“Heavens, not again! I’ve told that so many times.”
“What time?” Sellers asked.
“Now, I can’t be absolutely certain about the time,” she said, with her eyes downcast and counting on her fingers with her thumb. “It was along in the afternoon and it might have been... well, now I just don’t know. I’ve been trying to think back on what happened that day and I can’t remember exactly the time. You see, Sergeant, I was pretty well shaken up and I didn’t realize at the time I’d been seriously hurt. I started driving to my apartment and then somewhere along the line I guess I blacked out. The next thing I knew I was in my apartment and then everything went blank and— Well, of course by that time I knew I was shaken up and injured but I certainly didn’t think it was anything real serious. I thought I was just excited and— Well, I’ve read about fainting spells and what can happen from an emotional shock and I thought that’s what I was experiencing.”
Sellers said, “All right, I’m going to put it to you cold turkey. Was there an automobile accident?”
“Was there an automobile accident?” she echoed. “Why, what in the world do you mean? Of course there was.”
“I want to know just this,” Sellers said. “Did Holgate run into the back of your car or is it a cover-up?”
“What do you mean, a cover-up?”
Sellers said, “There’s evidence that Holgate was mixed up in a hit-and-run deal and had the front end of his car smashed in, that you and Holgate cooked up a deal by which he could account for his smashed front end on the car and you could help him out and present a claim to the insurance company for—”
“What in the world are you talking about? The accident took place just as I have described it. I wouldn’t try to defraud any insurance company and I had never met Mr. Holgate prior to the time that he ran into the rear of my automobile and we exchanged names from our driving licenses.”
Sellers looked at me thoughtfully. “Want to ask any questions, Pint Size?”
I said, “Who prepared the claim you submitted to the insurance company, Miss Deshler?”
She regarded me with a head-to-toe sweep of the eyes and her manner suddenly changed. “That,” she said, “doesn’t have anything to do with the accident or anything else. In short, it’s none of your business, Mr. Lam.”
I said, “I’ll ask you one other question. Have you ever been in an automobile accident before?”
She looked at Frank Sellers and said, “Do I have to sit here and submit to this kind of questioning? After all, you’re trying to solve a murder case. What difference does it make if I’d been in a thousand automobile accidents?”
“He was just asking,” Sellers said.
“Well, I’m just answering,” she snapped. “It’s none of his business. And now, gentlemen, I don’t have all afternoon to sit around here in my underwear and swap words with you. I’ve got to get busy and dress. I’m going out tonight. I’ve had a hard day and I want to look my best when I go out.”
Sellers said, “We’re not making any accusations but you know things could get awfully sticky if you started playing tag in a murder case. Now I’m going to ask you this: Did you hire a detective agency to do anything?”
“Heavens, no.”
“To keep tabs on Lamont Hawley, the agent of the Consolidated Interinsurance Company?”
“No, I told you. No, no, no! Ten thousand times no! I didn’t hire any detective agency, period. Now will you people please get out of here?”
The telephone rang.
She crossed over to the instrument to pick it up and answer it. She didn’t bother about her robe, which fell open to show she was wearing a bra and panties.
Sellers looked her over, looked at me and said, “You want to try any more questioning?”
“Of course,” I said. “You haven’t skimmed the surface yet. What did you think she was going to do, break down and tell you, yes, I worked this thing out in order to defraud the insurance company and it led to murder? Do you usually get confessions that easy?”
Sellers said, “There’s something about this thing that doesn’t ring true to me. I don’t like it. We’re skating on thin ice.”
She said, “This is a telephone call for you, Sergeant Sellers. It’s from a Captain Andover in Traffic. Says he has to speak to you right away on a matter of the greatest importance.”
Sellers went over, picked up the telephone, shifted the cigar over to the other side of his mouth, said, “Yeah? Sellers speaking... Shoot.”
He was silent for a minute, then said, “What the hell!”
Again there was more conversation.
Vivian Deshler started looking at me, sizing me up, then managed to smile and said, “I hope you come out all right, Donald.”
She shifted her position again and again the robe slid down her bare leg. She reached for it coyly, pulled it back and said, “I can sympathize with you. If there’s anything I can do — legitimately...”
Sergeant Sellers slammed up the telephone, said, “Okay, Pint Size, on our way.”
I said, “I’d like to finish—”
“On our way.”
Sellers turned around to Vivian Deshler and said, “I’m awfully sorry we came barging in here this way, Miss Deshler, but it was on a matter that was quite important and I had to check on it — and we have quite a time working against a schedule and all that.”
“It’s all right, Sergeant,” she said. “It was a pleasure. If you folks will come again sometime when I’m not caught completely unawares, I’ll buy you a drink.”
I said, “I want to ask a couple more questions, and—”
Sergeant Sellers took my arm and literally pushed me out the door.
She gave us a parting smile and then the door closed behind her.
“You and your theories,” Sellers said.
“What’s the matter now?” I asked.
“I told you about mustaches,” Sellers said. “Dammit, if I was wearing a mustache I’d shave the thing off before I even got in the automobile. I’d cut it off with a jackknife if I had to. I don’t think I’d even wait long enough to get to a barbershop.”
“What’s eating you now?” I asked.
“Mistaken identification.”
“Who?”
“That Troy woman.”
“What about her?”
“Andover told me he’d been working on a lead that was pretty much undercover. You remember that? He said he didn’t want to take a chance on wrecking it by showing his hand prematurely, but after this identification by Mrs. Troy he decided he might just as well shoot the works, so he started running this thing down and what do you know?”
“I don’t know anything,” I said irritably. “What do you know?”
“Well,” Sellers said, “for your information, Pint Size, the automobile that killed those two people wasn’t driven by Carter Holgate at all. It was driven by a man named Swanton, who was driving a big late model Buick and had got himself pretty well loaded at a cocktail party. His car wasn’t damaged very much and he thought he’d got the whole thing covered up and was sitting pretty, but when we got that identification on Holgate, Andover thought he’d better go talk with this guy and put the cards on the table.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“What happened?” Sellers said. “The guy caved. He’d had his conscience gnawing on him for quite a while, and the minute Andover made a pass at him the guy broke down and admitted the whole damned business, started wringing his hands and telling how sorry he was and what this was going to mean to his family, and how he didn’t know how in the world he had ever done a thing like that; that it was foreign to his nature, that he didn’t realize how drunk he was, that he couldn’t think straight, that— Hell, all the rest of it.”