Nipped in the Bud (20 page)

“Then both girls lie like a rug.”

“Bordin himself, when I dropped in at his office last week, impressed me with his earnest desire to find Ina Kell and subpoena her as a witness for the defense. He seemed to think that the prosecution had spirited her away.” Miss Withers stirred her coffee thoughtfully, first clockwise and then counterclockwise. “I’d have sworn that he didn’t know where she was.”

“Well, he sure as shooting did know! Because within a few minutes after I started making plans to come out here, he tried to beat us to the punch and whitewash himself by releasing the inside dope on Ina Kell’s being in Tijuana to the gossip columns!”

“No, Oscar!”

“Yes. So he knew all the time.” The inspector sucked hard on his cigar, which had gone out. “Unless you yourself tipped off your dear old former pupil with another of your cute little coded wires about sea shells?”

“Don’t be impertinent.”

“Well, we’ll take care of Bordin in good time. The situation right now is that you had your hands on Ina and the other girl and let them get away. They took time out to try to leave a false trail that would send pursuit off in the wrong direction, just as Ina had earlier done in New York, and then presumably ducked down to Ensenada or whatever it is.”

“Yes, Oscar. But you forget one thing, a very important thing. One of those girls managed to put through a long-distance call tipping me off to the fact that they had actually gone to Ensenada. It must have been one of them—nobody else knew I was at the hotel. And she—whichever it was—paid me a considerable compliment by taking it for granted that I’d know what the call meant.” Miss Withers flounced a bit. “Do you see what that means?”

“So the two young ladies are not in complete agreement. Ina is holding out on Dallas or Dallas is holding out on Ina. One of them wants to make sure that you know where they really are, or where they were.”

“
Are,
Oscar. There’s no place to go from Ensenada but back. Which also proves that only one of those girls wanted to sneak away. If so, I think I know which. I was positive during our talk in the hotel bedroom that evening that I had little Ina convinced that she should go back to New York and face the music. She even seemed to be looking forward to being the heroine of the occasion. But something must have made her change her mind.”

“She’ll have to change it back,” Piper said quietly. “And if she doesn’t it’ll be changed for her.”

The schoolteacher flashed him a glance. “I’m afraid it’s rather more complicated than you think, Oscar. If the girl doesn’t want to go, it’s not going to be easy to compel her. It will take a good deal of money, I’m afraid.” She told him about her informative interview with Guzman. “Greasing official palms seems to be a local convention,” she explained. “I don’t approve of it, but sometimes the end justifies the means. And when one is in Rome, one must burn Roman candles.”

“You don’t always have to burn them at both ends,” said the inspector.

“However,” she continued blithely, “I think possibly I have figured out ways and means. I’ve several irons in the fire, Oscar.”

“You have, have you?” He smiled a rather odd smile. “Would those irons in the fire have anything to do with the bushel basketful of telegrams I found sticking under your hotel door when I went up to your room a little while ago?”

She brightened. “Well! They did answer!”

“You can say that again.” Piper took a sheaf of familiar-looking envelopes out of his coat pocket. “I suppose I’ve got to give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you’ve got a good explanation for spilling official secrets to half the people in New York, but—”

“Oscar, surely you didn’t open and read my telegrams!”

“Surely I did. I thought they might give me a clue as to where you’d disappeared to. But when I read the first one—what in the name of Judas H. Priest did you say to Winston Gault, Sr., to make him wire you this?” He showed her:

FORWARD IMMEDIATELY FULL OUTLINE OF ANY INFORMATION YOU HAVE OR THINK YOU CAN OBTAIN RELATIVE TO POSSIBLE NEW EVIDENCE ON MY SON’S CASE. SUCH OUTLINE WILL BE TURNED OVER TO MY ATTORNEYS FOR EVALUATION AND IF SATISFACTORY THEY WILL CONTACT YOU ABOUT YOUR REQUEST FOR MONEY.

“New evidence!” said the inspector bitterly.

“Oscar, I didn’t exactly say that—”

“Go on. Read the next. It’s signed ‘Gracie.’ I suppose that’s Sam Bordin’s big blonde office-wife?”

Miss Withers read:

MR BORDIN OUT OF TOWN. STRICT ORDERS NOT TO SAY WHERE BUT WHEN YOU SEE HIM TELL HIM TO LEAVE THOSE SENORITAS STRICTLY ALONE.

“I only wanted Sam Bordin to get in touch with Junior Gault—”

“Better and better!” snarled Piper in deep bitterness. “The next one is just a notice that according to Western Union in New York, your telegram to Junior Gault couldn’t be delivered.”

“They wouldn’t let him receive it at the prison? How mean!”

“Of course they wouldn’t. Besides, he isn’t there.”

Miss Withers almost fell off the stool. “You mean, the trial is over and he’s already in Sing Sing, all in three days I’ve been away?”

“No!” He handed her another telegram. “This one’s short and sweet.”

Attached to a wire remittance form was the message:

HERE IS $200 RETAINER. BRINGING REST OF MONEY IMMEDIATELY.

RUTH FAGAN

“I can explain that, Oscar. If only …”

“If nothing!” he exploded. “Here’s one I’d like to hear you explain; this is the payoff.” She took the yellow sheet and with trembling fingers read the worst:

DEEPLY INTERESTED IN TELEVISION POSSIBILITIES DRAMATIC EVENT MENTIONED BY YOU ON PHONE LAST NIGHT. IF YOU CAN ARRANGE OUR EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE ACTUAL SURRENDER KEY WITNESS GAULT CASE TO BE RECORDED ON FILM AND USED ON SOONEST VIDEO NEWS BROADCAST WILL GUARANTEE SUM MENTIONED AND REASONABLE EXPENSES. OUR MR WINGFIELD AND CAMERA CREW LEAVING AT ONCE BY CHARTERED PLANE. CONFIRM YOUR ACCEPTANCE THIS OFFER IMMEDIATELY

R L WARRENDER VICE PRES WKC-TV

“Well?” demanded the inspector, much too quietly.

Miss Withers lifted her coffee cup to her lips, found it empty, and set it down with a nervous little clatter. “But, Oscar, I told you—it will take a lot of money to get the authorities here to deport Ina Kell as an undesirable alien since she actually isn’t a fugitive from justice or anything. And though she’d given me the slip, perhaps unwillingly, I knew that I had her located down in Ensenada, which is only sixty miles from here and no place to go beyond, so I thought it would be nice and helpful if when you arrived—”

“Helpful! You’re as helpful as a boil on my—my neck.”

“Ruth Fagan had already once offered me practically a blank check, up to five thousand dollars.”

“Five grand? Just to reopen the Fagan investigation?”

“She didn’t quite put it that way. She just wanted to make sure that her husband’s killer didn’t get away with it. She took it for granted Gault was guilty, but I’m sure that she doesn’t care who we pin it on as long as the truth comes out.”

“The truth
is
out!” roared the inspector. “Judas priest in a cupcake, can’t you get it through your head for once and for all that this case at least is all cut and dried?”

Miss Withers stiffened. “There is always the possibility that you cut and dried it too soon. This new evidence …”

“
What
new evidence?”

She told him about Ina Kell’s confession of the other evening; about that possibly all-important five or ten minutes left unaccounted for, when the hallway of the apartment house had been clear for someone to come and go again.

For all his exasperation, Oscar Piper listened carefully. “But
who?
” he demanded at last.

“I don’t know, Oscar. Time and time again I’ve tried to shut my eyes and visualize one of the other suspects in this case coming along that hallway, and it all remains blank.”

“
What
suspects?”

“I don’t know … yet.”

“Phooey,” he said, inelegantly.

“And there’s always the chance that Ina is making it all up about going to the bathroom,” went on the schoolteacher wickedly. “Perhaps the girl was peeking and listening from her door all the time. Suppose, after Junior left, she actually caught a glimpse of another person in that hallway, leaving or entering the Fagan apartment? Suppose she kept silent for some reason or other—because she recognized him as someone she knew, or because of fear that she would be the next to die if she opened her mouth, or …”

“As I said once before, you ought to write soap operas.”

“But, remember, Oscar, that Ina was oddly reluctant to identify Junior Gault. She still insists that she thinks him innocent, which is unreasonable unless she knows or suspects that someone else is guilty.” Miss Withers shrugged. “It certainly is obvious that Ina knows more than you’ve got out of her, that she somehow holds the key to all this, whether she realizes it or not.”

“Oh, brother!” interrupted Oscar Piper. “The witness who knows something but doesn’t know she knows it! That went out with the ‘If I Had But Known’ school.”

Very nettled, Miss Withers said, “Nevertheless, it has happened. Will you grant that, as the only person at or near the scene of the crime—besides the murderer and victim—she represents a very real menace to the former?”

“Sure, to Junior. If she tells the truth, she’ll convict him.”

“Will you admit that only the murderer, or someone protecting him, would want her out of the country?”

“Sure, and that’s just what happened. Junior Gault, his lawyer and his girl cooked up a deal to get Ina Kell down here and keep her here.”

“I wonder,” said Miss Withers. “You’re probably right. But I wonder. It occurred to me that perhaps Junior wasn’t a party to it at all. Dallas Trempleau could have taken matters in her own hands. And I thought if that by some fantastic coincidence Junior actually wasn’t guilty but just the victim of circumstantial evidence, why, then he might leap at the chance to contribute to my slush fund; he might
want
Ina brought back to testify. And if he did cooperate, it would be a definite indication of his innocence!”

The inspector shook his head pityingly. “You must have been smoking these queer cigarettes they have down here.” He paid the check, and they went out to the Avenida, deserted as usual at this hour of the morning.

“My car’s over this way,” she said meekly. “Oscar, now that I’ve explained, do you see what I meant, even though you may disapprove of my methods? After all, I didn’t really let any cats out of the bag when I sent those wires.”

“Not much!” he scoffed. “Sealed-lips Hildegarde, they call you.”

“Because I’d already learned from talking to Wingfield that it was no longer a secret about Ina Kell being down here.”

With chilly politeness he held the car door open for her. “I suppose you’ve got an explanation for calling in the broadcasting company, too?”

“That, Oscar, was purely an accident. I had to call Wingfield at his office to ask for Ruth Fagan’s private phone number. I knew he’d have it—there’s something between them, by the way, that will stand looking into.”

“Is there, now?” Piper almost forgot himself, and smiled.

“Yes, I feel it in my bones. Anyway, he wouldn’t give me the number, though he said he’d deliver a message. He has a quick mind, that young man. I told him as little as possible, but he’d already read the gossip columns, and I guess he put two and two together. He seemed suddenly very excited, but I had no idea he was going to try to make a Roman holiday out of it for his old television program. That last wire was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you.” She saw that the inspector was still on the sidewalk. “Aren’t you coming, Oscar?”

“Not now. I have business. I have to drop in at the
Jefatura,
and then go back over to San Diego and pay the usual courtesy call on the police there. I may need them later, for all I know.”

“Need them, why? Oscar Piper, what have you got up your sleeve?”

He just looked at her cryptically.

“Well then, let me drive you over.”

The inspector hastily declined, with thanks. “Don’t know how long I’ll be,” he hedged. But he finally consented to pick up her marooned luggage at the other hotel and bring it back with him.

“You’ll be here in time for dinner?”

“Maybe, if you’re buying. On that expense account of yours—Ruth Fagan’s two hundred bucks.”

“Wait, Oscar! We’ve got so many things to talk about—how to get Ina to surrender, and what to do about this avalanche of people I seem to have brought unwittingly down around our ears, and …”

The inspector turned back and eyed her with a cold eye. “The talking part is over,” he said. “I don’t know as this is any of your business, Hildegarde, but it’s no secret. You may as well know that Junior Gault was released yesterday.”

“
What?
But—but I didn’t think they ever allowed bail for first-degree homicide. Was the charge reduced?”

“No, to both questions.”

“Then the district attorney’s office thinks he’s innocent, after everything—”

“You don’t know what they think, or what I think. Brace yourself, there’s more coming. I’m not down here to play polite patty-cake with a missing witness. And there won’t be any need to bribe anybody; the local authorities will be tickled pink to cooperate if necessary, though I don’t think it will come to that.”

“Well, Oscar?” she demanded impatiently. “I’m all ears.”

The inspector cocked his head and stared at her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t say that; there’s a good deal of nose showing. But if you must know, I came flying out here to pick up your little friend Ina Kell on a murder rap.” He waved a cheery good-bye and stalked back up the Avenida.

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself.”

—WALT WHITMAN

IT WAS JUST AS
well that Tijuana’s streets are almost deserted in the forenoon, for on her way back to the hotel Miss Withers’ attention was anywhere but on her driving. To her everything had taken on the quality of a walking nightmare, and in the bright shimmering glare of the summer sunlight objects seemed to shift and change their outlines in a sort of living, moving double exposure.