The switchboard operator informed me it was listed as fair.
I waited another twenty-four hours before calling on Mrs. Lawrence Powers. I picked two P.M. as the best time to arrive.
The Powers’s home was a huge rose granite affair of at least fourteen rooms, surrounded by fifty feet of perfect lawn in all four directions. A colored maid came to the door.
“Mrs. Powers, please,” I said, handing the maid one of my cards reading: Bernard Calhoun, Confidential Investigations.
She let me into a small foyer, left me standing there while she went off with the card. In a few minutes she came back with a dubious expression on her face.
“Mrs. Powers is right filled up with appointments this afternoon, Mr. Calhoun. She wants to know have you got some particular business?”
I said, “Tell her it’s about an auto accident.”
The colored girl disappeared again, but returned almost immediately.
“Just follow me please, sir,” she said.
She led me through a living room about thirty feet long whose furnishings alone probably cost a year of my income, through an equally expensive dining room and onto a large sun-flooded sun porch at the side of the house. Mrs. Lawrence Powers reclined at full length in a canvas deck chair, wearing brief red shorts and a similarly-colored scarf. She wore nothing else, not even shoes, and obviously had been sun bathing when I interrupted her.
The maid left us alone and I examined Mrs. Powers at the same time she was studying me. She was the same woman I had seen at the wheel of the Buick convertible. She was about thirty, I judged, a couple of years younger than me, and she had a body which started my heart hammering the moment I saw her. Not only was it perfectly contoured, her flesh was a creamy tan so satiny in texture, I had to control an impulse to reach out and test if it were real. She was beautiful clear from the tip of her delicately-shaped little nose to the tips of her small toes. Even her feet were lovely.
But her face didn’t have any more expression than a billiard ball.
After a moment she calmly rose from her deck chair, turned her back to me and said, “Tie me up, please.” Her voice was pleasantly husky, but there was a curious flatness to it.
She had folded the scarf into a triangle and now held the two ends behind her for me to tie together. Taking them, I crossed them in the middle of her back. The touch of my knuckles against her bare flesh sent a tremor up my arms and I had an idiotic impulse to lean down and press my mouth against the smooth shoulder immediately in front of me.
Killing the impulse, I asked, “Tight enough?”
“It’ll do.”
I tied a square knot.
She turned around right where she was, which put her face an inch in front of mine and about six inches below. She was a tall woman, about five feet eight, because I stand six feet two.
Looking up at me without expression, she said in a toneless voice, “You’re a big man, Mr. Calhoun.”
For several moments I stood staring down at her, not even thinking. I’m not used to having scantily-clad women push themselves so close to me on first meeting, and I wasn’t sure how to take her. Then I got my brain functioning again and decided she probably wasn’t used to having strange men walk into her house, take one look at her and then grab her and kiss her. Probably, despite her seeming provocation, she’d scream for her maid.
I said, “Two-ten in my bare skin,” backed away and took a deck chair similar to hers. Gracefully Mrs. Powers sank back into her own.
“You’re a private detective, Mr. Calhoun?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And you wanted to see me about some accident?”
“The one night before last. Involving a green Buick convertible with license X-42-209-30, a parked Dodge belonging to a man named James Talmadge, a parked Ford belonging to a man named Henry Taft, and a pedestrian named John Lischer who’s currently at City Hospital in fair condition. A hit-and-run accident.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she merely said, “I see.”
“I happened to be coming out of Happy Hollow just as it took place,” I said. “I was the only person on the street aside from John Lischer, and I’m sure I was the only witness. I got a good look at both the driver of the Buick and the passenger. Good enough to recognize both. You were the driver and Harry Cushman was the passenger.”
Again she said, “I see.” Then, after studying me without expression, she asked, “What do you want?”
“Have you reported the accident?”
When she looked thoughtful, I said, “I can easily check at headquarters. I haven’t yet because I didn’t want to be questioned.”
“I see. No, I haven’t reported it.”
“What does your husband do, Mrs. Powers?”
A fleeting frown marred the smoothness of her brow, but it was gone almost instantly.
“He’s president of Haver National Bank.”
“Then you haven’t told your husband about the accident either.” I made it a statement instead of a question.
She regarded me thoughtfully. “Why do you assume that?”
“Because I don’t think the president of Haver National Bank would let an accident his wife was involved in go unreported for thirty-seven hours. Particularly where no one was seriously hurt, you undoubtedly have liability insurance, and the worst you could expect if you turned yourself in voluntarily would be a fine and temporary suspension of your driver’s license. He’d know the charge against you would be much more serious if the police have to track you down than if you turned yourself in on your own, even at this late date.”
Her face remained deadpan. “So?”
“So I think the reason you didn’t stop, and the reason you don’t intend to report the accident, isn’t because you lost your head. You don’t impress me as the panicky type. I think the reason you didn’t stop was because you couldn’t afford to let your husband find out you were out with Harry Cushman at one in the morning.”
When she said nothing at all, I asked, “Have you tried to have your car fixed yet?”
She shook her head.
“Where is it?”
“In the garage out back.”
“How come your husband hasn’t noticed the damage?”
“It’s all on the right side,” she said tonelessly. “A smashed front fender, bent bumper and dented door. Nothing was knocked loose. We have a three-car garage and my stall is the far right one. I parked it close to the wall so no one could walk around on that side. The station wagon’s between my car and my husband’s Packard, so there isn’t much likelihood of him noticing the damage.”
“You say nothing was knocked loose? Was your headlight broken?”
“No. I don’t believe I left any clues at the scene of the crime.”
I leaned back and put the tips of my fingers together. In a conversational tone I said, “You must have left some green paint on the two cars you hit. By now the police have alerted every repair garage within a fifty-mile radius to watch for a green car. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes.”
“How you plan to get around it?”
“I haven’t yet solved the problem.”
“Would you be interested in some advice?”
“What advice?” she asked.
“Hire a private detective to get you out of your jam,” I said.
3
For a long time she looked at me, her expression completely blank. When she spoke there was the slightest touch of mockery in her voice.
“I was frightened when Alice said you wanted to see me about an auto accident, Mr. Calhoun. But almost from the moment you walked through the door I knew you hadn’t come to investigate me on behalf of that old man or either of the two car owners. I’m a pretty good judge of character. Out of the four people involved, how did you happen to pick me as your potential client?”