“But you did know she was dead,” I said positively.
“I didn’t,” she replied just as positively.
I nudged O’Gar with my elbow. He pushed his undershot jaw at her and barked:
“What are you trying to give us? You knew she was dead. How could you kill her without knowing it?”
While she looked at him I waved the others in. They crowded close around her and took up the chorus of the sergeant’s song. She was barked, roared, and snarled at plenty in the next few minutes.
The instant she stopped trying to talk back to them I cut in again.
“Wait,” I said, very earnestly. “Maybe she didn’t kill her.”
“The hell she didn’t,” O’Gar stormed, holding the center of the stage so the others could move away from the girl without their retreat seeming too artificial. “Do you mean to tell me this baby—”
“I didn’t say she didn’t,” I remonstrated. “I said maybe she didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
I passed the question to the girclass="underline" “Who did?”
“Babe,” she said immediately.
O’Gar snorted to make her think he didn’t believe her.
I asked, as if I were honestly perplexed:
“How do you know that if you didn’t know she was dead?”
“It stands to reason he did,” she said. “Anybody can see that. He found out she was going away with Joe, so he killed her and then came to Joe’s and killed him. That’s just exactly what Babe would do when he found it out.”
“Yeah? How long have you known they were going away together?”
“Since they decided to. Joe told me a month or two ago.”
“And you didn’t mind?”
“You’ve got this all wrong,” she said. “Of course I didn’t mind. I was being cut in on it. You know her father had the bees. That’s what Joe was after. She didn’t mean anything to him but an in to the old man’s pockets. And I was to get my dib. And you needn’t think I was crazy enough about Joe or anybody else to step off in the air for them. Babe got next and fixed the pair of them. That’s a cinch.”
“Yeah? How do you figure Babe would kill her?”
“That guy? You don’t think he’d—”
“I mean, how would he go about killing her?”
“Oh!” She shrugged. “With his hands, likely as not.”
“Once he’d made up his mind to do it, he’d do it quick and violent?” I suggested.
“That would be Babe,” she agreed.
“But you can’t see him slow-poisoning her — spreading it out over a month?”
Worry came into the girl’s blue eyes. She put her lower lip between her teeth, then said slowly:
“No, I can’t see him doing it that way. Not Babe.”
“Who can you see doing it that way?”
She opened her eyes wide, asking:
“You mean Joe?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Joe might have,” she said persuasively. “God only knows what he’d want to do it for, why he’d want to get rid of the kind of meal ticket she was going to be. But you couldn’t always guess what he was getting at. He pulled plenty of dumb ones. He was too slick without being smart. If he was going to kill her, though, that would be about the way he’d go about it.”
“Were he and Babe friendly?”
“No.”
“Did he go to Babe’s much?”
“Not at all that I know about. He was too leary of Babe to take a chance on being caught there. That’s why I moved upstairs, so Sue could come over to our place to see him.”
“Then how could Joe have hidden the fly paper he poisoned her with in her apartment?”
“Fly paper!” Her bewilderment seemed honest enough.
“Show it to her,” I told O’Gar.
He got a sheet from the desk and held it close to the girl’s face.
She stared at it for a moment and then jumped up and grabbed my arm with both hands.
“I didn’t know what it was,” she said excitedly. “Joe had some a couple of months ago. He was looking at it when I came in. I asked him what it was for, and he smiled that wisenheimer smile of his and said, ‘You make angels out of it,’ and wrapped it up again and put it in his pocket. I didn’t pay much attention to him: he was always fooling with some kind of tricks that were supposed to make him wealthy, but never did.”
“Ever see it again?”
“No.”
“Did you know Sue very well?”
“I didn’t know her at all. I never even saw her. I used to keep out of the way so I wouldn’t gum Joe’s play with her.”
“But you know Babe?”
“Yes, I’ve been on a couple of parties where he was. That’s all I know him.”
“Who killed Sue?”
“Joe,” she said. “Didn’t he have that paper you say she was killed with?”
“Why did he kill her?”
“I don’t know. He pulled some awful dumb tricks sometimes.”
“You didn’t kill her?”
“No, no, no!”
I jerked the corner of my mouth at O’Gar.
“You’re a liar,” he bawled, shaking the fly paper in her face. “You killed her.” The rest of the team closed in, throwing accusations at her. They kept it up until she was groggy and the policewoman beginning to look worried.
Then I said angrily:
“All right. Throw her in a cell and let her think it over.” To her: “You know what you told Joe this afternoon: this is no time to dummy up. Do a lot of thinking tonight.”
“Honest to God I didn’t kill her,” she said.
I turned my back to her. The policewoman took her away.
“Ho-hum,” O’Gar yawned. “We gave her a pretty good ride at that, for a short one.”
“Not bad,” I agreed. “If anybody else looked likely, I’d say she didn’t kill Sue. But if she’s telling the truth, then Holy Joe did it. And why should he poison the goose that was going to lay nice yellow eggs for him? And how and why did he cache the poison in their apartment? Babe had the motive, but damned if he looks like a slow-poisoner to me. You can’t tell, though; he and Holy Joe could even have been working together on it.”
“Could,” Duff said. “But it takes a lot of imagination to get that one down. Anyway you twist it, Peggy’s our best bet so far. Go up against her again, hard, in the morning?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And we’ve got to find Babe.”
The others had dinner. MacMan and I went out and got ours. When we returned to the detective bureau an hour later it was practically deserted of the regular operatives.
“All gone to Pier 42 on a tip that McCloor’s there,” Steve Ward told us.
“How long ago?”
“Ten minutes.”
MacMan and I got a taxi and set out for Pier 42. We didn’t get to Pier 42.
On First Street, half a block from the Embarcadero, the taxi suddenly shrieked and slid to a halt.
“What—?” I began, and saw a man standing in front of the machine. He was a big man with a big gun. “Babe,” I grunted, and put my hand on MacMan’s arm to keep him from getting his gun out.
“Take me to—” McCloor was saying to the frightened driver when he saw us. He came around to my side and pulled the door open, holding the gun on us.
He had no hat. His hair was wet, plastered to his head. Little streams of water trickled down from it. His clothes were dripping wet.
He looked surprised at us and ordered:
“Get out.”
As we got out he growled at the driver:
“What the hell you got your flag up for if you had fares?”
The driver wasn’t there. He had hopped out the other side and was scooting away down the street. McCloor cursed him and poked his gun at me, growling:
“Go on, beat it.”
Apparently he hadn’t recognized me. The light here wasn’t good, and I had a hat on now. He had seen me for only a few seconds in Wales’s room.