A. Fair - Bedrooms Have Windows

“He wasn’t a detective,” she said, “surely he wasn’t a detective. He’s — why, he’s a nice young man, just the same as you are.”

I laughed and said, “Well, that’s a load off my mind. He’s a friend, then. You’ve known him for a while?”

“Not too long.”

I waited.

She said, “He’s nice. A nice young man.”

I said, “He looked like a detective to me.”

She frowned.

“How did you meet him?” I asked.

She said, “Well, you might call it accidentally. He’s a rich chap, has an interest in some mining properties, so he doesn’t have to work. He’s what you’d call a play-boy, I guess, although what a man like that can see in me is more than I can tell.”

She simpered.

“He can see what I can see, can’t he?”

“Mr. Lam! You forget my age. The man can’t be over… well, he’s a lot younger than I am.”

“I’ll bet he’s older.”

“Why, Mr. Lam! How you talk!”

“You know I’m right.”

She tried to look demure. “Why, such an idea never occurred to me. Mr. Durham was just trying to be nice to me…”

I smiled knowingly.

She looked as satisfied as a bird preening its feathers.

I said, “Well, I’m sorry. I hope you’ll pardon me.”

“For what?”

“For getting so personal.”

She said archly, “Women like men who get personal.”

“Do they?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I... I guess I just never stopped to think of it.”

“Well, that’s what they want,” she said. “Remember it.”

“I will.”

She looked at me somewhat wistfully. “Will you be back?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll have to come back several times. I’ll make an investigation and then I’ll have to come back and ask you some more questions.”

“I wish you would. I’d like to do something about that insurance company.”

I got to my feet. She raised her voice and called, “Susie.”

The maid popped into the room with suspicious alacrity.

“Mr. Lam’s leaving,” she said. “He’ll be back from time to time. I’ll see him any time he comes, Susie, any time.”

The woman merely nodded her head.

She stood to one side in the passageway, and I walked out ahead of her.

I unhooked the screen door and opened it. She stood in the doorway.

“Good-bye, Susie,” I said, and smiled.

She glared at me and said, “You’ve fooled her. That doesn’t mean you’ve fooled me,” and slammed the front door hard.

I thought that over while I was walking across the street to where I’d left the agency car. I’d parked off the pavement, on the side of the road, and when I noticed the tracks of flat-heeled, feminine shoes around the licence number, I was glad that we took the precaution of keeping the car registered in the name of a dummy.

I drove the agency car to the parking space we rented by the month, got out, locked the bus and started towards the building where our office was located.

I saw a flicker of motion from across the street, there a big police car came out of a parking lot, driving fast. Sergeant Frank Sellers of Homicide grinned from behind the wheel and said, “Hi, Master Mind!”

“Hi, yourself,” I told him. “What’s on your mind?”

He said, “I just wanted to talk with you. You’re a hard guy to catch. Bertha told me you were out working on a case.”

“That’s right, I am.”

“What case?”

“Don’t be silly. You know I can’t tell you that.”

“You’d have to if I asked the questions in the right way.”

“Well, that wasn’t the right way.”

“I’ve been trying to get you for two or three hours, Lam. You must have started out pretty early this morning.”

“Early is a relative word,” I said, “depending on whether you’re working for Bertha Cool or the taxpayers.”

He didn’t see the humour of that. He pulled the catch and pushed the door open. “Get in.”

“Where are we going?”

“Places.”

“For what?”

“Never mind. Get in.”

I got in. He slammed the door shut and poured speed into the car.

“Can’t you tell me where we’re going?” I asked.

“Not now. I don’t want to question you, and I don’t want any statements from you until I’m sure of my ground. When I’m sure of it, I’m going to give you a chance to come clean.”

I settled back against the cushions and yawned.

Sergeant Sellers turned on the siren, and we really started making time through the frozen traffic.

“Must be an emergency,” I said.

He grinned. “I just hate to plod along behind a stream of Sunday drivers. It does them good to hear a siren once in a while. Makes ’em get over. They — damn the guy!”

Sellers whipped the car into a skid, barely avoided a chap who had swung out, trying to pass another car.

Having missed the collision, Sellers slammed on his brakes and we skidded to a stop when a road patrol car flashed out of line and the man at the wheel shouted, “I’ll get him!”

“Throw the book at him!” Sellers yelled. “Give him the works on five counts.”

The officer nodded.

Sellers stepped on the throttle once more, saying, “Guys like that should be locked up and kept locked up.”

“That’s right,” I told him. “Here you are tearing out on a matter of life and death and…”

He flashed me a sidelong glance. “Better save your sarcasm. You may need it later on.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll save it. I probably will need it.”

Another three minutes, and I knew where he was taking me. I braced myself for what was bound to happen and sat tight. The KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT seemed drab and shoddy by daylight. At night, the neon signs in front had been arranged so that it gave a certain colourful glamour to the front. The motorist could see the sweep of the curved gravel driveway, the red and green lights, the cottages arranged in neat, orderly rows, with lights illuminating only the white stucco fronts and showing the neat whiteness of the gravel. But by daylight the backs of the cottages were apparent and the white stucco showed that it was badly in need of paint and repair, chipped here and there, grimy with dirt.

Sergeant Sellers swung the car into the driveway. “Come on in, Lam,” he invited.

I followed him in.

The woman who ran the place looked us over.

“Ever seen him before?” Sellers asked.

I met her eyes.

“That’s the one,” she said.

“What one?”

“The one I was telling you about, the one who came here in Fulton’s car. He’s the one that wrote ‘Dover Fulton, 6285 Orange Avenue, San Robles.’ That’s his handwriting.”

“What about the girl with him?”

She sniffed, and said, “Some little tramp. And if you ask me, this man is grass green. My God, he came here with a stall about this dame being sick and needing a rest-room. I told him we didn’t have rest-rooms, that we had cabins and that the cabins had baths and toilets, and asked him if he wanted one. And what do you suppose he said?”

Sergeant Sellers was regarding me speculatively. “What the hell did he say?”

“Said he’d have to go and ask her.”

Sellers grinned.

“I almost didn’t rent it to him,” she said. “It’s people like that who give a place a bad name. I wish now I’d followed my inclination and kicked him out. A couple of little amateurs, that’s what they are. After all, I’m not running a place for kids.”

“He ain’t a kid,” Sellers said.

“Well, he acts like it.”

“What about the babe that was with him?”