Erle Gardner - The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

“At that you’re in hot water again,” she observed after a few minutes during which she silently concentrated on driving the car.

“It’s hot all right,” Mason admitted, “and it keeps getting hotter. It won’t be long until it starts boiling.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll become even more hard-boiled.”

“For one like that, you deserve to be conversationally ostracized,” she proclaimed. “I’m going to put you in verbal quarantine.”

“It’s really justified,” he admitted, letting his head drop back to the cushions, closing his eyes. “I really should be shot.”

Mason dozed while the dusty miles slipped behind. Then the dirt road joined a ribbon of paved highway and the car purred smoothly toward Mojave, topped a little rise, and the town of Mojave sprawled out across the face of the desert as listless, when seen from this distance, and as sun-bleached as a dried bone.

“Well,” Della Street said, easing the pressure on the foot throttle, “here we are. Where do we go?”

Mason, still with his eyes closed, said, “Nell Sims’ restaurant.”

“Think we can find it all right?”

Mason chuckled. “Her return should be quite an event in the history of Mojave. Doubtless there will be some manifestation. Her individuality is too strong to be swallowed without a trace in a town of this size.”

The road swung along for a short distance parallel to the railroad track. Della Street said, “Looks as though it had been snowing.”

Mason opened his eyes. Pieces of paper were plastered up against every clump of greasewood that dotted the face of the desert.

“Railroad track over here,” Mason said with a gesture, “and the winds come from that direction, and you’ve never really seen the wind blow until you’ve been in Mojave. Trains always spew out pieces of paper, and along here the winds blow them against the little greasewood bushes so hard that they stick. The accumulation of years along here. Down here a way, a man had a hat farm.”

“A hat farm?” Della asked.

“That’s right. It gets hot in the desert and people stick their heads out of the train windows. A certain percentage of hats blow off, and the wind rolls them along the ground like tumbleweeds until they fetch up against the greasewood on this fellow’s little homestead. His neighbors plowed up the ground on their homesteads and tried to grow things. The country starved them out. This man left all the natural brush in place and picked up enough hats in the course of a year to keep him in grub.”

Della Street laughed.

“No kidding,” Mason told her; “it’s a fact. Ask some of the people around here about the hat farm.”

“Honest injun?”

“Honest injun. You ask them.”

The road went down a little dip, made a slight curve and entered Mojave. At closer range the little desert metropolis presented more signs of external activity.

“There was a time,” Mason said, “when the only people who lived here were those who didn’t have carfare enough or gumption enough to get out of town. This was too civilized to have the real advantages of the desert, and too much of the desert to have the advantages of civilization. Now, with air-conditioning and electric refrigeration, the place is quite livable, and you can see the difference in the whole appearance of the city. — I guess this is the place we want, Della, dead ahead. See the sign?”

A sign made of bunting had been rigged up and hung out across the sidewalk. It proclaimed in vivid red letters at least three feet high, “ NELL’S BACK!”

Della Street eased the car to a stop. Mason held the car door open while she slid out from under the steering wheel, across the seat, and, with a flash of trim legs, stood on the sidewalk beside him.

“Any particular line we use?” Della asked.

“No. We just barge in and start talking.”

Mason held the restaurant door open for her. As they entered the room, after the glare of the desert, their sun-tortured eyes took a second or two to adjust themselves so they could see into the shadows. One thing, however, which was clearly visible as soon as they entered the room was a long thin piece of bunting stretched over the mirror behind the lunch counter. On it was painted in big letters: “BECAUSE I RUN A BETTER RESTAURANT, THE WORLD HAS BEAT A MOUSE TRAP TO MY DOORS.”

“This,” Mason announced, “is undoubtedly the place.”

From the dark coolness near the back of the room, Nell Sims exclaimed, “Well, for the land sakes! Now, what on earth are you two doing here?”

“Just looking for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie,” Mason said, grinning and walking across to shake hands. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Well, you folks certainly do get around.”

“Don’t we?” Della said laughing.

“It’s just a little early for me to get my shelves stocked with pastry,” Nell Sims apologized, “but I’ve got some pies coming out of the oven in just a minute now. How’d you like a piece of hot apple pie with a couple of scoops of ice cream on top of it and a nice big slab of cheese on the side of the plate?”

“Can you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Serve pie, cheese, and ice cream at one time?”

“I ain’t supposed to, but I can. Out in these parts Hospitality can’t read — at least, any of these new-fangled government regulations. Sit right down and I’ll have those pies out of the oven in just a minute or two. You’ll like ’em. I put in plenty of sugar. Never did care for desserts that were just half sweet. I put in lots of butter and sugar and cinnamon. May not be able to bake so many pies, but those I do bake certainly taste like something.”

“Anything new around here?” Mason asked casually, as he slid up to the counter.

“Lots of excitement in town over the new strike. If you ask me, there’s something awfully fishy about it.”

“What?” Mason asked.

“That prospector,” she said, and stopped.

“The man who located the mine?”

“The man who says he located the mine.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Mason asked.

“He’s a tenderfoot. If he’s a prospector, I’m a diplomat. He’s certainly got the gold, though. Showing it around everywhere.”

“What’s he doing?” Mason asked.

“Drinking mostly.”

“Where?”

“Just any place around town where he can find a parking place and a bottle. That cattleman is with him, and they’re doing the craziest things.”

“Where,” Mason asked, “is your husband?”

“Haven’t seen him since I landed. When they going to have the funeral, do you folks know?”

“I don’t think anyone does. There’s a lot of red tape in connection with post-mortems and things of that sort.”

“A mighty good man,” Nell Sims said. “It’s a crying shame men like him have to go. He was just like a brother to me. Leaves me all broken up. Don’t s’pose they’ve found out who did it yet... Land sakes! I’m almost forgetting about my pies.”

She dashed back into the kitchen. They heard an oven door open and, a moment later, the delicious aroma of freshly baked pie warmed their nostrils.

The door opened. Two men entered the restaurant. Della Street, looking back at the door, closed her fingers on Mason’s forearm. “It’s Paul Drake and Harvey Brady,” she said in a whisper.

“Hi!” Paul Drake exclaimed in the loud voice of a man who has been drinking and feels that his thoughts become increasingly important as they are expressed in a louder voice.

Mason’s back was rigid.

“Madam,” Paul Drake said, a slightly thickened tongue interfering a little with his grandiloquent manner, “I have been advised that the civic life of this c’munity has turned over a new page, with the auspicious advent of your return to the scenes of your earlier triumphants. In other words, Madam, to express myself more directly, they say you make damn good pie.”