The cops flashed their badges at Miss Little, then herded her with the rest of us into Fredrickson’s office for a little chat.
Fredrickson said, “What’s the meaning of this? Miss Little, I specifically...”
“Oh, shut up, Charlie,” Miss Little snapped. “It’s the cops.”
“Listen here,” Fredrickson said to James, “you have no right to intrude. What is the meaning of all this?”
“Mr. Hunter tells it so well,” said James, “we’ll just let him tell you.”
“Tell what?” Fredrickson asked.
“Tell how you killed those three deadbeats, as you call them,” I said.
Fredrickson shook his head. “Yesterday we went over this in great detail...”
“That’s before I got the evidence I needed,” I said. “What got me thinking on the right track was a commercial I saw last night. A commercial for the bug spray you have in your desk drawer. It’s called Bug Off The commercial made me aware of the fact that it has a curare base. I checked that out by going to the dry goods store this morning. Next I called the police and told them my suspicions. Guess what we did?”
Fredrickson licked his lips. “What?”
“We got a court order to have the bodies exhumed for an autopsy. About an hour ago we got the word. Oh, it was hard go considering the embalmer had already been there, but Doc Warren is an expert. He found traces of curare in all three bodies.”
“And I suppose you think I held them down and sprayed bug poison in their mouths,” Fredrickson said.
“Nope. You prepared for them, and after they got the policies signed over, and you fixed up the loan papers, you poisoned them. You had a cup prepare’d before hand with a good dose of Bug Off in it.” I looked, at Miss Little. “Have any idea how much Bug Off it takes, Miss Little?”
She didn’t answer. Just looked like she wished she could melt. I looked at the coffee maker on the far side of the room. “I suppose you poured the coffee yourself, huh, Fredrickson? No matter. They had the coffee, left here and died of disruption of cardiovascular functions. That’s what curare does to the human body. But of course you know that. That’s why Dravek got a little farther into town than the other two. He was younger, and able to resist the poison longer.”
“It’s not a nice way to collect money, Fredrickson, but it worked, and would have continued to work if you hadn’t gotten greedy. They just died too close together and of the same ailment.” I turned to Miss Little. “And you, I bet, are an accessory.”
“He did it,” Miss Little whined. “It was all his idea.”
I said, “Uh huh.”
Jacobs grabbed Miss Little by a pudgy arm and escorted her to the reception room to take her statement. I didn’t bother to mention to Fredrickson that I had lied about having the bodies exhumed.
“I suppose you can link all of this to me?” Fredrickson said, but his voice was a whine.
“She’s link enough,” James said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “She’s in there spilling her guts out. You can bet on that.”
Fredrickson’s Adam’s apple worked up and down, and then suddenly he dove for the desk drawer.
James, still quick after all these years, leaned over and slammed the drawer on Fredrickson’s hand, opened it slowly and removed the .38 snub nose that was resting there.
“Tsk, tsk,” James said. “If you’re going to be a hardened criminal, Mr. Fredrickson, you’re going to have to learn to keep your cool.”
“And not be so greedy,” I said. “You could have gotten away with this.”
“You sonofabitch,” Fredrickson said, rubbing his hand.
James looked at me, his face full of mock pain. “Did you hear that? Such an ugly remark from the mouth of a gentleman.”
“You can never tell these days,” I said.
Fredrickson, defeated, sat down behind his desk and put his face in his hands. James began reading him his rights. I went out quietly.
In the outer office Jacobs was listening patiently to Miss Little’s snarling remarks. I waved at her as I went out between two uniformed cops standing in the doorway.
She waved back with the middle finger of her left hand, the old one gun salute.
I went out to my car and drove over to find Capella and collect my ten percent saviour’s bonus.
George
by R. C. Tuttle
He was about three inches long, he could spread his legs out to six inches, and his bite could create a serious problem in a human body — like maybe death!
Mrs. Vivian Van Leer walked-briskly down the sidewalk, her delicately-featured face slightly apprehensive. The closed stores lining the side street seemed to be staring at her, telling her: You old fool, you shouldn’t leave your apartment after dark. She was a slim figure in her brown, polyester coat and floppy hat atop well-kept snow-white hair and could easily be mistaken in the dim light for a teenager instead of an ex-psychologist of seventy-eight. Perky was the word for Vivian. She enjoyed good health, a youthful outlook on life, a comfortable income, and she wasn’t about to be chained to her apartment by a few crazies.
Nevertheless, she was tense as she stepped past shadowy, staring figures, night people who, like poisonous toadstools, emerged from the depths at night to do their thing. A street peopled with furtive figures — who wrote that? Sax Rohmer in one of his mysteries.
Her husband, dead ten years, had been a detective story writer with a small but faithful following. As her eyes panned the street ahead, she thought about Tom and his battered old typewriter. Wherever he was, He was probably devising a diabolical plot of murder and mayhem. Yet, he’d been a gentle, loving man whom she had loved dearly.
Now, her only love was George — which was unique because tarantulas don’t, usually have lovers, even among the spider set.
As she walked, her purse dangled loosely from her hand.
Suddenly, a figure appeared and a quick hand yanked the purse out of her grasp. There was a rush of feet, and the purse snatcher sped down the street.
She staggered but quickly recovered. She had gotten a glimpse of his face and his hair! Especially his hair. His picture had been in the paper a week ago — a suspect in a drug bust. Greg Matson. His father was a lawyer and an official, in the city administration.
She quickened her step and ten minutes later stepped into her second story apartment. After closing the door and flipping the lock in place, she turned on the lights and called the police.
Then, she caught a silverfish in the bathroom and fed it to George.
George was a South American tarantula — the clerk in the pet Central America, as a bird spider. He was about three inches long, he could spread his legs out to six inches and his bite could create a serious problem in the human body — like maybe death. In the jungle he would be living in a tree and feasting on small birds, but in the apartment he resided in a large glass tank among rocks, dirt and exotic plants. Vivian kept him well fed with roaches, silverfish and other bugs that inhabited the nooks and crannies of the apartment. Thinking that George might need some female company, she had bought a smaller California tarantula, known in his homeland, store had assured her it was a female — and put the eight legged beauty in with George. The romance never got off the ground. Perhaps the small spider was actually a male or George, a female. George had promptly pounced on the hapless intruder and had him or her for supper.
George’s entrance into the United States was unexpected. One minute he had been eating a bug on a bunch of bananas and suddenly he found himself on a banana boat headed for the United States. He had surfaced in the fruit section of the local supermarket, luckily, just as Vivian was checking the oranges. She had lured him into a paper bag and taken him home.