Nipped in the Bud (22 page)

“What makes you think—” he began indignantly. “Only a couple of minutes, why?”

“I just hoped you’d eavesdropped on the entire conversation, so I wouldn’t have to repeat it all. But I will.” And she did.

Unmollified, Piper said, “I don’t believe it. I mean I don’t believe it when Bordin says he didn’t have any idea Ina Kell was down here until that phone call—if there ever was a phone call.”

“There could have been,” Miss Withers offered hopefully. “The girls could have put it through when they were hastily packing to get out of here, just after they learned someone had been asking about them. Or Ina could have done it when she was taking so long to get the coffee and sandwiches.”

“So what? We have only his word for it as to what was said.”

“Yes, Oscar. But when Sascha was a little boy, back in my class at P.S. 38, he never cheated. He argued a lot, but he never cheated.”

“You mean you never caught him. Besides, people change with the years.”

“Some of them don’t change enough. You are overly suspicious, Oscar. If he had known where Ina is, Bordin wouldn’t have come here to the hotel asking me. That should be obvious, even to a professional policeman. I’m disappointed in you.”

“Disappointed!” he exploded. “You listen to me! I only came back here because I thought it over and decided that for old times’ sake I ought to forgive you for making a mess of everything. I was all ready to admit that maybe you meant it for the best even when you inaugurated this fantastic fund-raising campaign to get money to grease the local authorities. That dopey idea was only planted in your gullible mind by this shady lawyer you were telling me about. It wouldn’t have worked. He probably would simply have put the dough in his own pocket, and then given you the horselaugh.”

“Perhaps,” she admitted meekly, thinking dark thoughts about Lic. Guzman.

“I was going to tell you how everything’s fixed up—I made a courtesy call at San Diego police headquarters. The warrant hasn’t come yet, but they’ll let me know here when it does, and they’re willing to give me any cooperation on that side of the line that I need, even to lending me a policewoman to escort the Kell girl back to New York. I was going to tell you about the warm welcome I had from Chief of Police Joe Robles over at the
Jefatura
—”

“Oscar, how splendid!”

He wasn’t listening. “And then I have to walk in and find you hand-in-glove with a high-class shyster from our own side of the border who’s trying to get Junior Gault off by fair means or foul even though he admits he knows his client is guilty. I suppose you had to go and blab to him about where Ina is?”

“I didn’t tell him—at least I hope I didn’t! And, Oscar, nobody’s hand was in anybody’s glove. Was it so wrong to chat with an old pupil of mine?”

“Sealed-lips Hildegarde!” he said bitterly.

“Well,” she snapped with some asperity, “there have been too many lips sealed around here; it’s high time we had a touch of frankness. Has it ever occurred to you that there are a lot of unanswered questions in this Fagan case?”

“Sure,” the inspector said wearily. “There always are. Everybody has an axe to grind, and everybody has something to conceal.”

“The truth lies deep down, but sometimes a ruthless stirring will bring it to the surface. Worse even than unanswered questions are the ones nobody remembered to ask. Oscar, while you were gone I’ve been doing a little ratiocination of my own, and I’ve made a sort of list. Sit down, won’t you?”

“Oh, lord, here we go again,” said Oscar Piper. But he sat down, crossed his legs, and lighted a fresh perfecto.

“Oscar, can’t you imagine for a moment that after Junior Gault, with considerable provocation, beat Fagan to within an inch of his life, some other and more subtle enemy came along and completed the job?”

“We don’t use imagination in police work; we use facts.”

“Perhaps you should use both. Here’s another question. Why did Arthur Wingfield turn green that evening when you came up behind him and touched his shoulder and asked if he’d come along quietly?”

“Why …”

“Wait. What is there between Wingfield and Ruth Fagan?”

Piper laughed. “A big-bosomed thrush named Thallie Gordon, mostly. He’s going to marry her.”

“Why did Wingfield call Ruth on the phone and warn her that I was likely to come snooping around?”

“And why shouldn’t a man be on speaking terms with his ex-wife?”

“
What?
You never told me that Ruth was once Mrs. Wingfield!”

“You never asked me. Sure, we knew all about it. They were married for a year or two, back in the forties. She was his first secretary when he came to New York from WGN in Chicago. They had a friendly split.”

“Is there such a thing? Of course, I wouldn’t know.” The schoolteacher frowned. “Of course, Ruth did admit to me that she’d been to Reno once before. But Oscar, isn’t there a possible motive—”

“I don’t see it,” he objected sensibly. “It proves nothing, especially in show business where a divorce is only a dropped option anyway. I can’t go along with you when you suggest that Wingfield might commit murder over a woman he’d lived with and already outgrown. Try again.”

Miss Withers sighed and stole a look at her notes. “Well, there’s Ruth herself. How do you think a woman would feel, after having got a divorce only because her husband insisted on it, if he called her back—and then when she came, she found instead of the warm reconciliation she had expected, only a gay party? Ruth had never fitted into the bourbon and Benzedrine group; she didn’t like any of his friends except possibly Wingfield, so she walked out boiling mad. Couldn’t she have come back later after the party was over for one last try, found him unconscious and finished him off?”

“And then went to bed in the spare bedroom, so she’d be handy for us to find next morning?” The inspector blew a large smoke ring, and another smaller one through it. “No dice.”

“I’m not through. What was the murder weapon, Oscar?”

He shrugged. “We figure it was one of those heavy vases.”

“And yet the walls of the Fagan apartment were hung with better weapons—with primitive battle-axes and krisses and spears. Wouldn’t it seem reasonable …”

“Murderers are never reasonable, or they wouldn’t commit murder.”

“I wonder, Oscar. It has always seemed to me that they were reasonable, according to an odd, twisted logic of their own. This was an unusual murder, too—with a very unusual victim. A man who drank milk, laced with whisky, even on his television show. Where did that bottle of milk come from?”

“That’s easy,” said the inspector. “Fagan brought it from home. He had a standing order with his milkman. So what?”

“I’m not through. Why did Thallie Gordon come rushing into the projection room when Wingfield was showing me that film, to warn him that you were snooping around? That would certainly indicate a guilty conscience.”

“Or else indicate that she was smart enough to realize that some kinds of publicity are no good for an actress or a singer. Of course, she was afraid that the Fagan case was being reopened—she didn’t know that Wingfield was only doing me a favor by running that old film. She and he both had been out of work for months after the murder. They were both reestablished, and she was afraid of new headlines.”

“But you will admit that she had been mixed up with Tony Fagan?”

“Sure.” For the first time that day the inspector grinned. “Why should she make an exception in his case? Thallie is like the girl in the limerick, the young lady named Gloria, who went out with Sir Gerald du Maurier, and then with some men, then Sir Gerald again, then the band at the Waldorf-Astoria. At least she had that reputation until she started getting serious about Art Wingfield. Fagan was her meal ticket; she had no motive.”

Miss Withers eyed him coldly. “Well, then, I know somebody else who
did.
What about the girl who played corespondent in the Fagan divorce case, the one who got surprised by a raid on a certain hotel bedroom and had her picture taken in a nightgown? That’s one of my questions—I think I asked you once before to try to find out who it was—”

“Judas priest on a hayride, I did!” Piper confessed. “Forgot to tell you. It was only Thallie, though, doing her boss a slight favor.” He told her about the photo Sergeant Smitty had enlarged so that it showed the telltale ring.

“And you sit there with your bare face hanging out and say
that
isn’t a possible motive?”

Piper shook his head. “No. Even if Fagan played a dirty trick on her and didn’t tell her the detectives were scheduled to break in and take pictures, Thallie wouldn’t be really sore. A nightgown is practically working uniform for a girl like her. Her name wouldn’t be mentioned, and even if it was—that sort of publicity doesn’t hurt a singer.”

“I’ll thank you to stop talking like a—like a policeman,” Miss Withers said. “Anyway, I hope I have made it obvious to you that, apart from Junior Gault, there are four perfectly good suspects—”

“Three,” he reminded her. “But who’s counting?”

The schoolteacher frowned. “Yes, that’s right. Now I wonder, why did I say four? An unconscious slip of the tongue, I suppose.”

“Maybe you’re trying too hard,” the inspector prodded her gently. “You’re so intent on proving that Junior Gault is innocent that you’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Were you thinking of Dallas Trempleau? Maybe she was so mad at having her voice kidded on Fagan’s last program that she did him in. Only I doubt it, because we checked with the servants at her family home out on Long Island, and she drove her car into the garage hours before Fagan got killed. Or there’s Ina Kell, your favorite suspect as of last week, who had never met Tony Fagan in her life but still—you said—must have killed him out of unrequited love.”

“You’re
not
especially funny, Oscar.” Miss Withers flushed slightly.

“Well, whatever suspects have you got? Do you suppose that teacher’s pet Sam Bordin was so hard up for a client that he went out and committed a murder that would be pinned on a guy he knew would have plenty of money for a big fee, knowing that anybody in that income-tax bracket would automatically come to him? Or maybe our friend John Hardesty is a homicidal maniac—”

“Be quiet, or go,” the schoolteacher snapped. “I won’t say
where
you can go, but you guess.”

“Okay, okay,” said Oscar Piper, subsiding. He looked at his watch. “Say, can I use your phone? I was supposed to call the Chief’s office about now.”

He talked, or rather listened, for a few moments, and when he hung up the little Irishman was obviously in a much-improved humor. “You were right about one thing, anyway,” he said. “Ina Kell is safe and sound in Ensenada.”

“But, Oscar,” she said wonderingly, “what fast sleuthing!”

“You can give the credit to Chief Joe Robles. When I walked into his office a while ago he laid out the red carpet, remembering me from the last police chiefs’ convention in Chicago. Robles is a sour-bitten, hard-faced character who looks like a retired jockey, but I for one would hate to offer him a dirty dollar or a dirty peso. He’s an old-time peace officer, and a good one.”

“He is going to cooperate, then?”

“All the way—as soon as that warrant arrives. Meanwhile he offered to check with Ensenada. The girls are holed up in a deluxe bungalow on the grounds of the Hotel Pacifico; they registered there Monday forenoon—under phony names, of course. But the descriptions fit.”

“Of course.” Miss Withers frowned. “I suppose that your friend Chief Robles has arranged to have a succession of thumb-fingered policemen watching that bungalow twenty-four hours a day? There would be no better way to frighten those girls into further flight.”

“Still trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs, aren’t you? No, there’s no surveillance, by my request.” The inspector kicked the nearest suitcase. “I wouldn’t bother to unpack these if I were you,” he said. “This case is just about wound up.”

“I hope so,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers doubtfully. “At any rate it is getting on toward dinnertime.” She edged him out into the hall. “Would you mind running along so that I can get clothed and in my right mind, if any? How about picking me up at six-thirty?”

He went, but it was only a minute or two after six when a heavy knock came at the door. “Oscar, I said six-thirty!” she cried.

“Is not Oscar,” came the voice outside. “Is me.” And Vito came in, swaggering, obviously pleased with himself. “These ones who are suing you with the lawsuit,” he announced, “they are not upstanding citizens. They none of them have regular jobs, they don’t even guide for a living like me. They are peddlers of junk jewelry and lottery tickets, very much lowlifes.”

The schoolteacher nodded. “Then you would say, Vito, that none of them was likely to have been gambling heavily on the greyhound races?”

“Not much.”

“But somebody must be behind it all!”

“Sure. I don’t know who that somebody is, but—well, one of the hombres whose name is on that paper has a brother who works in the garage down the street where Mr. Braggioli keeps his expensive imported automobile from England.”

“Ah
ha!
” cried Miss Withers. “That was one rat I already smelled. Which reminds me that Nikki Braggioli has been conspicuous by his absence of late. Vito, would you please go out in the hall and warn me by rapping three times if you see anybody coming?”

“Sure—on this door?”

She shook her head, and told him what door she meant. A moment or so later the schoolteacher was out on the little iron balcony again, stepping gingerly in through the window into Nikki’s bedroom.

There had been, she immediately noticed, some changes made. It was an empty, bare sort of bedroom, the pictures gone from the walls, the closets bare. In the middle of the living room were three big suitcases, packed and waiting. Nikki Braggioli, it appeared, was about to take off. In one wastebasket, torn in bits, was the portrait of his intended bride, Mary May Dee.

Miss Withers was very thoughtful for a moment, and finally withdrew the way she had come. But this was the wrong time of day, she found, for balcony-prowling. In the street below somebody cried a derisive “
Hola!
” and a moment later a group of strolling
mariachis
broke into “
Amor, amor,
” all looking up and grinning at her. Leave it to the Latin temperament to put only one construction on things.