Morley Patton, the manager of the Ace High Detective Agency, regarded us with something less than cordiality.
“This is official business,” Sellers said.
“And so you bring one of my competitors along with you to listen?” Patton asked.
“Now, don’t be that way,” Sellers told him. “I’m running this thing and I have to have Lam here because there are certain things about the case he knows.”
“And probably a lot of other things he’d like to know,” Patton said.
“All right, you had a tail on Donald Lam,” Sellers said. “How did it happen?”
“I don’t think we have to discuss that and I’m not admitting that we had a tail on Lam.”
I said, “Put it this way, Patton. You were shadowing a Doris Ashley at the Miramar Apartments in Colinda and when I entered the picture and got acquainted with her, you put a tail on me.”
“I don’t have to answer your questions, that’s a cinch,” Patton said.
“All right,” Sellers said, his face darkening, “you’re going to have to answer mine. Now did you have a tail on Doris Ashley or not?”
“It depends on what you mean by—”
“You know what I mean,” Sellers said. “Now, you can answer that question yes or no and damned fast.”
“You were keeping her car at her apartment under surveillance?” I asked.
“You’re talking to my deaf ear,” Patton said.
“Were you?” Sellers asked. “I’ll make it my question and put it to the other ear.”
Patton said, “Yes.”
“All right, who was your client?”
“We don’t have to tell you that.”
“I think you do.”
“I don’t.”
“For your information,” Sellers said, “this is now being tied into a murder case.”
“Murder!” Patton exclaimed.
“You heard me.”
“Who was murdered?”
“Carter Holgate. Know anything about him?”
“He…he enters into the picture in a general way,” Patton said, choosing his words cautiously now, and his manner showing that he was apprehensive.
“All right,” Sellers said, “I think the identity of your client may have something to do with our investigation. I want to know who was employing you.”
“Just a minute,” Patton said, “let me get the record.”
He walked over to a filing case, pulled out a jacket, opened it, looked at some papers, dropped the jacket back into the file and stood frowning.
“We’re waiting,” Sellers said. “And for your information, the police like a little more active cooperation from a private detective agency in connection with a murder case.”
“How much cooperation are Cool and Lam giving you?” Patton asked.
“All I’m asking for,” Sellers said. And then added with a grin, “More than I’m asking for.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” Patton said. “Our client was just a telephone number in Salt Lake City. Money for our services was received in the form of cash and we were instructed to telephone developments as fast as they happened to whoever might answer at this number.”
“And you didn’t look up the number?” Sellers asked.
“Sure, we looked it up,” Patton said. “We’re not that naïve. It was the number of an apartment that was rented to a man named Oscar Bowman. It was a hotel apartment. No one knew anything
that was it. Sometimes a man’s voice answered the telephone when we phoned in for instructions and sometimes a woman’s voice.
“We had Doris Ashley under surveillance for about a week. That is, we kept her apartment under surveillance, or rather her car at the apartment house. When she’d come out or go in, we’d clock the times of arrival and departure.
“When Lam showed an interest in the picture, we reported on that, and when Lam had made a contact and gone up to her apartment house with her, we phoned in that information and were instructed to drop the whole thing, to mail a report and terminate our activities at once.”
“You mailed the report to the apartment in Salt Lake?” Sellers asked.
“No, we didn’t. We mailed the report to Oscar Bowman, General Delivery, Colinda.”
“The hell,” Sellers said. “What about your fees?”
“We had received a retainer in the form of cash in an envelope sent through the mail. There is still a credit to the client on the case. We were instructed to forget about the credit and close out the case.”
“In other words,” Sellers said, “when Lam got on the job, it caused them to press the panic button and get out?”
“I don’t know,” Patton said. “All I know is what happened. I’m telling that to you.”
“Who told you to close up the case when you telephoned? Was it a man or a woman that was talking?”
“I remember that very distinctly. It was a woman talking.”
I said, “On a deal of that sort, Sergeant, they’d protect themselves.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’d tell her to hang on for a minute and he’d switch the phone conversation onto a recording. They’ve got a recording of the thing somewhere.”
Sellers looked at Patton.
Patton said to me, “I wish you’d drop dead.”
“He will someday,” Sellers said, “but right now I’m interested in finding out whether you have a recording of that conversation.”
“We have a recording.”
“Let’s listen.”
“You can listen,” Patton said, “if you get tough about it. Lam can’t listen. We don’t have to turn the records of our employment over to a competitive agency, particularly when that man figures in the case and—”
“You’re right,” Sellers said. “I’m going to get tough about it. And I’m beginning to do a little thinking on my own.
“Donald, you can just toddle along. I know where to get you whenever I want you. Don’t try to pull any fast ones. Don’t try to leave town.”
Patton’s face lit up. “You mean he’s a suspect?”
“I mean he’s a suspect,” Sellers said, “and before I get done prowling through your records, there’s just a chance little Pint Size here is going to find himself mixed up in that murder worse than ever.”
Patton became downright cordial. “If you’ll step right this way, Sergeant,” he said, “I’ll dig out the records of the conversation. For your information, the whole conversation was recorded. That is, we phoned a report on Donald Lam entering the picture and immediately were ordered to discontinue our surveillance and close up the case, to send a final report to Oscar Bowman, care of General Delivery, Colinda and to keep the credit, whatever it might be.…It’s all recorded on tape.”
Sellers took the cigar out of his mouth. “Get lost, Pint Size,” he said to me. “I’ll get in touch with you when I want you—and that may be pretty damned soon. If you’ve got any business you want to wind up, you’d better wind it up.”
I took a taxi to the offices of Cool & Lam, went up in the elevator, pushed my way through the big glass door into the reception room, nodded to the girl at the switchboard and said, “Don’t bother to tell Bertha I’m here for a minute. I want to—”
“But she wanted to know in case you came in, Mr. Lam. She wanted you just as soon as you arrived.”
“All right,” I said. “Tell her I’m on my way in.”
I walked through the door marked B. COOL—PRIVATE. Bertha was just hanging up the phone.
“All right, Donald,” she said. “What happened?”
I said, “They jerked the rug out from under me. The bottom fell out.”
“What happened to all this theory of yours?”
“Out the window. Down the drain,” I said. “It was nice while it lasted.”
“It’s no good?”
“No good.”
“Where does that leave you?”
“What’s Sellers doing?”
“Getting an earful from the Ace High Detective Agency.”
“An earful or an eyeful?”
“Both. They have some recorded telephone conversations he’s listening to. Whoever it was hired them got in a panic as soon as it appeared another detective agency was interested and ordered the investigation stopped and the case closed out.”
“Why?”
“That,” I said, “is what I’ve got to figure out.”
“You’ve been figuring out too damned much,” Bertha said. “You got a theory and tried to sell Sellers on it and when the theory busted it leaves you behind the eight ball. If you’d just sat tight and told him it was up to the police to prove their case, it wouldn’t have looked so bad for you.
“How in hell do they figure you could have picked up Holgate’s body and shoved it into the trunk of the agency automobile?”
“They figure I might have had an accomplice,” I said. “Those things do happen.”
“Phooey!” Bertha said. “It would take an accomplice that was strong as an ox and—Who the hell would be so involved as to get mixed up in murder with you?”
I looked her straight in the eyes. “You.”
“Me!” Bertha screamed.
“You,” I said.
“What in hell are you talking about?”
I said, “I’m talking about police thinking. After they get done manufacturing a case against me and looking for an accomplice that would stand by me in a murder, someone who was sufficiently interested to go all the way in the thing, they’ll start thinking about you.”
“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said.
“They may do just that,” I told her.
Bertha said, “How do you know this Mrs. Troy isn’t lying? She may—”
“She is lying,” I said. “They’ve got the party who killed those two people at the bus stop. It wasn’t Holgate at all. Mrs. Troy made a mistaken identification. She didn’t identify a man, she identified a mustache and some western clothes.”
Bertha’s diamonds glittered as her pudgy fingers started drumming on the top of the desk.
“Of all the damned cases!” she said.
That gave me a grin. I said, “This is one that you picked, remember? You wanted one of the nice, quiet, respectable kind of cases. You were tired of the spectacular hairbreadth escape cases that I dreamed up.”
“Where’s Sellers now?” she asked.
“At the Ace High.”
“You get the hell down to your office,” she said, “and you let me talk with Sellers. If he comes messing in here with any of his accomplice theories, I’ll pin his ears back, but good.”
“Remember,” I told her, “that anything you say may be used against you.”
I looked back as I went out the door. She was sitting there with her mouth open, so damned mad she was temporarily speechless.
Elsie Brand was waiting for me in my office. “Did it pan out, Donald?” she asked eagerly.
I shook my head. “It didn’t pan out,” I said, “and dammit, it should have. Everything would have fitted in nicely but—”
“Why didn’t it pan out? I thought—”
“It didn’t pan out because a fellow by the name of Swanton had his conscience bothering him and the minute the police pointed a finger at him, he started confessing all over the place.”
“You mean to the murder?”
“No, no. To the hit-and-run. You can cross that off your books now. That’s solved.”
“Oh, Donald,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes were sympathetic. She seemed almost on the point of tears.
I said, “Well, there’s no use wasting sympathy at this point, Elsie. We’ve just got to start thinking constructively.”
“Can I help?” she asked, her voice showing that she wanted to help, that she desperately wanted to help.
“I don’t know,” I told her.
“Of course, Donald, you asked for the hit-and-run accidents on the evening of the thirteenth and as soon as I told you about that one in the bus stop you grabbed on it, but actually there were two and—”
I looked at her for a moment, then suddenly jerked her up out of the chair, put my arms around her and started dancing around the office.
“Donald!” she exclaimed. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Sweetheart,” I said, “I love you. I—”
“Oh, Donald!”
“Why in hell didn’t you take a chair and club me over the head when you saw me pulling a bonehead like that?”
“A bonehead like what?”
“Taking one case and not asking if there were any more. Quick, Elsie, what’s the other one?”
“This one was written up as kind of a gag,” she said. “It doesn’t amount to much but it was a hit-and-run and—”
“Where is it, where is it?” I asked. “Come on, quick. Give.”
She said, “This, of all things, is the chief of police of Colinda. Someone sideswiped his car, knocked it into the ditch and then kept right on going.”
“The chief of police of Colinda,” I said. “How nice. What’s his name?”
“Let’s see,” she said. “It’s a funny name for a police officer. I’ll look it up. It’s more like the name of a movie star. It’s—Wait a minute, it’s Montague A. Dale. You understand, Donald, it wasn’t his private car, it was the city’s car, the one they furnish the chief and—well, it seems that the thing happened so suddenly Chief Dale was busy trying to keep his car from upsetting and didn’t get a good look at the car that went past other than it was a big car, and I believe he said he thought it was a Buick. But he didn’t get the license number, and the city council was inclined to be a little sarcastic about—”
“Darling,” I said, “never mind any more. Did that happen on the thirteenth?”
“On the thirteenth,” she said.
“And at what time?”
“At five-thirty.”
I pulled her to me and kissed her. “Elsie,” I said, “you’re a dear. You’re a lifesaver. You’re the sweetest thing ever invented. You’re a combination of molasses, sugar, saccharin and honey. If anybody wants me, tell them to go to hell.”
I went tearing out of the office.