“I found a label off a prescription box in the drawer in the motor court. I went to San Francisco and called on the girl. She said she’d just got back the night before and had gone to work yesterday morning.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
I said, “According to her story they left San Francisco Monday evening at five o’clock. They drove as far as Salinas, stayed there that night, then drove down to Hollywood the next day. They went directly to a cocktail parlor. Billings picked them up. They went to the motor court. That was Tuesday night. They checked out Wednesday morning and went to another motor court. They were there Wednesday night. Then, early Thursday morning, they left to return to San Francisco. They got to San Francisco late Thursday night and the girls started working again yesterday.”
“So what?”
“Hell of a vacation, wasn’t it?”
Bertha said, “Lots of people have to take short vacations. They can’t get away for longer periods.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Bertha demanded.
I said, “Suppose you had four days that you could take as a vacation, and you wanted to go to Los Angeles; what would you do?”
“I’d go to Los Angeles,” Bertha said. “Dammit, come to the point.”
I said, “You’d arrange your vacation so it started on Monday or so it ended on Saturday, or both. You’d leave on Saturday morning — or Saturday noon — if you had to work Saturday morning. You’d have all Saturday afternoon and Sunday added to your vacation. You wouldn’t work Monday, then leave Monday night and get back Thursday night so you could go to work Friday.”
Bertha thought that over. “Slice me for an onion,” she said, half to herself.
“Moreover,” I said, “as soon as this girl had me spotted as a detective who was trying to pump her about that particular trip, I quit talking about it and pretended I wasn’t going to do any more talking. For a minute she got in a panic, being afraid she wasn’t going to collect the bonus that had been guaranteed to her for handing me that story. She must have thought I was a hell of a detective. She damn near had to ask me to take her out to dinner. She almost dragged me up to her apartment. She fell all over herself seeing that I got the proper information.”
“Well, you got it,” Bertha said, “and we got the money. What is there for us to worry about?”
“I hate to be played for a sucker.”
“We got three hundred bucks out of that bird when he came in yesterday morning. We got five hundred bucks out of him this morning. That’s eight hundred dollars for a two-day case. And if they want to play Big Bertha for a sucker to the tune of four hundred bucks a day they can move right in.”
Bertha banged her jeweled hand down on the desk by way of emphasis.
“Okay by me,” I told her, got up and started for the door.
“Say,” Bertha said, as I had my hand on the knob, “do you suppose that whole damned alibi is faked, Donald?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You’ve got the money. What more do you want?”
Bertha said, “Wait a minute, lover. This may not be so good.”
I said, “What’s wrong about it?”
“If there’s anything phony about it, that bastard paid out eight hundred dollars just for the privilege of having us fronting for an alibi that could be phony as hell.”
“Well,” I told her, “you said you didn’t mind being played for a sucker at four hundred dollars a day. You’d better put two hundred dollars into a sinking fund.”
“What for?”
“To buy a bail bond with,” I said, and went out.
Chapter Five
I turned my car into the driveway on the Sepulveda Motor Court.
The manager looked up as I entered the office. Her eyes became angry. “What kind of a shenanigan were you trying to work on me?”
“Nothing,” I said.
She said, “You rent a double cottage and are in there for about fifteen minutes. If it was going to be something like that, why didn’t you have the decency to at least tell me when you were pulling out so I could have rented the apartment last night?”
“I didn’t want you to rent it. I paid you enough for it, didn’t I?”
“That’s neither here nor there. If you weren’t going to use it—”
I said, “Let’s quit beating around the bush and suppose you tell me what you know about the people who were in there Tuesday night.”
“Suppose I don’t. I don’t discuss my guests.”
“It might save you some unpleasant publicity.”
She looked up at me and then said, thoughtfully, “So that’s what it is. It’s a wonder I didn’t realize it before.”
“That’s what it is.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to see the registration for Tuesday night, and I want to talk with you.”
“Is this the law?”
I shook my head.
She started drawing a red, lacquered fingernail across a sheet of letter paper on the desk, then carefully studying the indentation marks the nail had made. Apparently that was the most absorbing thing to do that she had found all day.
I stood there and waited.
Abruptly, she looked up. “Private?”
I nodded.
“What are you after?”
“I want to know who stayed there Tuesday.”
“Why?”
I smiled at her.
She said, “I don’t give out information like that. Running an auto court is a business in itself.”
“Sure it is.”
“I’d have to know why you wanted to know.”
I said, “My business is confidential, too.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
She went back to tracing patterns with the point of her fingernail over the paper.
Abruptly she asked, “Could you keep me out of it?”
I said, “You live here. We live here. I wouldn’t come out to see you this way if I was going to give you a double cross. I’d get the information some other way.”
“How?”
“Having a friendly newspaper reporter or police officer come out.”
She said, “I wouldn’t like that.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
She opened a drawer in the desk, reached in, and after a moment’s search pulled out a card.
It was a registration card. It showed that the cabin had been rented Tuesday night to Ferguson L. Hoy and party, 551 Prince Street, Oakland, and the rental had been thirteen dollars.
I took a small copying camera from my briefcase, set it up on a tripod, turned on an electric light so there would be good illumination, and took a couple of pictures.
“That all?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Now I want to know something about Mr. Hoy.”
She said, “I can’t help you much there. He was just another man, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Young?”
“I wouldn’t remember. Come to think of it, it was one of the women with him who came in. She got a registration card and took it out to him. He was in the car. He signed it and sent back the thirteen dollars in exact change.”
“How many people in the party?”
“Four — two couples.”
“You didn’t see this man well enough to remember him if you saw him again?”
“That’s hard to say. I don’t think so.”
I said, “I was out here yesterday about eleven o’clock.”
She nodded.
I said, “Someone had been in that cabin shortly before I arrived there.”
She shook her head. “That cabin had all been cleaned up and—”
“Someone had been in there shortly before I arrived,” I interrupted.
“I don’t think so.”
“Someone who was smoking a cigarette,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Do the maids smoke?”