“You invented it?” Milred asked.
“Uh huh, an’ she ain’t got no inert ingredients in ’er. You drink this an’ you know you got somethin’. The taste is kinda disguised, but don’t make no mistake about it. She’s like these here women that look mild an’ housified, but boy, oh boy, oh boy!”
Duryea said, “I’m willing to try it, but I may have to go to the office this evening.”
Milred made a little grimace. “Again! Why don’t you let the sheriff work up that case?”
“Because I’m afraid he’ll arrest the wrong person,” Duryea said, “and then it’ll be up to me to go into court with a case that will backfire.”
“I gathered from the evening paper that a pretty black case was building up against this Moline girl.”
Gramps unscrewed the little cap in the spout of the cocktail shaker. “The way things look right now,” he said, “it hinges on that letter to them oil people. Stearne told the stenographer he was goin’ to leave so he could get it in the post office before five o’clock. That meant he’d have to leave the yacht by twenty minutes to five at the latest. If he didn’t mail that letter, it looks as though he got killed between five minutes past four and twenty minutes to five. An’ this here Moline girl was on the yacht an’ can’t prove where she was next until four-thirty. How’m I doin’, Frank?”
Duryea said, “Pretty good. As a matter of fact, Milred, I think I’ll have to put Gramps on the force.”
Gramps Wiggins looked up with a quick little birdlike jerk to his head. “You meanin’ that?” he asked.
Duryea laughed. “No.”
“I was afraid not.”
Duryea said, “You’d get fed up with it in ten days, Gramps. Nothing but a lot of routine. People commit petty crimes. Kids steal automobiles. Men drive while intoxicated. A burglary here and there. Occasionally some talented crook drifts into town and pulls a job. Mostly those people aren’t caught, but if they are caught, it’s nearly always a dead open-and-shut case.”
“How about murder cases?”
“Murder cases come along about twice a year. Mostly they’re emotional killings where a person shoots someone in blind rage, then goes and gives himself up, or commits suicide. It’s only once in a blue moon we have any real mystery murders.”
“Well,” Gramps said, “I guess p’raps I better make arrangements to just come back an’ work every blue moon. Here you are, folks.”
Gramps passed over the tray with the cocktail glasses. Milred tasted hers, then said, with a voice that held a faint trace of surprise, “Why, Gramps, it’s good.”
“Of course it’s good,” Gramps said indignantly. “What you think I been doin’ all this time, wastin’ elbow grease an’ good liquor on somethin’ that wasn’t good?”
Duryea said, “Tastes as though it had rum in it.”
“You just drink it,” Gramps said, “an’ don’t worry about it.”
“But it certainly tastes mild. You aren’t kidding about its having authority?” Milred asked.
Gramps Wiggins looked at her over the tops of his glasses. “Now, you listen to me, Milred. I’ve batted around this country right smart. Me an’ old John Barleycorn have had many a tough tussle. I ain’t never licked him, an’ he ain’t never licked me. Once or twice he’s had me down, but I ain’t stayed down. It’s just about been a draw so far. But I’m tellin’ you this here cocktail is old John Barleycorn’s ace in the hole. This is the thing he uses for his haymaker.”
“Well, I’ve certainly tasted lots of cocktails that seemed stronger than this.”
Milred turned to her husband. “What are you going to do about that Moline woman?” she asked.
“Darned if I know,” Duryea admitted cheerfully. “The sheriff wants to go ahead and charge her. I’m holding off for a while. There are some investigations I want to make. I’d like to go to Catalina tomorrow and check up on some things.”
Milred said, “Oh, take me.”
“It’d be a business trip.”
“I wouldn’t interfere. I just want to go along.”
He shook his head.
Gramps Wiggins said, “Tell you what you do, sis. You come along with me. I was thinkin’ o’ goin’ to Catalina tomorrow, an’ you an’ I can go along together. If your husband gets on the same boat, we can’t do nothin’ about that.”
“I might fly down,” Duryea said, smiling.
“Phooey,” Milred retorted. “There’s no fun in that. Why don’t you come along with us, get the thrill out of the boat ride, the tang of the salt sea air, see the different types of people? Then you’d have an hour or two over at Catalina after you’d finished your business, and you could really relax. You’ve been in the office too much lately.”
“Are you actually going?” Duryea asked.
“You heard Gramps ask me, didn’t you?”
Gramps said with a chuckle, “An’ when you ask a Wiggins to go some place, that’s all there is to it. No true Wiggins ever stuck around anywhere until he got into a rut. He’s a ramblin’ son of a gun, the original rollin’ stone.”
Milred asked her husband, “What are you going to investigate?”
Duryea said, “I want to check up on Mrs. Right and her brother.”
“Good heavens, Frank, why?”
“Oh, just a matter of routine.”
“Why not let the police do it?”
“I don’t want to give it that much publicity.”
“But why check up on them?”
Duryea said, almost musingly, “At around four o’clock Sun-day afternoon, something may have happened. Or perhaps I should say something had been planned to happen.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. No one seems to know. The Gypsy Queen had been intending to put to sea at three o’clock in the afternoon. The Albatross was at sea at three o’clock in the afternoon. Now, if it should appear that Pearl Right, in her brother’s speedboat, was also ferried out to sea at three o’clock in the afternoon, it would be — rather a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”
Gramps said, “Now you’re gettin’ somewhere, son. I been hopin’ the time would come when you’d call the turn on this here Joan Harpler. She’s had you plumb hypnotized, an’ she knows it.
“She’s a cute little package — too darn cute. Somehow, the way she tells her story about sailin’ around alone sounds awfully genuine and truthful when you’re listenin’ to her, but when she goes away an’ you don’t see those wide eyes anymore, an’ don’t hear that rich voice purrin’ words at you, but just remember the words themselves, they sound kinda fishy.”
Milred said, “I guess there really is something in that cocktail. It’s got Gramps started talking.”
“What do you mean?” Gramps demanded. “I’m always talkin’.”
“Telling me secrets about my husband’s office. He comes home and talks about the routine legal chores. Then you take two cocktails and I find he puts in his time talking with beautiful women and letting them put him in a state of trance.”
“You got somethin’ there,” Gramps said. “That there Harpler girl is purty as a picture, an’ this Moline girl is...”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of her,” Milred said. “Frank doesn’t fall for that type. Sophistication, glitter, and the flash of a shapely leg leave him quite cool, thank you; but let a good-looking girl put on the good-sport act, smile up into his eyes, give him a warm handclasp, and he’s a pushover.”
Duryea said, “So you’ve been using dictographs again, eh?”