“It looks as though Bob Elgin was mixed up in it too. You know the way it is around these night-clubs. There’s opportunity for some nice blackmail if the people want to do it. They didn’t want to take over the real dirty work, but Amelia Jasper did. That’s the way she’s been making her living for the past five years.
“It’s strange the way she happened to start on Minerva Carlton. It seems Claire Bushnell made some crack about the swell time the two girls had been having at the beach. She thought she was just entertaining her Aunt Amelia. Amelia urged her on, got all of the facts and…”
I said, “Did anybody confess? Did Sellers get a confession?”
“Did he get a confession!” Bertha said, with a glint of admiration in her eyes. “You should have seen that boy work! Him with only one good hand! But he pulled a piece of rubber hose and he scared the pants right off that crowd.”
“Who squawked?”
“Oddly enough,” Bertha said, “it was the man who weakened first.”
“Tom Durham?”
“Yes.”
“All right, what’s the low-down?”
“They were shaking down Minerva Carlton. They threatened to tell her husband. Tom Durham met her in the Cabanita. Minerva said she’d be at the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT Saturday night and would pay off. She wrote the name on the back of a menu. Lucille managed to get placed in the same booth after they’d left and grabbed the menu. They didn’t show the first time — scared, I guess, Mrs. Carlton repeated the next week. She got Dover Fulton to pose as Stanwick Carlton, her husband. When the blackmailers showed up, she laughed at them, said her husband knew all about her ‘indiscretion’ and had forgiven her; that he’d arrived unexpectedly from Colorado and she’d confessed the whole thing to him because she had to. She seemed radiantly happy.
“There was some argument, and Durham, mad at having lost a touch, started a swing at Fulton. Fulton drew his gun, took a shot, missed and hit Amelia Jasper in the fanny.
“Before Fulton could fire again, Durham had the gun wrenched away from him.
“Fulton made the mistake of being game. He made a lunge and Durham let him have it right between the eyes. Minerva Carlton turned and started to run and he hit her in the back of the head. He’s a crack shot.”
“And the suitcase?”
“Just as you said. They knew they had to account for the third bullet.”
“And what about Lucille Hollister?”
“They wanted to do business with her. She’d been keeping an eye on the blackmailers. They were watching the house where she was staying, intending to get her when she came out. You blundered into the picture and the two women followed you around to the back, later on into the bedroom.”
“You mean Amelia Jasper and Susie?”
“That’s right. My God, but you’re dumb! Can’t you even look behind you and see whether or not a couple of amateurs are trailing along behind?”
“Not when a girl’s undressing in a bedroom window,” I said.
Bertha sighed and shook her head. “That’s what comes of having a man for a partner. I should buy you polarized glasses.”
“You should for a fact,” I said. “They followed me, is that right?”
“No. They were watching the house.”
“I know, but after I showed up, they followed me.”
“That’s right. They’d been afraid of Lucille. They didn’t know just where she entered the picture. They thought she was a detective. They found out, of course, from reading the newspaper accounts of the shooting in the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT that you’d been there and had a woman with you. They read her description. They knew that Lucille had been hanging around the clubs and cocktail bars where they were working. They didn’t know just what she wanted. They were close enough so they could hear her bedroom conversation with you through the open window. She signed her own death warrant when she said she’d seen people moving around in the cabin where Minerva Carlton and Dover Fulton were killed after the three shots had been fired.”
Elsie Brand tapped on the door and said, “The adjuster from the insurance company is here. He wants to see Donald Lam.”
A beatific grin suffused Bertha Cool’s features.
“Send the gentleman in here where we can both work on him,” she said softly.