“Have you ever hired any other?”
“No,” Susan admitted and they both laughed. Then Susan’s face became serious. “Did you find out — is John alive?”
“I believe he is. In fact, the only sense I can make out of the whole thing depends on his being alive. And believe me, this case is not an easy one to make sense of. Now — I want to warn you that Clymer’s going to toss a few bombshells at us during dinner. Think you can take it?”
“Now you’re scaring me. But I’ll do my best.”
“Good girl.” Short brought out his cigarettes and lighter. “Can you remember what you were wearing last Friday? What kind of an outfit?”
“Of course. My powder blue suit, a wide-brimmed gray hat, gray gloves, gray purse, and gray and blue shoes. Why do you ask?”
“I almost wish I hadn’t.” Short shook his head. “The guy at the garage — where you’re supposed to have taken the car — described you to a T.”
“But anyone could have told him what I was wearing,” Susan protested. “The hotel-clerk, the bellboy — or he could have seen me himself, here or in the hotel or out on the street.”
“I know. It’s just that everything keeps adding up in their favor.” Short hung a cigarette on his lip and spun the wheel of his lighter. “I guess that one’s got to be handled by Sweeny’s Law.”
“Sweeny’s Law?”
“Yeah.” Chuckling softly as he puffed smoke, Short explained, “Sweeny’s Law is the principle that the better a thing looks, the phonier it is inside; and if you jam a monkey-wrench into an apparently perfect machine, the phony part will fly apart and destroy the rest. Very soon now we’re going to toss a wrench.” He paused a moment, then asked, “You want to tell me exactly what happened when you went down to Sonora?”
“But I did.”
“No, I want more detail.”
“Well, I went to the address I’d been given on the phone — No. 14 Balboa Avenue. It was a tourist-shop. A store full of stitched leather handbags, sandals, straw-hats — stuff like that — and on the second-floor was an attorney’s office. The man and the woman in the store claimed they knew nothing about any phone-call or about John, and neither did the lawyer upstairs. He was an old, white-haired Mexican. He listened very carefully to my story and then went down and talked the matter over with the people in the store. All three advised me to go to the police. I did. The officer — a captain, I think — wrote it all down and said an investigation would be conducted. After that I went to the pawn-shop, bought the gun, and drove back here.”
“And you can’t remember anything unusual?”
“I got a flat tire — if that’s the kind of thing you mean.”
Short’s face lighted with interest. “Where?”
“In Sonora. When I came out of the souvenir-shop I saw my front right tire was flat. Kids. The Mexican kids stick nails into tourists’ tires unless you give them a nickel or a dime to guard the car. So the old lawyer explained. He was very apologetic.” Susan shrugged. “I’d gladly have given the child a dime, but I didn’t see any when I parked.”
“Don’t tell me — a man appeared from nowhere and changed the tire for you.”
“No. But there was a service station directly across the street. The mechanic changed the wheel and repaired the tire while I had coffee in a place nearby.”
Short nodded. “That about does it.” His eyes flicked toward the restaurant entrance. “But look sharp now, Clymer’s coming.”
“But what happened down there?” Susan asked, frowning.
“No time to explain now,” Short whispered. He stood up as Sheriff Clymer approached their table. “Good evening, Sheriff. Mrs. McCrary was delighted to accept your kind invitation.”
Clymer, now wearing a maroon sash under a white dinner jacket, a stiff shirtfront and maroon tie, took Susan’s hand, bowed as low over it as his vast belly would permit, and brushed it lightly with his cherubic lips. “I’m honored, Madam. Rarely has the Sierra Royal been graced with such beauty.”
Susan flushed and withdrew her hand, murmuring, “Thank you.” Clymer straightened, looked about the room, nodded, and snapped his fingers. A huge, ornately carved chair was brought by two uniformed flunkies, was placed at the table, and then a dark-suited waiter appeared, bowing and smiling.
“Everything’s as ordered?” Clymer asked.
The waiter did his best to touch the floor with his nose. “Si, si— Es—”
“Speak English, Manuel. Now and throughout the evening.”
“Yes sir. All is ready.”
Short watched this little comedy with a glint of amusement in his eyes, but otherwise his face was expressionless. As dinner proceeded, Clymer went through an elaborate soup-testing, salad-tossing, winesampling ritual that would have done justice to the Ritz cuisine. And when a four-inch thick, 12 pound London broil was served, he made a great to-do over a special mushroom-onion-soy sauce of his own invention. The man was a gourmet and his joy in serving and consuming the meal was unalloyed. Short did full justice to his portion. Susan ate moderately, mostly in silence, but replying pleasantly enough to Clymer’s compliments and little attentions. All during the various courses, Clymer kept up a light, cheerful conversation, mostly about food, and it was gradually revealed that he was a well-traveled man who had dined at the finer restaurants of most of the world’s great cities.
When dessert arrived — a thing of chilled fruit, cream, brandy, and exotic spices — Clymer asked Short if he intended to adhere to the course he’d indicated during their earlier conversation. Short said that he did.
Susan looked first at Clymer, then at Short. He smiled and dug a spoon into his dessert, saying, “I told Sheriff Clymer we’d be starting the drive back to Chicago tonight.”
Susan’s eyes went wide. Short looked at her steadily and she said nothing. From his thronelike chair, Clymer, watched them both closely and then said, in the attitude of one who’d come to a decision, “I may take it then that some degree of the confusion of the past week has been cleared away?”
At these words, Susan’s eyes snapped into angry fire. “If you mean have I changed my mind about having a husband when I came here, the answer is ‘no’.”
A sort of patient disappointment crossed Clymer’s face; then a frown descended on the tiny black eyes and the little girlish lips drooped at the corners, merging into folds of fat on the chin. He shifted his glance from Susan to Short and let a question form by tilting his eyebrows.
“We’re leaving,” Short said. “Tonight if possible, and certainly in the morning.”
Clymer nodded and looked satisfied. “Miss Shaw, I’ve a couple questions, more in your interest than mine—”
“I’m Mrs. McCrory,” Susan snapped.
Short hid a grin behind a heaping spoonful of creamed iced fruit.
“Very well,” Clymer conceded. “Mrs. McCrory, I believe you told me you were married in Chicago on the twelfth of last month?”
“In Fayetteville — a suburb of Chicago.”
“In a church?”
“No. In a minister’s private home. The Reverend James Bush. On Foster Street. I told you all this at least three times before.”
“Please bear with me. Your husband, a man named John McCrory, is a music-composer, known in certain concert-music circles in Chicago?”
“He’s not famous, but he’s known. The Chicago Friends of Music Society certainly knows him. He’s known at the Hibbard School. And at the State College.” Susan sighed and looked at Short. “I’ve told him all this.”
“It’s all right.” Short nodded and patted her hand.
“Hmmm,” Clymer mumbled, rubbing his chin. “I wonder if you could explain this, Miss — Mrs. McCrory?” Clymer took a folded paper — a telegram — from his pocket, opened it out flat, and handed it to Susan. Her eyes turned to Short inquiringly and he bobbed his head once up and down.