The Case of the Lazy Lover (7 page)

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Mason! What are you talking about."

"Your mother running off with your boy friend."

"Are you completely crazy, or are you laying some soft of a trap for me?"

"Didn't your mother run off with Robert Gregg Fleetwood?"

"What do you mean 'run off' with him?"

"Leave her husband and elope. Aren't they running away together and…?"

"Certainly not!" she blazed. "What are you trying to do? Are you just trying to get a rise out of me?"

Mason said, "I'm trying to represent your mother, Patricia, and I'm supposed to represent you in case you get in a jam. If your mother hasn't gone off with Fleetwood, you'd better give me the facts, and fast."

"But the check, Mr. Mason. I don't see how in the world anyone could have…"

"Never mind the check for a minute," Mason said. "Let's get the lowdown on what's happened to Fleetwood."

"What do you mean 'what's happened to him'?"

Mason met her eyes steadily. "Did you," he asked, "strike him with your car, Patricia?"

For a moment her eyes met his, defiantly. Then under the steady gaze of the lawyer's eyes, her own eyes faltered.

"Did you?" Mason asked.

"Yes," she said "And that's why you're having your car repaired? Why you've created the identity of Maurine Milford-- trying to conceal the evidence that would indicate you had struck someone with the left front fender of your automobile?"

She said, "It's a long story, Mr. Mason."

"Then the sooner you start on it, the quicker we'll get to an understanding."

"Have you ever been out to our house?" she asked.

Mason shook his head.

"It's virtually a double house," she said, "with a patio. As a matter of fact, there really are two houses. Mr. Allred uses the south wing for his offices. The north wing contains the living quarters, and between the two, and connecting them, are the garages with servants' quarters. It's just as though you had two houses separated by a vacant lot, with the garages running along the back of the vacant lot, and the vacant lot being used as a patio."

"Rather a public patio, isn't it?" Mason asked.

"That's the point. When Mr. Allred bought the place, he planted a hedge along the sidewalk. That hedge had now grown up very thick and heavy. It shuts the place off completely except for the gap where the driveway to the garages goes along the side of the north wing."

"And what does all this have to do with what happened to Robert Fleetwood?"

"I'm coming to that. The hedge is close to the driveway. In the course of time, as the hedge grew and expanded, despite all the trimming it's had, it's spread out into the driveway so that there's barely room to get a car through."

"That's all you want, isn't it?"

"Yes, but… you remember it was raining Saturday night?"

Mason nodded.

She said, "My mother and I had been to a cocktail party. I don't want you to think that we were the least bit tight, because we weren't. But we had had three or four cocktails apiece."

"Who was driving the car?"

"I was."

"And you hit Fleetwood?"

"Not exactly… well, it wasn't just like that."

"How was it?"

"When we started for home it was rather late, and I was making time. It had been raining heavily and visibility was poor. The wet pavement seemed to sop up the headlights. When we got home I swung around the corner and started to turn into the driveway. Then I noticed that Mr. Allred's car had been parked at the curb in such a way that the hind bumper actually stuck out just a little bit over the driveway. I probably could have stopped my car, backed around, made a perfectly straight run down the driveway and got into the garage. But as it was, I simply clipper a corner of the hedge. Well, the hedge was a little bigger and a little stronger than I had remembered it. The last time I put a car through the corner of the hedge it went through all right, but this time it-- it struck something."

"Fleetwood?" Mason asked.

"At the time I thought it was merely a heavy branch."

"Is Fleetwood dead?"

"No, no. Don't misunderstand me. He sustained a head injury and he's suffering from amnesia. He can't remember a thing."

"And aside from that?"

"Aside from That, he's all right."

"When did you know you'd struck Fleetwood?"

"That's just the point, Mr. Mason. I didn't know it at the time. That's the unfortunate part of it. That's where all the trouble will come in."

"Go ahead."

"I knew that I'd struck something fairly solid, and said to Mother that that hedge certainly had grown up and that I guessed I'd nicked a bumper-- and we both laughed. It seemed funny at the time. We were feeling good." 'Then what?"

"Then we drove into the one of the garages that's kept for my car, dashed into the house, showered and dressed for dinner.

"Mr. Allred told us that he and Bob Fleetwood had been working until late and he'd asked Bob to stay for dinner but Bob said he wanted to run down to his apartment and freshen up a bit first, that it would only take him fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Fleetwood's apartment is near your house?"

"That's right. Within two or three blocks. You see, he works with Mr. Allred at all hours of the day and night, so he got an apartment near by"

"Is he a special friend of yours?" Mason asked.

"Definitely not."

"Wants to be?"

"I think so, yes. In a wolfish sort of way."

"And doesn't get anywhere?"

"No."

"Then you haven't been crying your eyes out?"

"Over what?"

"Over what happened."

"I've been terribly upset over-- well, over hitting him."

"You did hit him when you clipped the corner of the hedge?"

"Yes."

"When did you find it out?"

"Not until after dinner. We waited for Bob for nearly half an hour, then Mother decided to go ahead and have dinner. It was sometime during dimmer that we mentioned to Mr. Allred that the hedge would have to be cut back and told him what had happened. He was full of apologies. He said he'd parked his car at the curb, intending to leave it there only for a few minutes. He hadn't realized that the car was in the way. He said he'd move it right away.

"It was still drizzling and dark. Mr. Allred went out to move his car away from the driveway, and then-- just as he backed it around to come down the driveway the headlights showed this-- this object."

"Fleetwood?"

"Yes."

"You say he wasn't killed?"

"No, he was unconscious. Mr. Allred thought he was dead, but I'd had some first aid experience and I was able to find a pulse."

"So then what happened?"

"We brought him into the house. I started to telephone for a doctor, but Mr. Allred said we could put him in his car and he could get him to a hospital a lot quicker than we could wait for a doctor or an ambulance.

"Bob regained consciousness while we were talking. He opened his eyes and muttered something that was unintelligible, then closed his eyes again and then after a moment wanted to know where he was and wanted to know who he was.

"Of course, at the time, we felt that it was merely the fact that he was dazed. Apparently he'd struck his head on a curb when… when my fender had hit him."

"There's a walk on the inside of the hedge by the patio?" Mason asked.

"That's right. There's the public sidewalk along the street on the outside of the hedge, and then there's a walk along the inside, flagstones set into the lawn, but there's a cement curb, a sort of retaining wall running along the edge of the flagstone walk, with the lawn about eighteen inches higher than the flag walk."

"All right," Mason said. "Go on. What happened?"

"Well, it was obvious that the injury to Bob's head had given him amnesia. He didn't know who he was or where he was, or what it was all about."

"And then what happened?"

She said, "I don't know all of the details. I know that Mr. Allred and Mother had a whispered consultation and then went in the other room and talked for a while. You see, Bob Fleetwood is Mr. Allred's right-hand man. He knows a lot about the business, and right at the present time there are some very important matters pending."

"Such as what?" Mason asked.

"Well, for one thing, Mr. Jerome and Mr. Allred are having some trouble. I think they're ready to dissolve the partnership. It's a question of who pays the money and how much is taken. I think Fleetwood knows something there.

"Then there's the lawsuit with Dixon Keith. I think Fleetwood is the key witness there, and if people should know that Fleetwood had lost his memory-- well, even if he got it back, you know what a lawyer would do. He'd get Bob on the stand and ask him if such and such wasn't the case, and if Fleetwood said 'No,' he'd ask him if it wasn't true he'd lost his memory for a while and ask him how he knew he had made a complete recovery. He'd make things pretty tough for Bob."

"So what?"

"So Mr. Allred decided that my mother had better tell Fleetwood she was his married sister, that Bertrand Allred was his brother-in-law, and I was his niece.

"And that's absolutely everything there was to it, Mr. Mason. My mother and my stepfather took Bob Fleetwood…"

"Wait a minute," Mason interrupted. "You mean your stepfather went with them?"

"Of course."

"Where did they go?"

"They intended to go to some outlying suburb where no one would ever think to look for Bob. They intended to register somewhere and keep him very, very quiet. They knew that's what a doctor would prescribe, to keep him quiet so as to avoid the aftereffects of concussion."

"You don't know where they went?"

"No."

"You do know that Bertrand Allred went with them?" Mason asked.

"Yes."

Mason got up from the chair and began pacing the floor, hands pushed down deep in his pockets, his head thrust slightly forward.

"What is it, Mr. Mason?" she asked.

Mason said, "Then your mother didn't have any romantic attachment for Fleetwood whatever?"

"Of course not. Certainly not."

"She simply took him to some motel or auto camp where he could be quiet for a while?"

"Yes."

"And Bertrand Allred knew about it?"

"He's the one who suggested it. He went with them."

Mason shook his head and said, "It doesn't make sense. Wait a minute. Yes, it does, too."

"What do you mean?"

Mason looked at his watch and said, "Where's your mother now?"

"I don't know."

"Any way of finding out?"

"She was going to communicate with me."

"What," Mason asked, "is the idea of all this buildup?" and he included the apartment with a gesture of his hand.

She said, "I feel like a heel about this, Mr. Mason, but it was Mother's idea. She thought that if-- well, if anything happened and there should be any complications--"

"Go ahead."

"She thought that-- well, in case anything happened, that it would be a lot better if I could adopt the position that I'd loaned the car on Saturday evening to some friend. So we created the identity of Maurine Milford and decided to build her up a bit. We decided to let her live here in Las Olitas, take Patricia Faxon's automobile in to have it repaired, tell a story about having hit something, try to keep the whole thing secret and…"

"And then as soon as any investigator started checking on the thing, he'd find that your description agreed with that of Patricia Faxon and would have discovered the whole scheme without any difficulty."