Smallwood took out a fat wallet. “Cash,” he sneered. “No checks, cash.”
“Mr. Smallwood,” said Otis Beagle, his eye on the wallet, “I am an honest man, if you want to employ an honest man. But if it’s a thief you want — tell me your troubles!”
Somewhere a church-steeple clock was bonging ten. The turnkey unlocked the grilled door and gestured to Joe Peel. “All right, laddie, it’s a nice sunshiny day outside and you’re free.”
“Do I have to go?” asked Peel. “I was just getting used to the cockroaches.”
“They’ll still be here when you get back!”
In another room they handed Peel his necktie, his belt and an envelope containing his money and keys.
“What is it, bail — or for keeps?” he asked the attendant.
The man shrugged. “Nobody tells me anything. I got word to turn you loose, that’s all.”
On the street Peel looked around for Otis Beagle, but could not find him. He stepped to the curb, signaled a taxi and climbed in.
“The Shelby Hotel,” he said, “on Ivar off Sunset.”
A short while later he got out of the taxi and went into the hotel. He went up to his room, took a shower, dressed, sprawled out on the bed.
The phone rang. Peel let it ring five times before he finally took the receiver off the prongs.
“What’s the matter with you, Joe?” cried the voice of Otis Beagle. “There’s work to be done.”
“Sorry, old man,” replied Peel. “I’ve got a hot solitaire hand and I’m too busy to talk to you.”
He hung up. Thirty seconds later the phone rang again. Peel took the receiver off the hook. “Mr. Peel’s busy,” he snapped.
“Listen to me, Joe,” pleaded Otis Beagle. “A hundred-dollar bonus!”
“Now?”
“Now!”
Peel slammed the receiver back on the hook and got to his feet. He left his room and descended to the lobby.
Ten minutes later he entered the office of the Beagle Detective Agency. Beagle sprang to his feet.
“I’m sorry, Joe, I couldn’t make it any sooner.”
“Of course not,” said Peel. “You were playing gin rummy.”
“I had to lose, Joe,” cried Beagle. “I never had such hands in my life and I had to throw them. I had to lose — deliberately. We were playing for ten cents a point and I had to lose. Pinky wouldn’t lift his finger to help. He was sore. I had to lose sixteen hundred dollars, Joe. That’s what it cost me. Sixteen hundred dollars.”
“And that put him in a good mood?”
“No, it made him madder’n hell. The sixteen hundred and the twelve-fifty I already owed him — twenty-eight hundred and fifty bucks. He asked me for a check and I told him I couldn’t pay it. I told him I was ruined, that I’d stuck out my neck and if I didn’t get you out of jail, you’d make a case against me and I’d be thrown in jail — and then I wouldn’t be able to pay him the money I owed him.”
Beagle wiped perspiration from his forehead. “You should have seen the hands. Laydown hands... and I had to lose. I could have won a thousand dollars from him. But if I had, you’d still be in jail.” He clapped a beefy hand on Peel’s shoulder. “That’s what I did for you, Joe!”
Peel pulled away from Beagle’s hand. “What was that you said about a bonus?”
Beagle’s self-pity vanished. “We’ve got a new client, in fact, we’ve got two new clients.”
“Don’t tell me... Thaddeus Smallwood and—”
“—Iowa Lee.”
“Four clients in the same case,” Peel shrugged. “Okay, I’ve already been in jail. It’s a nice jail. The food’s not bad — not for me. Of course you’ll lose some of that waistline of yours.”
“It’s too late for clowning. We’re in too deep. Besides, Iowa’s problem doesn’t conflict with the others. All she wants us to do is keep her Lonely Hearts Club out of the mess.”
“And you think that’s easy?”
“I’m just telling you that’s the assignment.”
“But Becker has two letters, written by you and signed with my name, that were sent in care of the club paper, Heart Throbs.”
“They can’t prove you’re a member of the club.”
“She’s got my name on a card.”
“Not any more she hasn’t. You picked up a copy of Heart Throbs on a bus, you were never a member of the club.”
“And Susan Sawyer?”
“She’s dead.”
“But her ad was in the paper.”
“No, it wasn’t — Susan Sawyer was never a member of the club. Her name isn’t on the list of club members... Linda Meadows’ name is, yes, but not Susan Sawyer’s.”
“I see,” said Peel. “But Linda Meadows is also a client of the agency.”
“Who says so?”
“She gave me fifty bucks.”
“In cash, Joe, in cash. Nobody can prove we ever represented Linda Meadows.”
“Nobody,” said Peel. “Nobody except Linda Meadows — and the people to whom she shows the receipt I gave her.”
“What receipt?” cried Beagle.
“The receipt, on the agency letterhead, on which it says the fifty dollars is to apply toward the fee of one hundred dollars for which we agree to find Susan Sawyer—”
“You didn’t, Joe,” howled Beagle. “You didn’t write out a receipt with all that on it!”
“The fifty bucks was when we were hungry — before you got all the other clients.”
Beagle retreated to his chair and slumped into it. For a moment he stared helplessly at Peel, but then he brightened. “For finding Susan Sawyer? All right, she’s been found.”
“But we didn’t find her.”
“A technicality. She’s been found and we’re no longer working for Linda.”
“So we’ve only got three clients: this smoothie, Charlton Temple, Thaddeus Smallwood and Iowa Lee. For which one am I getting the bonus?”
“The bonus is to make up for last night.”
Peel laughed shortly, without humor. “You’re on the spot and you need me.”
“I always need you, Joe. You know that.” Beagle coughed. “Did Becker tell you where Susan Sawyer was found?”
“They didn’t tell me anything. They wanted me to talk, but they didn’t volunteer anything — except that Susan Sawyer was dead.”
“Her body was found late yesterday afternoon between Victorville and Barstow, in a ravine only a hundred feet off Highway 66. She’d been dead twenty-four hours, more or less.”
“But that would make it right after I saw her at the apartment!”
“Think, Joe. Dave Corey was on the floor when you woke up. But Susan was gone. Where was she?”
“In Corey’s apartment?”
“And then Corey disappeared in the minute or so from the time you heard the police siren until they came into the apartment. Where did he disappear to so quickly?”
“His apartment.”
Beagle shook his head. “Try it this way. Corey popped you and then Mr. Murder stepped in, with the rooty-toot in his hand. He shot Corey. Could he let Susan Sawyer walk out? Of course not. He let her have it at the same time. He carried her body down to the garage, put her in the car, then went up to get Corey. That’s when you woke up. While you were taking the stairs, he stepped out of the elevator and picked up Corey. He took him down to the garage and...” Beagle hesitated, frowning in thought, then nodded. “He dumped Corey on Mulholland, but he kept on with the girl — to Victorville...”
“Why would he carry her that far?”
“He was on his way to Las Vegas, where else? But he didn’t want to pass the inspection station at Yermo with a corpse in the car. That’s what he’d like us to think, anyway. And that’s why we’ll find him right here in town.”