“Meaning?”
“Ed, she was up there. Jenkins was.”
“And saw it?”
“Just happened to. And cashed in.”
“... What would she be doing there?”
“At that hour of night, I would say there was only one thing she would be doing, and that would be lolly-gagging with a guy. For a little slavey that sleeps in one of the small inside rooms down over the kitchen and isn’t allowed to bring anybody in there, that just about would be the answer. She was up there, snugged into a canvas swing with a guy, and here comes this little procession of a man, a woman, and a dog. She keeps quiet, hoping not to be seen, and we can pretty well be sure that the guy, whoever he was, wanted it that way too. The procession marches around, and she sees it’s Sperry, Mrs. Sperry—and who else does she see, Ed?”
“Dolly.”
“Who can’t talk, but can tell tales.”
“But why that story Jenkins told the cops?”
“There was nothing else for her to do.”
“What reason did she have?”
“To protect Mrs. Sperry, for a price, we can assume. To get it off the roof.”
“And why Mrs. Sperry’s story at the inquest?”
“The insurance investigators. If they could hang it on Mrs. Delavan, they’d save themselves every cent of their obligation. Therefore, they’d dig. But digging, real digging, was what Constance dare not have. If she hadn’t been seen, then the plant that was made by the phone call, with the location of the body, would have made Mrs. Delavan guilty, so fine. But once there was evidence against herself, once there was stuff those insurance guys might turn up, she had to do something to get them out of the picture. On suicide, they were satisfied. So she made it suicide. She thought fast.”
“Nice.”
“Horrible.”
We walked out to the street, and he took my arm. “Ed, I can be thankful of one thing, though.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“It’s not my case.”
“I guess that helps.”
“But, Ed, suppose I had to pin it on her!”
He went back to Los Angeles, and for a couple of weeks all that happened was the itching I did over the $25,000 in insurance Jane had thrown away by firing Jenkins. But then one day Jane rang me and said the police wanted to talk to her again, and could I be there. This time it was a couple of plainclothes men, by the name of Brady and Lindstrom, and I think it was Lindstrom that did the talking. He fished a gold bracelet out of his pocket that was bent up quite a little and had three horses’ heads on it with rubies for eyes. Or garnets, whatever they were. Nobody quite seemed to know. He asked Jane if she’d ever seen it before, and she said: “Yes, it’s mine.”
“Where’d you get this here bracelet?”
“From a cousin of mine.”
“What’s his name?”
“Harold Sherman.”
“When was this?”
“About ten years ago. When I was in school. I rode three of his horses to firsts in a Long Island horse show, and this was his way of thanking me. I’m sure, if you’ll look, you’ll find some sort of engraving inside there about it.”
“When did you wear it last?”
“I’ve never worn it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s pretty ghastly, you know.”
Lindstrom looked at it and Brady looked at it and they kind of looked at each other. You could tell that something being pretty ghastly was a new idea to them. So far as they knew, if it was gold and it had jewels in it, it must be O.K. and if she said she’d never worn it, it was a 2-1 shot she was lying. Lindstrom said: “Who has been wearing it?”
“Nobody that I know of.”
“When did you miss it?”
“I haven’t missed it.”
“You didn’t know it was gone?”
“Not until now.”
“... Where you been keeping it?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean I put it away when it was given me, I don’t recall now just exactly where. I wrote a polite note about it, and forgot it. I haven’t seen it since—I can’t say when.”
“You got a jewel box?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Didn’t you keep it there?”
“I tell you, I don’t know. It could be.”
“I’ll have a look at this here jewel box.”
I said: “No, you won’t.”
“... Hey, Mac, who are you?”
“A friend. And my name’s not Mac, it’s Horner, like you were told. And the lady’s not some tart in the Monday line-up. She’s accommodated you so long as it was a question of clearing up a case that seemed to be giving you some trouble. Now it involves going into her jewel box that’s different and how’d you like to get the hell out?”
“Mac, I don’t care for that kind of talk.”
“A judge’ll be talking to you in an hour if—”
“O.K., O.K., if that’s how you want it.”
“Beat it.”
It took me an hour to get her quiet again, but then I called a Lieutenant I knew over at headquarters to find out what it was about. It was a couple of hours before he called me back. “Ed, it was found on the street, the way I get it, the night Sperry took his dive. Found by a brother and sister on their way home from a bowling alley and they advertised it in the Register, under found, by the name of Jane and by the name that was engraved on it. They didn’t get any answer so they advertised again. And then Lindstrom, he got interested in it, why Jane didn’t come to get her bracelet so he went over there to talk to them. He traced who it belonged to by the New York jeweler that made it, and that’s about all I can tell you, but I guess Lindstrom wanted to know more about it on account of that other stuff that’s been turned up.”
“O.K., thanks.”
Jane and I figured on that a while, and after a while she said: “Ed, I’m getting frightened. It’s more of that devilish plan. She threw that down there at the time she pushed him over.”
“How would she have it?”
“I could have left it in Bermuda.”
“Any way you can prove you did?”
“Jenkins might know. She packed me.”
“If we could get out of her whether you brought it with you or left it in Jamaica that would be a help.”
“I’ll get her up here.”
“She still here?”
“I suppose so.”
I give you one guess, though, what the answer was on that. She had checked out without giving a forwarding address or anything. “All right, Ed, I’ll say it since you won’t. Firing her was just about the stupidest thing I ever did in my life, and you warned me, I can’t say you didn’t.”
“We’ll find her.”
But suppose you try finding a Cockney girl that walked out the side door with her suitcase in her hand and just vanished. We hung around the gambling halls, the bus depots, the taxi stands; we called up all the little hotels. After three or four days I knew it was one for a detective, and we went to a guy on Fourth Street that we picked out of the classified phone book, though not anybody the company had ever done business with. He made a lot of notes, took my check for $150, explained there was quite a lot of preliminary expense getting out dodgers for his correspondents, that seemed to be people that kept an eye on cars and so on, and liked to pick up some dough on missing persons and didn’t mind a little Hawkshaw excitement in their lives. But his face gave a twitch when we said we had no photograph, and I knew it was going to be tough.
About a week after that, when I went up one afternoon to take Jane out to dinner, I found her all in, hanging onto herself till her fingernails were cutting the palms of her hands to keep from breaking out into screaming hysteria. And come to find out the bishop’s granddaughter was in town and had come to see her about Delavan. It seemed he didn’t want to marry her any more, which might explain why De
lavan was so nice about it when Jane started her period of residence all over again. “Ed, she was here for two hours—three hours, I don’t know, I thought she’d never go. And what can I do for her? She’s a frizzle-haired, washed-out, pint-size simpleton. She talks baby talk. Even when she’s trying to be sensible she talks it. And she’s been perfectly horrible for Tom. For years and years she’s been in his hair, and don’t ask me what hold she has on him. He’s known her ever since they were children, and God knows what went on. Nothing, probably. She wouldn’t have enough gump for something really scandalous. But somehow, maybe because she’s so tiny, maybe because she plays on his sympathies or something, that guilt complex of his gets into it, and he’s alternately involved with her and trying to break away from her and his life is nothing but a series of runnings away from her. That’s all I was. He calls it rebound, but it was more than that. One more lunge at freedom for his soul. That he never gets. Now he’s lunging again and she’s after him again. Why don’t they get married, and give the rest of the world some peace?”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I was sorry.”
“Has she seen him?”
“He refuses to see her.”
“And she wants you to intercede?”
“And I won’t.”
“Good.”
“... Ed!”
“Yeah?”
“Tom would know about the bracelet!”
“He might, at that.”
“Well, she helped, after all!”
She went in the bedroom and talked, and came back looking better. “He says he’s sure I haven’t had any such thing since he met me, or he’d have known it. He reminded me that he inventoried everything just after the wedding, in connection with a new floater policy for the house, and he was very careful about everything of mine, especially my jewelry and coats, and he’s positive there was no such bracelet. And if there’s any trouble about it, he’s willing to testify, or talk to the police, or do whatever is necessary.”
“You didn’t actually ask him to go to the police?”
“No, I said if, as and when needed.”
“O.K.”
Couple of days later, I was over at a trucking company’s offices, trying to close a group deal. Stuff like that is mostly a matter of corporation taxes, and I was lining it out for a bunch of execs in the secretary’s office, when a girl came in and said I was wanted on the telephone and that it was important. I took it outside, on her phone, and it was my secretary, Linda. “Mr. Horner, I’ve been trying to reach you all over town. Mr. Delavan’s been killed.”
“What?”
“They called us, on account of our card in his pocket.”
“Who called?”
“The state police.”
“The state police?”
“He fell from a horse. Outside of town.”
“When was this?”
“They called twenty minutes ago and they’re going to call again as soon as they get him back to town. What shall I tell them?”
“I’ll take over.”
Part Four:
HUSH MONEY
12
TAKING OVER, THAT DAY anyway, consisted of sitting in Jane’s living room and answering police questions over the telephone, mostly about who would claim the body, stuff like that. He’d been found in a gully after his horse, that he’d rented from the Los Amigos stables just south of town, had come in without him. For some of the stuff they wanted we had to call the family in the east, and Jane did the talking on that, and on breaking the news to this girl he’d been engaged to marry, Faith Converse. Jane called her Penny, but I think that was some moniker they’d given her, on account of her being so small. It took us until five, and they said as neither one of us was with him there’d be no need for us to attend the inquest, which would be held at another undertaking parlor that night. I suggested we drive over to Carson for dinner, and she seemed to like the idea. She had taken it a little hard for a couple of minutes, more from shock than anything else, I think, and then she had snapped out of it and done what she had to do in a quiet way I fell for pretty hard. But on a chance to get away from the hotel and the phone calls, she jumped at it pretty quick.
We had dinner in the Arlington, which was where we generally went over there, and we didn’t talk about it, or ourselves, or anything of that kind. I got off on a long educational pep talk about Kit Carson, that the town was named after, and what a terrific help he’d been to all those old grizzlies that were building the West a hundred years ago. But on the way back we got to what was on our mind, and it was she that brought it up. “Ed, you know what this means, don’t you?”
“That you don’t need a divorce?”
“I’ve no further business in Reno.”
“None at all?”
“... That’s for you to say.”
“Then—O.K., you’ve got business.”
“You want me to stay on?”
“Of course I do.”
“We can’t be married right away.”
“You mean it wouldn’t look right?”
“It’s out of the question.”
“Then you stay on, Jane, and we’ll ride around and see each other and little by little two or three months will go by and a ceremony will be O.K.”
“I’d say about six.”
“Then six.”
“Shall I write my family?”
“Go right ahead.”
“... Or perhaps I’ll wait.”
“Why wait, Jane? Write ’em.”
“What’s not announced doesn’t have to be openly admitted. And what is announced can’t be taken back. Just to avoid complications, I think I’m staying on for the climate. Or the scenery. Or something like that. You’ve got to admit it’s pretty wonderful.”
“Anything you say.”
I tossed it off like a big shot that had it all under control, but inside me was something moving, like in the shark that swallowed the oyster borer. I had to tell her about that policy, and it would mean she’d know I’d lied to her, and big as the policy was, somehow I hated to get to it. But pretty soon I knew I had to, so I kept right on the big shot line and tossed it out like it was the big surprise good news I had been saving for her all the time. “And by the way, speaking of what’s pretty wonderful, there’s a wedding present due to drop in your lap, or a dowry, or whatever you call it, that’s just about as wonderful as anything I can think of, anyway for a night in late fall.”
“Dowry? What do you mean?”
“$100,000.”
“... For me?”
“For cute little you.”
“From where?”
“That—policy.”
“... Tom’s?”
“You didn’t think I really knocked it in the head, did you?”
“But Ed, I haven’t it.”
“I have.”
We rode quite some ways and she didn’t say anything. Then: Ed, I wish you hadn’t done this to me.”
“Made you $100,000, you mean?”
“Behind my back. Why did you?”
“Insurance is my life. I believe in it.”
“I wish I could believe that was the only reason.”
“That’s one thing about dough, Jane. It’ll do just as much for you whether you work for it or you don’t work for it or whether you believe or you don’t believe. It’s strictly open shop. I’m not ashamed of it that I saw something good, something good for you I mean, and took it even when you told me not to.”
“And you told me an untruth about it.”
“Hell, I lied. But you’ll get the money.”
“And you’ll get the cup.”
“... What cup?”
“Please, Ed.”
“Can’t a guy have two reasons for doing something?”
“Not if one of them’s me.”
We went along for a while trying to talk about what a pretty night it was, and how nothing ever looked as bright as lights in the clear Nevada
air. Than she began to cry. “Ed, I’ve been trying to make myself say thank you for what you did. I suppose you had no bad motive. I can’t do it. I—just can’t.”
“I can. I thank myself a lot.”
“Then, all right.”
“And not only for the money.”
“I hope you enjoy the cup.”
“And my wife.”
“I—don’t understand you.”
“O.K., Jane, now you get it. I’ve never been quite sure, if you want to know the truth, about how Sperry got it. O.K., so the dog went over the wall. O.K., so you don’t know a thing about the phone call. O.K., but there’s the big Sperry policy, and unless they can prove suicide, there’s the money. Now I know I lied to you about this Delavan policy. You couldn’t have had anything to do with it. That clears up a lot of things. Maybe one’s not got anything to do with the other, but it’s got a lot to do with how I feel about it.”
“Ed, you suspected me?”
“No, but it’s nice being sure.”
“Then you did suspect me?”
“I’d have loved you, anyhow.”
“You could love me, suspecting—”
“I didn’t care.”
Brother, if I could leave it out about the next three hours I’d do it, and if that would be lying, I’d got to the point where one lie more or less didn’t seem to matter a whole lot, one way or the other. But there’s two or three people that could call it on me, so here goes, but don’t get too excited about it if I kind of go easy and not take extra billboard space to advertise what a heel I felt like for a while. It’ll be the truth but kind of on the quiet side, if you get what I mean—in good taste, but not any production job, with lights. We rode along, and she kept staring in front of her, and I kept trying to think of something like the Nevada air we could use for talk. We got to the hotel and started through the lobby and Lindstrom got up out of a chair and came over to us. Then he introduced a kid named Kubic that he said was assistant state’s attorney. Then he asked Jane to sit down. She did and we all did and he asked if she was holding a policy on Delavan’s life. “I don’t, but I understand one was taken out for me.”