“What do I do next?” she asked.
“Got any money?”
“Some left from what Edna sent me. Tell me, Donald, what should I do? Should I go back to the police and tell my story?”
“Not yet, and not now.”
“Why?”
“It’s too late now. You’ve missed the boat.”
“Couldn’t I explain the—”
“Not now, you couldn’t.”
“Why?”
I said, “You didn’t murder him, did you?”
She looked as though I’d thrown something at her.
I said, “All right, someone did. That someone wouldn’t like anything better than to have the police blame things on you.”
“Well, can’t I do myself more good by being there to block that very thing?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“If you’re out of circulation for a while the real murderer will then try to make you the goat by planting evidence, making false statements, and things of that sort. Then you’ll have the chance to find out who this is. Reel out lots of rope and see if we can’t hang somebody.”
“Not me, I hope.”
I met her eyes, raised my coffee cup.
“I hope.”
I paid the check, inquired if there was a telephone booth in the restaurant, found there was, closeted myself in it, and called the airport at New Orleans.
“This is Detective Lam at Shreveport talking,” I said, and then so they wouldn’t start asking questions as to whether I was on the force at Shreveport or a private detective, I started talking fast. “On Wednesday noon you had a passenger for New York. That passenger turned right around at New York and came back to New Orleans. The name was Emory G. Hale.”
The voice at the other end of the line said, “Wait a minute and I’ll consult the records.”
I waited for a minute or so during which I could hear papers rustling; then the voice said, “That’s right. Emory G. Hale. New York and back.”
“You wouldn’t know what he looked like? I wouldn’t be able to get a description?”
“No. I don’t remember him. Just a minute.”
I heard him say, “Anyone remember selling a ticket to a man named Hale for New York on Wednesday? Shreveport police calling... No, I’m sorry we don’t have anyone who remembers him.”
“When you book a passenger, don’t you take his weight?”
“Yes.”
I said, “What did Hale weigh?”
“Just a minute. I have that right here. He weighed — let’s see — yes, here we are. He weighed a hundred and forty-six.”
I thanked him and hung up.
Emory G. Hale would have tipped the beam at something over two hundred pounds.
I came out of the telephone booth.
“What is it?” Roberta asked. “Bad news?”
“Want to go to California?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I said, “I think we can hire a car to take us to Fort Worth and a plane from Fort Worth will get us into Los Angeles tomorrow morning.”
“Why California?”
“Because this state is very, very hot so far as you’re concerned.”
“Won’t we attract attention?”
“Yes. The more the better.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “People speculate about a couple whom they don’t know. The thing to do is make them know us. We get acquainted with everybody from the driver of the rented automobile to the passengers on the plane. We’re husband and wife. We left Los Angeles to come east on our honeymoon. We’ve just got a wire that your mother had a spell with her heart, and we’re rushing back to be with her. It’s an interrupted honeymoon. People will sympathize with us, remember us in that capacity. If the police teletype starts clicking out a description of you as being wanted for murder, no one will ever connect that description with the poor little bride who is so worried about her mother.”
“When do we start?” she asked.
I said, “As soon as I telephone for an automobile,” and went back into the telephone booth.
Chapter Seventeen
At daylight Sunday morning we were skimming over Arizona. Gradually the desert had ceased to be a vague, gray sea beneath us and had acquired form, substance, and color. The higher buttes thrust their rim rocks up at the plane, catching the first vague suggestion of light. Down below, the deeper canyons and gulches were filled with shadows. The stars pinpointed themselves into a bluish green oblivion. As we sped westward the roar of the twin motors echoed from the jagged rim rocks around the buttes below. The east assumed a rosy glow. The tops of the cliffs were bathed in champagne. We sped over the desert as though trying to flee from the sun. Then abruptly the sun shot over the horizon, and the bright rays pounced upon us. The fainter colors of dawn gave place to dazzling bits of brilliance where sun splashed against the eastern edges of the cliffs, accentuating the dark shadows. The sun climbed higher. We could see the shadow of the plane scudding along below us. Then we were over the Colorado River, and into California. The roar of the motors faded to the peculiar whining sound which precedes a landing, and we were down in a little desert stopping place where the airport lunch counter gave us steaming hot coffee and bacon and eggs while the plane was refueling.
Once more we were off. Great snow-capped mountains appeared ahead, guarding the edge of the desert like gray-haired sentinels. The plane jumped and twisted like something alive in the narrow confines of a pass between two big mountains, and then, so abruptly that it seemed there was no appreciable period of transition, the desert fell behind, and we were skimming over a citrus country in which orange and lemon groves, laid out in checkerboard squares, marched by in an endless procession. The red roofs of white stucco houses showed in startling contrast to the vivid green of the citrus trees. Dozens of cities, constantly growing larger and crowding closer together as we neared Los Angeles, spoke of the prosperity of the country below.
Then they shrouded the plane. I looked across at Roberta. “Won’t be long now,” I told her.
She smiled somewhat wistfully. “I think it’s the best honeymoon trip I ever had,” she said.
Then, almost without warning, the plane was swooping down out of the sky, gliding toward a long cement runway. The wheels dipped smoothly to the earth, and we were in Los Angeles.
I said, “Okay. Here we are. We go to a hotel, and I’ll get in touch with my partner.”
“The Bertha Cool you’ve been talking about?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think she’ll like me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t like good-looking young women — particularly when she thinks I do.”
“Why? Afraid she’s going to lose you?”
“Just on principle,” I said. “She probably doesn’t have any reason.”
“Do we — that is, register under our own names?”
“No.”
“But, Donald, you — I mean I—”
“You register as Roberta Lam,” I said. “I register under my own name. From now on we’re brother and sister. Our mother is very low. We hurried to be at her side.”
“And I’m Roberta Lam?”
“Yes.”
“Donald, aren’t you putting yourself in a dangerous position?”
“Why?”
“Giving me the protection of your name, when you know I’m wanted by the police.”
“I didn’t know you were wanted by the police. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She smiled. “It’s a nice alibi, Donald, but it won’t work. They’ll ask you why it was you spirited me around, using an assumed name and an assumed relationship if you didn’t realize that police were looking for me under my own name.”
“The answer to that is very simple,” I said. “You’re a material witness. I think I can use you to solve a murder. I’m keeping you with me. In place of reporting to Bertha Cool by letter, I’m taking you with me so she can hear your entire story.”