Patty blushed, then looked at me appealingly. “I know I wasn’t very loyal to poor Mr. Machin,” she said softly. “But when I told Mr. Rutter and suggested he should pretend it was his own idea, he was so nice to me—and, well, after all, he is president of the company.”
“Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry about it, honey.” She brightened up immediately. “Danny, how long will I have to stay cooped up in here?”
“Until the cops get a line on Estell,” I said promptly. “I figure it won’t be too long. There aren’t that many places in a town this size that he can hole up in. Maybe I’ll hear something this afternoon from Schell.”
“I hope so!” she said fervently. “I feel if I don’t get out of this room, I’ll go crazy!”
“It won’t be too long, honey.” I patted her hand absently. “But this is a hell of a lot better than Marty Estell.”
She shuddered. “I’ll have nightmares the rest of my life about that man!”
“In a couple of weeks you’ll have forgotten his name,” I told her confidently. “I guess I’d better move along and see Schell I have to give him a written statement about last night and I don’t want him any more mad at me than he is right now—if that’s possible.”
“What time will you be back?” she asked casually.
I was on my feet and running. “Hard to say,” I told her as I reached for the door. “But don’t worry—you just sit tight!” Then I was out into the corridor with tie door shut behind me before she could pin me down any further.
There was a faint dew of sweat across my forehead when I got into the elevator. I prayed that Schell had already gotten a line on Marty so Patty could go back to her own apartment right away—she was acting like we were married already, or something. The “or something,” I could see very clearly now, had been a bad mistake.
It took a hell of a long time down at police headquarters. Schell played it in slow time, deliberately, giving me the treatment all the way down the line. After I’d dictated the statement, and it had been typed up so I could sign it, he went through the whole thing, word by word, three times. By then it was five o’clock and I needed a drink.
“Lieutenant,” I growled at him, “I know you hate me, and I can understand it even. But if we go through that statement one more time I’m going to have hysterics all over your office. You don’t want that, do you? I mean, like everything’s so neat and tidy in here, it would be out of place. We’d both be embarrassed.”
“Justifiable homicide for a guy with a private license isn’t good, Boyd,” he said coldly. “Even with impeccable witnesses to swear the man had no alternative but to kill —that it was strictly self-defense. But with no witnesses?” He shrugged meaningfully.
“It’s my day for the cryptic ones!” I muttered. “Lieutenant, you’re trying to tell me something?”
“I think you’re in trouble,” he snapped, “big trouble. I also think you’re holding out on me a little, Boyd. You’ve got some information somewhere that we haven’t. I’m telling you now, if you don’t cooperate fully with us, I’ll throw the book at you on this Ungar killing.”
“I always cooperate with you, Lieutenant, you know that already,” I said reproachfully. “I’m not holding out a thing.”
“Okay,” he rasped. “So we’ll play it the hard way!” “You’d have me real worried about that justifiable homicide if it wasn’t for a couple of points,” 1 told him in a mild voice.
“What points?”
“Well, like Patty Lamont will testify to what happened in her apartment with Ungar and Estell,” I said gently. “And how I gave them a fake address but they caught onto that later—and how I went to Byers’ apartment to protect him against them just in case they had caught on.” Schell snorted violently and I chose to ignore it.
“Then there’s Ungar’s record,” I continued happily. “I remember what you said last night, Lieutenant—‘He’s got a long-playing record, you name it, he’s done it!’ And those two slugs Estell fired at me must have been in the wall, so your ballistics expert would testify they didn’t match the slugs out of my gun, wouldn’t he?”
Schell snarled something deep in his throat and glared at me ferociously. “You’re going to outsmart yourself, Boyd, any moment now!”
“Have you got anything on Estell yet?” I asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “Either he skipped out of town last night—ran out of Byers’ apartment and just kept on running—or else he’s made himself invisible. I know this town and the people in it. I’ll stake my badge we’ve covered every possible place he could hide out, at least twice already!”
“Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “How do you figure the whole case now, Lieutenant? Does Rutter still rate as a suspect?”
“What do you think?” he asked in a nasty, suspicious voice.
“I figure he does,” I said firmly. “Did you check on him for an alibi for the time Byers was killed?” “Should I?” He played it nonchalant, making it a throwaway line, while he watched me like a hawk.
“I don’t know,” I said vaguely. “I was just curious, that’s all. Just for laughs, let’s presume he did kill Louise Lamont because he couldn’t stand her blackmailing tactics any longer, when they indirectly involved him in the tiarra theft? Maybe he didn’t know about Byers’ relationship with Louise—but she could have told Byers about him, right? Then, after she was dead, Byers could have decided to venture into the blackmail business on his own account—threaten to expose Rutter to the cops—” “Police!” Schell grated.
“—police, so Rutter figured the only alternative was to knock off Byers too, and if he made it look like suicide, you’d think that little Willie had murdered Louise, then taken his own life.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Schell said, but his voice was only half-hearted.
“You’re probably right,” I said smoothly. “Not that it would do any harm to pull Rutter in and ask him some questions—it might give him some respect, if nothing else.”
“Respect for what?”
“I hear he’s shooting his mouth off all over town about the bungling incompetence of the police force in general, and a certain lieutenant in particular,” I said mildly. “But I guess you’re above that kind of thing, Lieutenant, and it doesn’t worry you, right?”
“Oh, he is, is he?” Schell snarled. “The big fat slob! Just because he owns a plastics plant, he figures he’s a big-shot? We’ll soon pull him into line!”
“Well, of course,” I murmured, “it’s none of my business, but—”
“You’re damned right it’s none of your business!”
He scowled at me for about ten seconds, then shrugged in frustrated fury. “All right! What?”
“I was just thinking,” I said in a tentative voice. “He’s the kind of guy who uses authority to bulldoze anybody who’s smaller than he is—and that’s the only kind of treatment he’d respect. I mean, like if you played it very tough, very official—that kind of jazz—it would make a bigger impression on him.”
“Yeah,” Schell said, nodding slowly. “For once in your stupid life, you make sense, Boyd. I’ll play it so tough, he’ll figure the Gestapo must have been a bunch of boy scouts!”
“Well”—I kind of slid onto my feet—“if you don’t need me any more, Lieutenant?”
“Who needs you?” he said disgustedly. “You think I have nothing better to do all afternoon than waste my time talking to a homicidal maniac? Get out!”
I got back to the hotel just in time to have a quick shower and change my clothes, then get down to the Luau Bar by five of eight. At eight exactly, Tamara O’Keefe took off her mink jacket and slid into the alcove seat beside me. She wore a magnificent flamingo-colored velvet sheath; it was strapless, and cut low enough in the bodice to reveal the beginning of the entrancing cleavage between her full breasts.