A. Fair - Bedrooms Have Windows

I could see that that bothered Sellers. He hesitated for a minute then said, “I’m not betting, but I’m taking a look around, just the same.”

“You can’t search my apartment,” Claire Bushnell said.

“Oh, oh,” Sellers observed. “That’s the pay off.”

“Well, you can’t. You haven’t a warrant and you just can’t come barging in here. How do I know you’re an officer?”

“Bertha knows I’m an officer,” Sellers said. “Why don’t you want me to search the place, sister?”

“Because it’s my place. I don’t like the idea of police barging in here and going through it just any time they happen to feel like it.”

“Still want to bet?” Sellers asked Bertha.

There was a long interval of silence, then Bertha said dubiously, “I’ll bet you ten bucks.”

“Make it twenty-five,” Sellers said.

“No, ten,” Bertha said. “That’s my limit.”

“You’ve come down forty bucks.”

“You’ve changed your tune,” Bertha told him.

“Okay,” Sellers said, “I’ll bet you ten bucks. Get out of my way, sister. What’s behind this door?”

I could hear her struggling with Sellers. Sellers merely laughed.

“Damn you!” she panted. “You can’t do that. You…”

“Out of the way, sister, out of the way,” Sellers said.

The door latch clicked. The door swung open and the wall-bed pushed me out to one side.

“Well, well, well,” Sellers said. “First rattle out of the box. Come on out, Lam.”

I walked out into the room.

Bertha jumped up, her eyes blazing. “Why, you damned little son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed at me. “You’ve cost me ten bucks!”

Frank Sellers threw back his head and roared with laughter. “This is good,” he said. “This really is good.”

“Why, you ungrateful little…” Bertha’s voice choked with emotion.

Claire looked at me helplessly.

I said, “It’s all right, Claire. I’m sorry. I came up the stairs. You must have been out telephoning or something. The door was open. I came in here and waited for you to come back and then the door-bell began to ring. I didn’t know who it was so I slipped in here and pulled the door shut behind me.”

Sellers said, “You must have got here just before Bertha did, then.”

“That’s right,” I said.

Sellers quit laughing. He got up off the sofa, walked over to the door and said, “Show me how you pulled this thing shut after you got in there, Lam.”

I knew I was trapped. There wasn’t any handle on the inside of the door.

Sellers grinned, and said, “That makes it nice. Stick your wrists out, Donald.”

“Wait a minute, Frank. I want to go over this…”

“Stick your wrists out,” he said, his voice suddenly ringing with brutalized authority.

I knew that tone of voice. T knew the gleam in his eyes. I put my wrists out and Sellers snapped on handcuffs, then he searched me for weapons and said, “All right, now sit down. If you have any talking to do, start talking. You’re under arrest. You’re charged with the murder of Lucille Hollister. Anything you say can be used against you. Now talk your damn head off, if you want to.”

I said, “I didn’t kill her.”

“Yeah, I know. You just came in and found her dead and smeared lipstick all over your mouth and then went into the other kid’s bedroom and waited for her. I’d never have thought it of you, Donald. I always knew you were a queer piece of fish, but I never thought you were like that.”

I said, “Let’s go back to the beginning on this thing, Sellers.”

“Oh, nuts,” Sellers said, and then added hastily, “But go ahead. Keep talking.”

I said, “All you’re listening for is for me to say something that will incriminate me. Now, give a guy a break. Get your mind free and clear of all that prejudice. Forget you’re a cop and let’s see what we can make of this.”

“It’s your party,” Sellers said. “Go ahead and serve the refreshments.”

I said, “Let’s go into the history of this thing, Sellers. Lucille Hollister was crazy about her young sister, Rosalind. Rosalind was in love with Stanwick Carlton. Stanwick Carlton’s wife may have done a little playing around. Lucille thought she did, anyway. She wanted to bust up Stanwick’s marriage.”

“Who told you all this?” Sellers asked.

“Lucille.”

“When?”

“Just before she died.”

Sellers’ eyes lit up with the gleam of a hunter finding a fresh trail. “So you admit you were in the bedroom with her just before she died.”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes.”

“Why did you kill her, Donald? Was it a sex murder?”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “In the first place, I didn’t kill her. In the second place, it wasn’t a sex murder. Someone killed her to keep her from talking.”

“About what?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, what I’m trying to find out.”

“Go ahead,” Sellers said, and then turned to Claire Bushnell. “You heard him admit that he was with her just, before she died.”

Claire Bushnell, white-faced, tense, nodded.

I said, “That accounts for Lucille Hollister. She was trailing Minerva Carlton, but on this trip Minerva Carlton wasn’t playing around.”

“I see,” Sellers said sarcastically. “She went in that auto camp with Dover Fulton because he wanted to teach her how to play tiddlywinks, and she took her blouse off so the sleeves wouldn’t get wrinkled.”

I said, “Minerva Carlton was playing a deep game. She came to Claire Bushnell, here, and gave her a cheque for five hundred dollars and instructions as to what Claire was to do. Claire was to get Bertha Cool to find out about a man who was calling on Claire Bushnell’s aunt.”

Sellers glanced at Claire Bushnell.

She nodded.

Sellers, interested now, said, “Go ahead, Lam. What’s the sketch?”

I said, “I got on the job. I shadowed this man to the Westchester Arms Hotel. He was staying there. He was registered under the name of Tom Durham — now why do you suppose Minerva Carlton wanted him shadowed?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Sellers said. “I’m not a mind reader.”

I said, “When Lucille Hollister went to the motor court with me, she opened her purse and took out a packet of cigarettes and some matches. She left both cigarettes and matches on the table. The matches had the imprint of the Cabanita Club.”

“So what?” Sellers asked.

“And,” I went on, “when she took out the cigarettes she had evidently forgotten that she had used the cigarette packet as concealment for a little piece of paper. It was a piece that had been torn from the menu of the Cabanita Club, and on it had been written, KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT.”

“And that was the place where Lucille Hollister steered you?” Sellers asked.

“That’s right.”

“The place where Dover Fulton and Minerva Carlton committed suicide?”

“The place where they were murdered,” I corrected.

Sellers said, “Well, well, the party’s perking up. You mean they were murdered, with the door locked from the inside?”

“That’s right.”

“Keep talking,” Sellers said. “We may have you on two or more counts of murder, just in case we can’t convict you on the first one.”

I said, “The door was locked from the inside, all right, but who knows when it was locked?”

“What are you getting at?”

I said, “There were several shots fired.”

“That’s right. One in the suitcase, one in Dover Fulton, one in Minerva Carlton.”

“That’s four,” I said.

“Four!” Sellers said. “Are you nuts? That’s three.”