“Oh, yes!” he said, pushing aside the mail, his mobile, intelligent face lighting up. “Has Mr. Teal found anything?”
“Mr. Teal was shot and killed last night.”
He looked at me blankly for a moment out of wide brown eyes, and then repeated: “Killed?”
“Yes,” I replied, and told him what little I knew about it.
“You don’t think—” he began when I had finished, and then stopped. “You don’t think Herb would have done that?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think Herb would commit murder! He’s been jumpy the last few days, and I was beginning to think he suspected I had discovered his thefts, but I don’t believe he would have gone that far, even if he knew Mr. Teal was following him. I honestly don’t!”
“Suppose,” I suggested, “that sometime yesterday Teal found where he had put the stolen money, and then Whitacre learned that Teal knew it. Don’t you think that under those circumstances Whitacre might have killed him?”
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “but I’d hate to think so. In a moment of panic Herb might — but I really don’t think he would.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Yesterday. We were here in the office together most of the day. He left for home a few minutes before six. But I talked to him over the phone later. He called me up at home at a little after seven, and said he was coming down to see me, wanted to tell me something. I thought he was going to confess his dishonesty, and that maybe we would be able to straighten out this miserable affair. His wife called up at about ten. She wanted him to bring something from downtown when he went home, but of course he was not there. I stayed in all evening waiting for him, but he didn’t—”
He stuttered, stopped talking, and his face drained white.
“My God, I’m wiped out!” he said faintly, as if the thought of his own position had just come to him. “Herb gone, money gone, three years’ work gone for nothing! And I’m legally responsible for every cent he stole. God!”
He looked at me with eyes that pleaded for a contradiction, but I couldn’t do anything except assure him that everything possible would be done to find both Whitacre and the money. I left him trying frantically to get his attorney on the telephone.
From Ogburn’s office I went up to Whitacre’s apartment. As I turned the corner below into Gough Street I saw a big, hulking man going up the apartment house steps, and recognized him as George Dean. Hurrying to join him, I regretted that he had been assigned to the job instead of some other member of the Police Detective Homicide Detail. Dean isn’t a bad sort, but he isn’t so satisfactory to work with as some of the others; that is, you can never be sure that he isn’t holding out some important detail so that George Dean would shine as the clever sleuth in the end. Working with a man of that sort, you’re bound to fall into the habit — which doesn’t make for teamwork.
I arrived in the vestibule as Dean pressed Whitacre’s bell-button.
“Hello,” I said. “You in on this?”
“Uh-huh. What d’you know?”
“Nothing. I just got it.”
The front door clicked open, and we went together up to the Whitacres’ apartment on the third floor. A plump, blond woman in a light blue house-dress opened the apartment door. She was rather pretty in a thick-featured, stolid way.
“Mrs. Whitacre?” Dean inquired.
“Yes.”
“Is Mr. Whitacre in?”
“No. He went to Los Angeles this morning,” she said, and her face was truthful.
“Know where we can get in touch with him there?”
“Perhaps at the Ambassador, but I think he’ll be back by to-morrow or the next day.”
Dean showed her his badge.
“We want to ask you a few questions,” he told her, and with no appearance of astonishment she opened the door wide for us to enter. She led us into a blue and cream living-room where we found a chair apiece. She sat facing us on a big blue settle.
“Where was your husband last night?” Dean asked.
“Home. Why?” Her round blue eyes were faintly curious.
“Home all night?”
“Yes, it was a rotten rainy night. Why?” She looked from Dean to me.
Dean’s glance met mine, and I nodded an answer to the question that I read there.
“Mrs. Whitacre,” he said bluntly, “I have a warrant for your husband’s arrest.”
“A warrant? For what?”
“Murder.”
“Murder?” It was a stifled scream.
“Exactly, an’ last night.”
“But... but I told you he was—”
“And Ogburn told me,” I interrupted, leaning forward, “that you called up his apartment last night, asking if your husband was there.”
She looked at me blankly for a dozen seconds; and then she laughed, the clear laugh of one who has been the victim of some slight joke.
“You win,” she said, and there was neither shame nor humiliation in either face or voice. “Now listen” — the amusement had left her — “I don’t know what Herb has done, or how I stand, and I oughtn’t to talk until I see a lawyer. But I like to dodge all the trouble I can. If you folks will tell me what’s what, on your word of honor, I’ll maybe tell you what I know, if anything. What I mean is, if talking will make things any easier for me, if you can show me it will, maybe I’ll talk — provided I know anything.”
That seemed fair enough, if a little surprising. Apparently this plump woman who could lie with every semblance of candor, and laugh when she was tripped up, wasn’t interested in anything much beyond her own comfort.
“You tell it,” Dean said to me.
I shot it out all in a lump.
“Your husband had been cooking the books for some time, and got into his partner for something like $200,000 before Ogburn got wise to it. Then he had your husband shadowed, trying to find the money. Last night your husband took the man who was shadowing him over on a lot and shot him.”
Her face puckered thoughtfully. Mechanically she reached for a package of popular brand cigarettes that lay on a table behind the settle, and proffered them to Dean and me. We shook our heads. She put a cigarette in her mouth, scratched a match on the sole of her slipper, lit the cigarette, and stared at the burning end. Finally she shrugged, her face cleared, and she looked up at us.
“I’m going to talk,” she said. “Never got any of the money, and I’d be a chump to make a goat of myself for Herb. He was all right, but if he’s run out and left me flat, there’s no use of me making a lot of trouble for myself over it. Here goes: I’m not Mrs. Whitacre, except on the register. My name is Mae Landis. Maybe there is a real Mrs. Whitacre, and maybe not. I don’t know. Herb and I have been living together here for over a year.
“About a month ago he began to get jumpy, nervous, even worse than usual. He said he had business worries. Then a couple of days ago I discovered that his pistol was gone from the drawer where it had been kept ever since we came here, and that he was carrying it. I asked him: ‘What’s the idea?’ He said he thought he was being followed, and asked me if I’d seen anybody hanging around the neighborhood as if watching our place. I told him no; I thought he was nutty.
“Night before last he told me that he was in trouble, and might have to go away, and that he couldn’t take me with him, but would give me enough money to take care of me for a while. He seemed excited, packed his bags so they’d be ready if he needed them in a hurry, and burned up all his photos and a lot of letters and papers. His bags are still in the bedroom, if you want to go through them. When he didn’t come home last night I had a hunch that he had beat it without his bags and without saying a word to me, much less giving me any money — leaving me with only twenty dollars to my name and not even much that I could hock, and with the rent due in four days.”