"Supplied Nathaniel with it?"
"Right. So why the housebreaking? What would he or anybody else be looking for in Kate's house?"
"Nothing taken."
"And that's helpful," Grimes snapped. "Well, I'll ponder it. Blood tests, eh? You watch the timing, lad. Looks like he'll rush the wedding. You don't want to prove he did it, afterwards."
"Prove—" Johnny sent a groan the five-hundred-odd miles.
"You been shot at or anything?" Grimes asked curiously.
"Don't be ridiculous!"
"You think a killer won't kill twice?"
"In my case, he doesn't need to bother," said Johnny savagely. "I'm not getting anywhere."
Grimes was silent.
"Copeland said to call you," Johnny remembered. "What's up? Any ideas?"
"A few," Grimes said. "By the way, do you own a hat?"
"A whati"
"Hat, I said."
"I don't wear a hat," said Johnny. "What's that got to do with . . . ?" He :s^as in a state of sputtering frustration.
"I brood," said Grimes. "I brood, you know. I got an idea."
"What?" barked Johnny.
Grimes said, after hesitating, "For a title."
"Title!"
"Yep. Pretty tricky. 'A Life for Two Pins.' How's that?"
"Just ducky," said Johnny bitterly and slammed down the phone.
Grimes in his armchair with his fiction-oriented mindl Johnny felt lonely and futile. Maybe he ought to take Kate Callahan's advice. Let people go. Nan was in love and that was her fate, her foUy, or her privilege, and there wouldn't ever be a way to prove that Dick Bartee had killed poor Christy. If he had. Too long ago. Too many people dead, or gone. If Nan did marry Dick Bartee, McCauley would just have to bear it. Well? He was a saint, wasn't he?
Johnny Sims would have to bear it, too.
In San Francisco, Copeland was saying on the telephone
to Roderick Grimes, "You didn't tell him, then? Well, it's hopeless, anyhow."
"Who says it's hopeless?" Grimes protested. "Sims doesn't wear a hat. I didn't think so."
"Evidence," said Copeland. "What are you going to take to court? Six flower petals?"
"You are confused," said Grimes cosily, "between evidence and clue. Six petals of ceanothus, caught in the trunk seam of a rented car—that is a clue. Who said it was evidence?"
Copeland groaned.
"Let me outline it for you," Grimes continued. "I sit and think. Occurs to me, a killer wHl kill again. I note that Dick Bartee was here, in this city, the night that Emily Padgett died. With—if he is the ring-tailed doozer we suspect—a fine fat motive to get rid of her. So, I query the good doctor. He turns out to be uneasy about that heart. Also, a patient of his across the court from Padgett's room saw a man in there. Doc thinks it was Johnny Sims. Man wore a hat, however. Did not take it off. Discourteous, you see? Sims has good manners, as we know."
"That's evidence?" said Copeland bitterly.
"That's a clue," said Grimes. "Who was the man with a hat on? Tripped the bhnds, he did. Well, I go poke around the airport on hypothesis. Very scientific. Bartee got off a plane close to seven that night, rented a car. Returned it on the Monday. Tuesday, I get there, and the car is in. Six flower petals in the trunk seam. Ceanothus. Even I can recognize. What else is blue?"
"You couldn't count the ceanothus in Cahfomia," the lawyer said. "It's second name is California hlac."
", see?" Grimes went right on, "and tall enough to shed on the trunk of a car. I went—personally, mind you—to snoop around that hospital. Looking for a ceanothus in bloom, along the curb. Sure enough, there was one."
"I can see the jury."
"I can, too," said Grimes cheerfully, "when we produce this old chap, walking his dog last Friday night, who gets amused when the three letters on a license plate spell a word. He gives us the same three letters on that rented car, mider the ceanothus bush. Coincidence? Yahl"
"Not proof."
"Sometimes the human mind will jump the proof and reckon up the probability. Just as humans did when Mc-Cauley was convicted. You don't think this human world goes by logic, do you?"
The lawyer was silenced.
"Now, Grimes went on, "we've got Bartee's car near the hospital."
"He wouldn't know that Emily was there."
'I don't care about that," said Grimes bhthely. "If we can put him there, tlien we know that he knew. We'll find out how he knew some other time. You absolutely cannot prove that a man doesn't kjipw something. So don't worry about it. Now, for the leg-work. I've stiired up the police. Their legs are legion. Checking every patient in that wing. Who visited?"
"Take weeks," groaned Copeland.
"I don't think so. Two rooms to worry about/'
"Two rooms?"
"Padgett's room was second from the end of the wing. Nobody in the end room on her side. So, the two rooms on the opposite side of the corridor, between her and-lhe door. Bartee wd^ldn't walk through the hospital."
"Listen," said Copeland, "I am willing to suspect . . . But even if he knew which hospital, how could he know which room?"
"I'll tell you," said Grimes. "What about the florist who called and asked if Emily Padgett was in there and if so in which room? And what about nurses who say, 'No flowers for Padgett/ ever?"
"Somebody goofed," said Copeland feebly.
"You don't beheye that," said Grimes. "You're just as human as I am. We both know Bartee killed Emily Padgett."
"If he did ..." Copeland raved.
"The rest is leg-work. Find some witnesses. If any visitor saw him and can identify. Let's short-cut this thing. You take room 409. I'll take 411. BeHeve me, they are the ones that count."
"Why didn't you tell John Sims?" asked the lawyer.
"Because," said Grimes, "better he get nowhere. Bartee must be pretty confident that nobody will ever prove he killed a woman seventeen years ago. But if he killed a woman
last Friday night, that's difiFerent. Sims knew the Padgett woman well. He couldn't hide that suspicion. Bartee could get nervous. And a killer may as well kill three times as twice."
"Poor Emily," mourned Copeland. "Poor Nan. Poor httle Nan."
"Everybody's going to be safer," said Grimes, "if we assume this Dick Bartee is mighty dangerous."
The phone rang in Johnny's room in the motel. Blanche Bartee seemed to be inviting him to dinner.
"I'd hke very much to come, Mrs. Bartee," Johimy's manners concealed his astonishment. "Thank you."
"Seven o'clock, Mr. Sims?" Blanche said in a hostess' voice, with no human warmth in it.
He agreed, hung up, breathed deeply in.
Maybe Nan needed him! He could see a vision of her in his mind. Nan subdued, shrunk back into her shy shell, forlorn, lost, wondering, feeling the doubt. The Bartees would be concerned about her. They would ask him to come to the house and they would want things clarified. They would want to know what Johnny had done to her.
Poor little Nan.
CHAPTER 13
The dining room, which lay back of the long parlor, was red and white. There was a red carpet and red damask hangings at the several long windows. The walls were white. The chandeher was crystal. At the oval table, Johnny sat on the left of his hostess, who, in white with peals, was discoursing on the subject of the climate here.
To his left sat the old lady, in black, attacking with greed and relish her cake.
Bart, at the head of the table, bent to Dorothy on his left.
Dorothy wore a soft apricot-colored dress and had her blonde hair swept high.
Nan (poor httle Nanl) was wearing red. A red velvet band held her dark hair back from her sparkhng face. Bonds, spun in the air, but almost visible, held Nan hugged close, allied in loving faith, to Dick Bartee, who sat between the two pretty girls, being charming.
In the parlor, before dinner, under the shock of finding his vision of Nan to have been about as inaccurate as it could be, Johnny had rallied. Well, then? Here he was. What was to be accomplished?
The old lady had not been in the parlor and he had been afraid she would not appear. For, he reflected, the old lady hked him. Maybe he could try again with her. Glean all he could before the politeness and the charm broke open and he was told why he had been asked. Or asked what he had been told. Or told to stop asking.