“You’re a little late,” he said. “I’ve got more than a theory. I’ve got a solution.” I raised my eyebrows.
“My idea of having the high schools run a check of their summer-school pupils paid off,” he said. I noted that it was now his idea instead of Hannegan’s. “We located the kid who had that gun initialed at Jessup’s.”
“And found out who hired him?”
“Well, not yet. I just talked to the school principal over the phone. I sent Hannegan over to Fairmont High to pick the kid up. He ought to be back any minute now.”
In view of this development I decided to keep my new theory to myself until we heard what the fake Pickup Service messenger had to say.
Eventually there was a knock on the door and Day yelled, “In!”
The door opened and Lieutenant Hannegan ushered in a tall, thin youngster with a horselike face. The boy seemed to be about sixteen or seventeen and he was dressed in denim slacks and a T-shirt.
“Eddie Johnson,” Hannegan said. “Inspector Day. Moon.”
“Sit down, Eddie,” Day said in a friendly voice, pointing to a chair.
Gingerly the youngster seated himself. He looked a little nervous but not particularly scared.
“You’re a student at Fairmont, are you?” the inspector asked in an obvious attempt to put the kid at ease.
“Yes, sir.” The “yes” started in a bass voice, but the “sir” came out soprano.
“You know why we want to talk to you, Eddie?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Benson told me. He’s our principal.”
“What did Mr. Benson tell you, Eddie?”
“Well, he asked over the loud-speaker if any of the students had run an errand to Jessup’s Jewelry Store recently, and if they had, to report to the office. I reported, and Mr. Benson said the police were trying to locate the person I ran the errand for. But I don’t think I’ll be able to help you much, sir.”
Day frowned. “Why not?”
“I don’t know who she was.”
The statement brought both Day and me up straight in our chairs.
“Did you say ‘She’?” I asked. “Yes, sir. It was a woman.”
The inspector said, “We didn’t expect you to know her name, Eddie. All we need is a description.” He gave me a pleased look. “Seems our killer is a woman, Moon. That conform to your new theory?”
It knocked the props from under my new theory, but I didn’t want to give Day the satisfaction of knowing that. I merely gave him an enigmatic smile.
“I don’t know if I can describe her too good,” Eddie said dubiously. “Except she was a nice-looking woman.”
“How did she contact you?”
“She just stopped me on the street after school and said she’d give me five bucks to run an errand for her. I said sure, and she took me in a taxi over to Jessup’s. She gave me a big manila envelope with something heavy inside and told me to tell the jeweler I was from Pickup Service.
“Well, I done like she said, and that’s all there was to it. I give the envelope to the man in the store, walked out again and got back in the taxi. The woman give me five bucks and dropped me off in front of the school, where she picked me up. Then, just before I got out, she told me to meet her the same place and the same time next day and I could make another five bucks. So I did, and this time my job was to pick up the envelope and pay the charges on it. She give me a ten-dollar-bill to pay for it with, and when I handed her back the change, she paid me off and had the taxi take me back to the school again. I never saw her since.”
“Okay, Eddie,” Day said. “Now to get back to this woman’s description. Was she a blonde or a brunette?”
“I never saw her hair. She wore one of those scarf things around her head.”
The inspector frowned. “About what age was she?”
“Not real old,” Eddie said vaguely. “Around twenty or thirty. I’m not much good at guessing women’s ages.”
“Just describe her as well as you can,” he said.
Eddie Johnson screwed his long face into a thoughtful frown. “Well, she had a kind of pretty face and a nice shape. Not too fat and not too skinny. She wore just a plain dress. Blue, I think. And this light blue scarf around her head. I noticed she had nice legs.” He thought a moment and added, “She was about average height.”
Day looked frustrated. “That description fits half the women in town,” he said to me. “I guess we’ll just have to parade them all before him.”
“Parade half the women in town?” I asked.
“The ones connected with the case,” he said impatiently.
“And that’s who?”
He gave me an irritated look. “The women who were there the evening Ford got it. Evelyn Karnes, Bubbles Duval, Madeline Strong. Do I have to spell it out for you?” He paused a moment and added, “Fausta Moreni.”
“Fausta had never even seen Walter Ford until an hour before he was dead,” I protested.
“We’ll parade her anyway. I’m not playing any favorites. Hannegan, bring in the four women I just mentioned.”
As the lieutenant straightened away from the wall, I said, “Hold it a minute. Are you planning to parade all four women at once and let Eddie pick one out?”
“That’s the usual way,” Day said.
“Then you’ll have to wait till tonight,” I told him. “Unless you’re mean enough to make Bubbles Duval lose her job by dragging her away from Saxon and Harder’s in the middle of a fashion show. She works till seven.”
For a few moments he merely stared at me, his nose slightly whitening at the tip. Then he said, “Oh, the hell with you, Moon.” At Hannegan he snarled, “Arrange for all four women to be here at seven-thirty P.M. sharp.”
“One of them is in the building now,” I offered. “Madeline Strong is back visiting Thomas Henry in his cell.”
The inspector grunted, picked up his desk phone and instructed someone to bring Madeline Strong to his office.
Then he said to Eddie, “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay right here at headquarters until this is over, Eddie. We’ll serve you some supper here. You can phone your folks and tell them where you are and that you’re not in any trouble. You can use my phone, and if they’re worried, I’ll talk to them.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Just a minute,” Day called. To Hannegan he said, “That’s probably Miss Strong, and I don’t want her to see Eddie or Eddie to see her until we can have a fair parade no shyster lawyer can break, with all four women present at the same time. Take him in the next room.”
As the lieutenant disappeared through the side door, the inspector called, “Come in.”
It was Madeline Strong. “You wanted to see me, Inspector?” she asked.
“Yes. Could you be down here at my office tonight at seven-thirty?”
“Tonight?” the girl asked. “I’m supposed to be at Barney Amhurst’s at eight.”
“Another party?” I asked dryly.
Apparently Madeline’s session with her fiancé had gotten her her over her pout at me, for her voice was entirely friendly when she spoke. “Not exactly, though I suppose Barney will serve drinks. It’s more a business meeting to decide whether we should try to buy out Walter Ford’s widow’s share of Huntsafe. She inherits Walter’s ten cent, you know.”
I had an idea. “Then Friday will be there too?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And will he bring Evelyn Karnes?”
“I suppose. He usually does.”
To the inspector I said, “I’ve got a better idea than bringing everybody down here. Why disrupt so many people’s plans? Let’s let this meeting go ahead, and I’ll get Fausta and Bubbles over to Barney’s at eight too.”
The inspector threw up his hands. “First you heckle me into postponing it till tonight, now you want it halfway across town. You run it any way you damn please, Moon.”