“You could hold me, perhaps,” Sandra Jean said, “but it wouldn’t be for long. Cranny Cox was alive when I left him.”
“There’s only your word for that,” Smith snapped.
“Not at all. I can prove it. Or... yes, Lieutenant,” she said in the sweetest of voices, “I think I’ll let you prove it for me.”
“Prove that Cox was alive when you left him?”
“Mm-hm.” The girl tugged at her skirt. “Oh, dear, I seem to have ripped my hem somewhere... You see, Lieutenant, although I went to the Hobby in a cab, I had the man let me out blocks and blocks from the motel and walked the rest of the way. But when I left, I took a taxi right outside the motel. Cranny took me out to the road and actually hailed it for me — handed me into it, in fact, like the gentleman he wasn’t. I was all dressed up and I looked like a lady, if I do say so myself. Taxis don’t pick up many ladies outside the Hobby, so I’m sure the cabbie will remember me — and Cranny Cox being so gallant and, of course, alive. In fact, I can even give you a description of the taxi man. He was white-haired, about fifty-five years old...”
Tully scarcely heard her rattle on, as Julian Smith scribbled furious notes. The cold-blooded little bitch, he thought. She hadn’t said a word to him about that!
“Of course,” the detective was saying frostily, “even if this checks out, Miss Ainsworth—”
“Oh, it will check out all right, Lieutenant,” she smiled.
“—it could mean that you made a deliberate attempt to establish your departure at a time when Cox was seen alive, only to slip back to the motel later and do the shooting. In other words, a phony alibi.”
“I suppose it could mean that,” Sandra Jean murmured, “only ‘could mean’ doesn’t carry much weight as evidence, Lieutenant, does it? Anyway, my alibi’s a lot better than that. If you’ll find that taxi driver, I’m sure he’ll tell you where he took me, and when. He drove me to an all-night party I’d been invited to in the Heights. People named Bangsworth. And there must have been a dozen people there I knew who’ll account for every minute of my time. So, you see, Lieutenant, I simply couldn’t have shot Cranny Cox.”
Tully could only sit there, numb.
Julian Smith sat there, too. He said slowly, “A few minutes ago, Miss Ainsworth, you told me that Cox asked you to visit him at the motel the night he was shot. Just how did he ask you?”
Sandra Jean’s brow wrinkled ever so little. “I don’t think I understand, Lieutenant.”
“I mean, did he write you? Did he phone you?”
“He phoned me.”
“Where?”
“At the Cabbotts’, where I’ve been staying.”
Smith leaned forward. “But you said he thought your name was Ruth. How could he have looked for Ruth in a place where you’re known as Sandra Jean?”
“Oh, that,” Sandra Jean said. “Didn’t I explain that? Between the time Cranny came to town and the time he phoned me, he did some snooping. That’s how he found out my real name and where I was staying, he said.”
The unutterable trull. She hadn’t told him that, either.
Tully shut his eyes. Andy Gordon had placed Cox’s call to the Tully home, when the blackmailer had asked for Ruth, as having come two days before his murder. So at that time Cox must still have been ignorant of Sandra Jean’s real name. In those two days, then, Cox had done his homework. But if by the time of his phone call to the Cabbott house he had known that “Ruth” was really Sandra Jean, why had he...?
Tully heard scraping chairs. He opened his eyes. Smith and Sandra Jean were on their feet.
“But where are you taking me, Lieutenant?” Sandra Jean was saying, not entirely without alarm.
“On a tour of the cab companies,” the detective said, “to make an honest woman of you. Dave, this won’t take too long. Though you don’t have to wait if you have something else to do.”
Tully shook his head. Julian Smith opened his office door and stood aside, and Sandra Jean swept by in rather a hurry, Tully thought, noting that she was careful not to look at him. He could wait. There were only three or four cab companies in town; it wouldn’t take long.
It didn’t. Barely an hour later Julian Smith marched back into the office. He was alone.
“Where’s Sandra Jean?” Tully got to his feet.
Smith homed in on his desk. “She gave me a message for you. ‘Tell my darling brother-in-law he needn’t wait for me. I’ll hop a cab — I have things to do in a rush.’ The last I saw, she was streaking for a phone booth. That’s quite a sister-in-law you have.”
“So her story is true,” Tully said slowly.
The detective shrugged and sat down. “The alibi checks. I found the hack the first cab company I hit. He identified her, all right, and corroborated her statement that Cox put her into the cab that night. His trip-sheet in the office checks out for time, too. He described Cox to a T. For the record I had him hustled over to the funeral parlor for a look at the body, and I just had a call that he made a positive identification.
“And he did take the girl right from the Hobby to the Bangsworths’ at the Heights, as she claims. I phoned Mrs. Bangsworth and she gives the girl a clean bill. I also phoned three of the people at the party who Sandra Jean said could testify that she hadn’t left the house after she got there, and they so testify — the party didn’t break up until five A.M., long past the time of the shooting. One of my men is running down the whole list the girl’s given me, but that’s just going through the motions. There’s no question that Cox was alive when she left him at the motel, and she’s alibied for every minute after that. She’s absolutely in the clear, Dave. Didn’t you know that when you brought her in here?”
Tully said, “No,” and had to clear his throat. The detective looked at him curiously. “Where does this leave Ruth?”
“You tell me.”
“Well, for one thing, Julian, at least now you know it wasn’t Ruth who took my gun to the motel.”
“There’s still that business of the name.”
“Name?”
“The name Maudie Blake said she overheard Cox use that night in addressing his visitor — or one of them. According to Sandra Jean, Cox knew well in advance of the visit or visits that her name was really Sandra Jean. So if that night he called some woman Ruth...”
Tully bit his lip. He had foolishly hoped that detail would somehow be lost in the shuffle. “That’s assuming Sandra told the truth about what went on in the room, Julian.”
“Her alibi story checks to the letter. We have to assume the rest of her story is true, too.”
“But that means you think my wife came to Cox’s room after Sandra left! How do you know she hadn’t come and gone — assuming she was there at all — before Sandra even got there?”
Julian Smith said, “We have the Blake woman’s sworn statement as to the time she heard the name Ruth mentioned by Cox in direct address. That time was well past the time we know Miss Ainsworth left. I’m sorry, Dave,”
So the Blake woman had lied to him about not remembering the time, too! Tully was striding up and down the office like a prisoner in a cell. “That sworn statement of Maudie Blake’s. She’s dead, Julian. It seems to me that if it came to a trial—”
“The admissibility of evidence is a matter for the judge and the lawyers, Dave. I can only do my part of the job.”
“You’ve had your case blown right out of your hands!” Tully cried. “Why do you keep persecuting my wife?”
“Because of that name,” the lieutenant said doggedly. “Because she’s run away. And it’s not persecution, Dave; you know better than that. In the light of those two facts I’ve got to keep after her. You know that, too.”