A. Fair - Up for Grabs

“Okay, okay,” Sellers said wearily. “He had an accomplice. After we get him, we’ll get a confession and we don’t give a damn whether he had an accomplice or not. What we want is to get him.”

I said. “You go ahead and build up a murder case against Foley Chester in his absence, then Chester shows up and you have a surprise for him, a nice fat murder rap.”

”I’ll say we have a surprise for him,” Sellers said.

“Who knows,” I pointed out, “by the time he gets back you may have distorted the evidence enough so that the guy can’t prove his innocence.”

“What evidence?” Sellers asked sarcastically.

“The evidence of this man walking down the sandy bottom of the barranca, for one thing,” I said. “Figure it out for yourself. The road is coming down a steep ridge. It makes half a dozen loops, but it comes back within a hundred feet of this sandy wash not over a mile and a half down there from where you found the car, and even if you only go half a mile down the wash, the elevation is decreased so that it’s only a couple of hundred yards back to the road.

“If I had gone down to burn up a car. I wouldn’t go climbing back up that steep slope. I wouldn’t leave a car up there where any traffic officer would tag it and question me. I’d set fire to the wrecked car and then I’d walk down the sandy slope of the barranca.”

“And then walk back along the road to the car?” Sellers asked dryly.

“Not if I had an accomplice,” I said.

The deputy turned to Sellers questioningly.

Sellers made a gesture of dismissal, waving his hand at the same time giving a Bronx cheer.

I said, “That cigarette is a brand you don’t hear of very often, and doesn’t do any advertising. It relies on good tobacco. And, if you’re lucky and the evidence hasn’t been handled too much, you can get a blood type from the saliva.”

“Phooey,” Sellers said.

The Kern County deputy walked over to where Sellers. had thrown the cardboard box and the cigarette, looked down at it for a moment, then picked it up and put it back in the cardboard box; put the cardboard box in his pocket.

“Let’s not overlook any bets that the defense could capitalize on,” he said. “Now that Lam has pointed this out, some defense attorney might claim we’d botched up the evidence.”

“Now that Lam has pointed it out, is right,” Sellers said. “Lam, you, get in your automobile and get the hell out of here, and don’t hang around any place where Chester is apt to be until we’ve put the cuffs on him. Now, I mean that. That’s a lawful order given you by an officer of the law. You keep the hell away from Chester and from the places where he’s apt to be.

“And now,” he went on with elaborate sarcasm, “since we know how busy you are, there’s no need to detain you. You can just get on about your business... And, if you trigger one of our stakeouts so that Foley Chester gets wise, so help me, I’m going to take a rubber hose and give you a working over that you’ll remember to your dying day. Now, get started!”

I looked in Sellers’ eyes and I got started.

Jim Dawson, the Kern County deputy, was watching me thoughtfully as I climbed up to the road.

From a telephone booth I called the Butte Valley Guest Ranch and asked to talk to Dolores Ferrol.

It took me a minute to get her on the phone. I could hear music and laughter.

“Hello, Dolores,” I said. “Donald Lam talking. What did you find out about Melita Doon?”

“Why, Donald, I talked with your secretary this afternoon and—”

“That’s all right,” I said, “I told her to call you. But, what about Melita?”

“The strangest thing happened,” she said. “Melita got a telephone call sometime before noon. I don’t know exactly when it was, but it came in while I was out on the morning ride.”

“And what happened?”

“She packed up in a hurry, said her mother was worse, that she had to leave. By the time I returned from the horseback ride, he was gone. It was that fast.”

“That’s fine,” I told her.

“Donald,” she said, “people have been asking questions about you.”

“That’s all right,” I told her. “Let them ask. I’m just checking up.”

“Don’t stay away too long,” she said, in the seductive voice of the professional.

“I won’t,” I told her and hung up.

It was nearly seven o’clock when I checked in at the office to put the camera back in the closet and see if there were any notes on my desk.

There was a light in Bertha’s office.

She evidently heard me come in and jerked the door open.

“My God,” she stormed, “trying to keep in touch with you is giving me ulcers from my Adam’s apple down. Why in hell don’t you tell me where you’re going?”

“Because I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“By anyone, I presume you mean Frank Sellers.”

“That was part of it.”

“Well, Frank Sellers knew all right. He called me up and said if you didn’t keep your nose out of that murder case he was going to throw you in the can and keep you there until the case was settled.”

“Frank is impulsive,” I said.

“Also he was mad as hell.”

“He gets mad,” I said. “It’s a weakness in an investigator.”

“Homer Breckinridge is anxious to see you,” Bertha said. “He’s been calling every half hour— Here he is now, I guess,” she interpolated, as the phone rang sharply.

She picked up the phone and instantly her voice changed to honey and syrup.

“Yes, Mr. Breckinridge, he just this minute came in the door. I was going to tell him to call you — he hasn’t been in here ten seconds... yes, I’ll put him on the phone.”

She handed me the telephone. Breckinridge said, “Hello, Donald?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s hell to pay.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I guess I outsmarted myself.”

“How come?”

“It seems that this man, Bruno, was a lot smarter than we gave him credit for being.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it seems that Alexis Melvin is in on the case.”

“Who’s he?”

“Alexis Bott Melvin is a whiplash injury specialist who is hated and feared by every insurance company in the West.”

“He’s that good?” I asked.

“He’s that bad,” Breckinridge said.

“And what has he done?”

“He’s moved in on the case.

“Now, I can’t tell whether Bruno was wise all along or whether Melvin was the one that got wise and has been giving us lots of rope so we would hang ourselves good and hard.”

“Go on,” I said.

“I can’t very well explain it to you over the telephone. I would like to talk with you tonight, but I can’t leave my house at the moment.”

“Do you want me to come out there?”

“If you could, Donald, it would be a big help.”

He hesitated a moment, then went on, “I am alone at the moment. My wife may come in while we are here. In the event she does, I think it would be best to be vague about details. There are some things about this business that she doesn’t understand.”

“I understand,” I told him.

“Thank you, Donald. You’ve shown great tact. You understand that it is necessary in this business to work with female operators just the same as it is necessary in your business, but it is always difficult to explain these matters to a woman.”

“I understand perfectly,” I said. “I’ll be out in about an hour. There’s one matter I have to take care of first. I can’t make it before that, but you don’t need to worry, you can trust my discretion.”

His voice showed relief. “Thank you, Donald. Thank you ever so much.”