Erie Gardner - The Case of the Crying Swallow

“I think she does.”

“And hasn’t fired the nurse?”

“No. I think she doesn’t mind if the nurse worships the ground the major walks on but doesn’t presume to raise her eyes to look at him, if you get what I mean.”

“I get it,” Mason said thoughtfully, “and I don’t like it. Wait, here comes Paul now.”

Drake, walking stiffly, joined them.

“Find anything, Paul?” Mason asked.

“I found something,” Drake conceded, “and I don’t know what it is.”

“What does it look like, Paul?”

“In the first place,” Drake said, “you can easily follow her tracks. She took the lower bridle path. After the first quarter mile, there’s only one set of tracks going and coming. They were made when the ground was soft and they go down to a road and a gate that’s locked. I didn’t have a key, but I could see where the horse tracks went through the gate and down onto the road, so I tied up my horse and managed to squeeze through the fence.”

“Any tracks around those trees, Paul?”

“An automobile had been parked there,” Drake said. “There must have been two automobiles. That’s the only way I can figure it out, but I still can’t figure the tracks right.”

“How come?”

Drake took a small thin book from his pocket. “This is a little pocketbook which gives the tread designs of all makes of tires. Now an automobile that had some fairly new tires was in there. One of the wheels was worn too much to identify, but I identified the track of a right front wheel. Then the track of the other front wheel and the other hind wheel and... well, there I bogged down, Perry.”

“What do you mean?”

“Of course, you have to understand it’s a little difficult trying to get those tracks all fitted into the proper sequence. They...”

“What are you getting at?” Mason said.

“Hang it, Perry, I got three wheels.”

“And the fourth was worn smooth?”

“Not that — what I mean is, Perry, that I got three wheels on a single side.”

Mason frowned at the detective. “Three wheels on a side?”

“Three wheels on a side,” Paul Drake insisted doggedly.

Mason said rather excitedly, “Paul, did you notice a circular spot in the ground, perhaps eight or ten inches in diameter?”

“How the deuce did you know that spot was there?” Drake demanded, his face showing bewilderment.

Mason said, “It was made by the bottom part of a bucket, Paul. And the three tracks on each side were all right. That’s the way it should be.”

“I don’t get it.”

“A house trailer,” Mason explained. “An automobile and a house trailer were parked under the trees. The waste water from a trailer sink is carried out through a drain to the outside. A bucket is placed there to catch the water as it runs off.”

“That’s it, all right,” Drake admitted, then added morosely, “I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it, Perry.”

Mason said, “It now begins to look as though Marcia Winnett had kept an appointment on Monday with someone in a house trailer. And that seems to have been very much a turning point in her life.”

Drake nodded. “On Monday — that’s a cold trail, Perry.”

“It’s the only one we have,” Mason pointed out.

Mason, studying the tire tracks, said, “It was an automobile and a house trailer, Paul. The round place which marks the location of the spout bucket can be taken as being approximately in the middle of the trailer. You can see over here the mark of an auxiliary wheel attached to the front of the trailer to carry part of the weight while the trailer was parked. That enables us to estimate the length of the trailer.”

Drake said, “The trailer must have been backed in between these trees, Perry.”

Mason started prowling along the edge of the fence. “Took some clever handling to get it in there. Let’s look around for garbage. If the trailer remained here overnight, there are probably some tin cans... potato peelings, stuff of that sort.”

Mason, Della Street and Drake separated, covering the ground carefully.

Abruptly Della said, “Chief, don’t look too suddenly, but casually take a look up there at the big house on the hill. I think I saw someone moving in the glassed-in observation tower.”

“I rather expected as much,” Mason said, without even looking up. “However, it’s something we can’t help.”

Drake exclaimed, “Here it is, Perry, a collection of tin cans and garbage.”

Mason moved over to where Drake was standing. Here the water from the winter rains, rushing down the ditch at the side of the road, had eddied around one of the roots of the big live oak and formed a cave which extended some three feet back under the roots of the tree.

Mason, squatting on his heels, used two dry sticks to rake out the articles.

There were three cans which had been flattened under pressure, some peelings from onions and potatoes, waxed paper which had been wrapped around a loaf of bread, an empty glass container bearing a syrup label, and a crumpled paper bag.

Mason carefully segregated the items with his sticks. As he did so he kept up a running fire of conversation.

“That flattening of the cans is the trick of an old out-doorsman,” he said.

“Why flatten them?” Della inquired.

“Animals get their heads stuck in cans sometimes,” Mason said. “Moreover, cans take up less room when they’re flattened and require a smaller hole when they’re buried. This little garbage pit tells quite a story. The occupant of the trailer must have been a man. Notice the canned beans, a can of chili con came, potatoes, bread, onions — no tomato peelings, no lettuce leaves, no carrots, in fact, no fresh vegetables at all. A woman would have had a more balanced diet. These are the smallest cans obtainable and... hello, what’s this?”

Mason had pulled apart the paper bag as he talked. Now he brought out a small oblong slip of paper on which figures had been stamped in purple ink.

Della Street said, “That’s a cash register receipt from one of the cash-and-carry grocery stores.”

Mason picked up the receipt. “And a very interesting one,” he said. “The man bought fifteen dollars and ninety-four cents’ worth of merchandise. There’s a date on the back of the slip and this other figure refers to the time. The groceries were bought at five minutes past eight on Saturday morning. It begins to look, Paul, as though this is where you take over.”

“What do you want me to do?” Drake asked.

Mason said, “Get a room in the hotel at Silver Strand beach. Open up something of an office there. Get men on the job. Get lots of men. Have your men buy groceries. See if the printing on the slip from any cash register matches this. If it does, try to find out something about the single, sun-bronzed man who purchased fifteen dollars and ninety-four cents’ worth of groceries at five minutes past eight on Saturday morning. A sale of that size to a man just a few minutes after the store opened might possibly have attracted attention.”

“Okay,” Drake said. “Anything else?”

“Lots else,” Mason said. “Della, where’s that slip of paper, the copy you made of what you found in the observation tower?”

Della ran to the glove compartment and brought back the square of paper on which she’d made the copy.

Drake looked at it, then said, “What is it, Perry?”

“Stuff Della found in the observation tower. What do you make of it?”

“Some sort of dimensions,” Drake said. “Here’s this number 8 inches and 5280 feet, 9 inches and half a mile, 10 inches and quarter of a mile. What’s the idea, Perry? Why should the inches run 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and...?”