the street, there a big police car came out of a parking lot, driving fast. Sergeant Frank Sellers of Homicide grinned from behind the wheel and said, “Hi, Master Mind!”
“Hi, yourself,” I told him. “What’s on your mind?”
He said, “I just wanted to talk with you. You’re a hard guy to catch. Bertha told me you were out working on a case.”
“That’s right, I am.”
“What case?”
“Don’t be silly. You know I can’t tell you that.”
“You’d have to if I asked the questions in the right way.”
“Well, that wasn’t the right way.”
“I’ve been trying to get you for two or three hours, Lam. You must have started out pretty early this morning.”
“Early is a relative word,” I said, “depending on whether you’re working for Bertha Cool or the taxpayers.”
He didn’t see the humour of that. He pulled the catch and pushed the door open. “Get in.”
“Where are we going?”
“Places.”
“For what?”
“Never mind. Get in.”
I got in. He slammed the door shut and poured speed into the car.
“Can’t you tell me where we’re going?” I asked.
“Not now. I don’t want to question you, and I don’t want any statements from you until I’m sure of my ground. When I’m sure of it, I’m going to give you a chance to come clean.”
I settled back against the cushions and yawned.
Sergeant Sellers turned on the siren, and we really started making time through the frozen traffic.
“Must be an emergency,” I said.
He grinned. “I just hate to plod along behind a stream of Sunday drivers. It does them good to hear a siren once in a while. Makes ’em get over. They — damn the guy!”
Sellers whipped the car into a skid, barely avoided a chap who had swung out, trying to pass another car.
Having missed the collision, Sellers slammed on his brakes and we skidded to a stop when a road patrol car flashed out of line and the man at the wheel shouted, “I’ll get him!”
“Throw the book at him!” Sellers yelled. “Give him the works on five counts.”
The officer nodded.
Sellers stepped on the throttle once more, saying, “Guys like that should be locked up and kept locked up.”
“That’s right,” I told him. “Here you are tearing out on a matter of life and death and…”
He flashed me a sidelong glance. “Better save your sarcasm. You may need it later on.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll save it. I probably will need it.”
Another three minutes, and I knew where he was taking me. I braced myself for what was bound to happen and sat tight. The KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT seemed drab and shoddy by daylight. At night, the neon signs in front had been arranged so that it gave a certain colourful glamour to the front. The motorist could see the sweep of the curved gravel driveway, the red and green lights, the cottages arranged in neat, orderly rows, with lights illuminating only the white stucco fronts and showing the neat whiteness of the gravel. But by daylight the backs of the cottages were apparent and the white stucco showed that it was badly in need of paint and repair, chipped here and there, grimy with dirt.
Sergeant Sellers swung the car into the driveway. “Come on in, Lam,” he invited.
I followed him in.
The woman who ran the place looked us over.
“Ever seen him before?” Sellers asked.
I met her eyes.
“That’s the one,” she said.
“What one?”
“The one I was telling you about, the one who came here in Fulton’s car. He’s the one that wrote ‘Dover Fulton, 6285 Orange Avenue, San Robles.’ That’s his handwriting.”
“What about the girl with him?”
She sniffed, and said, “Some little tramp. And if you ask me, this man is grass green. My God, he came here with a stall about this dame being sick and needing a rest-room. I told him we didn’t have rest-rooms, that we had cabins and that the cabins had baths and toilets, and asked him if he wanted one. And what do you suppose he said?”
Sergeant Sellers was regarding me speculatively. “What the hell did he say?”
“Said he’d have to go and ask her.”
Sellers grinned.
“I almost didn’t rent it to him,” she said. “It’s people like that who give a place a bad name. I wish now I’d followed my inclination and kicked him out. A couple of little amateurs, that’s what they are. After all, I’m not running a place for kids.”
“He ain’t a kid,” Sellers said.
“Well, he acts like it.”
“What about the babe that was with him?”
“I didn’t get a good look at her,” the woman said, and then added wearily, “I never do with that type. Some of them stand out brazen as can be, but, for the most part, the amateurs keep back out of the way, sitting in the car and trying to look disinterested. They make me sick!”
“Come on,” Sellers said, “you must have had something of a look at her. Was she a red-headed girl with…”
“No, she was small, and she was blonde. I saw that much. I’ve told the police all about her already.”
“Then what happened?”
She said, “This man registered. I took them down and showed them the place, collected the rent money and went back. I had three more cottages. I rented them within about an hour and a half. On the last one there was this complaint about the radio in the other cabin, so I…”
“Did you hear the shots?”
“I thought it was a truck back-firing. I had no idea…”
“Three of them?”
“Three.”
“After these people had rented the cabin?”
“Yes.”
“How long after?”
“I don’t know — perhaps fifteen minutes — perhaps not that long. Perhaps only ten.”
“Longer than fifteen minutes?”
“I tell you it could have been. I don’t keep the time on those things. If I’d known they were shots I certainly would have noticed the time. And if I’d known this man was going to make me all this trouble, I never would have rented him anything in the first place. I’m not a fortune-teller.”
“No, I suppose not,” Sellers agreed. “What happened after that?”
“I didn’t rent the last cabin until around eleven o’clock. That was the cabin that was right next to this one. It was a double cabin, and the way it’s arranged it’s a white elephant. A party of four showed up and wanted the place. I took them down to get them located, and when I did, I noticed that the lights were on in this other cabin and the radio was playing.”
“You hadn’t had any complaints before that?”
“No, I don’t think any of the other cottages would have noticed it so much. But this vacant double was right next to it and you could hear pretty plain. The four people said they were tired and wanted to get to sleep, so I said I’d get the party next door to quiet down.”
“Go ahead,” Sellers said.
“I’ve told all this before.”
“Tell it again.”
“I went over and knocked on the door. Nothing happened. I knocked louder. Nothing happened. I tried the door. It was locked from the inside. I got mad and punched the key out and used my pass-key to get in. There they were, lying on the floor. Blood all over my carpet, and me trying to run a decent place! I’d put in a new carpet there only three months ago, trying to keep the place attractive. That’s the way it goes and—”
“And you called the police?”
“That’s right — and while you’re here I wish you’d tell me something — I’d collected the money for that double cabin from the four people. They got angry when they heard the police cars and all the commotion, and insisted that I give them their money back. I told them they’d rented the cabin and that if they were decent people with clean consciences, they could go to sleep and a little noise of automobiles coming and going wouldn’t hurt anyone. They said they were going to have me arrested if I didn’t give them the money back. Can they do that?”
“No,” Sellers said.
“Well, that’s what I thought. I’m glad you told me so.”
“What happened?”
“They pulled out about one in the morning. Said they wouldn’t sleep in a place that was next to a killing. They went on down the road somewhere. I hope they never did find a place to stay.”
I looked at Sellers. Sellers said, “Get me the dope on that party. Let me see how they registered. Give me their licence number and…”
The woman started pawing through a file of registration cards. “Not now,” Sellers said hastily. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. You get that stuff for me. Write it all out, and I’ll come back and pick it up.”
Sellers took my arm, piloted me outside. “Suppose you start talking, Donald?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Come on,” Sellers said. “You’d better come clean.” I said, “I can’t. It’s a job I’m working on.”
“A job, my eye!” Sellers said. “I’ve already checked with Bertha on that angle.”
“I still tell you it’s a job. A woman paid me two hundred dollars. She wanted her…”
“Go on,” Sellers said as I stopped.
I shook my head, and said, “I can’t do it without betraying the confidence of a client. I’ll have to get her permission before I can say anything.”
“You can give us a lift on this thing, Donald. I want it cleared up and off the books.”
“No, I can’t, Frank. I tell you it’s a job.”
“Phooie! You were out with a jane on your own. Bertha herself says so. You try pulling this sort of stuff, and you’ll lose your licence. I’ll try to make it easy on the partnership because Bertha’s been a square shooter, but as far as you’re concerned, you’ve always cut corners.”
I said, “I tell you I was on a job. It had to do with Dover Fulton, but it didn’t have a darned thing to do with the killing.”
“You’re supposed to co-operate with the police. Remember that.”
I said, “Look, Frank, this is a suicide, frustrated love. They were both of them nuts. They chose that way out. It’s their business. As far as the police are concerned, the case is closed. You know that as well as I do.”
“It has some funny angles. The department wants them cleared up.”
I said, “There’s nothing to investigate. They’re both dead. It’s the same old suicide-pact stuff.”
“But that automobile being here. The whole thing is cockeyed. I want the straight of it.”
“If I told you all I knew about it, it would still be cockeyed.”
“Who’s your client? Who are you working for?”
I shook my head.
Sellers said, “Wait here.”
His heavy feet crunched on the gravel as he went back into the office of the auto court. He was in there about five minutes, then came out, folding a paper. He climbed into the police car, and said, “Okay, we’ll take another ride.”
This time we went to San Robles.
6285 Orange Avenue was a post-war job that had been knocked together out of such materials as were available and such labour as had been willing to work. It was a Monterey-type house, neat enough on the outside, but the builders had been up against a problem of cost per square foot and had tried to make the square feet as few as possible.
Fifteen years ago the place would have been an architect’s model, a miniature house used for an estate agent’s office or an oversized doll-house. Now it was two bedrooms and bath, twelve thousand, seven hundred and eighty-five dollars.
We went through a little gate.
Sellers rang the bell.
The woman who opened the door had been crying until she had realized crying wouldn’t do her any good. Now she was in the dazed condition of trying to adjust herself to a whole new set of circumstances on which she hadn’t figured.
“Know this man?” Sellers asked.
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” Sellers said, “but we want to come in.”
Mrs. Fulton stood to one side and held the door open for us.
“Where are the children?” Sellers asked.
“One of the neighbours came and took them,” she said. “I guess it’s better to have them out of the house, what with the way people have been trooping in here and everything.”
Sellers said, “I guess so. We won’t stay long.”
He settled himself in a comfortable chair, crossed his legs, pulled back his coat, shoved his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and said, “I don’t want any run-around. You’re absolutely certain you haven’t seen this man before?”
She looked at me and shook her head.
“You didn’t hire him to shadow your husband?”
“No! Heavens sake, no! I didn’t think for a minute there was anything wrong.”
“You thought your husband was working at the office?”
“Not at the office, but out on a job somewhere.”
“Did he seem as devoted to you the last two weeks as he had before that?”
“Yes — even more so. Just a few days ago when Dover came home I was thinking how fortunate I was. He was complimenting me on the way I looked and... well... it must have been yesterday. It seems like it was ages ago.”
Sellers looked at me.
“How about the insurance?” I asked.
Sellers said to me, “What’s the idea, Master Mind?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Only you’ve been around here churning up the woman’s feelings, and I thought it might be about times you did something constructive for a change.”
“Well, I’ll do the thinking,” Sellers said
Irene Fulton said, “I had him take out insurance just a few months ago. The way the cost of living has been going up he couldn’t save anything — well, not enough. So I had him take out something that would give us protection, fifteen thousand apiece for the children, to put them through school, and ten thousand for me.”
“That’s good,” Sellers said.
“How long ago?” I asked.
“Last fall — and I called up the insurance people and they told me the policies were no good in case of suicide within one year from the date the policies were issued. I get back the first premiums and that’s all. And that’s going to be every cent I’ll have.”
“How about the house?” Sellers asked.
“We own it subject to a big mortgage. I suppose we could get something out of it for our equity. But that would take time — and I’ve got to live somewhere. And then the children…”
She stopped for a moment to appraise the situation.
There was sheer panic in her eyes. “What am I going to do now? How am I going to — good heavens, there won’t be any monthly income at all! There won’t be — there won’t...!”
“Take it easy,” Sellers said.
“Those policies,” I asked, “were they straight life insurance?”
“Yes. They provided for double indemnity in case anything happened to him. You know, in case he died in an automobile accident or anything of that sort. Until he took them out I hadn’t been able to sleep nights wondering what would happen to the children and me in case anything should — well, then it was a load off my mind — and now they won’t pay.”
“That’s right,” Sellers said, “they don’t pay off in case of suicide. Not when it’s within one year.”
There was silence for a moment, then Sellers said, “I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Fulton, but you’re going to have to take a little ride with me. You’re going to have to go to see a person.”
“Well, if I have to, I have to,” she said. Her voice sounded as though she welcomed the chance to get away.
“You can leave the house all right?”
“Yes, I’ll just lock up. The children are over at the neighbours’.”
“Okay,” Sellers said. “Get ready and come on.”
He glared belligerently at me and said, “And I can get along without any of your comments for a while, Master Mind.”
“Okay by me,” I said. “I can tell you right now you’re going to draw a blank.”
“Never mind the comments,” he said angrily. “I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do about you. I–I wish it had been a murder, then I could have thrown you in the hoosegow.”
I didn’t say anything. Sellers wasn’t in any mood for argument.
Mrs. Fulton got her hat and coat, dashed cold water in her eyes, put on some make-up and joined us.
Sellers drove to the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT. The woman came out, looked at Mrs. Fulton and shook her head.
“No?” Sellers asked.
“No,” she said, “The woman who was with him was smaller, a well-formed pint-sized kid, with long hair, high cheekbones, big, darkish eyes, and very full lips.”
“You’re sure you weren’t fooled, not seeing her get out of the car?” Sellers asked.
“Not a chance in the world,” the woman said. “This woman — well, she knows her way around. She’s married. The other one was slinky, well, a little bit frightened. She’d done a little playing around, but she wasn’t accustomed to spending the night in auto camps.”
“Thought you said she was a tramp,” Sellers said.
“Well — put it this way. She was a damn little hypocrite, and she was frightened about something that was due to happen. I thought it was about maybe getting caught on an all-night party. I don’t know. It was something.”
“How do you know this woman’s married?” Sellers asked.
“I can tell ’em as far as I can see ’em. This woman’s settled down. She’s quit thinking of herself. She’s got a home, a kid, probably a couple of ’em. This little tramp last night hadn’t got her man yet and she wasn’t thinking of anybody but herself.”
Sellers said, “You talk like a mind reader.”
“I am,” the woman said. “In this business you’ve got to be.”
“How old was this girl last night?” Sellers asked.
“Younger than this woman, a lot younger.”
“Smaller?”
“Smaller.”
“Lighter?”
“A whole lot lighter.”
Sellers sighed and started the car. “Okay,” he said wearily. “That’s just the way it goes. You have to investigate all of these angles.”
While we were driving back to San Robles, I said casually to Sellers, “What time do you figure the shooting took place, Sellers?”
“Right around ten-fifteen, as nearly as we can determine. You know how it is in a case of that kind. No one pays enough attention to look at the time, and then they have to approximate it afterwards, but it was right around ten-fifteen.”
“Checked up on everybody?” I asked.
“Uh huh,” he said wearily.
“How about Mrs. Fulton?”
“What about her?”
“Checked up on her?”
“What are you getting at?” Mrs. Fulton said.
Sellers cocked a quizzical eyebrow at me.
I said, “You must have had quite a shock last night, Mrs. Fulton. When did you learn your husband was dead?”
“About one o’clock in the morning. The police came and got me out of bed.”
“That’s tough. Of course,” I said, “you thought you had insurance. That must have helped soften the blow.”
“Yes,” she admitted, “I thought I had insurance until I talked with that insurance man. What’s all this about checking up on me?”
“He just wants to know where you were,” Sellers said, grinning. “He’s taking an indirect way of finding out.”
“Where I was! Why, I was home, of course.”
“Anyone else with you?”
“Certainly not. My husband was away. I was there with the children.”
“Where were the children?”
“In bed.”
“I mean at ten-fifteen.”
“That’s when I mean.”
Sellers glanced over at the woman, then looked at me again. “Lam,” he said, “you do get some of the damnedest ideas.”
“Don’t I?”
Sellers said, “Okay, Mrs. Fulton, I hate to rub it in, but just for the record, you could have slipped out of the house, gone down to the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT, found your husband down there, made a scene and…”
“Oh, bosh!” she interrupted.
“And that scene,” Sellers went on, “could have been the thing that caused your husband to shoot his sweetheart and commit suicide.”
“Don’t be a sap.”
“There’s something cockeyed about it.”
“In the first place,” she said, “how would I have got down there? I didn’t have a car.”
“How do we know you didn’t? You told us that your husband was out working and had his car, but... by God, Lam, I believe you’ve got something! Dover Fulton didn’t have the car with him. He’d left the car at home. His wife got in the car, beat it down to the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT, made a scene and the scene terminated in a shooting, and she was afraid to drive the car back. She…”
Sellers’s voice trailed off into silence.
“Running out of ideas?” Mrs. Fulton asked sarcastically.
“No, just getting them,” Sellers said. “You got any way of showing where you were at ten-fifteen? Any way at all?”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “Certainly I have.”
“What is it?”
“A man called up just about ten-fifteen,” she said, “and asked me if my husband was home. Then he said something about a Lucille Hart, who was supposed to be my sister. I told him I didn’t have any sister. And then he hung up. But all we have to do is to find that man and…”
“Nice stuff,” Sellers said sarcastically. “All we have to do is to find one guy out of the three or four million phone subscribers who are within reaching distance.”
“Well, it seems to me it would be easy. If you’d let it be known in the paper. .”
“We might, at that,” Sellers interrupted. “You answered the phone personally?”
“That’s right.”
“Talked with this man?”
“Yes.”
“Think he’d recognise your voice?”
“He should — he should be able to tell it again. In any event, he can tell that some grown woman was at my address and answered the telephone. That would certainly seem to dispose of this wild theory you have.”
Sellers drove for a while in silence.
“And how do you think I got home after the shooting?” Mrs. Fulton asked.
“You probably hitch-hiked,” Sellers said. “You’d locked the car when you went there and you were afraid to... Now, wait a minute. Donald Lam’s card was in there, and... Where’s your coin purse?”
“Right here in my bag.”
“Let’s take a look at it.”
She opened her bag, and Sellers pulled the police car over to the kerb to a stop. He looked at the coin purse Irene Fulton handed him, said thoughtfully. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Neither do you!” she snapped, then said suddenly, “Isn’t it enough that I have all these troubles without having you come along and adding to them?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Sellers said, and eased the car out from the kerb. But all the way to San Robles he was scowling as he watched the road. He didn’t use the siren, and he was driving so slowly that a couple of times I was afraid we’d be pinched for blocking traffic.
Mrs. Fulton didn’t say anything, either. She sat with her face hard, white and strained, looking straight ahead through the windscreen. She had thoughts for company, and they weren’t nice thoughts.
We got to the house in San Robles and Sellers said, “I guess I’ll just take a look through the place. You can show me where the kids were sleeping and where the phone’s located.”
I made motions in the rear seat, and Sellers threw over his shoulder, “You sit right there, Lam.”
I settled back and smoked a cigarette.
Sellers was gone about ten minutes. When he came out, he had a cigar in his mouth that he had chewed into frayed wreckage.
He adjusted himself behind the steering wheel, slammed the car door, turned to me and said, “Damn it, Lam, there are times when I could knock your teeth right down your throat.”
I looked at him innocently. “Why?” I asked.
“I’m damned if I know,” Sellers said angrily, “and that’s what makes it so damned irritating.”