A. Fair - Up for Grabs

“Oh,” I said, “they’d probably use it all over the country, just in a spot announcement, you know, one of those little fifteen-second spot announcements that they buy on station time.”

“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Well,” I told her, “thank you very much. I just wanted you to know that we didn’t lose interest in our hundred-thousandth customer just because we had completed the sale.”

I left the apartment.

She was looking a little thoughtful as I left.

I took up a vigil outside of the apartment.

It was an all-night vigil. She didn’t come out until seven o’clock in the morning, then a taxi drew up and she came down and had the cabdriver bring down four suitcases. They were big heavy suitcases.

She took them all down to the airport, shipped the four of them by airfreight and kept only a little overnight bag with her.

She bought a ticket to Los Angeles.

There’s a knack about shadowing. If you are too anxious to be unobtrusive, you tip off your presence. If you just take it easy and are part of the scenery, it’s damned seldom people notice you.

I cut a small hole in a newspaper so I could hold it up and pretend to be reading. I kept watch until the Los Angeles flight was announced.

Mrs. Bruno was on first class. I got a ticket on tourist class went to the telegraph office, and sent a wire to Sgt. Frank Sellers Los Angeles Police Force:

PRIVATE DETECTIVE DONALD LAM HERE ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT NEW ANGLE ON MURDER CASE WHICH APPARENTLY YOU INVESTIGATING LOS ANGELES. LAM FOR LOS ANGELES AMERICAN, FLIGHT 709, THIS MORNING. WHILE HERE INADVERTENTLY NEGLECTED SIGN TEN DOLLAR CHECK. WE CAN PROSECUTE ON THAT IF YOU WANT EXCUSE TO HOLD HIM.

I signed the telegram, “Sgt. Smith,” sent it extra rush, then got aboard the tourist class section of the plane.

It’s a wonderful thing in following a person on a plane to be in tourist class. There’s a complete line of separation. The first-class people don’t come back to the tourist class, and the tourist very seldom go up to the first class.

I settled back in my seat. The plane was nonstop to Los Angeles and I had nothing to do except doze and wonder how I was going to explain to Breckinridge that I had taken it on myself to violate his instructions.

We flew steadily westward, racing the shadows and, at the speed of jet transportation, seeming to almost keep up with them. The air was smooth, clear as crystal, and after we passed New Mexico, we looked down on the Arizona desert and then the Colorado River and the Imperial Valley.

I almost fancied that I could pick out the Butte Valley Guest Ranch as we flew over Arizona. Buck Kramer would be out putting saddles on the horses; Dolores Ferrol turning on the highly personalized charm, infatuating the guests.

Then we began our long, slow descent into the Los Angeles airport and landed so smoothly that it was hard to tell we had reached the ground until the braking effect of the motors made itself manifest.

I was at the head of the line in the tourist-class division, but after I got off and reached the point where the stream of passengers merged I hung back until I saw Mrs. Bruno walking along, very sedate, with eyes downcast.

Then suddenly Sgt. Sellers and a plain-clothes man came barging down the long corridor.

I hurried to catch up with Mrs. Bruno. “Well, well,” I said, “you didn’t tell me you were taking this plane!”

She turned to look at me with consternation on her face, then suddenly made up her mind to brush it off as best she could. “Oh, Mr. Donald,” she said. “Well, heavens, you didn’t tell me you were on this plane.”

“I guess you were in first class” I said “My company doesn’t encourage me to travel on extra fare—”

“Okay, Pint Size,” Sgt. Sellers said. “This way.”

I said, “Well, well, Sergeant Sellers! Permit me to present the woman for whose murder you’re trying to arrest Foley Chester. Mrs. Chester, this is a very dear friend of mine, Sergeant Sellers of the local police.”

She looked as though she wanted to run, and that look was the thing that undid her. If she had been just a little scornful, just a little defiant and said, “What in the world are you trying to pull?” Sellers might have let her get away with it. But that look of panic gave everything away.

“What the hell are you talking about, Pint Size?” Sellers said, but his eyes were on the woman.

I said, “Mrs. Foley Chester, alias Mrs. Helmann Bruno.”

Sellers did a double take, fished a photograph out of his pocket, and said, “I’ll be damned if it isn’t.”

Then was when she started to run.

Sellers and the plainclothesman grabbed her.

By this time a crowd of gawking passengers were gathering around, and Sellers and the plainclothesman were rough with them. “On your way, folks,” Sellers said. “Break it up. Keep moving. That’s a lawful order from an officer. If you disobey it you’ll be arrested. Either keep moving about your business or get a free ride to headquarters in the paddy wagon, whichever you want.”

That started them scattering like startled chickens.

Sellers and the plainclothesman led the woman down to one of the deserted loading rooms which they used as an interrogation room.

“All right” Sellers said, “come clean.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s no us denying it. You’ve caught me.”

Sellers looked at me. I said, “It had to be that way. Chester didn’t push his wife over the grade on that detour, and Melita Doon, the nurse, didn’t have all her trouble because she stole a couple of X-ray pictures for a malingerer. What bothered her was the fact that she had stolen a corpse.”

“A corpse?” Sellers said.

“Sure. Read the hospital report. A woman patient of Melita Doon’s was supposed to have got up and walked out. She was a patient who was in for treatment in connection with an automobile accident. She died in the night.

“Chester, alias Bruno, had been waiting for a chance at a corpse like that. Melita had been stealing X-rays. This time they wanted a corpse. They had been waiting for weeks for the right sort of a death on Melita’s floor. They wanted an unattached woman of about Mrs. Chester’s build.

“They smuggled this woman’s body out of the hospital; took her clothes; clothed the body in Mrs. Chester’s clothes, had Melita Doon report a walkout, and then they planted the body and burned it past recognition so Chester could collect insurance on his wife.

“Unfortunately, however, the police were a little too efficient. They examined the rented car Chester had, found where the paint had been scraped when they pushed the other car sidewise over the grade so it would look convincing, and Chester knew that part of the jig was up. Chester and his wife had a getaway all planned. They had established secondary identities as Bruno and wife in Dallas.

“And Chester had still another ace in the hole. As Bruno, he reported an accident, a purely synthetic and imaginative accident. As Bruno, he reported that a car bearing Foley Chester’s license number had bumped him from the rear and had given him a whiplash injury.

“Then he flew to Los Angeles, and as Foley Chester reported the accident to the insurance company, stating that it was all his fault and putting the insurance company in a position where they had to admit liability.

“Originally, that had been all there was to it. They’d have settled for some ten or fifteen thousand, but when you entered the picture and started making Chester a fugitive from justice, Bruno saw his real chance. He then hired an attorney to represent him so that the case could be settled without Bruno having to appear or do anything other than sign papers.