“Let me try it my way first,” she pleaded. “If I am convicted, we can ask for an appeal on the grounds of new evidence.”
“You don’t make sense,” he said. “Is there something involved here beside your worry over the possible effect on Bud?”
“Of course not.”
“I think there must be. You can’t be so protective that you would risk your life, or at least your freedom, just to save the boy some discomfort.”
“Don’t keep referring to it as merely discomfort,” she said crossly. “You know as well as I do it would ruin his life. Let me stand trial on my present defense.”
“You don’t have any present defense. You admitted as much yourself the other day. I refuse to risk it.”
The matron called, “Visiting time’s up, folks.”
“Please promise me you’ll do nothing until we talk again tomorrow,” Betty said hurriedly.
Rising, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Betty. I’m not going to let you spend another single day here. I’m going to see Barney Meister and Arn Ross this afternoon.”
She had risen also. “You’ll lose me if you do,” she said quietly.
“I’ll lose you if I don’t. And I’d rather lose you this way than to prison.”
Abruptly he turned and stalked out.
Chapter XXIV
The next day, Wednesday, the Runyon City News published an exclusive story announcing the release from jail and dropping of all charges against Mrs. Elizabeth Case. The story explained that new evidence uncovered by Police Chief Barney Meister proved beyond any doubt that Bruce Case, not his widow, had set the scene to make it appear that the cat burglar had entered the home, and had been hoist by his own petard. There was no mention of the wire-across-the-stairs incident or of the twelve-year-old murder-suicide of Bruce’s parents.
The story was picked up by the wire services on Thursday and published all over the country. That same day a Detroit doctor and his beautiful nurse-receptionist were arrested for conspiring to murder the doctor’s wife.
By Friday the doctor and his mistress were in headlines from coast to coast and the Runyon City shooting was a dead issue.
Marshall wasn’t around when Betty was released from jail. Immediately after filing his story on Wednesday, he left on a Canadian fishing trip and didn’t get back until early Sunday evening. He phoned Betty at eight p.m.
“Still mad at me?” he inquired.
“I never was angry, Kirk. I was deeply disappointed when you took things into your own hands against my express wishes. But the publicity hasn’t been as bad as I expected it to be.”
“There won’t be any more digging,” he said. “You’re yesterday’s news. No one need ever know about Bud’s grandfather. It’s out that his father was a killer, or at least that he wanted to be, but that won’t hurt him any more than people thinking his mother was a murderess.”
“I suppose not,” she said. “I probably was exaggerating the whole thing. But I kept visualizing what would happen to his life if the whole appalling mess came to light. I just couldn’t stand to do that to him.”
Marshall said, “At the jail you told me I’d lose you if I went to Meister and Ross. Does that still stand?”
There was a period of silence before she said, “As it turned out, I guess you did the best thing. I thought I’d hear from you before this.”
“I wanted to give you time to settle down. I’ve been fishing up in Canada.”
“Oh?” she said. Then, after a pause, “Are you tired from the trip?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then why don’t you drop over?” she asked softly.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he told her.
Young Bud let him in when he rang the doorbell. The boy led him into the front room and said, “Mom’s upstairs getting herself all fixed up. I’m supposed to entertain you until she comes down.”
Taking a seat, Marshall grinned at him. “How do you propose to go about it?”
Momentarily Bud didn’t know what to make of this question, then realized he was being teased and smiled. “Just talk, I guess.” He sat on the couch across from Marshall’s chair.
“Where’s your Aunt Audrey?” the reporter asked.
“Oh, she went back to Rochester Friday. We didn’t need her any more. There’s just Mom and me now.”
Glancing about the room, Marshall spotted a wooden screen frame leaning against one side of the empty fireplace. “Why do you keep that there?” he inquired, pointing toward it.
“It’s gotta have new wire in it. A man from the crime lab just brought it back yesterday. They’d been keeping it for evidence, you know. That’s the screen from upstairs that Dad cut the wire out of.”
Apparently the youngster knew of his father’s murder attempt, if he was aware that it was his father who had cut the screen. Marshall was a little surprised. He had assumed that Betty would attempt to shield her son from knowledge that his father had tried to kill her. Of course it was inevitable that some other boy would tell him eventually, but he had thought Betty would want to delay his finding out as long as possible. It could be that Bud had read it in the newspaper. Few ten-year-olds read anything except the funnies, but Bud was an intelligent boy for his age.
“Did you read about him cutting it in the newspaper?” Marshall asked.
Bud looked at him without comprehension. “Why would something like that be in the newspaper?”
“Well, how do you know he cut it?”
“We saw him.”
“Come again?” Marshall said.
“Mom and me — I mean I. That same evening when everything happened. Only a lot earlier.”
A considerable period passed before Marshall said anything. Finally he said, “Just what happened, Bud?”
“That’s all. We saw him cut out the screen.”
From previous experience Marshall had learned the best way to get a story out of the boy. He said, “Remember that game we played on the beach, Bud? Where you told me everything that happened up until you tripped over the wire?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s play it again. You start with when you and your mother left the country club that day and carry it right through.”
“Okay,” the boy agreed. “That must of been about four. Mom drove us home and made me take a bath, even after I’d been in the lake all afternoon, and we both got all dressed up because we were going out to dinner. About five we drove over to the Rexford Bay Inn and Mom sat at a table for a while having a cocktail while I played the shuffleboard. That’s like bowling, you know, only there’s a flat metal thing instead of a ball, and you have to put a dime in.”
“I know,” Marshall said, wondering if he shouldn’t have asked the boy to start ten minutes before the screen was cut. With his total recall, he might not get to the point before his mother appeared.
“Then we had supper — I mean dinner — and came back here about six-thirty,” Bud said. “Mom put the car away and closed the garage door. She wanted to go over to the Derrings’ for a while, so we walked across the Pierce lawn next door, over to the Derrings’ house. I played out back with Jim Derring for about an hour while Mom was inside visiting with Mrs. Derring. Then she called me and we started back home across the Pierce lawn. I guess that was about seven-thirty. It was still real light.”
Marshall said, “It doesn’t get dark until about nine this time of year.”
“Just as we reached those big bushes between our house and the Pierces”, I said, ‘Hey, look what somebody’s doing.’ We both stopped and Mom looked where I pointed. You couldn’t see who it was behind the screen, but you could see the knife sticking out and cutting across the top. Mom pulled me behind one of the bushes and we watched. The knife went all around the four sides, then Dad leaned out the window and dropped the cut-out piece to the ground behind the bushes next to the house.”