I stopped at all the garages and gas-stations I could find but I couldn’t get a line on the Chrysler. I went back to the hotel and looked at the register and found out that Miss Mackay had put down Chicago as her home, and I finagled around for a half hour and talked to the sheriff and the clerk and everybody who looked like they wanted to talk but I didn’t get any more angles.
The sheriff said he’d wired Chicago because it looked like Healey and Miss Mackay were both from Chicago, and that he’d found a letter in one of Healey’s old coats from a Chicago attorney. The letter was about a divorce, and the sheriff had a hunch that Miss Mackay was Mrs. Healey.
I had a sandwich and a piece of pie in the hotel restaurant and bundled up and went out and got in the car and started for L A.
I didn’t get up till around eleven o’clock Tuesday morning. I had breakfast in my room and wired a connection in Chi to send me all he could get on Miss Mackay and her brother. I called the desk and got the number of Card’s room and on the way down stopped in to see him.
He was sitting in his nightshirt by the window, reading the morning papers. I sat down and asked him how he was enjoying his vacation and he said swell, and then he said: “I see by the papers that our friend Healey had an accident.”
I nodded.
Card chuckled: “Tch, tch, tch. His wife will sure be cut up.”
I smiled a little and said, “Uh-huh,” and Card looked up and said: “What the hell are you grinning about and what do you mean: Uh-huh?”
I told him that according to my paper Mrs. Healey was the lady who had rubbed Healey — the lady who was on her way back East in a box.
Card shook his head intelligently and said: “Wrong. That one was an extra. Mrs. Healey is alive and kicking and one of the sweetest dishes God ever made.”
I could see that he was going to get romantic so I waited and he told me that Mrs. Healey had been the agency’s client in the East and that she’d come in from Chicago Monday morning by plane and that he’d met her in the agency office, and then he went on for five or ten minutes about the color of her eyes and the way she wore her hair, and everything.
Card was pretty much of a ladies’ man. He told it with gestures.
Along with the poetry he worked in the information that Mrs. Healey, as he figured it, had had some trouble with Healey and that they’d split up and that she wanted to straighten it all out. That was the reason she’d wired the Salt Lake office of his agency to locate Healey. And almost as soon as they’d found Healey he’d shoved off for L A and the agency had wired her in Chicago to that effect. She’d arrived the morning Healey had been spotted in Caliente and had decided to wait in L A for him.
Card said he had helped her find an apartment. He supposed the agency had called her up and told her the bad news about Healey. He acted like he was thinking a little while and then asked me if I didn’t think he ought to go over and see if he could help her in any way. “Comfort her in her bereavement,” was the way he put it.
I said: “Sure — we’ll both go.”
Card didn’t go for that very big, but I told him that my having been such a pal of Healey’s made it all right.
We went.
Mrs. Healey turned out a great deal better than I had expected from Card’s glowing description. As a matter of fact she was swell. She was very dark, with dark blue eyes and blue-black hair; her clothes were very well done and her voice was cultivated, deep. When she acknowledged Card’s half-stammered introduction, inclined her head towards me and asked us to sit down, I saw that she had been crying.
Card had done pretty well in the way of helping her find an apartment. It was a big luxurious duplex in the Garden Court on Kenmore.
She smiled at Card. “It’s very nice of you gentlemen to call,” she said.
I said we wanted her to know how sorry we were about it all and that I had known Healey in Detroit, and if there was anything we could do — that sort of thing.
There wasn’t much else to say. There wasn’t much else said.
She asked Card to forgive her for bothering him so much the previous evening with her calls, but that she’d been nervous and worried and kept thinking that maybe Healey had arrived in L A after the agency was closed and that she hadn’t been notified. They’d been watching the trains of course.
Card said that was all right and got red and stammered some more. He was stunned by the lady. So was I. She was a pip.
She said she thought she’d stay in California and she told us delicately that she’d made arrangements for Healey’s body to be shipped to his folks in Detroit.
Finally I said we’d better go and Card nodded and we got up. She thanked us again for corning and a maid helped us with our coats and we left.
Card said he had to go downtown so I took a cab and went back to the hotel. There was a wire from Chicago:
JEWEL MACKAY TWO CONVICTIONS EXTORTION STOP WORKS WITH HUSBAND ARTHUR RAINES ALIAS J L MAXWELL STOP LEFT CHICAGO WEDNESDAY FOR LOS ANGELES WITH RAINES STOP DESCRIPTION MACKAY FOUR ELEVEN ONE HUNDRED TWO BLONDE GRAY EYES RAINES FIVE SIX ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE RED BROWN EYES STOP MAY LOCATE THROUGH BROTHER WILLIAM RAINES REAL ESTATE SOUTH LABREA REGARDS
I got the number of Raines’ real estate office from the telephone book and took a cab and went down and looked it over. I didn’t go in. Then I told the driver to take me to the Selwyn Apartments on Beverly Boulevard. That was the place the telephone book had listed as Raines’ residence.
It took a half-hour of jabbering about spark plugs with the Bohunk in the Selwyn garage to find out that Mister Raines had gone out about ten o’clock with another gentleman, and what Mister Raines looked like and what kind of a car he drove. The gentleman who had been with him was tailor maybe he was short. Or maybe it had been a lady. The Bohunk wasn’t sure.
I jockeyed the cab around to a good spot in the cross street and went into the drug-store on the opposite corner and drank Coca-Colas. Along about the fifth Coca-Cola the car I was looking for pulled up in front of the Selwyn. A medium-sized middle-aged man who I figured to be the brother got out of the driver’s seat and went into the apartment house. The other man in the car moved over into the driver’s seat and started west on Beverly. By that time I was back in the cab and after him.
Of course I couldn’t he sure it was Raines. It looked like a little man. I had to take that chance.
We followed the car out Beverly to Western, up Western. I wondered what had become of the blue Chrysler. Then we drew up close behind Raines’ car at an intersection and I nearly fell out the window. The man in the car ahead turned around and looked back; we looked smack at one another for five seconds.
I’d seen him before! I’d seen him the night before in Miss Mackay’s room at the Pine Hotel in Caliente! He’d been one of the raft of people who’d busted in with the Sheriff and stood around ah-ing and oh-ing. The man had guts. He’d come in while Healey and the girl were still warm to see what a neat job he’d done.
The traffic bell rang and I knew he’d recognized me, too. He went across that intersection like a bat out of hell, up Western to Fountain.
He lost us on Fountain. I talked to my driver like a father. I got down on my knees and begged him to keep that car in sight. I called him all the Portuguese pet-names I could think of and made up a few new ones, but Raines ran away from us on Fountain.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the Hollywood Branch of the Automobile Club and had a friend of mine look up the license number of the car. Of course it was the brother’s car, in the brother’s name. That didn’t get me anywhere. I was pretty sure Raines wouldn’t go back to his brother’s place now that he knew I’d spotted him; and it was a cinch he wouldn’t use that car very long.