A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

“And why the devil should anyone dip a wrist watch in a drink of gin and Coca-Cola?” Bertha asked.

“So that when the person who was wearing it was cross-examined about the exact time she heard the shot, she’d have to confess that a few days afterward she noticed her wrist watch was out of order, and she had to take it to a jeweler.”

Bertha sat blinking at me as though I’d flashed a very bright light full in her eyes.

“I’ll be damned!”

I didn’t say anything, but just sat there, letting her think it over.

After a while she said, “Are you sure about the watch, Donald, that he dunked it in the drink?”

“No. I’m simply giving you the evidence. It’s circumstantial.”

“Why on earth would he have gone up to Roberta Fenn’s apartment?”

“Two reasons.”

“Roberta Fenn is one?”

“Yes. And the other’s the dead lawyer, Nostrander.”

“Why would Nostrander figure in it?”

I said, “Roberta Fenn was feeling pretty low. She went to New Orleans. Edna Cutler was in New Orleans. She’s the wife of Marco Cutler. Marco was about to give her a terrific smear in a divorce action. Edna couldn’t face the music. She went to New Orleans, got Roberta to pose as her double. When the papers arrived to be served on Edna, the process server served them on Roberta.

“Marco Cutler got his divorce. He didn’t wait for the final decree. He married a wealthy woman who has ideas about such things. She may be going to have a baby. Edna Cutler chose that time to appear on the scene and calmly observe that she’d never heard of any divorce. It was a slick stunt. She’s got him over a barrel unless he can prove fraud or collusion.”

“Can he do that?”

“He might be trying.”

“How?”

“By hiring detectives.”

“What detectives?”

“Us.”

Bertha’s eyes kept blinking rapidly. “Fry me for an oyster,” she said at length, almost under her breath.

“Get it?” I asked.

“Of course I get it. Marco Cutler is in the millionaire class. If he’d hired us and told us what he wanted us to find out, we’d have soaked him good and proper. Moreover, we’d have been able to blackmail him. He got this New York lawyer to come out here, and because the man was from New York, we kept thinking it was a New York client that was involved in the case.”

“Go ahead, you’re doing fine.”

“Then this lawyer, posing as a man by the name of Smith, got hold of Roberta Fenn and tried to pump her. When he didn’t get anywhere, he came to us. He knew exactly what he wanted us to find out, but he wouldn’t tip his hand. He sent us to New Orleans and told us to find Roberta Fenn, knowing that finding her would be a cinch. What he really wanted was to have us start investigating her past, get all the dope he could on her, and then talk with her. He thought that she might talk to someone who was trying to close up an estate where there was some money in it for her.”

I said, “That could have been it all right.”

“And because he handed us that song and dance,” Bertha went on, “I made him a bedrock price. Oh, it was a price that had plenty of velvet, about two or three times what we’d have worked for in town, but — gosh, if I’d only known.”

“You know now.”

Bertha blinked at me and said, “That’s right, I do.”

I said, “Here’s something else that happened.”

“What?”

“I put Emory Hale in your apartment. He hadn’t been there very long when he got to rummaging around in an old desk and found some clippings dealing with this murder of Howard Chandler Craig. It seems that Craig was riding with Roberta Fenn when the so-called love bandit stepped out of the bushes and took Craig’s money and tried to take his girl. Craig wouldn’t stand for it, and got shot. At least, that’s the story the girl told.”

“Go ahead,” Bertha said. “Give me the rest of it.”

I said, “In the bottom part of the desk was a thirty-eight caliber revolver. Craig was shot with a thirty-eight caliber bullet.”

“Then Roberta Fenn was guilty of that murder. The story she told about the stick-up was all a lie.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Well, if it turns out that was the gun that committed the murder, it’s a cinch that’s right.”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

I said, “Hale got in touch with Roberta Fenn at a time when he was posing as Archibald C. Smith who was in the insurance business in Chicago. He tried to get Roberta to talk. Either she wouldn’t talk or else she didn’t talk the words Hale wanted to hear.” “What sort of words?” Bertha asked. “That there was some collusion between her and Edna Cutler, that Edna knew of the filing of the divorce action, or anticipated a divorce action would be filed, and that papers would be served, and deliberately put Roberta Fenn in her apartment for the purpose of avoiding service.”

“So then what?” Bertha asked.

I said, “Marco Cutler got a decree of divorce. He got an interlocutory decree, he didn’t get his final. It’s due. If Edna Cutler came into court, and had that interlocutory judgment set aside on the ground that she had known nothing about the action, and that summons had not been served upon her-now there’s one other angle. If the thing was the other way around, we’re being played for suckers.”

“What do you mean?” Bertha asked.

“Suppose the whole thing is a beautiful frame-up. Suppose we’re to appear in the role of giving it authenticity and a touch of first-class respectability.”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose Marco Cutler wanted to get a divorce. Suppose he knew that Edna Cutler would contest it. He didn’t want to get in the middle of a contested divorce action because he himself was living in a glass house, and, therefore, wasn’t able to throw stones. All right, he gets Roberta Fenn to go to New Orleans. She gets in touch with Edna Cutler. Edna is feeling pretty gloomy. Roberta skillfully plants in her mind the idea that it might be a swell stunt to disappear. Edna agrees. After the disappearance has been staged, Roberta passes the word on to Marco, and Marco gets his lawyers to file suit and send the papers to New Orleans for service. They serve Roberta as Edna Cutler. Edna actually never knows a single thing about the divorce action. They’ve wiped her off the slate without even giving her a chance.”

“Then what?” Bertha asked.

I said, “Everything lies dormant until Edna finds out about it. Then just as she’s getting ready to do something drastic, Hale comes to us on the theory that he wants us to find Roberta Fenn. We find her. Roberta is very coy. She arranges to be found at just the right time. In fact, if I hadn’t found her by a process of detective work, she’d probably have stumbled into me on the street or dropped in at Jack O’Leary’s Bar when I happened to be there.”

“Go ahead,” Bertha said. “All that stuff is so elemental there’s no use wasting time on it. Give me the real lowdown.”

I said, “The game was that we’d find Roberta. She’d get very, very friendly. She might even encourage me to make a pass at her. Then she’d ‘tell me all,’ only the ‘all’ would be that Edna Cutler certainly acted strangely about having her take her name. It would be just enough to indicate that there was a big frame-up on Edna’s part to nick her husband. Edna would get thrown out of court.”

“Pickle me for a peach!” Bertha said. “What are we going to do now, lover?”

“Absolutely nothing-not until we find out whether we’re being played for suckers, or whether the whole thing is on the up and up.”

“We’ve got to find Roberta Fenn.”

“I have.”