Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

“What kind? Hey — this is a hundred-dollar bill!” I said.

“They can change it. Get any kind — grab the first bottle you see and make it fast,” she said.

She sat down on a couch and I went out to the Sprite. A girl was sitting in it. She was pretty. In fact, she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I knew who she was, too. What’s more, she acted like she knew me.

“Hi, George. How’s about a lift to Santa Monica? Would you be kind enough?” she said.

Would I be kind enough! When Dorothy Dupree, star of screen and TV, asks for a lift she’s the one that’s being kind! “I’d be glad to, Miss Dupree,” I said, “but I got to drive up to the Mayfair first. How come you know my name?”

“I’ve seen you playing football, George. I watch you every time I get the chance, which is every time my drama coach will let me. I think you’re wonderful. Call me Dorothy,” she said.

“Okay, Dorothy.” I vaulted happily into the driver’s seat. “Want to run up to the Mayfair with me?”

“I can’t,” she said. “That’s where my drama coach has gone. She’d see me and I’d never get to Santa Monica today. I live next door” — she pointed to another gate — “and when I saw you bringing Phyllis Bennett home I thought, this is my chancel”

“To do what?”

“To get off on my own a little while,” she said. “To skip going to the studio just for once. No lines to study. No interviews. No dancing lessons. Is that too much to ask?”

I thought about it and decided that it wasn’t. “Everybody ought to have some time off once in a while,” I said. “When is this party you mentioned coming back?”

“Any minute now.”

“And she’ll make you do these things that you don’t want to do?”

“That’s her job and she’s an expert at it,” Dorothy said. “My mother’s in Reno, see, and while she’s establishing residence my drama coach is Head Disciplinarian and Chairman of the Board combined.”

I thought some more and came up with an answer. “There’s a drainpipe a short ways up the beach,” I said. “It’s a big pipe and this time of year there isn’t any water in it. If you’re not afraid of maybe getting your clothes a little dirty—”

“Sandals, shorts, and sweater? They’re expendable,” she said.

Sure enough, that turned out to be what she had on. It was funny that I hadn’t noticed them before. I must have been concentrating on her face. Her face was — you know, angelic? She had black hair, and the way the sun hit it made it look as though there was a halo perched on top.

“So you go down to the beach,” I said. “Crawl through the drainpipe and wait for me on the other side. That’s one place nobody will think to look for you. Okay?”

“Like it’s a deal,” she said.

That’s beat talk, that “like” jive. You can’t just say “okay.” You got to say “like okay,” and if you’re real beat it’s “like okay, man.” I never went for it, being a — you know, purist? — and anyway it’s sort of dated now. But coming from Dorothy I got to admit it sounded cute.

I watched her climb out and walk towards her own gate. Then I swung the Sprite in a U-turn and drove up to the market. I left it in the parking lot and went into the liquor department of the Mayfair. There were bottles of scotch lined up on the shelves on my right. I took one and carried it to the man behind the counter. I gave him Mrs. Bennett’s hundred-dollar bill.

“Got a bag to put the bottle in?” I asked.

He didn’t move, just stood there studying the bill. At last he looked at me. “I.D.” he said.

“Come again?”

“Let’s see your identification. I got to know how old you are.”

“Look.” I set the bottle on the counter. “It’s not for me. I’m buying it for a lady, Mrs. Bennett. She—”

He broke in. “Mrs. Phyllis Bennett?”

“That’s right,” I said. “She lives—”

“I know where she lives. Sorry, but I can’t sell you liquor. If you’ll wait a minute I’ll call Mrs. Bennett and explain.”

He got a phone book and started looking for the number. The bill was lying in front of me where he’d put it down. I put it in my pocket. It was Mrs. Bennett’s money and I had to see that it got back to her intact. He dialed the number he had found.

I got restless, waiting. Mr. Wurley’s class was the first period after the lunch hour. I might be able to alibi not having any paper finished enough to hand in, but at least I had to make the class on time. And there was Dorothy waiting for me in the drainpipe—

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Don’t she answer?”

“No,” he said. “You sure she’s at home?”

“She was a few minutes ago, and she didn’t look as if she was going anywhere,” I said.

He shrugged and kept on listening to nothing on the phone. I said, “Forget the whole deal, please,” and started to leave. He said something about holding on a minute because there was a question or two he’d like to ask, but I made out as if I didn’t hear.

I went out to the parking lot and got into the Sprite. I put the stick in what I thought was low-low, let in the clutch, and backed into a black-and-white job just behind me.

It turned out to be a Sheriff’s car. Two deputies got out and walked towards me, both wearing that sort of sad, disillusioned look that deputy sheriffs seem to cultivate.

“Operator’s license, kid,” one of them said.

I handed it to him. He read it. “This your car?” he asked.

“No, sir. It belongs to Mrs. Phyllis Bennett. I was running an errand—”

“Registration.”

I fished it out of the side pocket. He looked it over, gave it back. He looked at the front license tag and called out the number to the other deputy.

“Ring any sort of bell?”

“Not on the list.” The other deputy stopped staring at me long enough to shake his head.

The first deputy wrote me out a ticket. “Next time you’ll be more careful, won’t you, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Couldn’t you just—?”

I was going to point out that, after all, I hadn’t hurt his car and ask him to go easy on me, my driver’s license being practically virginal and all, but as he handed me the ticket I saw a complication headed in our direction and I changed my mind. The complication was the man from the liquor department. He was coming straight towards us and I foresaw a whole career ahead of me just answering questions. I put the ticket in my pocket and got out of the parking lot.

I drove straight back to Mrs. Bennett’s and left the Sprite where I had parked before. I went through the gate, and the three steps, and through the door. Mrs. Bennett was lying on the couch. “So that’s why she didn’t answer the phone,” I thought. “She passed out.”

Then I saw the hole in her head where the bullet had gone in and knew that this particular pass-out was going to be permanent. She was dead.

My heart started banging and my knees got rubbery, and there was a time — I don’t know how long it lasted — when I went here and there and back and forward, expending a lot of energy but not getting much of anything constructive done. I started for Mrs. Bennett. I thought I’d better feel her pulse or maybe hold a mirror over her face to see if she was breathing, but it didn’t take a mirror to tell me that she wasn’t and to know she didn’t even have a pulse.

So I stumbled over to the telephone. I picked it up, and then I put it down because I didn’t know whether to call the Emergency Hospital or the Sheriff’s office first So I ran into the patio intending to find one of the neighbors and pass the buck to him, but thinking about the neighbors reminded me that Dorothy was one of them and that she was waiting in the drainpipe. So I stopped again, just inside the gate.