Lay Her Among The Lilies

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District Commander Dunnigan’s office. He had done his best to dig into a case that kept

snapping shut every time he thought he had worked the lid off, but he hadn’t succeeded.

My story was straightforward, and more or less true. I said Freedlander’s daughter had been

missing for a couple of years. This he was able to check by calling the Missing People’s

Bureau in Orchid City. I told him I had found her wandering the streets suffering from loss of

memory, and, having taken her to my secretary’s apartment, had immediately got in my car to

come to ‘Frisco to take Freedlander to her.

He wanted to know how I knew she was Freedlander’s daughter, and I said I read the

Missing People’s Bulletin the police circulated and remembered her description.

He stared bleakly at me for some minutes, wondering whether to believe me or not, and I

stared right back at him.

“Should have thought you had better things to do,” was his final comment.

I went on to tell him how I had arrived at Freedlander’s apartment, heard a shot, broke in,

found Freedlander dead and the Wop trying to get away. I said he fired at us and we fired at

him and handed Dunnigan our gun permits. I said maybe the Wop was a burglar. No, I didn’t

think I had seen him before, although I might have. All Wops looked alike to me.

Dunnigan had a sneaking feeling there was much more behind all this than I was telling

him. I could see that plainly on his big, square-shaped face. He said so.

I told him he must have been reading too many detective stories, and could I go now as I

had a lot of work to do?

But he starred in from the beginning again, probing, asking questions, wasting a lot of time,

and finally finishing up just where he had started. He looked like a baffled bull as he sat

glaring at me.

Luckily the Wop had taken Freedlander’s money and his gold watch: the only things of

value in the apartment, so it was a perfect set-up for a routine shoot-and-run stick-up. Finally,

Dunnigan decided to let us go.

“Maybe it was a stick-up,” he said heavily. “If you two birds hadn’t been in on it, it would

have been a stick-up, but you being there makes me wonder.”

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Kerman said if he worried about a little case like this, he would be an old man and retired

before he got to the big cases.

“Never mind,” Dunnigan said sourly. “I don’t know what it is about you guys. Whenever

you show your faces in this City, trouble starts, and it usually starts for me. I wish you’d keep

out. I’ve got all the work I want without you coming here and making me more.”

We both laughed politely, shook hands, promised we would attend the inquest and left him.

We didn’t say a word until we were in the Buick, and driving along Oakland Bay Bridge,

heading for home. Then Kerman said gently, “If that guy ever finds out the Wop was the one

who kidnapped Stevens, I have a feeling life may he a little difficult for you.”

“It’s difficult enough as it is. We’re now landed with Anona.” I drove along for a mile or so

before saying, “You know, this is a hell of a case. All along I have had the feeling that

someone is trying very hard to keep a big, strong cat from getting out of the bag. We’re

missing something. We’re looking at the bag, and not at the cat, and the cat is the key to the

whole set-up. It has to be. Everyone who has caught sight of it has been silenced: Eudora

Drew, John Stevens, Nurse Gurney, and now Freedlander. And I have an idea that Anona

Freedlander knows about the cat, too. Somehow we have to get her memory going again: and

fast.”

“If she knows something why didn’t they knock her off instead of keeping her in that

home?” Kerman said.

“That’s what’s worrying me. Up to now all of them have been killed more or less

accidentally, but Freedlander was murdered. That means someone is getting in a panic. It also

means that Anona is no longer safe.”

Kerman sat up.

“You think they’ll try to get at her?”

“Yeah. We’ll have to hide her some place safe. Maybe we could get Doc Mansell to put her

in his Los Angeles clinic and I’ll get Kruger to lend me a couple of his bruisers to sit outside

the door.”

“Maybe you have been reading too many detective stories, too,” Kerman said, looking at

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me out of the corner of his eyes.

I kept the Buick moving at high speed while I thought about Freedlander’s killing, and the

more I thought the more jittery I got.

We reached San Lucas, and I pulled up outside a drug store.

“What now?” Kerman asked, surprised.

“I’m going to call Paula,” I said. “I should have called her from ‘Frisco. I’ve got the

shakes.”

“Take it easy,” Kerman said, and looked startled. “You’re letting your imagination run

away with you.”

“I hope I am,” I said, and made for the phone booth.

Kerman clutched my arm and pulled me back.

“Look at that!”

He was pointing to a stack of evening newspapers on the magazine counter. Inch headlines

smeared across the front page read:

Wife of Well-known Nature Cure Doctor

Commits Suicide

“Get it,” I said, jerked my arm free and shut myself in the booth. I put the call through to

Paula’s apartment and waited. I could hear the buzz-buzz note of the ringing tone, but no one

answered. I stood there, my heart thumping, the receiver against my ear, listening and

waiting.

She should be there. We had agreed Anona wasn’t to be left alone.

Kerman came to stare at my tense face through the glass door. I shook my head at him,

broke the connection and asked the operator to try again.

While she was making another connection, I opened the door.

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“No answer,” I said. “She’s trying again.”

Kerman’s face darkened.

“Let’s get on. We have a good hour’s run yet.”

“We’ll do it in better time than that,” I said, and, as I was about to hang up, the operator

came on and said the line was in order, but there was no answer.

I rammed down the receiver, and together we ran out of the store. I sent the Buick whipping

down the main street, and as soon as we were clear of the town I opened up.

Kerman was trying to read the newspaper, but, at the speed we were going, he had trouble

in holding it steady.

“She was found this afternoon,” he bawled in my ear. “She took poison after Salzer had

reported Quell’s death to the police. No word about Anona. Nothing about Nurse Gurney.”

“She’s the first of them to get cold feet,” I said. “Or else someone fed her poison. To hell

with her, anyway. I’m scared about Paula.”

Kerman said afterwards he had never been driven in a car so fast in his life, and he didn’t

ever want to go through the experience again. At one time the speedometer needle was stuck

at ninety-two, and kept there as we roared along the wide coast road with, the horn blaring.