A. Fair: Shills Can't Cash Chips

“Well, if it blew up in his face, you can’t blame him.”

I said, “Only one phase of it did. We got hold of the wrong phase. We took the wrong turn in the road.”

“All right, what’s the right turn in the road?”

“You are.”

He said, “Don’t talk in circles, Lam. Put it on the table.”

I said, “All right. Holgate had an automobile accident on the thirteenth of August. He reported to the insurance company that he had collided with the rear of an automobile driven by Vivian Deshler who lives at the Miramar Apartments and that the accident was his fault. The front end of his car was caved in, not so bad that he couldn’t drive it, but nevertheless caved in, and the injuries to Vivian Deshler’s car were rather slight.”

Chief Dale’s eyes narrowed. “Go on,” he said.

I said, “Vivian Deshler said she had sustained a whiplash injury and made a claim against the insurance company. From the way the claim was prepared the insurance company felt there was a professional hand somewhere in the background.”

“A shrewd lawyer?”

“Could have been.”

“Go on, Lam.”

“Well, the funny thing is that there were no witnesses to the accident, that the front end of Holgate’s automobile was pretty badly caved in, but the back of Vivian Deshler’s car, which was a light car and should have been the one that sustained the most damage, was only slightly injured.

“There were some other things about the accident that began to look a little peculiar. Then I found out that Holgate’s car apparently was in good condition at four-thirty on the afternoon of the thirteenth; yet the accident was supposed to have taken place about three-thirty. I guess there’s no question that Vivian Deshler’s automobile was damaged by three-thirty in the afternoon. Doris Ashley, her friend, saw the car at that time and the tail end had been crumpled — not too bad but enough to notice.”

“Go on,” Dale said.

I said, “The records show that nobody said anything about any accident taking place at the location given in Colinda until the next day.

“Now then, under all the circumstances it occurred to me that perhaps Holgate had been mixed up in a hit-and-run accident that happened sometime in the evening, that he was in a quandary as to what to do; that he told his girl friend, Vivian Deshler, about it, and Vivian Deshler said, ‘Well, my car was damaged this afternoon. Why don’t we claim that the damage to your car was done when it hit my car and report it as an automobile accident?’

“ ‘That would account for the damages to your car. You could take it right in and have it fixed. You could report an accident to the insurance company. They’d have an appraiser come and take a look at your car and then the claim agent would come and talk with me and I’d tell him my story. That would account for the damages to your car and let you out of the hit-and-run deal.’ ”

A smile began to spread across the chief’s face. “You got anything that’ll support this except theory?” he asked.

I said, “I think we can get quite a bit. If Holgate’s car wasn’t smashed at four-thirty in the afternoon, if Vivian Deshler’s car was smashed at three-thirty, that’s pretty damned good evidence that the report of the accident was a fake.”

“Would Holgate get murdered on account of it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think that Holgate contemplated the fact that his girl friend, Vivian Deshler, was going to put in a whopping big claim against the insurance company for a whiplash injury. I think that the minute that happened, Holgate realized he was involved in a criminal conspiracy, in obtaining money under false pretenses, that he could go to prison, and that he’d got himself out of the frying pan and into the fire. I think perhaps Holgate began to get cold feet and wanted to get out.

“I think that when Holgate realized the insurance company wasn’t satisfied with the explanation he had made about how the accident occurred, he became terribly apprehensive, and since a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, the people who were mixed in it with him—”

“You mean Vivian Deshler murdered him in order to keep him from blabbing?”

“I don’t know who murdered him,” I said. “The murder may have no connection with the hit-and-run accident. On the other hand, it may all be tied in together.

“What I’m doing is tying up loose ends, and what you’re interested in is getting this hit-and-run accident solved.”

“Am I interested in it!” he said. “That’s the understatement of the year. That damned hit-and-run may cost me my job if I can’t solve it.”

“Mind telling me about it?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” he said. “I was driving along the street going home when I saw this car coming behind me and I didn’t like the way it was driving. It didn’t occur to me that the man was drunk but I thought it was reckless driving. I pulled off to the side of the road and just as the man came up I held out my arm for him to stop. I was going to flag him down, take a look at his license, throw a scare into him and maybe give him a ticket.

“Instead of doing what he should have done, he swerved the car directly toward me, smashed into the left rear of my car, pushed me clean over into the ditch. Then his car glanced off and away he went.

“I was shoved off the road so far I thought I was going over. I was fighting the steering wheel for a matter of seconds. My left rear tire had blown out under the impact. I couldn’t chase him and under the circumstances I didn’t get any kind of a description.

“It’s one of those things. No one could have secured a description, but because I’m chief of police and because I’m always yelling about keeping your presence of mind and getting a description of any car that acts suspicious — well, I don’t need to draw a lot of diagrams for you. Now that’s the situation.”

“All right,” I said. “You’ve been anxious to solve it. You’ve got evidence.”

“You’re damned right I’ve got evidence,” he said.

“How much evidence?”

“Quite a bit. When the car hit me it smashed the right headlight. We have part of the lens. Some of the paint came off and we have a piece of grill — the stuff was from a Buick. If we could ever have found the damned car we could have made a case all right. But we couldn’t find the car.”

“You covered repair shops?”

“Of course I covered repair shops. What the hell! I had every repair shop that did any work on a car, particularly a Buick of that model, make a detailed report to the police.”

“All right,” I said, “then the accident was investigated.”

“That’s right.”

I said, “Let’s see if you have a report on work that was done on Holgate’s automobile.”

He studied my face for a minute, then began to grin. “Lam,” he said, “there’s just a chance — just a chance, mind you, that you’re a lifesaver.

“I don’t know as I’d buy this if it weren’t for the fact that I am personally involved. It’s a farfetched theory and I don’t know, I have an idea you may be trying to cut yourself a piece of cake and get yourself out of a murder case.

“Before I look, I’m going to ask you one question. I want a frank answer. The authorities feel that you were in that place of Holgate’s before you went back there with Holgate’s secretary, apparently to discover the wreckage. Now, I’m going to give you one test question: Were you in there or weren’t you?”

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

“And then you went back the second time for a cover-up?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t know what had happened, but I had made an affidavit that I’d seen that accident of Holgate’s—”