Her words tumbled out on a torrent of feeling she couldn’t dam any longer. “He’ll be crazy because I deceived him, ran away to get married. Knowing it’s his fault. Knowing if he hadn’t knocked you down that day, I wouldn’t have called to apologize, met you to explain — gone on meeting you... But he’ll forgive me. I’m all he has. And — he’s a great guy, Jerry. You’ll see.”
His arm pressed hers hard against him. “Calm down, sweet. The shooting’s over. Even your smoke-eating old man should be able to see I’ve proved my point. You’re married to me and not dragged into any mess. Invite him to dinner if you want. Why shouldn’t we all be friends?”
She sat there quiet, her cheek against his sleeve, watching the lights of the city creep around them. Dope, she thought, worrying about Jerry, the sweetest, squarest guy in the world. Jerry, who could fall in love with a girl who had checked on him, heckled him!
II
They came in over the Hollywood freeway, that wound above the dingy, east section of town, giving the panoramic scope of a great-city. She was on a new speedway of her own, Bina thought. The same world, but married to Jerry, suddenly a new one. Exciting, warm, promising. A world of height and depth and thrilling vistas. A world where you dreamed with your eyes wide open. Where every beat of time was measured and heavy with love.
At Beverly Hills, they cut over to Wilshire and followed its winding curves west for a mile before turning up the narrow drive that hugged the lavish slab of apartment building Jerry called home. On the other side of the drive a thirty-foot excavation yawned.
Bina whistled. “They’ve been busy while you were away.”
“Must be going to build a skyscraper from the size of that hole.” Jerry swung the car into its parking stall. Loaded with suitcases and tennis racquets, they went in through the back entrance, and took the small service elevator.
“Married or not,” Bina observed, “I feel guilty going into a man’s apartment.”
“You won’t feel guilty by the time you’ve scrubbed the cobwebs out of that refrigerator,” Jerry assured her.
At his door, he put down his luggage, turned his key in the lock, and gathered Bina up, suitcases and all.
“You’ll break your back!” Bina cried, laughing, as he carried her over the threshold.
“Isn’t that what husbands are for?”
He stood there in the smart cubicle of hall laughing with her, and then suddenly sniffed. “Lobster thermador!”
“Silly,” Bina laughed.
At this minute, Toto moved around the corner and came toward them, with his slippering, half run. His Oriental face glistened with grinning excitement.
“Welcome. Welcome!” He made a giggling bow.
Jerry slid Bina from his arms and together they stared at the houseboy, who had left the Crevellin place after Clarissa’s death to work for her young, clubwoman friend, Marge Norris.
“It is lobster thermador.” Jerry beamed at the boy.
“How do you happen to be here tonight?” Bina demanded.
Toto giggled again. “I a loan,” he said. “Missa Canby, your secretery, tell Missa Norris you come today. Missa Norris tell me come make dinner.”
“Good old Marge,” Jerry approved. “You can help me get this junk into the bedroom, Toto.” He picked up his suitcases and rounded the corner into the living room — to bump into Bina, who had stopped dead still.
“You have guest,” Toto remembered, belatedly.
“Hello.” Lefty Ryan stood across the room with his stiff cop’s carriage, hat in hand, his dark suit looking more uniform than suit, his face coolly expressionless.
Bina ran across to him and wound her arms about his neck, sobbing. “Dad! Dad!”
His arm tightened around her, but his expression did not change. Sniffing, she wiped her eyes on his tie. “I knew you’d have to forgive me, Lefty — and congratulate us.”
“Sorry. That’s not exactly it.”
She ignored the coldness of his tone and rushed on. “You’re staying to dinner! We talked about having you to dinner on the way in, didn’t we, Jerry?”
Jerry put down the luggage and advanced toward his father-in-law resolutely, if a little warily. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I got off to a bad start with you, sir, but — I’m going to do my best to change your opinion. And — to make Bina hap—”
Before Lefty’s flinty gaze, Jerry’s voice trailed off, his proffered hand dropped. “I came around to tell you some new evidence turned up on the Crevellin case,” Lefty’s cold eyes moved from Jerry to Bina.
Bina stood very still, her breath catching in her throat. “New evidence,” she said weakly.
Jerry’s face tightened. “There was never any ‘Crevellin case’,” he said.
“There might have been if my daughter had done her job honestly.”
“What do you mean, ‘honestly’?”
“Told your aunt all she saw at those social functions.”
“What new evidence?” Bina broke in.
Lefty swung around to her. “A piece of Mexican jade that looks like it fits the piece found on the floor of Clarissa’s bedroom the night she was — the night she died.”
“That silly jade business again.” Without thinking, almost automatically, Jerry offered Lefty a cigarette.
Lefty waved the pack aside. “That ‘silly jade business’ is going to make it a case,” he snapped.
“No!” Bina moaned.
“It was too big a thing to pass over,” Lefty said tersely. “Jordon and I have never been satisfied. The cleaning woman swore it wasn’t on the floor in front of the chaise when she swept that morning. Mrs. Crevellin didn’t own any Mexican jade. Bina hadn’t worn any of her bracelets that week. Then who dropped that first piece of jade in front of the chaise where Mrs. Crevellin was found? It was never cleared up, any more than the bump on the back of her head.”
Anxiously Bina glanced over at Jerry, smoking furiously. “Please, father—”
Jerry crushed out his cigarette. “We appreciate your — continued interest in our behalf, Detective Ryan. But I’m still satisfied with the coroner’s conclusion in regard to that. If you’ll recall, my late aunt was alone that afternoon after Bina went home. It was Toto’s afternoon off. The cleaning woman came only for three hours that morning. It seems far more plausible that she could have overlooked that piece of jade on the carpet than that anyone could have broken into the house, gotten past the gardener unseen, and left no fingerprints of any kind. As to the bump, my aunt died of a heart attack that afternoon. She could have fallen trying to call the doctor.”
“There was a phone upstairs,” Lefty snapped. “She certainly wouldn’t have started downstairs. Your doctor wasn’t too happy with the verdict,” he added darkly. “It was his private feeling that that bump on her head would have contributed to her death, but he hadn’t thought her heart was bad enough to stop beating from just the shock of falling down some stairs.”
“Who found the second piece of jade?” Jerry said. “Where was it found?”
Lefty’s eyes glinted ominously. “I found it,” he said. “Yesterday morning. Down between the second and third flagstones of our front walk.”
“That’s fantastic!”
Lefty’s gaze moved to Jerry. “And your marriage is going to be a big help,” he said, with an almost savage bitterness in his voice.
Bina stood frozen, unable to believe what she had heard, helplessly staring at her father and Jerry, squared off like a couple of fighters, Jerry parrying, Lefty slugging.
Jerry said sardonically. “You’ve turned in the jade?”
“It’s safe,” Lefty snapped. “And the Chief will have it when he gets back from his vacation Wednesday — whether anything happens to me or not.”