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Erle Gardner: Beware the Curves

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Erle Gardner Beware the Curves

Beware the Curves: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Unfettered, unfiltered, unorthodox Bertha Cool and Donald Lam have four of the least likely and most popular private eyes in the business — and they’ve never been in sharper focus! It’s always exciting when Erle Stanley Gardner assumes his favorite pseudonym of A. A. Fair and lets her rip! This new mystery novel is exhibit A proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Bertha Cool and Donald Lam are among the most ingenious and inventive characters in mystery fiction. Here is all the old sweet-and-sour, plus the catchiest plot ever dissected by the intrepid twosome. Bertha is at her toughest and funniest, and Donald is at top form knowing and debonair. Beware the Curves

Erle Gardner: другие книги автора


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The investigation of the murder of William Desmond Taylor followed a similar pattern.

I made copious notes.

When the library closed, I knocked off for the night, with two shorthand books filled with notes.

Wednesday morning I went once more to the newspaper files in the morgue.

Bertha Cool was just going out to lunch as I came in.

“You’ve been to Susanville?” she asked.

“I’m going.”

“Going?” she said. “My God! You’re supposed to have been on your way long ago. Our client rang up and I told him you were already up there.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“What the hell have you been doing?” Bertha blazed at me.

“Getting some insurance,” I said.

“Insurance?“

I nodded.

“For what?”

“To keep us from losing our license,” I told her.

“When are you starting?” Bertha asked, too exasperated to ask for particulars.

“Now,” I told her. “I take a plane to Reno; then I’m renting a car at Reno and driving to Susanville.”

Bertha glared at me angrily. “When will you get to Susanville?”

“It all depends,” I told her.

She said, “Our client is on pins and needles. He’s telephoned twice. He wanted to know if you’d taken off. I told him you had.”

“That’s fine. As long as he feels we’re on the job, he’ll be satisfied.”

Bertha’s face darkened. “Why the hell do you need to take out insurance when we’re working on a dead open-and-shut case?”

“Because it’s dead open-and-shut.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “The police would like to clean up the Endicott murder. They have one witness, a taxi driver by the name of Drude Nickerson. He’s their case. All of a sudden the obituary column reports the death of Drude Nickerson up in Susanville. It’s private. No flowers. You’d naturally think the body would be shipped back to Citrus Grove and that the funeral would be held there.”

Bertha blinked that over.

“I’ll be seeing you,” I told her, and started for the door.

“Pickle me for a beet!” Bertha said under her breath as I opened the door.

Chapter 5

It was late afternoon when I pulled in to Susanville. I located myself in a motel and registered under my true name, giving the address of the agency.

I looked up the Susanville Undertaking Parlors.

“You have a body here — Nickerson?” I asked.

The man at the desk sized me up carefully, then made a show of looking through some records and a card index.

“That’s right.”

“Can you give me his first name?”

“Drude,” he said. “D-r-u-d-e.”

“Know anything about the man’s background or anything?”

“It was a coroner’s case,” he said. “Injuries on the highway.”

“When’s the funeral?” I asked.

“Private.”

“I know it’s private, but when?”

“It hasn’t been decided yet.”

“Could I see the body?”

“It’s a closed casket case. Who are you?”

“The name,” I said, “is Lam, Donald Lam, from Los Angeles.”

“A relative?”

“No, I’m interested.”

“What’s your interest?”

“Just checking. Nickerson lived in Citrus Grove. How come they aren’t having the funeral there?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“The coroner handled the case?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll get in touch with the coroner.”

“Do that.”

“How about this man’s clothes?” I asked. “I take it he had identification. Could I take a look at his driver’s license?”

“I’d have to get permission.”

“How long would it take?”

“Not long.”

The man picked up a telephone, dialed a number, said, “There’s a Donald Lam here from Los Angeles inquiring about Drude Nickerson, wants to take a look at the man’s driving license and stuff that was in the clothes, wants to be sure of the identification, making inquiries. What’ll I do?”

The man listened for a moment, then said, “Okay.”

He hung up the phone, and said, “A representative of the coroner is coming right over. He’ll show you what you want to see if you can give him a reason.”

“I’ll give him a reason,” I said.

I waited for about two and a half minutes. I tried to get the man at the desk in conversation, but he’d quit talking. He made a great show of doing some paper work.

The door opened and three men walked in. They had LAW stamped all over them.

The man at the desk motioned toward me with his thumb.

The three men moved in on me.

“Okay,” one of them said, flashing a badge. “I’m the sheriff here. What’s your interest in the Nickerson case?”

“I’m making an investigation.”

“Why?”

“I’m a detective.”

“The hell you are.”

“That’s right.”

“Let’s take a look.”

I showed him my credentials.

The sheriff looked at the taller of the two men, said, “All right, Lam, this is the second pass you’ve made on this case. This gentleman here is the sheriff of Orange County.”

“How are you?” I said. “Glad to know you.”

The Orange County sheriff nodded curtly, made no move to put out his hand. “What were you doing checking newspapers in Citrus Grove yesterday, asking about the Endicott case?”

“I was looking up the facts.”

“All right,” the local sheriff said. “I think you’d better come with us.”

They moved in, one on each side, and escorted me out to an automobile.

They took me direct to a private residence. I assumed it was that of the local sheriff.

The sheriff from Orange County took charge. He was rather a nice individual, but he was determined and he was mad.

“You can’t pull a run-around like that with the law,” he said. “You’re a licensed member of a detective agency. This is murder.”

“Sure, it’s murder,” I said.

“Now, you went down to the newspaper in Citrus Grove and started messing around looking up dope on the Endicott murder, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, because we have the information that—”

I said, “If you get your information straight, you’ll find that I was looking up Endicott’s marriage.”

The men exchanged glances.

“Get the newspaper on the phone,” I told them. “I’ll pay for the call. You’ll find out that I didn’t show the faintest interest in the murder at that time. I was looking up the marriage.”

The sheriff waved the matter to one side. “All right. No need to put through the telephone call. We’ll take your word for it. You were looking up the marriage. Why were you looking up the marriage?”

“Because I already had everything on the murder.”

“You admit that?”

“Sure, I admit it.”

“You’d been looking up the murder?”

“Of course, I’d been looking up the murder.”

“Well, now that’s a lot better. That’s just a hell of a lot better. Now why were you looking up the murder? What’s it to you? What do you know about the case?”

“I know everything that the police have given the newspapers about the case,” I said. “The death of this fellow Nickerson gives it a swell angle. I’m looking up a whole series of unsolved murder cases in the Southwest. I’m going to write a regional book. I don’t know whether to call it ‘Southern California Murders,’ or what to call it.”

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