A. Fair - Spill the Jackpot

“Why?”

“How did you know he didn’t show up?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Something you said over the telephone.”

“Nuts. You knew he wasn’t going to show up. Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“He didn’t take that San Francisco plane out of Reno. He just disappeared into thin air.”

I stretched, yawned, and said, “When do we entertain Lieutenant Kleinsmidt?”

“He’s on his way up now.”

Knuckles pounded on the door. I opened it, and Kleinsmidt walked in.

“You,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Quite a heel you turned out to be.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Taking a powder and putting me in Dutch, after the breaks I tried to give you.”

I said, “I was out working for you.”

“Thanks!” His voice was sarcastic.

“As I see it,” I said, “all that interests you is the murder of Jannix.”

“That’s all, just a little minor matter like that, but the chief gets funny complexes. He’s sort of riding me about it, and there’s been a little criticism here and there, a few suggestions that your departure was rather abrupt, that I might have safeguarded the interests of the taxpayers a little better by seeing that you were provided with room and board. Where’s that Framley woman?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“You went away with her.”

“Uh huh.”

“Where’d you leave her?”

“In Reno.”

“Then what?”

I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Let’s not talk about it. Another guy beat my time.”

I felt Bertha Cool’s eyes staring at me. Kleinsmidt said, “Who’s the guy this time?”

“Man by the name of Hazen.”

“The one who identified the stiff?”

“That’s him.”

“He didn’t look like such a lady’s man to me.”

I said, “I made the same mistake, Lieutenant.”

He said, “I think I’ll do a little checking on that, Lam.”

“Go ahead,” I told him. “I can give you the name of the man who runs the gasoline station where we rented a cabin.”

“What does he know about it?”

“He told me this morning that he heard my wife and the other man drive away in the night.”

Kleinsmidt said, “Too bad. I don’t think you’re looking well. You need a good rest. We have the best climate in the west right here in Las Vegas. We’d hate to have you leave us again unexpectedly. I’m going to make arrangements to see that you don’t.”

I said, “Well, don’t be in a hurry about it. Here’s something for you to run down first.”

“What?”

“Remember Paul Endicott, Whitewell’s right-hand man?”

“Naturally.”

“I don’t know whether you heard Whitewell say so, but was going to give his son a partnership interest when he got married. You know, the income-tax people get funny ideas about those things. When the new partnership was organized, they’d want an audit of the books, even if Whitewell didn’t.”

I saw Kleinsmidt’s eyes showing interest.

“Keep right on,” he said.

I said, “I wouldn’t know, but if I wanted to make a bet, it would be that an audit of Whitewell’s books would show the real reason Endicott didn’t want the marriage to go through. That’s why he got Helen Framley to write a letter to Corla Burke that would make her think the marriage couldn’t go through.”

“What was in the letter?” Kleinsmidt asked.

“I wouldn’t know exactly, but it seems that Corla Burke’s father walked out and left the family when she was about fifteen. I wouldn’t want to be quoted, but I think the letter told her that her father had been arrested and was serving time in a penitentiary. Naturally, Corla wouldn’t have gone ahead with the marriage under those circumstances. She wouldn’t have thought it was fair to Philip.”

“It’s your story,” Kleinsmidt said. “So let’s hear the next installment.”

“Corla got to brooding over it. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown from overwork, anyway. She started out to investigate. Naturally, it wasn’t anything she could entrust to anyone else, and she had to make a stall so she could get away and postpone the wedding until she could find out.”

“That shouldn’t have taken her long.”

“It wouldn’t have,” I said, “if the shock hadn’t thrown her off her trolley. They found her yesterday wandering around in Reno without the faintest idea of who she was or how she happened to get there.”

Kleinsmidt’s eyes narrowed into slits. He said, “Remember, Lam, I played ball with you once. I got my fingers hurt. Your pitching is full of curves. This time you’ve got to give me something that will stand up with the chief.”

“What do you suppose I’m doing now?” I asked him.

“I’m damned if I know. And I’m a little suspicious.”

I said, “Endicott was fighting for all the delay he could get. Jannix was to back his play. He was to be the witness who’d swear Corla’s father was in the pen. Endicott was going to pay him. You know Jannix. He was hot tempered and a little suspicious anyway. Endicott made the mistake of coming to see him, and caught Jannix in one of his more suspicious moments. When he left, Jannix was dead.”

“Very, very nice,” Kleinsmidt said. “Only it’s full of holes. It’s bum stuff, even for a theory. You wouldn’t, by any chance, have any facts to back up this fairy story, would you?”

“Lots of them.”

Kleinsmidt said, “Well, you might begin by telling me how it happened Endicott could have done this at the exact moment he was sitting in a picture show. The chief would be interested in that. He’s funny that way, the chief is.”

I said, “If a woman had killed Jannix, he was killed between eight-fifty and nine-fifteen. If a man killed him, he might have been killed any time.”

“How interesting!”

“The trouble with you,” I said, “is that you got a theory and then tried to fit the facts to it. Your idea was that because the people who lived in the adjoining apartment hadn’t heard a shot, the shot must have been fired while they were out.”

“Try firing a shot in there without that old dame hearing it,” Kleinsmidt said.

“Sure. She didn’t hear a shot. She was out at the train. Therefore, the murder must have been committed while she was out.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Suppose she hadn’t gone out?”

“Then she’d have heard the shot.”

“Would she?”

“Of course, she would.”

“But suppose she hadn’t?”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“If she hadn’t,” I said, “you’d have tried to find out why, wouldn’t you?”

“Naturally.”

I said, “The body was found in an apartment. The people in the adjoining apartment had been out from eight-fifty to nine-twenty. This made it very nice for you. You were able to narrow the crime down to a thirty-minute interval and start asking questions, accordingly. Well, if a woman had killed him, that would have been all right.”

“Why does a man make it any different?”

I said, “A big, powerful man could have shot him in the alley or in an automobile or out in an auto camp, loaded the body into a car, parked in the alley, thrown the body over his shoulder, taken it up to Helen Framley’s apartment and dumped it. Then he could have gone to a picture show and started building himself an alibi. Didn’t it ever occur to you as slightly strange that Endicott dashed in to Las Vegas just to see a movie? He must be some little fan.”

Kleinsmidt shook his head. “It’s lousy,” he said. “It stinks.”

“All right, you wanted me to give you something you could take to the chief. Don’t say I didn’t do it.”