Dale leaned forward to read it. He read it once, looked up, squinted his eyes thoughtfully, then read it twice.
Then he said, “I’ll be damned!”
There was a long silence.
“How did you come out in there with Lorraine Robbins?” I asked.
“Lam,” he said, “she’s on the up and up. She’s a good kid. There’s something fishy about that accident just as sure as hell. Holgate’s car was all right at four-thirty on the thirteenth.”
“And,” I said, “Vivian Deshler’s car had the rear end caved in at three-thirty on the thirteenth.”
“By God, if it all does tie in! If Holgate was the hit-and-run guy and if that Deshler car was the getaway car in that bank robbery— Good God Almighty, what that would do!”
I said, “Be a pretty nice thing to clean all that mess up and walk in on the meeting of the city council at nine-thirty, wouldn’t it, Chief? You could show them that you’d cleared up the mystery of the hit-and-run driver, that you’d solved the bank robbery and—”
“All right,” he said. “I’ve fallen for it once, I’ll fall for it twice. I’m going back up.”
“Better take me with you,” I said.
He shook his head.
“You may need a witness.”
He thought that over.
“Two witnesses,” Elsie said.
“You take shorthand?” Dale asked.
She nodded.
“All right, come on,” he said.
He unlocked the handcuff that was holding me to the steering wheel, hesitated a moment, then snapped the handcuff back on my wrist. “Remember,” he said, “you’re still under arrest. I’m investigating this damned story but I’m not buying it. Not yet. I’m window shopping.”
We started toward the entrance to the apartment house.
I stalled things along as much as I could but eventually we got into the elevator and got up to the sixth floor.
As we walked down the corridor I could hear sounds of banging and thumping.
A woman screamed.
“What’s that?” Chief Dale asked.
I made my last stall. “It came from that apartment over there,” I said.
“I thought it came from farther down the line,” Dale said.
“No, I’m quite certain it was this apartment,” I said, and caught Elsie Brand’s eye.
“It came from this one right here,” she said.
Dale hesitated a moment, then went over and banged on the door of the apartment.
There was no answer.
He banged again.
After a moment a woman who had some kind of a robe hastily thrown around her shoulders, and who seemed to be completely nude except for that, opened the door a crack.
“Well,” she snapped, “what is it?”
“Police,” Dale said. “We’re investigating a disturbance.”
“There’s no disturbance here.”
“Didn’t you scream?”
“I certainly did not.”
Dale said, “I beg your—”
The door was slammed in his face.
Dale looked at me and said, “I’m beginning to know how the Los Angeles officers feel about you, Lam. You knew damned well those sounds didn’t come from that apartment. What are you stalling for?”
I said, “I could have been mistaken.”
“And you could have been playing games,” Dale said.
He strode on down to 519 and pressed the mother-of-pearl button.
Nothing happened.
After a moment he banged on the door with his knuckles, a hard, peremptory police knock. “Open up!” he said.
There was a moment of silence, then the door was jerked open.
Bertha Cool, her face flushed, said, “Well, come on in! Don’t stand there in the hallway gawking.”
Vivian Deshler was standing over in a corner sobbing hysterically. Her skirt had been ripped completely off. She was standing there in bra and panties, and the panties were embroidered with fancy mottoes.
“Who are you?” Dale asked Bertha Cool.
“I’m Bertha Cool, Donald Lam’s partner,” she said, “and this little minx is going to make a confession to you about being mixed up with a man by the name of Dudley Bedford in a bank robbery out in North Hollywood. They got about forty thousand dollars in cash and it’s somewhere in the apartment here. Where is it, dearie?”
Vivian Deshler put her hands in front of her eyes. “You stop!” she said.
Bertha Cool moved toward her. “Where is it, dearie?”
“In the suitcase in the closet!” she screamed. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you dare!”
“Look in the suitcase in the closet,” Bertha Cool said matter-of-factly, and walked over to the closet, took out a coat and tossed it to Vivian Deshler.
“Stick this around you in case you feel self-conscious,” she said.
Dale looked at Bertha, looked at Vivian Deshler, looked at me. “And who murdered Holgate?” he asked.
“Do you need to ask?” I said. “You’ve seen those panties before, you know. She could get plenty of information out of Maxton — the cocktail party and all the rest of the background she needed.”
Dale said to Bertha Cool, “Can you keep her from trying to escape?”
“I can keep her from so much as flapping an eyelash,” Bertha said. “She tries to pull out on me and I’ll slap her to sleep.”
“You’re deputized,” Chief Dale barked. “I’m going to take a look in that suitcase.”
He was back in two minutes with the suitcase opened and looking at the money all neatly arranged in packages.
It was at that moment a latchkey sounded in the door of the apartment.
Vivian Deshler sucked in a deep breath to scream a warning.
Bertha Cool slapped her in the stomach and knocked the wind out of her. She doubled up like an accordion.
The door clicked back and a smiling, debonair Dudley Bedford came marching into the room.
He took one look at what was happening and went for his gun.
Dale beat him to the punch. “You’re under arrest,” he snapped. “Get your hands up.”
Bedford slowly elevated his hands.
“Turn around, face the wall,” Dale ordered. “Now stick your hands out behind you.”
Bedford did as he was instructed.
Dale came over, unlocked the handcuffs from my wrists, put them on Bedford’s wrists, looked at me, grinned, looked at his watch, said to Bertha, “You’re deputized as a matron. Get some clothes on that prisoner and get her up to the station house. I’m in a hurry. I want to get a complete confession out of these people and I want to have it by nine-thirty.”
Bertha said, “Get some clothes out of the closet, dearie, and you’d better take those ornamental panties off. Where you’re going, nobody gives a damn about smart mottoes embroidered on fannies.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was ten-fifteen when Chief Dale emerged from the council meeting, strode over to the telephone, picked it up and said, “Get me police headquarters in Los Angeles. I want to talk with Sergeant Frank Sellers.”
He looked at me and winked.
It took about two minutes for the call to get through, then Dale said, “Hello, Sellers?
“This is Montague Dale. I’m the chief of police at Colinda. I have Donald Lam. I understand that there’s an all points bulletin out for him.”
Dale listened for a while and grinned.
After a moment he said, “Well, before you stick your neck out. Sergeant, you probably should know that there wasn’t any automobile accident with Holgate. That thing was all cooked up. Holgate sideswiped a police car on the evening of the thirteenth when he was drunk, and wanted to get out from under. A man by the name of Bedford, who was friendly with Holgate, learned what had happened and advised Holgate to fake an accident with a friend of his, a Vivian Deshler, so that he could account for the broken front of his automobile. Vivian was also a friend of Maxton, Holgate’s partner.