I took my knife, cut the clipping out of the newspaper, and folded it in my wallet.
Since I was, for the moment, at a standstill, and since I dared not circulate around too freely, I spent a long, tiresome day reading, thinking, and keeping under cover.
Monday I went out to get a morning paper.
The story was on the front page.
The body of Maurine Auburn had been found buried in a shallow grave near Laguna Beach, the famous ocean and resort city south of Los Angeles.
A shallow grave had been dug in the sand above hightide line, but air had seeped through the loose sand, the odor of decomposition had become noticeable, and the body had been uncovered.
From its location authorities felt the grave had been hastily dug at night, and that the young woman was already dead when a car drove down a side street, stopped near a cliff, and the body was dumped over the cliff to the sand below. The murderer then had hastily scooped out a grave in the soft sand and made his escape.
From an examination of the body, the coroner believed she had been dead about a week. She had been shot twice in the back — a cold-blooded, efficient job. Either bullet would have resulted in almost instant death.
Both of the fatal bullets had been recovered.
Los Angeles police, who had been inclined to wash their hands of the attractive moll after her distinct refusal to co-operate in giving the police information concerning the shooting of Gabby Garvanza, now had no comment to make. The sheriff of Orange County was breathing smoke, fire, and threats to gangsters.
In view of these developments, search was being redoubled for a young man with whom it was known Maurine Auburn had disappeared on the night that police now felt certain was the night of her death. Police had a good description and were making a “careful check.”
I went to a phone booth and rang up Elsie Brand at the office, putting through the call collect.
I heard the operator at the other end of the line say, “Mrs. Cool said she would take any collect calls from Donald Lam.”
A moment later I heard Bertha’s hysterical voice screaming oven the wire. “You damn little moron. What do you think you’re doing? Who the hell do you think is masterminding this business?”
“What’s the matter now?” I asked.
“What’s the matter?” she yelled. “We’re in a jam. You’ve tried to blackmail a client. They’re going to revoke our license. The client has stopped payment on the five-hundred- dollar bonus check. What’s the matter? What’s the matter? You go sticking your neck out there in San Francisco. The San Francisco police have a pickup on you, the agency is in bad, the five hundred dollars has gone down the drain, and you’re calling collect. What the hell do you think’s the matter?”
“I want to get some information from Elsie Brand,” I said.
“Pay for the call, then,” Bertha screamed. “There won’t be any more collect calls on the phone at this end.”
She slammed up the receiver so that it must have all but pulled the phone out by the roots.
I hung up the telephone, sat there in the booth, and counted my available cash.
I didn’t have enough to squander any money on telephoning Elsie Brand.
I went to the telegraph office and sent her a collect telegram.
WIRE ME INFORMATION PREPAID WILL CALL WESTERN UNION BRANCH FIRST AND MARKET.
Bertha probably wouldn’t think to stop collect telegrams.
I went back to my hole-in-the-wall hotel and kicked my heels, marking time while waiting for information.
The noon editions of the San Francisco newspapers blossomed out with useful information. The killing of Maurine Auburn suddenly assumed importance because it had a swell local angle.
Headlines across the front page said: Son of Wealthy Banker Volunteers Information in Gangster Killing.
I read that John Carver Billings the Second had voluntarily reported to police that he had been the one who had asked Maurine Auburn to dance at an afternoon rendezvous spot, that he had been the one whose fascination had charmed the attractive “moll” into leaving her companions.
The young man’s amatory triumph, however, had been swiftly eclipsed by humiliation when the moll had gone to “powder her nose” and had failed to reappear.
Young Billings reported that he had thereafter “become acquainted” with two San Francisco girls, and had spent the “rest of the evening” with them. He had not known their names until he had located them through the efforts of a Los Angeles detective agency which had uncovered the identity of the two young women.
Billings had given police the names of these two women, and, since they were reputable young ladies employed in San Francisco business establishments, and inasmuch as it seemed their contact with Billings had consisted merely in making a round of night spots and using him to “show them the town,” police were withholding their names. It was known, however, that they had been interviewed and had confirmed Billings’s story in every detail.
The newspaper carried an excellent picture of John Carver Billings, a good, clear photograph taken by a newspaper photographer.
I went around to the newspaper office and hunted up the art department. A couple of two-bit cigars got me a fine glossy print of the picture, a real likeness of John Carver Billings the Second.
I strolled back to the telegraph office. There was no wire from Elsie.
I took a streetcar to Millie Rhodes’s apartment.
I found her home.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “Come on in.”
Her eyes were sparkling with excitement. She was wearing an outfit which evidently had just been removed from a box bearing the label of one of San Francisco’s most expensive stores.
“No work?” I asked.
“Not today,” she said, smiling enigmatically.
“I thought your vacation was up and you were due back to work.”
“I changed my plans.”
“And the job?”
“I’m a lady of leisure.”
“Since when?”
“That’s telling.”
“Like it?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“You’re burning bridges, Millie.”
“Let ‘em burn.”
“You might want to go back.”
“Not me. I’m going places, not going back — ever.”
“That’s a new suit, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it divine? It does things for me. I found it and it fits me as though it had been made for me. It didn’t need the slightest alteration. I’m crazy about it.”
She had been standing in front of the full-length mirror. Now she raised her hands slightly and turned slowly around so I could see the lines.
“It’s a nice job,” I said. “It does things for you.”
She sat down, crossed her legs, and smoothed the skirt over her knees with a caressing motion.
“Well,” she said, “what is it this time?”
I said, “I don’t want you burning bridges. It was all right to lie to me about the John Carver Billings alibi.”
“John Carver Billings the Second,” she amended with a smile.
“The Second,” I admitted. “Lying to me was one thing — lying to the police is another.”
“Look, Donald,” she said, “you look like a nice boy. You’re a detective. That makes you have a nasty, suspicious mind. You came here and intimated that I was lying in order to give John Carver Billings the Second an alibi. I rode along with you in order to see what you’d say.”