Griselda answered, "I don't know at this hour." It was nearing midnight.
Dare repeated, "I have to see him tonight." She went to the door. "If I don't have any luck I'll come back and get you. You'll have a better chance."
She banged out, Griselda standing there with hands clenched. She wished she had but one gram of Dare's insolent assurance. She'd walk right up to Pembrooke and tell him to get out of her honeymoon, and the same to Captain Thusby and all the rest of them. She couldn't go to bed yet; Dare might return. She walked the room and she heard the newsflash warning, ran to turn up the radio.
The announcer's voice was so certain and so impersonally disinterested. "Captain Thusby announced tonight a sensational development in the Bixby Park murder case. Con Satterlee. well-known news commentator, who has been held since Sunday for questioning, has been charged with the murder of Shelley Huffaker. He is held without bail. Recent developments which have come to light—"
The voice went on and on in dreadful clarity, rehashing the known facts and the conjectures. It was the missing shells added to the fingerprints and the time element, ruling out all human intuition. It didn't enter into a murder charge that it was not in Con's character to have done such a thing. All the police wanted was the unimportant circumstances, the things that didn't count.
She didn't know she was sitting on the floor there before the croaking box until the air touched her ankles and she looked up at Dare again in the open doorway.
"Griselda, Con's been—" She stopped, realizing it was known. "You've heard. They wouldn't let me see him. Said he didn't want to talk to anyone until he'd seen his lawyer in the morning." She dug her hands in her coat pockets.
Griselda saw her through a blur.
"You don't want to stay here now. Come to my apartment. I have an extra bed." She must have remembered who'd last been her guest for she added quickly, "Or I'll drive you to the hotel. You can't stay here alone."
Griselda spoke with decision, "Con asked me to stay until he returned. I will." With battered dignity she rose from the floor. "I'm tired. I'd like to go to bed. If you don't mind."
She could sleep now. When you are purged of all feeling, you can't be afraid.
* * *
The Long Beach morning papers had it in scare-heads. So did the Los Angeles papers. The New Yorkers would have it served the same style with their breakfast coffee. Griselda sat in the ugly room waiting for word from someone. There wasn't any. Not even Captain Thusby. You would think that the police would inform the wife when they made such a move, not let her learn it from the radio and press. She wondered why the reporters hadn't descended; probably haunting the hotel lists; they wouldn't expect the Satterlees to be in a ramshackle beach cottage.
When the phone did ring near noon, it startled her. She didn't know the voice. Captain Thusby's compliments and would she come down to headquarters immediately?
The old car crept. She would get to see Con, confer with him. She must get a lawyer, a good lawyer, who would know what next should be done.
Her eyes were puzzled when she entered the office. There was Dare in the same tweed and brown felt, her gauntlets still dug into her pockets. There was Kew biting at his mustache. There was Major Pembrooke's stony face; Kathie Travis turning her great gaze from one man to the other. There was a type officer acting as doorman. All of them looked at Griselda when she entered and all looked too quickly away.
She crossed to Kew, spoke under her breath, "Why this? What's it about?"
He shrugged, then touched her arm. The door was being opened again by the officer. She began to tremble, wanting, not wanting, to see him here in front of everyone. But Con didn't enter. A grimly silent Captain Thusby marched in to his own swivel chair and sat down hard. Vinnie came through another door with a yellow pencil in his mouth and a notebook in his bony hand. He sidled to a plate near his father.
Thusby barked, "Nestor, get some more chairs. Everybody sit down." The officer brought them to Kew and Griselda. "I'll tell all of you right now, you don't have to answer my questions. But you'd better unless you want to look suspicious."
Vinnie took the pencil out of his mouth, licked the sharp point and regarded it with a faint surprise, as if it had disappointed him by not being flavored. The captain drew on his pipe, his face reddening with each puff, and he spoke on top of the stem.
"You start in, Mrs. Satterlee. What did you do last night?"
The question was so unexpected to all that they looked at Griselda, and she said nothing. She simply didn't understand.
Captain Thusby barked more sharply. "Go on. What did you do last night? Where’d you go? Who'd you see? Don't try to think up any fancy way to say it. Vinnie's going to write it down and he don't spell very fast."
It was simply absurd to sit there, holding her bag damply in her hands, unable to say one word. Save for burning the letter, she hadn't done anything that couldn't be repeated to the police chief and the entire roomful. It was nothing but a bad case of stage fright, looking into eyes whichever way she turned.
Thusby spoke to his pipe in exasperation. "Mrs. Satterlee, don't you know what you did last night?"
"Of course, I do," she answered back. "What time?"
"Start with dinner. Go on from there."
She began, "I had dinner with Kew Brent in Laguna," and watched Kathie's eyes darken. She didn't have to tell what they talked of; what they did was simple and innocent. But when she reached the homecoming, she faltered. She hadn't meant to; she hadn't intended to think of the letter, to remember that obscene cottage that could be another of Pembrooke's shore quarters. Nor did she wish to mention Dare. It might hurt Con. How, she didn't know because she, all of them, were steeped in ignorance, only Thusby had the right book open. She had to go on. Better Dare than those other items.
"What time was this?" Thusby nudged Vinnie and the son used his new pencil as if it were a more useful stub. He wasn't transcribing every word, only what the captain wanted.
"I don't know. Yes, I do. It was before midnight." Before that news broadcast. "Between eleven and midnight."
"What did she want that time of night?"
She said, "She wanted to see Con."
The a-ha! look on his round face was as strange as anything else in this strange gathering.
She looked about bitterly, "Why isn't Smithery here?" He had everyone else connected with Con, everyone but Chang and Vironova.
Vinnie said as if delighted, "We couldn't find him." His father scowled. "His name was on the list but we were unable to locate him this morning. Mrs. Crandall. you next."
Dare was at ease. "A friend of mine flew me in from Hollywood at eleven o'clock. You may check that without any trouble at the airport. I went directly from there to Satterlee's, then down here as you jolly well know, and after you turned me down flat I went back to Griselda. She told me to go home and I did."
"Any visitors?"
"No one. None." She was lying but she knew how to do it, answer promptly, fish out a cigarette and light it as you spoke. Dare anyone to question you further.
Thusby coughed and put away the gaseous pipe. He was as dictatorial as an old-fashioned schoolmaster.
"Mr. Brent, start telling about after you left Mrs. Satterlee. You turned up at the Hilton."
"Yes. I went up to the bar for a drink. Pembrooke and Vironova were there and I joined them."
Griselda was cold. He'd gone from her to meet the major.
She couldn't be certain that Kew wasn't in this on the major's side. His oblique suspicions of Pembrooke could have been to divert her and to terrorize her. Had all that he'd told her, frightened her with, been pre-arranged, to make her force Con to give up his investigation of Mannie's disappearance? Had that letter he destroyed incriminated Pembrooke in some way, or Kew himself?
He continued, "Mrs. Travis joined us when her party broke up. I escorted her to her room later and I went to my hotel. And so to bed."
"What time?"
"I
don't know exactly. About one."
Captain Thusby said, "It was exactly one-forty when you reached the Villa Riviera."
He'd stayed longer with Kathie than he knew. Still there seemed no reason for his hand to waver as he lit a cigarette.
Kathie answered Thusby's inquiring eyes, "Walker and I had dinner with Admiral Swales. It was so early when they left that my husband suggested that I stay with Kew a while. He took me to my room just like he said." She smiled sweetly at him. She knew she'd done nothing wrong.
Thusby had turned to Major Pembrooke. "You left the roof a bit after midnight with Mr. Vironova?"
Major Pembrooke said, "Yes, Mr. Vironova and I were discussing a sea spectacle he was planning to produce. We went to my room to continue discussion in peace, without the night-club accouterments, as it were. He left at one fifteen. I know the time concretely because he kept surreptitiously consulting the watch on his wrist as he talked. At that hour he leaped up as if surprised, remarked at the lateness, and rushed away. I presumed, rightly no doubt, that he had an amorous rendezvous."
Captain Thusby crumbled the paper slowly in his fingers. "He had a rendezvous, like you call it. but it wasn't what you thought it was. It was like in that poem Vinnie recites. What's it called, Vinnie?"
The son's face was magenta. He choked, " 'I have a rendezvous with Death.' "
No one said anything, not even—Vironova dead? No one did anything. No faint gasp disturbed that still. The shocked silence on each face was as unbecoming as it was unrehearsed. Yet one of these, unless it were Chang, must have known the reason for the police chief's peremptory morning summons. And there was no one who did not take murder for granted.
Thusby put on spectacles, started reading from a paper as if he hadn't mentioned anything of import. "Mrs. Travis, Major Pembrooke, Mr. Vironova staying at the Hilton." He looked over the old square lenses. "Not a stone's throw between the two hotels. Mighty easy to step from one to the other without nobody saying a word, don't need to take out a car or anything. Mighty near the Village."
"What are you trying to say?" Pembrooke demanded. No one else breathed.
"Other hand nobody to check you in and out when you're not in a hotel. Not too easy in an apartment; somebody might hear you taking your car out. Could be done. Park the car on the street; who's to notice if you go in or out?" Dare's lips emitted smoke. Griselda waited. "Easier in a house of your own. Nobody to check."
Kathie cried it softly, 'What are you trying to say? What happened? You must tell us what happened!"
"I'm going to tell you what happened." He took his time, putting his fingertips neatly together, clearing his throat, as if he didn't have the right words.
"Fellow that sweeps out the Village found Mr. Vironova in there this morning. Shot and killed. Know about the Village?"
Visit the Village. Signs everywhere. Under the ground. Subway walk beneath Ocean Boulevard. Curio booths, fortune tellers, street artists, gawkers, hodgepodge.
Kathie whispered, "I've always been nervous about the Village. I don't like it. I've always been afraid of it."
Captain Thusby waited. "Not much of a walk from either hotel to the Village, is it? Is kind of scary when it's deserted. I went through it once that way. Heard every step I took twice as loud as it should be. Echoes." His eves hardened. "There wasn't any gun there. Any of you keep guns?" The chairs rustled faintly. "Never mind getting anxious. Your rooms are all being searched while you're here."
Albert George's eyes gave his fury away. But he was silent.
"Search warrants all signed," Thusby snapped. "Not that I expect to find the gun that killed Vironova to be setting out in the open marked with fingerprints. Not unless somebody planted it. Too easy to get rid of a gun. Kick it under the board walk. We're scavenging. But not so easy to dreen the ocean. The tide'll bring it in some day." His voice roared as he brought his fist down with a startling thump on the paper-ridden desk. "But we aren't going to wait that long to find who did it. Because it's going to be easy now. The man or woman who's running around killing people in Long Beach"—he spoke as if it were treason to pick his town—"made a big mistake when he killed Mr. Vironova. I'll tell you why." He became confidential. "Mostly when murders happen in a little place it's hard to get to the bottom of them. It's not like New York where there's all kinds of big experts, laboratories, and money." He stressed the latter. "And that's where the murderer made a mistake." He chortled. "Because I got the money now. I got 'unlimited funds.' That's it. 'Unlimited funds.'"
Major Pembrooke consulted his watch. "This is all very interesting. Captain Thusby. but I—"
He was ignored. Thusby said, "Mr. Oppensterner —Jacob Oppensterner himself—told me on the telephone this morning that he'd foot the bills to crack this case, just so long as I cracked it and cracked it fast."
Griselda began to titter deep within her. She could just hear Oppy offering everything, sun, moon, and stars. Any finger laid on a member of his staff was personal to him. He'd be certain that he was next on the list. Poor Oppy, always with the jumps. He'd be frog-green with fear now.
Thusby demanded, "What's so funny, Mrs. Satterlee?"
She hadn't realized her mirth was visible but at his question she let it ripple aloud. "I was just thinking about Oppy. how scared he must be." She laughed and then choked it quickly. The eyes were turned in suspicion on her. She angered. "Never mind. It isn't funny to anyone but me. One thing certain. You can't blame Con for this. He's out of it now." She glowed with triumph as she flung the challenge in all of their stupid faces.
The chief's eyebrows moved up into white bushy points. His voice was gentle but beneath the gentleness was rock-hardness, "Con Satterlee escaped last night."'
She'd never had the breath knocked out of her but she knew this was. how it must feel. She caught her lip tight with her teeth and then all at once she began to shiver as if it were she being hunted. She turned pathetically to Kew. He was unreadable. She looked around the room. None of them had known of this.
Dare was sitting upright, her pretensions gone. And she cried it, "He couldn't have escaped!"
"That's what I thought." Thusby was complacent.
"It's absurd." She was certain of herself. "That doesn't happen today. It isn't necessary. All you need is a lawyer."
"Maybe," the chief allowed. "He's gone. He was gone by midnight."
"You didn't tell me." Her green eyes slitted.
"Didn't tell nobody. Thought maybe I’d made a mistake and he'd be around somewhere. But he was gone all right. I'm telling you now because it'll be in the papers by the time you leave here. I gave it to the reporters after you folks arrived."
Griselda shook her head. "There's some mistake." Piteously she asked him, all of them, to believe her. "He'll be back. I know he will."
Dare said briskly, "He's probably gone to get someone to help him out of this mess. He has influential friends, Captain Thusby."
"That so?" He tweaked his nose.
"Yes, that's so."
She mustn't mention Barjon Garth. Garth had betrayed Con. She didn't. She said, "The broadcasting company isn't without influence."
Captain Thusby complained, "He could have told me what he had in mind. Doesn't look well to have a prisoner escaping from you."
Griselda pushed back her hair. The room was suffocating. Why didn't Thusby say what he must be thinking? Con's flip line about hacksaws and files. The police would be certain she had effected the escape. She had to get out before the room began to swirl; it was already teetering. Thusby and Dare went on talking like end-men in a minstrel show.
She felt Kew's hand on her arm and she steadied. He interrupted the dialogue. "I have a Washington call coming at two, Captain Thusby. And I presume the women must be feeling rather faint without lunch. Do you need us longer?"
Thusby looked to Kew, then Griselda. She probably appeared as moon-yellow as she felt. "You can go. I guess." he said. "Leave your fingerprints in the outer office." He scotched the majo
r's borning protest. "If you're innocent as you all make out, you won't mind doing that. And don't any of you leave town."
Major Pembrooke did protest now. "I must return."
Griselda didn't wait. She was first in line to press her fingers on the pad, and she was brusque in refusal of Kew's offer to drive her home. She didn't want to see or hear of him or any of them again.
* * *
Con would come. She was certain of it. He would come and explain all this pother about escape and murder. The headlines—MURDER SUSPECT ESCAPES FROM LONG BEACH JAIL—wouldn't scare him away. The actual story of the break was scant as it Captain Thusby weren't quite certain as yet that his prisoner wasn't still playing hide-and-seek about the building. The box with description didn't sound much like Con. Any tall, thin, youngish man in a nondescript dark suit would fit. You couldn't describe Con with much accuracy. He didn't have a black beard or cauliflower ear or wart on the nose. He was remarkably average unless you knew him.
The trouble was that other persons would come here too. All of them wanted to reach Con. In particular. Major Pembrooke would come. If he didn't find Con, he might try to make her tell him what Con had learned. She shunted that thought quickly. She'd read too much of Axis methods of persuasion.
She should really put up a sign with her hours on it. The line would form outside the door. But she wasn't prepared for the first entry. Not for Kathie. Yet there she was in her sleazy red dress. "I thought Kew would be here," she said. She looked around as if he might be hiding.
Griselda said coldly, "I came home alone. Did you try his hotel?" She wished there were some way to tell this girl that she was welcome to Kew, that his heart didn't repose here.
Kathie shrank into the big chair. She didn't answer. She was pulling on her handkerchief as if it were made of elastic. She whispered suddenly, "I'm afraid. Mrs. Satterlee. I'm afraid."
"What are you afraid of?"
"Somebody killed Mr. Vironova." Her eyes were startled. "Why was he killed? Who's going to be next?"
Griselda herself had no strength; she couldn't reassure another. She'd be hard put to it to protect herself until Con came. But there might be some infinitesimal piece of information to garner from the frightened girl. "Did Shelley say anything to you about who—she-might fear? Why she was carrying a gun?"
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