Robert Sinclair - The Eleventh Hour

“Not about money?”

“No,” Conway said, and then it dawned on him. The waitress Bauer had spoken to passed close to the table, and Conway happened to glance up so that he saw her face from a low angle, and in that instant he remembered her. It was the woman who had served Helen and himself in that other National drugstore. It was so absurdly clear now that it was difficult not to laugh aloud. But — how much had she heard that night? What had she said to arouse Bauer’s suspicion? “We only quarreled about silly little things. Even quarrel is too strong a word—”

“What kind of silly little things? I’m just asking,” the detective explained, “because I might get married one of these days, and if I do I don’t want any trouble. Maybe you can give me a few tips.”

“Well, let me think.” Bauer could easily have confronted him with the waitress, and had her identify him, but that, Conway could only assume, would have been too easy. The sergeant must have gone to considerable trouble to have her transferred to this store for this one night so that she would be less readily recognizable; he would be hurt to learn that his elaborate stratagem had been so quickly seen through. “Things like — well, I hate to tell you this, because I don’t like to think about it. But we had a misunderstanding the day she — the last day she was here.” Conway, ever conscious of Betty, knew that he had to guard against overdoing it.

“What was that?” Bauer asked, his dinner now entirely forgotten.

The temptation to tease the sergeant along was too great. “She’d withdrawn the money from the bank the day before, as you know, and we were going to open a new account after we’d had lunch. Well, there was a misunderstanding — I thought she’d brought the money with her, and she thought I had. So we had a little tiff about it — nothing serious, and we made it up right away, but now I’d give anything if I hadn’t lost my temper even that little bit. That’s why I’ve still got the money in the house — it was too late, then, to go home, pick it up, and get back to the bank.”

Bauer said “U-um,” and Betty was again looking around the store, seemingly paying no attention to them.

“Well, that’s the kind of thing I mean. We were both a little quick-tempered, and we’d have occasional flare-ups, but they never lasted more than a few minutes.”

“Well, if that’s all—” Bauer said, sounding more disappointed than reassuring. “And anyway you made it up, you say.”

The sergeant was being unusually subtle, and Conway hurriedly decided to take no chances on being left out on a limb without having concluded his recital.

“Yes, we did. But that wasn’t all — we had another spat that night.” He caught a gleam in the detective’s eye. “Oh, we made that up, too. But it makes you feel pretty rotten to realize that on the last day we were ever going to have together—” Conway was tempted to let his voice break the least bit, but decided it was inadvisable in Betty’s presence.

“You don’t have to feel so bad about it,” Bauer said. “Come on, get it off your chest. You’ll feel better.”

“It was even sillier than the other. When we left the house to go to dinner, I asked her if she had some money — I only had a few bucks in my pocket. I guess she thought I asked if she had the money. Anyway, when we found we were early for the picture we went across the street for a cup of coffee. I only had a few cents, so I asked her to let me have a dollar, and she opened her purse and I saw the whole roll of money. Well, I thought it wasn’t very bright to carry that amount of money around at night, and I said so. So she got mad and asked what did I expect her to do, and I said I didn’t expect her to walk around with a red flag — she was wearing that red scarf — asking to be hit over the head. Then she said, ‘Here, you take it if you think I’m apt to get hit over the head,’ but I didn’t want her flashing it around in the drugstore, so we waited until we got into the theatre, and she gave it to me there.” Conway’s voice became almost a whisper. “Then we held hands all through the picture.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Bauer demanded. “Don’t you see what happened? Some guy saw her with that dough, thought she still had it after the movie, and knocked her off for it.”

Conway realized he had been stupid not to mention it; he had been so wrapped up in his original plan that he had failed to take advantage of an accident which would have served to divert suspicion even further from himself. But it was too late now to be of use; since he had not spoken of it before, it was necessary to minimize its importance.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “it was so trivial I’d forgotten about it. And I’m sure nobody saw it — she only took the dollar out of her bag, and I happened to see the rest of the money in the wallet.”

“Can’t be sure,” Bauer said.

“I suppose it’s possible that someone might have walked past the booth at just the right second, looked down and happened to see the wallet in her purse,” Conway went on. “But it never even occurred to me until now.”

“Um-m,” said the detective. “Well, it don’t get us anyplace much, just saying that somebody might of seen the dough. Still—” He tried another mouthful of food and worked at it for some time before he looked again at Conway. “Say, this potroast is terrible tonight. I guess neither of us is very hungry, eh? What say we blow?”

“Fine with me.”

“You know, sometimes I don’t mind being on a diet a bit,” Betty said.

When they reached the car, Bauer stopped suddenly. “I forgot to call and check in,” he said. “Wait here in the car. Won’t be a minute.”

Conway was conscious of Betty’s sidelong glance as they sat in the car, but she said nothing. He knew, of course, that Bauer was talking to the waitress, checking the details of his story. He could think of nothing that would not dovetail; the waitress could have heard little of the preliminary conversation, he was sure.

He lit a cigarette and pondered on Bauer’s technique. If this man is typical of the detective force, he reflected, it’s a wonder anyone’s in jail. When Bauer emerged from the rear entrance a few moments later, Conway realized that he was regarding him with genuine fondness.

“Have to go back down to Headquarters,” Bauer said. “Never a minute’s peace.”

“Something up?”

“Yeah — I think they picked up another round-shouldered guy with a dark suit. I’ll drop you home.”

Conway waited for the sergeant to bring up the subject of the waitress and his suspicions. But nothing was said, and Conway realized it was too much to expect the detective to acknowledge himself wrong a second time. I wish he’d stop getting these ideas, Conway thought; a few more bum deductions and he may start not liking me so much.

They rode home in a silence so unusual that Conway knew Bauer must be feeling very dejected indeed. “Thanks for the dinner, Sergeant,” he said as they stopped in front of the house.

“And thanks for the chance to try out my will power,” Betty said.

“Don’t mention it.”

“I’ll take you out some night when we all have better appetites,” Conway said.

“That’ll be after I’m off this case,” Bauer said. “Be seeing you,” he mumbled as he drove off.

“Maybe you’ll appreciate my cooking now,” Betty said as Conway unlocked the door. She headed straight for the icebox. “You didn’t eat enough of that wood-pulp to affect your appetite, did you?”

“I could force myself to dally with one of those steaks if it were sufficiently rare,” he said. “What a smart girl you were.”