Mason interrupted. “You left a back trail. I followed it. My detectives followed it. The police can follow it.”
“You weren’t supposed to get in touch with me,” she said. “I was supposed to get in touch with you.”
Mason said, “If I’d known you were Patricia Faxon when I started, I might have made different plans, but unfortunately you neglected to tell me that you intended to take an assumed name and an assumed identity. Now suppose you tell me why?”
“Suppose I don’t?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders. “It’s up to you.”
“I see no reason why I should, Mr. Mason. I’m going to tell you frankly that if — well, if certain things happen I’ll get in touch with you, and if they don’t, I won’t, and that’s final.”
Mason said, “I received a check in the mail for twenty-five hundred dollars, signed by Lola Faxon Allred.”
“I know you did.”
“And,” Mason went on, “you went to the bank at Las Olitas and drew out five thousand dollars, also on a check signed by Lola Faxon Allred.”
“Well?”
Mason said, “The check I received was a forgery.”
Her eyes widened. “A forgery, Mr. Mason?”
“That’s right.”
“It couldn’t have been. I know all about that check. Mother signed it. I saw her sign it.”
“A check on the First National Bank at Las Olitas?”
“No. On the Farmers, Merchants & Mechanics Bank in the city.”
Mason said, “That was the other check.”
“You mean you got two checks, Mr. Mason?”
“That’s right.”
“Two checks each for twenty-five hundred dollars?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s impossible!”
“I told you one of them was forged.”
“Won’t you — won’t you please sit down, Mr. Mason?”
Mason settled himself comfortably in one of the big overstuffed chairs. “Nice place you have here,” he said politely.
“Yes, I was very fortunate. What about this forged check?”
“All I can tell you is that the genuine signature from which the tracing was made was the signature on the letter your mother gave you for the cashier of the First National Bank here.”
“The letter I had?” she asked incredulously.
“That’s right, the Maurine Milford letter.”
“Why, I–I don’t believe it.”
“And,” Mason went on, “since your mother has eloped with your boy friend I thought that perhaps...”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Mason! What are you talking about?”
“Your mother running off with your boy friend.”
“Are you completely crazy, or are you laying some sort of a trap for me?”
“Didn’t your mother run off with Robert Gregg Fleetwood?”
“What do you mean ‘run off’ with him?”
“Leave her husband and elope. Aren’t they running away together and...?”
“Certainly not!” she blazed. “What are you trying to do? Are you just trying to get a rise out of me?”
Mason said, “I’m trying to represent your mother, Patricia, and I’m supposed to represent you in case you get in a jam. If your mother hasn’t gone off with Fleetwood, you’d better give me the facts, and fast.”
“But that check, Mr. Mason. I don’t see how in the world anyone could have...”
“Never mind the check for a minute,” Mason said. “Let’s get the lowdown on what’s happened to Fleetwood.”
“What do you mean ‘what’s happened to him’?”
Mason met her eyes steadily. “Did you,” he asked, “strike him with your car, Patricia?”
For a moment her eyes met his, defiantly. Then under the steady gaze of the lawyer’s eyes, her own eyes faltered.
“Did you?” Mason asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“And that’s why you’re having your car repaired? Why you’ve created the identity of Maurine Milford — trying to conceal the evidence that would indicate you had struck someone with the left front fender of your automobile?”
She said, “It’s a long story, Mr. Mason.”
“Then the sooner you start on it, the quicker we’ll get to an understanding.”
“Have you ever been out to our house?” she asked.
Mason shook his head.
“It’s virtually a double house,” she said, “with a patio. As a matter of fact, there really are two houses. Mr. Allred uses the south wing for his offices. The north wing contains the living quarters, and between the two, and connecting them, are the garages with servants’ quarters. It’s just as though you had two houses separated by a vacant lot, with the garages running along the back of the vacant lot, and the vacant lot being used as a patio.”
“Rather a public patio, isn’t it?” Mason asked.
“That’s the point. When Mr. Allred bought the place, he planted a hedge along the sidewalk. That hedge has now grown up very thick and heavy. It shuts the place off completely except for the gap where the driveway to the garages goes along the side of the north wing.”
“And what does all this have to do with what happened to Robert Fleetwood?”
“I’m coming to that. The hedge is close to the driveway. In the course of time, as the hedge grew and expanded, despite all the trimming it’s had, it’s spread out into the driveway so that there’s barely room to get a car through.”
“That’s all you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but... you remember it was raining Saturday night?”
Mason nodded.
She said, “My mother and I had been to a cocktail party. I don’t want you to think that we were the least bit tight, because we weren’t. But we had had three or four cocktails apiece.”
“Who was driving the car?”
“I was.”
“And you hit Fleetwood?”
“Not exactly... well, it wasn’t just like that.”
“How was it?”
“When we started for home it was rather late, and I was making time. It had been raining heavily and visibility was poor. The wet pavement seemed to sop up the headlights. When we got home I swung around the corner and started to turn into the driveway. Then I noticed that Mr. Allred’s car had been parked at the curb in such a way that the hind bumper actually stuck out just a little bit over the driveway. I probably could have stopped my car, backed around, made a perfectly straight run down the driveway and got into the garage. But as it was, I simply clipped a corner of the hedge. Well, the hedge was a little bigger and a little stronger than I had remembered it. The last time I put a car through the corner of the hedge it went through all right, but this time it — it struck something.”
“Fleetwood?” Mason asked.
“At the time I thought it was merely a heavy branch.”
“Is Fleetwood dead?”
“No, no. Don’t misunderstand me. He sustained a head injury and he’s suffering from amnesia. He can’t remember a thing.”
“And aside from that?”
“Aside from that, he’s all right.”
“When did you know you’d struck Fleetwood?”
“That’s just the point, Mr. Mason. I didn’t know it at the time. That’s the unfortunate part of it. That’s where all the trouble will come in.”
“Go ahead.”
“I knew that I’d struck something fairly solid, and said to Mother that that hedge certainly had grown up and that I guessed I’d nicked a bumper — and we both laughed. It seemed funny at the time. We were feeling good.”
“Then what?”
“Then we drove into the one of the garages that’s kept for my car, dashed into the house, showered and dressed for dinner.
“Mr. Allred told us that he and Bob Fleetwood had been working until late and he’d asked Bob to stay for dinner but Bob said he wanted to run down to his apartment and freshen up a bit first, that it would only take him fifteen or twenty minutes.”