CHAPTER 49
Anna sat by Georges’s bed as he slept a morphine sleep, under house arrest. Wolf wandered the apartment drinking Georges’s good whiskey and touching things. He came in and out of the bedroom. She heard him drop something in the living room. Joe stood in the bedroom doorway looking defeated. “That was pure genius, even if it wasn’t on purpose.”
“You think he had a fit for sympathy? I take offense at that. He’s sick.”
“I know. But since epileptics are more susceptible to moral failure, they’ll go easier on him.”
“You still think he’s the killer.”
“I don’t know. I just know you aren’t seeing straight.”
“I’m not seeing straight? You’re not seeing straight. You’re wrong about my brother.”
“Sherlock, prove me wrong. And don’t start with your conclusion—that Georges is innocent—and build your case backward.”
Anna made a sound of objection, her mouth open like a cave in a mountain of confusion. Had Anna done that? It wasn’t very detectively, and it didn’t show faith in her brother.
She closed her mouth. “Fine. I resolve to be brave. I’ll face any hard truth about Georges or about you, Joe Singer. I will see straight. That’s how I will catch the real killer.”
“Okay,” he said softly and put his hand on Anna’s shoulder. “And I’ll be fair. As fair as I can be. I’ll be your sounding board.”
Anna closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to be brave, trying to think like a cold-hearted cop and not like a sister. She arranged the facts in her mind, rearranging, turning them around to consider them. She pictured the park, the trail, Joe’s cock stand. “I’m being heartless like you and it still doesn’t add up. Tell me this, detective—how would Georges lure Samuel Grayson to Griffith Park? Not to the park entrance, mind you, but halfway up the mountain. To go for a hike? Clearly the answer is no. You don’t hike with your blackmailer.” Anna paused.
“Keep going.”
“I’m thinking . . .”
“Think out loud, Sherlock.”
“Who would go hiking with Samuel Grayson or who would Samuel Grayson go hiking with? Not Georges. Maybe his neighbor, Lester Shepherd. They were friends. Except Samuel Grayson wasn’t there to hike. He wasn’t wearing hiking clothes, even though, I’m sure, they make orange ones. He was wearing that awful, expensive, rust-colored suit. He had dressed his best—which wasn’t too well because he had awful taste.”
“I’ll give you all of that. Samuel Grayson wasn’t there to hike.”
“Why was he there?” Anna paced to the dresser, paced back to Joe, standing in the doorway.
“To meet someone who he was blackmailing.”
“He could have done that at the trailhead. It’s isolated enough. There was no one around the day we found the body.”
“So why was he there?”
“Why were we there?” Anna asked.
Joe whispered in Anna’s ear in case Georges could hear. “To make love? That’s why I was there. It’s the most romantic spot in Griffith Park.”
His breath on her neck made Anna tingle. It made her angry at her body. “Then, tell me this, how did Georges lure Samuel Grayson up to the most romantic spot in Griffith Park? Was he wooing him? Or being wooed? Is that how he got him to kneel? Did Samuel propose to Georges?”
“You’re being facetious, right?”
Anna put her hands to her cheeks. “Jupiter. I had a brain wave.”
“What?”
Anna crossed to the bed, leaned down and kissed Georges on the forehead. “I’ll be back.” She grabbed her purse and called, “Thomas, I have to step out. Joe, I need a cop.”
Anna flew out the bedroom door, passing Wolf in the living room, who fumbled the expensive vase he’d been examining. He barely caught it. “Honeybun, where are you going?”
“To catch the real killer.”
Joe followed Anna as she strode to the elevator. The elevator boy did his job, ignoring them.
“It was Samara Flossie, Joe. She was wearing that ugly diamond ring, that ugly, ugly ring. It wasn’t from the Black Pearl. It was from Samuel Grayson—the only man in the world who could choose a ring that ugly.”
Joe buried his face in his hands and groaned.
“Her hand was bruised, remember, I told you? Like mine after I shot Mr. Rooster’s mustache off in Chinatown. Her bruise was from the revolver, because she didn’t know how to handle a gun. Samuel Grayson proposed, on one knee, and Samara Flossie shot him, reverse execution style.”
“Okay. What’s her motive?”
“Because she wanted to marry the Black Pearl and Samuel was in the way. He had threatened to write her father to tell him where Samara Flossie was. Her father would have dragged her back to Oklahoma, or shot her, and maybe the Black Pearl, too.”
“That doesn’t explain Georges’s print on the gun.”
“It’s Georges’s gun all right—his stolen gun. Who knows where Samara Flossie got it. Probably from that pawn shop across from the Jonquil Apartments.”
“Her prints weren’t on it.”
“She was out of doors, Joe. She wore gloves.”
The elevator rattled as it descended. The door opened, and Anna and Joe strode into the hotel lobby.
“She left him a note right before he died. The apartment manager saw her slide it under his door,” said Anna.
“So, she arranged the meeting.”
“Yes.” Anna produced gloves from her purse and slipped her hands into them. “The trial is going very well. If Georges is found innocent, Samara Flossie can expect to be indicted for blackmail, though I doubt she was involved. She’s going to run, if she hasn’t already.”
“Where is she? Not back at the Jonquil.”
“No. I don’t know.”
They raced out onto the sidewalk and stopped, lacking direction. The morass of moving bodies, animals, and automobiles reminded Anna that they were looking for a needle in a haystack.
“She can’t go to the real Black Pearl. She doesn’t know his name or where to find him. He’s probably married, anyway. I doubt she has an auto, but she has all that money. She’ll probably take the train.”
“La Grande Station then. But which train? Riverside? San Diego? San Francisco? She may have already left.”
“We can take Georges’s car. My old car.” She flashed a brief smile.
“It will take five minutes to start it.”
Joe stepped into the street to hail a hansom.
Anna closed her eyes and pictured Samara Flossie and her smug look as Georges convulsed on the floor. What did she say? Anna’s eyes popped open. “Her last word to me was ‘Adios.’ Lester Shepherd said Samuel and Samara Flossie had planned to go to Mexico.”
“She’ll take the train to Yuma, then down to Mexico. If you recall, that train leaves at four o’clock. It’s four now. We’re going to miss it.”
“Trains can be late.”
A hansom stopped. Joe handed Anna in. “La Grande Station please. A dollar if you go fast.”
They rode in agitated silence, jostled by the motion of the speeding hansom.
They arrived at the train station with its turrets and domes and sprang from the hansom without paying. Joe took off running in his practical man boots. Anna flew after him in her Louis heels. She turned her ankle and fell forward onto her hands. “Biscuits!” She got up and limped after him onto the platform where a stationary train began to roll. Joe was nowhere to be seen. Anna grabbed a rail and leapt on board. “Police! Stop the train! I don’t want to go back to Yuma!”
She moved down the aisle of the car, checking every face. There were handsome faces and ugly faces, fat faces, thin faces, smooth faces, bearded faces—all seated. One man walked down the aisle away from Anna. He cast a glance back over his shoulder. Anna did a double take. He wore an impossibly bushy beard for a young man. It was twenty years out of style. Beneath his beard, an ugly, baggy, rust-colored suit offended Anna’s senses. She abandoned her search and quickened her step to catch up to the suspicious young man. “Wait!”
The young man too, gained speed, now jogging through the aisle toward the door.
Anna could see he had the full bottom of a woman. She spoke, slightly out of breath. “It’s no use running, Samara Flossie. If you leap from the train, I’ll follow you. I’ll hunt you like a . . . like . . . like a really good hunter.”
Everyone stared at Anna. The bearded lady disappeared through the door of the railcar. Anna limped after her. The train rolled slowly out of the station. Samara Flossie stood in the doorway, contemplating a jump. Anna had always wanted to play football but had never been given permission. She took a flying leap and tackled the lady. The two fell off the train.
Anna landed on top of Samara Flossie. It knocked the wind out of her, and undoubtedly hurt. They had landed on the gravel slope that lined the tracks. The bushy beard now hung askew from Samara Flossie’s lovely face.
“Flossie Edmands or Samara Mowrey—I’ll call you whatever you’d like—but you are under arrest for the murder of Samuel Grayson. Confess, you villain!” Anna captured her hand and bent back the lady’s fingers.
Samara Flossie screeched. “Stop!”
“Confess!”
The lady smiled and rolled her body violently, tipping Anna off. Anna held tight and rolled back on top of Samara Flossie and down again, rolling over and over to the bottom of the slope, their bodies pressed together between the gravel and the sky. They landed in a sloppy ditch with Samara Flossie on top. Anna’s head hit a rock and she felt momentarily stunned. Samara Flossie put her hands around Anna’s neck and squeezed. Anna’s head sunk into the muck up to her ears. The ugly engagement ring bit into her skin. The lady leveraged herself on Anna’s neck and jammed her knee into Anna’s diaphragm.
Anna couldn’t catch a breath, couldn’t expand her lungs nor open her throat. Her head felt cold from the muck. Joe Singer had gone with the train.
Suffocation was a terrible feeling. She would much rather fall off a cliff or be shot in the heart. This was not her death of choice. Thus, she collected her wits, reached up and yanked the villain’s hair. The lady’s hairpiece came loose in Anna’s hands. Samara Flossie laughed, and only squeezed harder. Anna’s strength was slipping away. She heard Flossie hiss in her ear. “I did it. I killed Samuel Grayson.” Then Samara Flossie laughed.
Georges was innocent. Of course he was. This gratified Anna, and the gratification gave her strength. Anna felt with her hands for anything to use as a weapon but could feel only mud. She scraped up a handful and pushed it into Samara Flossie’s face. It plopped back down into her own face. She felt dizzy and her vision began to darken. She reached out again with her hands and grasped something cool and metal, something long and steel. She struck.
The next thing Anna knew, Joe Singer was shouting her name, patting her cheeks. “Anna! Wake up!”
Her neck hurt. She spit out mud. “I’m not asleep.”
Joe kissed her dirty face.
Anna pushed him away. “Don’t touch me!”
The following day, Anna had a ring of purple bruising around her neck and a concussion of the brain. Samara Flossie lay in the receiving hospital, handcuffed to the brass bedrail and tended by Matilda. The patient’s eyes rolled in her pretty head, which had a dent in the temple from the railroad spike Anna had used to biff her. The handcuffs were a formality. Wolf had already called the people from the Asylum for the Insane and Inebriate to take her away. She would never stand trial. The doctor said, shy of a miracle, she would never be mentally competent. Perhaps this fate would hurt worse than hanging.
Georges returned to court to complete his testimony with Anna supporting him from the front pew, Wolf staunchly at her side. Georges remained poised and stuck to his story, though he looked tired and pale. Then Anna testified for the defense, wearing a low collar so everyone could see her bruises.
Earl Rogers, in his closing arguments, told of Samara Flossie’s murderous father, her flight with Samuel Grayson from Oklahoma City, how she quit Samuel Grayson to take up with the Black Pearl. How she killed Samuel Grayson so he could not write to her father. He recounted Samara Flossie’s flight and confession and her attempt to murder Anna. The jury returned after ten minutes and found Georges innocent on every count. Anna tried to give Joe Singer an evil stare, but he was shaking his head, looking at his lap. She, too, looked at his lap one last time.