It looked like a cinch for the man Healey had told me about, the one who was supposed to be Miss Mackay’s brother.
Healey had probably gone upstairs to take care of the girl. I knew that his being scared of her was on the level because I know bona fide fear when I see it. She evidently had plenty on him. He’d arranged his getaway with me and then gone up to carve the girl, shut her up forever.
The alleged brother had come in the side door and had walked in on the knife act and opened up Healey’s back with the automatic at about six feet.
Then he’d grabbed the roll and whatever else Healey had in his pocket that was of any value — maybe a book of traveler’s checks — had tossed the gun on the floor and screwed back down the back stairway and out the side door. Something like that. It wasn’t entirely plausible, but it was all I could figure right then.
By the time I’d figured that much out the sheriff had it all settled that Healey had knifed the girl and then she’d plugged him five times, in a ten-inch square in his back. With about three inches of steel in her heart.
That was what the sheriff said so I let it go. They didn’t know about the brother and I didn’t want to complicate their case for them. And I did want a chance to look for that roll without interference.
When I got out to the car the blue Chrysler was gone. That wasn’t important except that I wondered who had been going away from the hotel when it looked like everybody in town was there or on the way there.
I didn’t get much information at the station. The agent said he’d just come on duty; the telegraph operator had been there all afternoon but he was out to supper. I found him in a lunch-room across the street and he said there’d been a half-dozen or so people get off the afternoon train from Salt Lake; but the girl had been alone and he wasn’t sure who the other people had been except three or four home towners. That was no good.
I tried to find somebody else who had been in the station when the train came in but didn’t have any luck. They couldn’t remember.
I went back to the car and that made me think about the blue Chrysler again. It was just possible that the Mackay girl had come down from Salt Lake by rail, and the boyfriend or brother or whatever he was had driven down. It didn’t look particularly sensible but it was an idea. Maybe they didn’t want to appear to be traveling together or something.
I stopped at all the garages and gas stations I could find but I couldn’t get a line on the Chrysler. I went back to the hotel and looked at the register and found out that Miss Mackay had put down Chicago as her home, and I finagled around for a half hour and talked to the sheriff and the clerk and everybody who looked like they wanted to talk but I didn’t get any more angles.
The sheriff said he’d wired Chicago because it looked like Healey and Miss Mackay were both from Chicago, and that he’d found a letter in one of Healey’s old coats from a Chicago attorney. The letter was about a divorce, and the sheriff had a hunch that Miss Mackay was Mrs Healey.
I had a sandwich and a piece of pie in the hotel restaurant and bundled up and went out and got in the car and started for LA.
I didn’t get up till around eleven o’clock Tuesday morning. I had breakfast in my room and wired a connection in Chi to send me all he could get on Miss Mackay and her brother. I called the desk and got the number of Gard’s room and on the way down stopped in to see him.
He was sitting in his nightshirt by the window, reading the morning papers. I sat down and asked him how he was enjoying his vacation and he said swell, and then he said: “I see by the papers that our friend Healey had an accident.”
I nodded.
Gard chuckled: “Tch, tch, tch. His wife will sure be cut up.”
I smiled a little and said, “Uh-huh,” and Gard looked up and said: “What the hell are you grinning about and what do you mean: Uh-huh?”
I told him that according to my paper Mrs Healey was the lady who had rubbed Healey — the lady who was on her way back East in a box.
Gard shook his head intelligently and said: “Wrong. That one was an extra. Mrs Healey is alive and kicking and one of the sweetest dishes God ever made.”
I could see that he was going to get romantic so I waited and he told me that Mrs Healey had been the agency’s client in the East and that she’d come in from Chicago Monday morning by plane and that he’d met her in the agency office, and then he went on for five or ten minutes about the color of her eyes and the way she wore her hair, and everything.
Gard was pretty much of a ladies’ man. He told it with gestures.
Along with the poetry he worked in the information that Mrs Healey, as he figured it, had had some trouble with Healey and that they’d split up and that she wanted to straighten it all out. That was the reason she’d wired the Salt Lake office of his agency to locate Healey. And almost as soon as they’d found Healey he’d shoved off for LA and the agency had wired her in Chicago to that effect. She’d arrived the morning Healey had been spotted in Caliente and had decided to wait in LA for him.
Gard said he had helped her find an apartment. He supposed the agency had called her up and told her the bad news about Healey. He acted like he was thinking a little while and then asked me if I didn’t think he ought to go over and see if he could help her in any way. “Comfort her in her bereavement,” was the way he put it.
I said: “Sure — we’ll both go.”
Gard didn’t go for that very big, but I told him that my having been such a pal of Healey’s made it all right.
We went.
Mrs Healey turned out a great deal better than I had expected from Gard’s glowing description. As a matter of fact she was swell. She was very dark, with dark blue eyes and blue-black hair; her clothes were very well done and her voice was cultivated, deep. When she acknowledged Gard’s half-stammered introduction, inclined her head towards me and asked us to sit down, I saw that she had been crying.
Gard had done pretty well in the way of helping her find an apartment. It was a big luxurious duplex in the Garden Court on Kenmore.
She smiled at Gard. “It’s very nice of you gentlemen to call,” she said.
I said we wanted her to know how sorry we were about it all and that I had known Healey in Detroit, and if there was anything we could do — that sort of thing.
There wasn’t much else to say. There wasn’t much else said.
She asked Gard to forgive her for bothering him so much the previous evening with her calls, but that she’d been nervous and worried and kept thinking that maybe Healey had arrived in LA after the agency was closed and that she hadn’t been notified. They’d been watching the trains of course.
Gard said that was all right and got red and stammered some more. He was stunned by the lady. So was I. She was a pip.
She said she thought she’d stay in California and she told us delicately that she’d made arrangements for Healey’s body to be shipped to his folks in Detroit.
Finally I said we’d better go and Gard nodded and we got up. She thanked us again for coming and a maid helped us with our coats and we left.
Gard said he had to go downtown so I took a cab and went back to the hotel. There was a wire from Chicago:
JEWEL MACKAY TWO CONVICTIONS EXTORTION STOP WORKS WITH HUSBAND ARTHUR RAINES ALIAS J L MAXWELL STOP LEFT CHICAGO WEDNESDAY FOR LOS ANGELES WITH RAINES STOP DESCRIPTION MACKAY FOUR ELEVEN ONE HUNDRED TWO BLONDE GRAY EYES RAINES FIVE SIX ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE RED BROWN EYES STOP MAY LOCATE THROUGH BROTHER WILLIAM RAINES REAL ESTATE SOUTH LABREA REGARDS