Erle Gardner - Beware the Curves

“Tears for that crook!” she blazed. “What I want to know is what’s going to happen to the zoning ordinance. I wouldn’t cry over that two-timing—

“Wait a moment, I guess I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead. It isn’t supposed to be the sporting thing to do.”

“Go ahead and speak ill of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He isn’t dead,” I told her.

She looked at me with big eyes. “How do you know?”

“I don’t know. I’m guessing,” I said. “I don’t think he’s dead. I think the whole thing is a plant.”

She sat very still for several minutes, thinking things over. Suddenly she looked up at me and said, “Donald, you’re a darling and you may kiss me good night. What’s more it’s not going to be a cold, chaste kiss. Get ready, Donald, for an experience. You’re about to receive an osculatory award from a grateful woman.”

It was everything she said it was going to be.

I caught the six o’clock plane for Los Angeles and got to the office about the time Bertha Cool did.

“Get my wire?” I asked.

“Get your wire!” Bertha Cool said. “Of course I got your wire. How drunk were you when you sent it?”

“Cold sober.”

“What the hell did you think you were doing, going out in the desert to collect flora and fauna? You couldn’t get excited over a commonplace plant. What the hell were you talking about?”

“Didn’t you understand what I meant?” I asked. “I wanted you to warn our client. The thing was a plant.”

“What was?”

“Drude Nickerson’s death.”

Bertha Cool blinked her sharp little eyes at me. “Why the hell didn’t you say so?”

“I did. I sent you a wire.”

Bertha did some thinking for a minute. “If that’s a plant,” she said, “our client could be in one hell of a mess.”

“How come?”

Bertha said, “I was burning up the long-distance telephone wires trying to get in touch with you. I called every motel, hotel, rooming house and honky-tonk in Susanville.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“We’re fired. We don’t have any more case.”

“What’s happened to the case?”

“The client got his information out of a newspaper and it was all the information he needed.”

“What newspaper?” I asked.

“The Citrus Grove Clarion.”

“What did that paper have to say?”

“The paper found out about the death of Drude Nickerson. It published quite a story about it, and said that with the death of Nickerson the last chance of ever solving the murder of Karl Carver Endicott had passed. The newspaper went on to comment that Nickerson was the only man who had seen the killer and who could have made an identification.”

“And that interested our client?” I asked.

“Very much.”

“What did he do?”

“Told me that he had all the information that he wanted, that it had been a pleasure to do business with us, that he felt certain we could have handled the matter in such a way that it would have given him the greatest satisfaction, but there was no longer any need for us to concern ourselves. The matter was all taken care of. He had the information he wanted.”

“How nice!” I said. “The widow of Karl Carver Endicott. What about her?”

“What do you mean, what about her?”

“Where is she?”

“What’s that to us?”

“Let’s find out,” I said. I picked up the phone and told the office operator to put in a call for Elizabeth Endicott at Citrus Grove; that it was a person-to-person call, we’d talk with no one else if she wasn’t there; that if she wasn’t there, to find out where we could reach her. If she was at a telephone any place in the United States, we’d talk with her there.

Bertha was blinking her eyes at me as I hung up. “Are you nuts?” she asked.

“No.”

“Those calls cost money.”

“We still have expense money.”

“Not now we don’t. The case is over.”

“For your information,” I said, “if the thing is happening the way I have it doped out, the case is just starting. Whether we’ll be in it or not, I don’t know.”

Bertha said, “You must be off your rocker, Donald, or else you’re thinking about some other case. Our client, John Dittmar Ansel, called up and told us there was no more case, to discontinue expenses, to make an accounting. Do you understand?”

“Sure I understand. Ansel is the one who doesn’t understand.”

“What doesn’t he understand?”

“That he’s walking into a trap.”

The phone rang and the girl at the office exchange stated that Mrs. Endicott was away and would be gone for about a week, that there was no place where she could be reached.

I relayed the information to Bertha.

“Well?” Bertha asked.

I said, “I suppose we could telephone our correspondents in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Yuma, Arizona, and have them on the job so we could tip Ansel off. But that’s going to cost a lot of money and I don’t think he’d pay to have his wedding interrupted.”

“Could you blame him?” Bertha asked.

“No,” I said, and started for the door.

“Now wait a minute! Don’t walk out of here without telling me what this is all about,” Bertha snapped.

“I don’t know yet, not for sure.”

“When will you know?”

“When they arrest John Dittmar Ansel and Elizabeth Endicott just as they step up to the altar prepared to enter into the holy bonds of wedlock.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“Well then, who the devil is our client, John Dittmar Ansel?” she asked.

“For your information,” I said, “John Dittmar Ansel is the man who was taken to Karl Carver Endicott’s house in Drude Nickerson’s taxicab on the fateful murder date.”

Bertha thought that over a long time. “Can they prove it?”

“Of course they can prove it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to get him to come out into the open and furnish them with proof of motivation.”

“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said, as I walked out and left her sitting there, snapping her fingers in an ecstasy of exasperation.

I woke up about one-thirty and had trouble getting back to sleep. A whole series of events were chasing around in my mind trying to fit themselves into a pattern.

Three or four times I would doze off, only to waken with a start as all of the various ideas started chasing each other around like puppies at play. Finally about two-thirty I slipped into fitful sleep. It was broken by dreams and finally shattered by the ringing of the telephone bell.

I groped for the receiver.

Bertha Cool was on the line. I knew by the tone of her voice that we’d struck pay dirt.

“Donald,” she said in her most cooing voice, but mouthing the words as though each one had been a dollar rung up in the cash register, “Bertha hates to bother you at night, but could you get dressed and hurry to the office?”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I can’t explain, Donald, but we have a client who is in very great trouble. We—”

I said, “Listen, Bertha, are you dealing with the man who was arrested, with the woman who was with him, or with some lawyer?”

“The second,” she said.

“I’ll be right up. Where are you now?”

“I’m at the office, Donald. It’s the strangest, the weirdest story you ever heard in your life.”

“Mrs. Endicott there with you?”

“Yes,” Bertha said shortly.

“I’ll be up.”

I tumbled out of bed, into a shower, hit the high spots with an electric razor, jumped into clothes and drove through deserted streets to the office building.