Erie Gardner - The Case of the Crying Swallow

“I don’t know. No one seems to be home.”

“I ain’t seen ’em leave. They couldn’t go very far without their car.”

“Seen any visitors over there?” Mason asked casually.

“Not today. There was a young woman called last night.”

“What time?”

“I don’t know. We’d gone to bed. Her headlights shone in the window and woke me up when she came. I sat up in bed and looked out the window.”

“See her plain?”

“Yeah — a redhead. Checkered suit — trim-looking package.”

“She go in?”

“I guess so. She switched off her lights and I went back to sleep. Woke me up again when she left. Her car backfired a couple of times.”

Mason glanced at Drake. “I’d like to find these people.”

“I think there’s only one — a man. He drove in last night and had quite a bit of trouble backing the trailer around. You take one of these big trailers and it’s quite a job to park it. You try to back up and everything’s just reversed from what it is when you’re backing just a car. We went to bed pretty early and sometime after I’d got to sleep this other car came up. What really woke me up was headlights shining in my window. I looked out and seen this woman.”

“Remember what sort of car she was driving?”

“It was a rented car.”

“How do you know?”

“From the gasoline rationing stamp on the windshield.”

“Your wife didn’t wake up?”

“No.”

“How long have you been here?” Mason asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought not,” the man said, suddenly suspicious, and then after a moment added, “You’re asking a lot of questions.”

“Sorry,” Mason said.

The man hesitated a moment, then, by way of dismissal, turned back to the bumper.

Mason glanced significantly at Paul Drake. Silently the two walked away.

“Okay, Paul,” Mason said in a low voice. “Get Della on the phone. Tell her to put operatives on every drive-yourself car agency within a radius of fifty miles and see if we can find where the woman rented the car. When we spot the place, I’ll handle the rest of it.”

“I don’t like it,” Drake said.

“I don’t like it myself,” Mason told him. “But the young woman who called there last night was Marcia Winnett.”

“And her car backfired,” Drake said dryly.

Mason met his eyes. “Her car backfired, Paul. And in case it ever becomes necessary, remember that the only person who heard it said it was a backfire.”

Drake nodded gloomily. “Not that that will do any good, Perry.”

“It keeps us in the clear, Paul. You don’t rush to the police to report that someone’s car backfired.”

“When you’ve discovered a body, you do.”

“Who knows we’ve discovered any body?”

“I do.”

Mason laughed. “Back to the hotel, Paul. Try to trace that car. And just to be on the safe side, find out where Mrs. Drummond was last night.”

The last task Mason had given Paul Drake turned out to be simple. Mrs. Drummond had been trying to locate her husband in the nearby trailer camps all the evening before, and she had arranged with a police officer who was off duty to accompany her.

Locating the rented car in which the girl in the checkered suit went to the trailer camp was another matter.

Despite all of Drake’s efficiency, it was nearing eight o’clock when his detectives uncovered the lead Mason wanted. A man who operated a car rental agency in one of the coast cities, some twenty-five miles from Silver Strand Beach, had rented a car to a young woman who wore a checkered suit and who answered the description of Marcia Winnett.

Drake looked up from the telephone. “Want my man to try to pick up the trail from there or do you want to do it, Perry?”

Mason said, “I’ll do it, Paul. And it might be best to let your man think that that isn’t the trail we want.”

“Okay,” Drake said, and then into the telephone, “Describe her, Sam. Uh-huh... uh-huh, well, that’s not the one. Keep working. Cover those other agencies and then report.”

Drake hung up the phone. “Want me to come along, Perry?”

“Della and I’ll handle it,” Mason said. “Start calling your men in. Let them feel it turned out to be a false lead. And you’d better start checking on Mrs. Drummond, Paul. I wouldn’t like to have her show up right now.”

Drake nodded and said solicitously, “Watch your step, Perry.”

“I’m watching it. Come on, Della.”

The man who operated the car rental agency which had furnished a car to Marcia Winnett was not particularly communicative. It took diplomacy to get him in the mood to talk. Even then he confined his information to bare essentials.

He had never seen his customer before. She gave her name as Edith Bascom. She said her mother had died and it was necessary for her to use a car in connection with handling the estate. She was registered at the local hotel.

“Do you check on these stories?” Mason asked. “Or do you just rent cars?”

“Sometimes we just rent cars. Sometimes we check.”

“What did you do in this case?”

“Cars are scarce now,” the man said. “We checked.”

“How?”

The man picked up a daily paper dated the day before and indicated the obituary column. Mason followed the man’s finger to the stereotyped announcement of the death of Mrs. Shirley Bascom and the statement that funeral arrangements would be private.

Mason said, “I guess that covers it all right.”

“What’s your interest in it?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“I see. Well, she’s okay. Rather upset on account of her mother’s death, but a nice girl. You’ll find her in the Palace Hotel, two blocks down the street.”

“You checked on that?”

“I told you cars are scarce,” the man said. “I checked on it.”

It was but a matter of routine for Mason and his secretary to get the number of the room which had been assigned to Edith Bascom. Two minutes later Mason was knocking on the door.

There was no answer. Mason tried the knob. The door was locked.

Mason made a swift survey of the hall, stooped and held out his hands. “Step on my hands, Della. Take a quick look through the transom.”

She braced herself with a hand on his shoulder, caught the lower ledge of the transom and peered through.

Mason, with his right hand on her hip, steadying her, felt her body stiffen. Then she was scrambling to get down.

“Chief,” she said in an ominous whisper, “she’s stretched out on the bed. She’s... terribly still.”

“Lights on?”

“No, but the shade is up and there’s enough light coming in from the electric sign in front to make out the form on the bed.”

Mason said, “There’s a spring lock on the door... Better take another look, Della. See if she’s breathing and... hold it. Here comes a chambermaid.”

The chambermaid who wearily approached was aroused only momentarily from the lethargy of overwork by the bill Mason pushed into her palm.

“My wife and I seem to have left our key downstairs. If you could let us in, it would save us a trip down...”

“It’s against the rules,” she said, then added tonelessly, “but I guess it’s okay.” Producing her passkey, she clicked back the latch on the door.

Mason boldly pushed open the door, stood aside for Della to enter, then followed her into the dimly lighted room and closed the door behind him.

Della Street crossed over to the woman lying on the bed, as Mason groped for her pulse.

“She’s alive!” Della Street said.

“The light,” Mason said crisply. “Pull the curtains first.”