Nipped in the Bud (26 page)

“I can and I am,” Miss Withers assured her. “Now you just come clean, young lady. Do you mean to tell us you actually don’t know where Dallas Trempleau is?”

Ina nodded, and then shook her head.

“You don’t have any idea whom she went rushing off to see?”

“Did she go to see anybody?” Ina looked scared, and bewildered. “She was acting awfully oddly, but—”

The inspector quietly took over. “Ina, you remember me, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes, I do. You were the policeman who threatened to spank me once.”

“And I may still do it, unless you cooperate. Do you …”

Nikki Braggioli was hammering outside on the door. “Go away!” Piper ordered. “Get lost.” He turned back to the girl. “You were living with Dallas Trempleau at a hotel down in Ensenada, weren’t you? And this afternoon Sam Bordin, attorney for Junior Gault, came down to see you and asked you a lot of questions?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

John Hardesty turned fire-red with anger, but Piper waved him aside. “And after that, Ina?”

“Dallas and I got tight,” Ina admitted softly. “At least I did.”

“And then she asked you a lot of questions?”

The girl frowned. “I—I guess so. But I don’t remember much about it; it’s all a blur. I’m not used to drinking.”

Miss Withers couldn’t hold off any longer. “You certainly must remember what it was she forced you to remember about the morning when Tony Fagan was killed. It was something terribly important, so think hard.”

Ina thought. “Honestly, I can’t remember. I guess I sort of blacked out. If I told her anything more than I told you, or Mr. Bordin, I just don’t recall it. I’m—I’m sorry.” She smiled apologetically in the direction of John Hardesty.

There was a moment of silence, broken at last by Miss Withers. “Oscar,” she said firmly, “we’ve got to get to the bottom of this. For a desperate disease, a desperate remedy. Will you please send downstairs for a bottle of champagne and another of brandy?”

“What the …” he began.

“If it worked once, it may again.”

“Oh,
no!
” cried Ina desperately. “I can’t go through that again. I don’t think I’ll ever take another drink as long as I live. And I promised Nikki …”

“Bother Nikki.” Miss Withers was not in one of her gentler moods. “Can’t you remember anything you said to Dallas, anything at all? Think carefully; lives may depend upon it.”

Ina shook her head, so that the fire-colored curls swung wildly. “Nothing. Except … But that’s silly—”

“Except what?”

The girl looked lost and helpless and rather desperate. “I’m trying to think. I seem to remember something about poetry—Byron and stuff like that. But I can’t remember any more.”

“‘There was a sound of revelry by night …’?” prompted Miss Withers hopefully. “‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming …’? ‘Maid of Athens, ere we part …’?”

Ina Kell frowned with concentration, and then shook her head again.

“All right, now,” John Hardesty said gently, pulling his chair a little closer toward the girl, who was perched on the edge of the couch again as if to take off at any moment. “Never mind that poetry stuff for me. Just tell us everything that happened this evening, in your own way.”

“All right, I’ll try. I—I finally took a nap, or maybe I passed out. It’s not a nice thing to admit, but …”

“Never mind, you weren’t the one to blame for it. And when you passed out, was Dallas Trempleau there in the cottage? And did she stay there?”

Ina nodded. “As far as I know. Maybe she went out when I was asleep; neither of us had had anything to eat since brunch. Or maybe she went out to make a phone call; she was always slipping away to make phone calls where I wouldn’t hear.”

“Very well,” Hardesty conceded. “Miss Trempleau might have made or received a phone call other than the one we know about. Maybe that can be traced later, only it may be too late then. And afterwards?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything until Dallas suddenly woke me up by shaking my shoulder and slapping my face; she said she had to drive up to town right away and I had to come along. She barely gave me time to throw on a coat and get into the car, and off we went. She was driving like a madwoman, I remember that. As if nothing mattered any more, taking the corners on two wheels and like that. I asked her to slow down and she just laughed at me, a wild kind of laugh.”

“And then?”

“She had to slow down a little, there where the highway curves coming into Rosarito. I wasn’t feeling so well, and I guess I went to sleep. The next thing I remember, we were parked a couple of blocks from here on the Boulevard Agua Caliente, and she was shaking me. ‘This is Tijuana, you get off here!’ she said.”

“But, Ina …” began Miss Withers. The inspector caught her arm, shaking his head warningly.

“And that’s all she said?”

“Not quite. She was in a state; out of her mind almost. She told me I could have all the clothes and stuff back at the cottage. She handed me a hundred dollars—here it is right in my coat pocket—and she gave me my return ticket back to New York. Then she almost pushed me out of the car and drove on….”

“In which direction?” the inspector put in patiently.

“Just—just up the street, the same way we were headed. But I think … Yes, she turned right at the next corner.”

Miss Withers was already referring to her map. “There does seem to be a road turning off there, that cuts across the dry riverbed and across to the athletic field and the park, cutting off the town and ending at the port of entry.”

The two men looked at her. “So?” Piper said.

“So it would appear that Dallas wasn’t bound for Tijuana at all—or else she wouldn’t have said to Ina, ‘This is Tijuana, you get off here.’ That implies that she was going farther.”

“A point,” admitted John Hardesty judicially.

“She was going to San Diego, or in that direction,” put in the inspector. He faced the girl. “Ina, this is of the greatest importance. Can you tell us just what she was wearing?”

Ina concentrated. “She wasn’t fixed up for a party, if that’s what you mean. I think … Yes, she had on a slack suit, and she was wearing a red scarf tied around her hair, and she had on her beaver cape and—oh, yes, her sunglasses.”

“Sunglasses, in the evening?” questioned Miss Withers.

The girl nodded. “She had a special pair that she said cut out the glare of other headlights or something.”

“Excuse me,” said Oscar Piper, and picked up the phone. A moment later he was dictating a description of the missing girl, to be broadcast to all San Diego, National City, Chula Vista and San Ysidro prowl cars and to the California Highway Patrol.

Miss Withers came closer to Ina. “Just one thing more, child. You’ve been fairly helpful. But the phone call was at eight-thirty, and you and Dallas must have left Ensenada shortly thereafter. Allowing an hour or at most an hour and a half to drive the sixty miles, just where have you been since then? Why didn’t you come here to me?”

“Dallas told me to, but I’m sick and tired of doing what she says! And I ran into Nikki down in the lobby, and we went out and had something to eat.”

“All this time?”

“We sat a long time over coffee!” Ina insisted. “Nikki made me drink a lot of black coffee, and then he walked me up and down the street for a while until I began to feel better. And then one thing led to another, and—well, it does take a little time to get m-m-married!”

“He who asks questions on Thursday dies on Friday.”

T
HE BLUE CADILLAC HAD
swung off the highway a few miles south of Chula Vista, in that brown and barren no man’s land between San Diego and the border. It moved aimlessly east and north and west again along the back roads, past deserted lemon groves and truck farms, coming at last into a raw, new subdivision of half-finished small-down-payment-for-G.I.-homes, boxlike houses all smelling of spilled plaster and paint and sawdust.

The big car slid quietly into the gaping door of a garage, and its light flickered out. There were soft noises, furtive, shuffling sounds, the scratch of a match and then the quick crackling of flames, loud enough to drown out the monotonous sound of heavy drops falling one after the other from the front window of the car to splash on the raw, new concrete of the garage floor. Overhead a flight of Navy planes roared by.

“Married!” repeated John Hardesty foolishly, and sat down suddenly in a chair.

“Married, to
Nikki?
” said Miss Withers.

“Yes!” bubbled the girl. “I know it was awfully sudden, but that’s the only way I could ever take the leap. It happened in Mr. Guzman’s office, with a ring Nikki bought from a sidewalk peddler. It really isn’t a proper wedding ring—” She displayed her finger, graced with a massive silver circlet carved to represent some grinning Aztec deity.

“A wedding ring
is
a wedding ring,” admitted the schoolteacher. “But there’s a time and a place for everything.”

“The time for a wedding ring is when a boy is in the mood,” Ina said firmly.

“Speaking of that,” spoke up Oscar Piper. He went over to open the hall door and beckon to the bewildered and belligerent young man who was stalking up and down outside. “On second thought,” said the inspector dryly, “I guess you can come in after all.”

“Darling!” said Nikki Braggioli, not to the inspector. He came into the room like an avalanche. “What have they been doing to you?”

“It’s all right,” the girl reassured him quickly. “Nobody gave me any third degree or anything.” Her voice sounded more confident now, surrounded as she suddenly was by the strong right arm of her new husband. “You see,” she carefully went on to explain to the others, “Nikki and I just came back here to pick up his suitcases. Then we’re going back down to Ensenada and get my stuff, and head straight for New York in his car. I know I have to testify and get it all over with—” This last was for the benefit of John Hardesty, who still appeared to be in a state of shock.

“Yes,” he said.

“But when the trial is over Nikki and I are going to come back to Hollywood, where he has a wonderful starring contract waiting at Metro!”

“A career isn’t everything, though,” the bridegroom said lightly. “If you want to, dearest, I’ll settle for a little penthouse in New York, or a farm in Connecticut.”

“Just a minute,” interrupted the schoolteacher. “Far be it from me to produce any wet blankets at a moment like this, but isn’t there supposed to be an immigration problem in the way?”

“Oh, that!” Nikki grinned engagingly. “That’s all fixed. You see, I’ve had my quota number and entry permit all straightened out for a couple of weeks, only I found I had reasons for not wanting to hurry away from here, and Ina is all of them. I found out that I wasn’t in love with her part of the time, but weekends, too. It wouldn’t have been fair for me to marry Miss Mary May Dee when I was in love with somebody else, would it?”

“Of course not!” The girl suddenly stood on tiptoe and kissed him, very warmly indeed. “Wow, what a charge!” she breathed dreamily as they broke apart. “That beats liquor all hollow.”

“Okay, fun’s fun, but …” began the inspector, with amused impatience.

But Miss Withers spoke up hopefully. “I have an idea! Why don’t our two lovebirds kiss some more? Perhaps love can further intoxicate Ina to the point where she’ll recall the one essential clue we all want her to remember—something to do with Byron’s poetry, wasn’t it?”

The girl looked perfectly willing, but Nikki Braggioli stiffened, the English side of his ancestry coming to the fore. “I say!” he said. “It’s a bit public.”

John Hardesty cleared his throat, and for a moment the schoolteacher imagined that he was considering offering himself as a substitute. But he only ran his hands through his hair, in a baffled and unhappy manner.

“That’s enough of fooling around,” the inspector decided. “You two can …”

“But, Oscar!” cried Miss Withers. “Shouldn’t they stick around? After all, Ina is our only link with Dallas Trempleau, and any minute she may remember the missing clue. I only wish I could help her by remembering more Byron. There’s ‘Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.’ Or ‘The Devil hath not, in all his quiver’s choice, an arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.’ Or ‘Childe Harold to the dark tower came….’ Don’t any of those strike a chord, young lady?”

Ina slowly shook her head.

“As I was about to say,” continued the inspector coldly, “you two can run along. But I suggest you stick around next door. One place is as good as another for a honeymoon, and we’d rather you didn’t try to leave town at the moment.”

“I don’t see what authority …” Nikki Braggioli began.

But Ina touched his arm and shook her head. “We’ll be right next door,” she said. “Until the inspector and Mr. Hardesty say it’s all right for us to go.” She turned toward Miss Withers. “And if I should happen to remember anything …”

The inspector finally shooed them out of the room, and then glared at Miss Withers. “Hildegarde, sometimes you surprise me. Where’s your sense of—of romance?”

“Where’s Dallas Trempleau?” countered the schoolteacher.

“Well, you certainly won’t find her by quoting corny poetry!”

John Hardesty said softly, almost to himself, “‘Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare …’ That’s from
Childe Harold,
too,” he added.

Miss Withers shot him a sympathetic glance, and then faced Oscar Piper. “Well, Oscar, perhaps this is the time and the place for unorthodox methods. Are you getting anywhere with all your official channels and your radio broadcasts and dragnets and alerted police? The minutes are ticking away, the clock is running out …”

Then the phone rang. The schoolteacher seized it eagerly, and then after a moment held out the instrument to the inspector. “Yes, speaking,” he said. “Yes. Yes.” Then he listened for several minutes, said “Thanks,” and hung up. He turned to the two who waited, grinning.

“They’ve got her,” Hardesty said.

“No,” Piper admitted. “But for your information, that was the agent in charge at the U.S. port of entry, reporting to me directly at the request of the San Ysidro police. Dallas Trempleau crossed the border sometime around ten-thirty this evening, alone and in a hell of a hurry.”