Erle Gardner - Beware the Curves

Her eyes met mine. “You’re working for me,” she said. “You have no right to say I’m lying.”

“The hell I haven’t! I’m working for you. I’d like to salvage something before it’s too late.”

“I wasn’t in the house when the shot was fired,” she said.

“Where were you?”

“On the road to San Diego.”

“Let’s try it again,” I told her.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you this. I was on the road to San Diego but I can’t prove it. Walden, who ran the service station, was mistaken. He thought he closed up at nine o’clock. He hadn’t wound his watch that day. It stopped about seven o’clock. He tuned in his radio in order to get the time. The program was over at seven-fifteen. He thought it was over at seven-thirty. He set his watch fifteen minutes fast. He didn’t realize it until after he had testified in the inquest. He was absolutely positive his watch was right. He said at the inquest that he had set his watch by the radio less than two hours before he closed. Everyone took it for granted that he had set his watch with a time signal. He hadn’t. He’d set it with a program. He’d made a mistake of fifteen minutes on the program.”

“He found this out?” I asked.

“Yes. He found it out after the inquest. But Bruce Walden has confidence in me. I told him that it wouldn’t make any difference, that I actually was on my way to San Diego and he believed me. So he has never said anything.”

“Where’s Bruce Walden now?” I asked.

“He was running a service station then. Now he’s a gasoline distributor for the entire county.”

Quinn looked at me.

I said, “They have this man Victor. Victor’s positive the station was closed at seven minutes to nine when he drove by.”

Elizabeth Endicott said, “If they should start digging, Mrs. Walden would also testify that her husband was mistaken. He got home at five minutes past nine. He couldn’t have done that if he actually closed the station at nine. She took it for granted he’d closed up early. Nothing was said. It wasn’t until after the inquest that she began to put two and two together. She asked him about setting his watch. He told her how it had happened. She’s the one who pointed out to him that he was fifteen minutes off on the time.”

Quinn looked at me and threw up his hands.

Bertha Cool said, “Fry me for an oyster!”

“All right,” I told Quinn. “We’ll start from here. One of the first things to do is to find that gun before the D. A. finds it. Remember this: the D. A.‘s in a spot. He’s prosecuting John Ansel for first-degree murder. He doesn’t want to back up and dismiss. Even if he could prove Walden closed that station fifteen minutes early he still hasn’t proven Elizabeth Endicott guilty of killing her husband. That’s bothering him right now. That’s raising hell with his thinking.

“We’re going out and find that gun if it’s still there.”

“But don’t you see,” Barney Quinn said, “when Ansel gets on the stand he’s going to have to tell the truth. He can’t lie successfully, and now that I know his story, I can’t put him on and let him tell a lie. He has to tell about that gun.”

I said, “He doesn’t have to get on the stand.”

“If we don’t put him on the stand, we’re licked,” Barney said.

“No,” I told him. “We’ll let the district attorney play into our hands.”

“How?”

“We’ll give him a witness.”

“Who?”

“Helen Manning.”

“Who’s she?”

“She is a discharged secretary who came to Elizabeth Endicott and told her what a heel her husband was. She’s the woman who told Elizabeth for the first time that Karl had deliberately sent John to his death. She’s the woman who made Elizabeth Endicott think about killing her husband. She’s the woman who first put the idea into Elizabeth’s head.”

Elizabeth Endicott sat perfectly still, her face an absolute mask. “What are you trying to do?” she asked. “Send me to the gas chamber?”

“We’re trying to get the district attorney straddling a barbed-wire fence,” I said, “one foot on one side, one foot on the other.”

“You can’t do it with that guy. He’s smart,” Quinn warned.

“All right,” I said, “what are you going to do with him?”

Quinn didn’t have the answer to that one.

I turned to Elizabeth Endicott. “There’s only one thing for us to do. We don’t dare use flashlights. We can’t make the search by daylight or someone would tip the police off. Cooper Hale owns the property next to your estate so we’ll have to wait until well after midnight. We’ll go out to your house. We’ll ease out of the side door. Then we’ve got to get down on our hands and knees and search every inch of that hedge by feeling.”

“But what will we do if you find it?” Barney Quinn asked.

“We’ll keep it,” I said.

“It will be evidence,” Quinn pointed out. “It’s a crime to conceal evidence. It’s unprofessional conduct. They could disbar me for that.”

I grinned at him. “You won’t be there, Barney. Tomorrow be sure to ask me if we found a gun in the hedge. Come on, Bertha, let’s go. We’ll see you at your place in a couple of hours, Mrs. Endicott. Leave the back door open for us. You can fortify us with coffee and assure us the coast is clear.”

It was a dark night. High fog was drifting in from the ocean and there was a lot of humidity in the air.

Bertha Cool and I were down on our hands and knees on the damp grass, crawling along the hedge, our fingers digging through every inch of the soil.

“Why did you tell Betty Endicott to stay inside?” she asked.

“For one reason, we can’t trust her,” I said. “For another reason, in case anybody comes she can give us a signal.”

“I’ve ruined a dress, a pair of nylons and broken two fingernails,” Bertha Cool said.

“That’s nothing,” I said. “You may be ruining your professional career.”

“Why the hell do we do this?”

“It’s a service we give our clients.”

“I never did anything like this before you came along,” Bertha said. “It wasn’t until you teamed up with me that we started getting into all these damn scrapes.”

“You never made money before,” I told her. “Shut up and get busy. Don’t just skim along the surface. Work your fingers down deep into the soil. The thing has been out here for years, and it’ll be pretty well covered.”

“How come no one’s found it?” she asked.

“No one’s looked. The gardener puts water on the hedge. He trims it once in a while. The hedge is so thick it keeps weeds from growing underneath and he’s never spaded it up to do a decent job of it. He’s cut sod around the edges and thrown dirt into the center. He’s probably covered the thing up years ago.”

Bertha ripped out a string of cuss words.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve torn my dress and scratched my face. Donald, why the hell can’t we have a flashlight on this job?”

“We can’t let anyone know what’s going on. The police may be keeping the place under surveillance. Hale lives next door.”

Bertha grunted, groaned, heaved around on her hands and knees. She cussed me up one side and down the other, and then my fingers struck something.

“Wait a minute, Bertha!” I said. “I think... it’s either a stone or... okay, this is it. It’s the gun!”

“Well, thank God,” Bertha said. “It’s about time!” She heaved herself to her feet. “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to get into my apartment house. If the doorman gets a look at me, he’ll think I’ve been stealing chickens.”