Selby, listening with frowning concentration, said, “Wait a minute. How did Darwin Jerome know that you were riding with Frank Grannis? And as I size things up, he must have known.”
She said, “I’m coming to that. Darwin waited around the bus depot at Yuma. When I didn’t show up, he finally realized what must have happened. He passed us on the road, driving like the wind. I recognized the car. He must have been going at least eighty-five or ninety miles an hour.”
“Well?” Selby asked.
She said, “He wasn’t so dumb. He knew that I was going to have to get home to Madison City some way. He thought he stood a chance. There’s no question but what Darwin is — or was — completely infatuated with me. He had been looking forward to a marriage ceremony which wouldn’t be binding, and a honeymoon which would. I upset his calculations. Darwin is a happy-go-lucky individual, but when it comes to a showdown, and if anyone crosses him, he becomes hard as nails.”
“What happened?” Selby asked.
“As it turned out, he thought the reason I’d refused to go ahead was because of some other man who had come between us. When I didn’t go to the bus depot, he felt certain — and he’s insanely jealous.
“There’s a boulevard stop just before you come to Madison City with a bright overhead light. Darwin was waiting there. He spotted us when we drove up. I knew that he had, but Frank Grannis didn’t. Frank said he simply couldn’t go on and wanted to know where I wanted to get out. I’d been making him sleepy for the last half-hour by repeatedly yawning. I told him to put me out any place and I’d keep on hitchhiking. So he stopped the car at the auto camp. I kissed him good-by — just a friendly kiss, the way a regular hitchhiker would treat a nice boy who had given her a long ride, and started walking ostensibly to invite another ride.
“Darwin, of course, had seen me kiss Frank good-by. He’d seen Frank go to the motel. He was jealous and angry and hurt. He really thought Frank had followed us to Yuma and was the reason I’d refused to marry him. I simply couldn’t convince him Frank wasn’t an old friend. I slapped his face, and we quarreled again and then finally he took me home.
“He was willing to do that much to keep up appearances. I told Mother that I’d been taken violently ill, and thought I’d better come back home, and the next day I called Connie and fixed things up so that she’d back up my story.”
“And how did Carr enter the picture?” Selby asked.
“Well,” she said, “you can imagine how I felt when I saw that Grannis had been arrested on a hit-and-run charge. I simply can’t imagine how they ever picked on him. I knew that he wasn’t guilty. Of course, he was talking vaguely about a girl hitchhiker whom he’d picked up and who could give him an alibi. I’d given him a purely fictitious background and made it as vague as possible and... well, you know how it is on a pickup like that. You talk awhile and are more or less impersonal and fuzzy about backgrounds.
“I didn’t want to see him convicted wrongfully, and yet I couldn’t come out and relate the circumstances without getting myself in an awful mess, and letting Mother know I’d lied to her, and all that, so... well, I went to Carr.”
“I see. And what did Carr say?”
She said, “Carr wanted money. I didn’t have any money. I told him about my jewelry. Carr suggested that he’d look it over.”
“And then what?”
“Carr looked at the jewelry and said that he’d see Grannis got out of it and that I wasn’t involved; but he said that he wanted to do it his way and that I was not to come forward with any statement no matter what happened. That suited me all right. And Carr told me that any time within a year when I wanted to redeem the jewelry for a thousand dollars I could have it back, that that would be his fee.”
“And what about the burglary?” Selby asked hopefully. “That was Carr’s idea so that you wouldn’t...”
“No,” she interrupted, “that was my own idea. I thought that was the best way of accounting for the missing jewelry. I wouldn’t have had to say anything about it if it hadn’t been that Dorothy Clifton came to visit us. I knew that Mother would want to show her the antique jewelry, the heirlooms which I had. She spoke about the stuff at dinner that night.”
“I see,” Brandon said, disappointment in his voice. “Carr then really didn’t have anything to do with that fake burglary?”
“Not a thing.”
“Wait until she tells you the rest of it,” Horace said. “Go ahead, Moana. Try and be as brief as possible, because these men have work to do.”
She said, “Well, Carr reported to me from time to time. Of course, this is a relatively small town and it would never do for people to think that I was consulting Carr. I couldn’t go to his house and he doesn’t have an office here. Even if he had, I couldn’t have gone there. So Carr would telephone me at times and meet me at various places. He finally told me that he’d been trying to get the case against Frank Grannis squared up. That he’d offered to make all sorts of concessions to the authorities down there in Imperial County, but they wouldn’t even give him a tumble. I didn’t like the way he was talking. I thought perhaps he was trying to give me some sort of a double-cross, and actually accused him of it. But he insisted that he was working for my best interests, and that was all he had in mind, but that it was a difficult job to get the case squared without letting anyone know that he’d located the alibi witness. I could appreciate he was up against a problem there but that’s what I was paying him for.
“Finally Carr phoned on Tuesday that he had everything fixed. He said he had a girl who would swear that she had ridden with Grannis. He said she was a Daphne Arcola from Windrift, Montana, and that I was to meet her at the park that night. Carr said he’d try and join us.”
“Go ahead,” Selby said eagerly. “He arranged to meet you in the park the night that Dorothy came?”
“Yes. I knew that she was going to arrive sometime during the evening, and knew I couldn’t get away until after the house had settled down, so I told him that I’d have to find out how things were coming and let him know; that it would be difficult for me to call him. So he said that either he or Daphne Arcola would call me sometime during the evening. Well, she called and I didn’t think anyone remembered about it. I told her very briefly I’d meet her and Mr. Carr in the park at eleven-ten. I felt certain everything would be quieted down by that time.
“Well, everything would have been all right only Mother told Dorothy to leave her convertible in the driveway and leave the keys in it; that in case anyone had to take a car out they could move hers. Well, I was afraid that all that noise would waken Dorothy, and of course she was in the guest room, which is right over the driveway. It would have to happen that way.”
“Go on,” Selby said eagerly. “What happened? What happened when you got to the park?”
“Well, I got to the park. Daphne Arcola was waiting on the corner. I recognized her at once from the description, and she got in the car with me. Then we drove to the place in the park where we were to meet Mr. Carr.”
“And what happened?”
“We shut off the engine and waited for a minute or two, and then Daphne said she thought she saw someone over in the shadow of some shrubbery. She said she’d go over and take a look. I told her that it was foolish, because if Mr. Carr were there he’d come over to meet us, that he wouldn’t expect us to get out and go over into the shadows. But she thought perhaps something had gone wrong and that he was afraid to come out to the automobile, but wanted one of us to come over there.