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When the afternoon was young, I’d envisioned getting back to Mrs. Z’s in time for a bath and leisurely primping, and relaxing with my feet up for a while before Connelly came to take me to dinner. By the time I’d started my hospital visits, I’d given up on the relaxing part. Now, heading for the address of the man Pauline had seen Frank Scott talking to in the parking lot, I worried Connelly might show up at Mrs. Z’s before I did.
Before I passed a phone booth, I spotted a dumpy hotel. Pulling to the curb, I ran in and called Connelly’s place to let him know I’d be delayed an hour. No one answered. I called Mrs. Z’s. Esther, who’d been dating someone lately, picked the receiver up on the first ring.
“You must be going out,” I said. The phone was on a little table across from the foot of the stairs.
Esther laughed. “As a matter of fact, I am. I just put my coat on.”
“Do me a favor. Officer Connelly’s coming to meet me, and I’m running late. If Genevieve’s going to be around, ask her to tell him. If she’s going out, ask Mrs. Z.”
Assured I’d done all I could in that department, I hopped back into my DeSoto to drop in on Ike Wiggins, who from what I’d heard, qualified as a snake in the grass.
Wiggins lived in a nice brick house where a middle-aged woman getting her money’s worth from her corset opened the door.
“Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any,” she snapped.
I stiff-armed the door as she started to close it.
“I’m not selling anything. I’m here to see Mr. Wiggins. I’m doing some work for C&S Signals.”
Her nice wool dress and the wisp of a hat in her hand suggested she was the missus. A cat with rumpled fur looked happier than she did. The woman looked me up and down.
“You don’t look like a floozie, and if you are you’re welcome to him. With that cast on he smells like a billy goat, and has just about the same disposition. He’s in there.” She gestured.
“Oh, dear. How long has he been in a cast?”
“Too long,” she said darkly. Standing in front of a hall mirror nearly as tall as she was, she jammed her hat on her head. “Doreen!”
A woman in a starched white apron appeared from somewhere at the rear of the house.
“I’m going to my sister’s so I can have some pleasant conversation with my dinner. If Mr. Wiggins doesn’t want to sit at the table, take him a tray in his study. If you and Jules are ready to leave before he wants to go up to bed, put a pillow and quilt on the sofa and he can sleep there.”
“Ellen!” bellowed a voice from a room on the right. “Get back in here and tune this radio properly. I’m getting more static than program!”
As if she hadn’t heard, his wife went out and closed the door.
“Miss? May I help?” the woman in the apron asked timidly.
“I’m on my way to see Mr. Wiggins, thanks. Mrs. Wiggins and I were just having a chat. How long has the poor man been in a cast?”
“Two weeks tomorrow. If you want anything, he’s got a bell to ring, though he may have thrown it at something.”
I thanked her and a few seconds later stepped through the doorway indicated by Wiggins’ departing wife. A man with sloping shoulders sat in a wheelchair that held one of his legs out before him. It was encased, thigh to toe, in a plaster cast. If he’d had it on two weeks, he wasn’t the one who had met Frank Scott the night Pauline saw them. At any rate, he hadn’t driven there.
His back was toward me. He was struggling to reach the dials of a large console radio next to a lounge chair. He couldn’t manage because the cast sticking out in front of him and the wheels of his chair kept hitting the cabinet. Loathe to startle him since he was leaning halfway out of his seat, I cleared my throat.
“You took your own sweet time about coming.”
“It’s not your wife, Mr. Wiggins.”
Collapsing back, he spun the chair around.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name’s Maggie Sullivan.” I sat down, the better to be eye-to-eye with him. “And I want to know what you discussed with Frank Scott at your moonlight rendezvous in his office parking lot last week.”
Wiggins’ top lip bunched and he stared.
“What are you talking about? I haven’t been out of the house since I broke my leg tripping over that worthless, yappy mutt of my wife’s.”
As he spoke, he reached for a cushion behind him — to adjust it, I thought. Instead, he heaved it toward the door I’d just come through. I looked around in time to see a pint-sized pooch with bulging eyes take off down the hall.
“Now give me that.” Wiggins stabbed a finger toward the cushion.
I picked it up and handed it to him.
“I haven’t seen Scott since a month ago.”
“When you tried to bribe him.”
He cocked his head, looking wary now, but not particularly worried.
“I wouldn’t call it a bribe. I offered him a road to profit. What business is it of yours, anyway?”
“I’m a detective.” He didn’t need to know what kind. “Who else at C&S did you offer a road to profit?”
“Hey, what’s this about? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You also tried to bribe Loren Collingswood.”
“I already told you, it wasn’t— Okay, he might have misinterpreted. The man acts like he’s got a poker hanging out of his backside. Gave a spiel about loyalty and integrity.”
“And Scott?”
“Scott laughed in my face. Said he stood to make a lot more than whatever I could offer. In the way of, uh, profits, that is. From better marketing. That’s all I was trying to interest them in. They’re both owners, they got a right to sell whatever they want, don’t they?”
“Who did you try to make headway with at C&S who wasn’t an owner?”
His upper lip bunched again. A mannerism of his that said I’d lost him.
“What? Nobody.”
“What about Gil Tremain?”
Wiggins shook his head slowly.
“Sounds kind of familiar. What’s this about, anyway? If C&S are claiming I did something wrong, they better think twice. My word’s as good as theirs.”
“It’s about an employee of theirs. The engineer who made the breakthrough on the project you tried to get your hands on.” I decided to gamble. “A project of considerable interest to the War Department.”
He snorted.
“No, it ain’t. That project of theirs wouldn’t do a thing to keep planes in the air, but to some outfit wanting to mix pictures with sound, or make sound better than it is on that piece of junk radio there, it’s worth a bundle.”
The cushion sailed past me again. I heard a snarl and bark, but the dog already had vanished. Getting up, I retrieved the cushion and tossed it to Wiggins. He wasn’t exactly overcome with gratitude.
“I don’t know what your game is, girlie, but you can tell Collingswood it’s not going to work. I’m like this with my councilman.” He held up two crossed fingers. “If he or Scott tries spreading tales about me, I’ll sue them for slander. Now fix my radio on your way out.”
I walked to the console, smiled at Wiggins, and yanked the plug from the wall.