WHEN I let myself in, Brett was in the phone nook and I overheard him say, “Compartment A, Car 302, Southern Pacific Chieftain, Union Station—and be sure they’re delivered before 11:00 Thursday morning.”
“Someone ’leaving town?” I asked when he had hung up.
“Toni and Vette. They’re going to California.”
“Oh. Are you seeing Toni tonight?”
“Sure, and tomorrow night too.”
“I have a feeling you go for that gal.” I grinned at him.
For the first time in weeks he grinned back. “You don’t say!”
“Ummm. You should marry her and make the trip a honeymoon jaunt.”
“Not with Vette along!”
“Guess not,” I agreed and started upstairs to clean up.
“Any trace of Lucille yet?” he asked as I turned away.
“Only the usual reports placing her in every state in the Union. I imagine the police have given some small, blonde nurses several unhappy moments. Things should really start popping now. Fred McGowan has offered a five-thousand-buck reward for Ned’s killer.”
“Fred did that? When?”
“Today. It ought to catch something or somebody.”
“I should imagine,” he agreed and I turned away again Then back again.
“Will you promise not to fly in my face if I ask you a question?”
’Why should I fly in your face?”
“You might not like the question. Everyone around here seems to blame me for everything that happened and I’m almost afraid to open my mouth.”
“You’ll have to admit you did cook up a fine stew and mostly it was your fault.”
“I’ll admit no such thing! It was not my fault!” I denied indignantly.
“Okay, okay, let’s skip it. What was the question?”
“Well, you said a lot of things that day at the hotel. At times you sounded like you hated Ned’s guts. Did you?”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Is that the question?”
I nodded.
“There was a time when I hated Ned. But we got things all straight with each other.”
“What did he do to you?” I knew what he’d done.
“He dated Toni knowing she was my girl. I quit that job in Chicago and came home. I asked him if he was in love with her or just playing his usual game. He made some crack about having told me all women could be had and I hit him. I had it out with Toni and she told me it was Vette Ned loved. One night we got together at her house and after that we were good friends again.”
“As good as you’d ever been?” I asked searchingly.
“No. It was never quite the same,” he admitted honestly. “But I didn’t hate him at the time he was killed. I really rather liked Ned. He was a fool but a pleasant sort to be around.”
’Well, someone hated him enough to poison him.”
“I know. You don’t suspect your brother, do you?” His smile was teasing.
“I’ve suspected everyone else at one time or another, even Vangie. It’s a wonder I don’t suspect myself. Heaven knows I couldn’t abide Ned.”
His smile died. “That’s a very unfunny joke.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “If I’d known what he was doing to Vangie I would have been mad enough to kill him. How about you?”
“I don’t know what he did to Vangie but,” his hands clenched, “if I had found out there was anything to be ashamed of I’d have throttled him with my bare hands.”
“Don’t let it worry you. I found out that Ned never went the route with jail-bait girls. So Vangie is as good as new.“
“Who told you that?” He eyed me keenly.
“None of your business. But Vangie was nuts about him. I hope she gets over it soon. I’m pretty tired of her growling and glaring at me and I’m fed up with her dramatics and yelling to go out.”
“She has been hard to handle,” he admitted. “But don’t forget you spoke cruelly of the man she loved!” He placed his hand over his heart.
I giggled. “One more question before I go wash city room grime off me. Did you ever hear anything scandalous about Ned’s friendship with Marta Dellman?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it scandalous. There was some talk, but Gerry Dellman is insanely jealous of Marta and if there had been anything to get suspicious about he’d have blown his top. Of course he goes out of the city a lot and Ned hung around while he was away. I know she lent him a wad of dough.”
“To furnish his offices,” I reminded him.
“Oh sure. It was all perfectly businesslike. No, I don’t think they were intimate. Nothing more than a middle-aged woman being flattered by the attentions of a younger man who knew she could help him get ahead.”
“It sounds slightly disgusting, put that way.” I turned up my nose. “However, I guess that’s about the size of it. Well, I’m going to wash.”
I had just finished cleaning up when the silver tinkle announced dinner and I’d hardly put my foot in the dining room when Vangie jumped on me.
“Just how much longer do you think you’re going to keep me imprisoned in this house?” she demanded.
“Until the police tell me it’s safe for you to go out all by your little self,” I said calmly.
“Well, I’m not going to put up with it. I’m going out—tonight!” She glared at me. ’What’s more, I’d like to see you try and stop me, you nasty old—”
“Evangeline! That will do,” Mother said sternly. Vangie subsided sullenly.
We finished dinner, but the glow of the Irish whisky was still with me. I got up from the table and walked over to Vangie’s chair.
“You’re a nasty-tempered spoiled hellion,” I whispered in her ear. “But you’re my sister and you’re probably still a virgin and I love you anyhow.”
She stared at me, wall-eyed. “Whoever said I wasn’t a-a—” She looked at Mother and stopped abruptly.
“No one. It was just an idea I got. Skip it.”
Mother’s cool eyes were faintly inquiring, and following the habit of weeks in the doghouse, I excused myself and went up to my room. I’d barely got comfortable with a book in my hand—not a murder mystery—when Vangie came in without knocking first to see if she was welcome. I surveyed her calmly.
“Just what did you mean by that crack you made down-stairs?” she demanded.
It may have been the afterglow of the highballs. But I sat up straight and intoned in a deep, moving voice, “My darling, much as I want you I cannot take you like this. But I shall always treasure this moment. Ah! If you were—”
Shock held her speechless until I got that far. Then she interrupted, eyes blazing. “You spied on us! Or Ned told you! Oh! He couldn’t have done anything so low, so awful!”
“Take it easy!” I warned, moving to the far side of the bed. “Ned told me nothing and I never spied on you. I just happen to know that was his stock line with girls of jail-bait age.”
“Stock line! Who told you that?”
“Never mind who told me. It was someone who knew what she was talking about. He told her the same thing.”
“I don’t believe it! Ned wouldn’t do such a thing!”
“Oh he wouldn’t!” I raised up angrily. “Well he did. You don’t really think you were his one and only, do you? What of Vette? He was going to marry her, remember?”
“But he said he loved only me! He said he was marrying her because—well, just because,” she finished lamely and red-faced.
I thought with sudden unhappy suspicion of Vette’s sudden decision to go to California. Vette was past the age of consent.
“Marrying her because he’d got her in trouble, I suppose? And he told you that?”
’Well, he said—” She stopped again.
I threw the book at her.
“And that didn’t show you what kind of a louse he was? Oh, get out of here! I’m disgusted with you! Go on, scram!”
She wilted completely. “Please, Margaret. Who told you he said those things to her?”
“You think I’m crazy? Why should I give her away? Now go on, get out.”
“But I want to know. Truly I do.”
I sighed. “I daresay. Well, it was a girl I know, and he told her the same slush. Who she is happens to be my business. But it isn’t my business that you happen to be a gullible little fool. That’s your own headache.”
“I have been a fool,” she said bitterly, her shame and surrender complete. “I wouldn’t have believed it if you hadn’t known all the words.”
“And the music,” I added. “Yes, you’ve certainly been an ass, but you had company. Lots of it. Now don’t cry!” Tears were beginning to flow. “Just forget it. He wasn’t so smart after all. No smart guy would have handed all his girls stock lines. He might have known they’d meet and compare notes sooner or later.” Hysterical merriment seized me. “Just suppose,” I choked out between spasms, “just suppose they’d have done so while he was alive! He’d have been better off dead!”
“Oh, Margaret!”
“I’m sorry.” I tried to stop the near hysterical laughter. “Excuse me, baby, but it just struck me as being funny. It’s bad taste, I know.”
“Margaret—” she hesitated. “Margaret, if he told all the girls the same thing he must have been a louse, mustn’t he?”
I went off again. “To think I’d ever hear you say that about the man you loved!” I hooted. “Baby, I think you’re cured!”
“Well, isn’t it the truth? He was just a—just a big mess!”
“Sounds familiar.” I was suddenly very sleepy. “Somewhere I’ve heard those words before and you know ’tain’t fitten to speak ill—” I fell asleep.
I awakened in the morning to find Vangie in bed alongside of me. She hadn’t done that in a long time. As I watched her she opened her bright blue eyes and smiled at me.
“Hi, hussy,” I said.
“Hi, hussy yourself. Tell Bertha I’m in here and not to wake me up until 11:00. If I have to stay home I might as well sleep most of the time, and your bed is the best in the house.”
“It should be. I paid a fortune for that spring and mattress. Before you go back to sleep, you lucky wench, I want to tell you there’s a reward out for Ned’s killer. Why don’t you try to collect the dough?”
She opened one eye. “Why should I bother?” she asked and turned over.
I went down to breakfast feeling better than I had in weeks. Brett was my pal again, Vangie had been cured and had slept with me, a token of utter forgiveness, I knew Mother and Marian would come around in a day or two at the most. The only fly in the salve was the thought of what poor Vette must be going through if Ned had told Vangie the truth. I didn’t want to believe he had and felt so good I decided not to believe it. I spoke blithely to Bertha and asked for coffee.
I got a frigid silence and coffee.
I grinned. “Miss Vangie is sleeping in my room,” I told her blandly. “She said to tell you not to wake her up until 11:00.”
“Miss Vangie in yo room?” She sounded incredulous. ’Whut she doin’ dar?”
“Sleeping, I told you. Why not? She’s done it before.”
“But not lately she ain’t!”
’Well, she’s in there now.”
She beamed on me. “Now, Miss Mar’gret, you jest go sot in de brekfuss room ’n Ah brings you yo vittles right fast!”
I went in, knowing I’d get breakfast served with a smile. I sighed deeply. Home was home sweet home again. I felt at peace with the world and I was sure something nice was going to happen almost any minute.
It was Saturday before anything happened and it wasn’t nice.
On Saturday they found Lucille St. Clair.
Dennis had stuck me on the phones to answer the calls coming in about that reward. Not less than a thousand people had seen Lucille or a reasonable facsimile of same. They’d seen her in cities, towns, villages, and hamlets. We accepted all calls, collect every time. By 2:00 P.M. Saturday I was beat taking them and relaying them to the police to chase them down.
Lucille had been seen on a train, a bus, a steamer, and a plane. She’d even been detected hitching a ride on the highways, and she’d been positively identified as a passenger in no less than fifty cars bound for Texas, Georgia, Alabama, and points east, north, and west. By 2:00 P.M. of that same Saturday the paper owed the telephone company a shocking sum and Fred McGowan owed it to the paper.
When the real call came I wasn’t ready for it.
It came from New Iberia, a town in the Bayou section, and was actually phoned in from a Bayou crossroads station a few miles from the town.
The caller was a French Cajun, a trapper and pirogue fisherman who lived near New Iberia.
I accepted the call, bored and annoyed with the whole show and most particularly with Dennis.
“I ’ave information!” the voice said excitedly. “Me, zis is Jean Pierre Rebault, an’ I ’ave zis girl who is want for ze murder of le docteur!”
“You and ten thousand others,” I said wearily. “Okay, let it go. Where did you find her? Hiding in a Tabasco bottle?”
“Eh? You do not make to understan’ what I say! Me, Jean Pierre Rebault, I feesh in ze bayou an’ today I fin’ zis girl for who ze gendarmes look. I fin’ her, I tal you!”
“Did you really?” I marveled. “And what did she say to you?”
“Say? She say nossing. She can say nossing. She is ver’ dead!”