“No record, eh?”
“None”
“Well, it’s the nice ones that let a dame ruin ’em. We’ll retire to the living room where there’s a phone, bub.”
We retired to the living room, and he picked up the phone. He kept well away from me, his gun on me, but he had to flick one glance at the phone to dial headquarters.
I didn’t tell you I played baseball in college? Well, the cop didn’t know it either. The toss would have warmed the heart of Lefty Grove. The cop never saw the lamp I scooped off the end table. The lamp was heavy metal. It hit him on the side of the jaw, and his head hit the carpet before his heels did. I was shaking so hard I could hardly right the phone stand he’d knocked over and replace the phone.
I crouched in the snowball bush on the terraced lawn and watched them come and go. The brick house up at the head of the lawn was the one I’d rented for Ellicia and me. The rent was paid, so it was mine. But you’d never know that from their actions. They went up and down the lawn from the couple of squad cars at the curb. There was two press cars at the curb, too. I was beginning to realize I was an important man in this town. This killing rated. It wasn’t any satisfaction.
Along about ten o’clock they left. The house stayed lighted. Old J. P.’s car was still on the gravelled drive as I moved across the lawn to the side door that entered in the library.
J. P. and Ellicia were in the living room. She’d been crying hard. He was walking back and forth in front of the fireplace, his face drawn. I took a deep breath and said, “Hsssst!”
They both went rigid. I said from my dark corner of the hallway, “Are they gone? All of them?”
Through the open door I saw Ellicia bound out of her chair, old J. P. stride toward the door. Ellicia said, “Rick!” It was a moan. Old J. P. said, “Come in here!” It was a command.
I took a breath and faced it. Ellicia threw her arms around my neck when I got inside the doorway, “Rick, what have you done?”
“Yes,” J. P. said, “what have you done, son-in-law?”
“I haven’t done anything,” I said.
J. P. snorted and speared me with his gaze. “I ought to bean you with the fireplace poker, Rick, and yell for the police.” But he didn’t do it, and I was able to drag a breath lower than my larynx.
Ellicia kissed me and said, “It’ll be all right, Rick. We’ll hire the best lawyers in the state. We’ll beat ’em, Rick!”
Old J. P. snorted again, and I looked at him like he was looking at me. “Just one thing, J. P. And let’s get it straight. I didn’t kill Godiva Hoffman. I never saw her before tonight in my life.”
They both waited. The room waited. I tried to think where to start and I knew it was going to sound crazy as hell. If I told the truth, they’d say: “This is the most fantastic excuse, Rick, that a diseased mind could imagine!” Ellicia was willing to face the fact of murder and tell me that together we’d beat ’em. I had better not destroy that faith. So I said, “Did you tell the police about the mash notes?”
She said no, that she’d told the police just as little as she could. Old J. P. said, “Mash notes? What mash notes?”
I let him hang for an answer. I said to Ellicia, “Those notes are the thing that’ll hang me. My gun was used on Godiva, but I took it when I left the Wardmore Arms apartment. It’s at the river bottom now. The only real evidence left against me is the package of mash notes.”
“What the devil is this?” J. P. demanded. “Ellicia, why haven’t you told me everything?”
She let him wait for an answer, too. She said to me, “You want the notes? You want to destroy them?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Then,” she said, “you’ll tell them that Godiva was simply a friend, a very casual friend, who was having trouble finding an apartment. You merely did her a slight favor when you saw the vacancy at the Ward-more Arms. With the gun and notes gone, there’ll be no positive evidence against you whatsoever.”
“That’s the idea again. The D.A. can yell murder all he wants. The jury can believe that I’m as guilty as sin — but it takes evidence to convict a man of a crime — especially murder. With those notes destroyed, we can hang a jury till doomsday, but with those notes in the hands of the police, I’d be hanging!”
“Rick! Don’t say such things. The notes are right over here in the desk.”
J. P. and I watched her as she crossed to the desk. I was feeling better. They might try me, but they were going to have one tough time hanging me.
Then Ellicia turned from the desk, her face white as cotton. She didn’t speak. She held up her hands, and they were empty.
I fell in a chair. “Well,” I said. “This is just ducky. Are you sure the cops didn’t find the notes?”
“I’m positive,” Ellicia said. “I watched them. They didn’t search the desk. They didn’t question me, either, and they’d have done that if they had found the notes.”
“Then somebody else has the notes.” I got out of the chair. “Who, Ellicia? Who had access to the desk?”
She wrinkled her creamy forehead, touched a tapered finger against her lips. “Let’s check the time element, Kick. The police said Godiva was killed between six and six-thirty.”
“Which, of course, skyrocketed the value of the notes. All right. I was found by the cop in the Wardmore Arms apartment about seven or shortly after. Now what?”
J. P. looked from one to the other of us. “From what I gather, there were some notes. They were worth little or nothing to an outsider until Godiva Hoffman was killed, if I follow your statements correctly.”
“You’re on the beam, J. P.,” I said. “Those notes will now warm the chair for your son-in-law.”
“Which means,” Ellicia chimed in, “that the notes were stolen from here for one of two purposes. To make us pay plenty to keep them from falling into the hands of the police or to… or to send you to the…”
“…Hot squat,” I croaked. “But that still isn’t saying who.”
“No, it isn’t, is it? Well, the seven-thirty newscast carried the news of the murder. The police arrived here at eight.”
“And who was here between seven-thirty and eight?”
“Three people,” Ellicia said. “Perry Lance came by to say he’d heard of the murder on the newscast with your name mixed in, Rick. He offered me his sympathy.”
“Dear Perry,” I said, “he would do that.”
“Perry had been here about five minutes,” Ellicia went on, “when Jean Darlan and Archie Satler dropped in on their way to Club Mananita. They offered their sympathy too.”
“Dear Jean and Archie,” I said, “they would do it too. Too damn many of your friends, Ellicia, probably take their milk from a saucer in the corner.”
Club Mananita was one of those ultra-ultra little joints where they soak you a buck-and-a-half for a four-bit drink. The headwaiter didn’t like my entering without being in a dinner jacket, but I’d spent several sizable wads in the place, and I told him I was going to be inside only a minute.
A Latin dance team was doing a tango. Except for the spot on them and the low lights on the small tables the place was fairly dark. I wondered how many faces I would recognize, how many of the faces would see me, and how many had heard the newscasts tonight. The Latin team finished, Archie Satler’s band swung into a slow tune and the floor crowded with dancing couples. I spotted Jean Darlan’s lovely blonde head at a table alone. I threaded my way to her and sat down.
All the blood drained from her face when she saw me. I had my hand in my coat pocket, and I jabbed her in the ribs with my thumb. It was reasonable enough facsimile of a gun. She gulped, touched her lips with her tongue. “What do you want, Rick?”