“The waitress owned this coat?” Mason asked.
“Owned it or stole it,” Alburg said. “Perhaps it’s hot and she didn’t know what to do with it so she left it in a closet for a few weeks, and the moths got into it.”
“Perhaps some boy friend gave it to her and then ducked out so that she got the idea it might have been stolen,” Mason observed thoughtfully. “In any event, it’s a mystery, and I like mysteries, Morris.”
“Well, I don’t,” Morris said.
Mason inspected the coat carefully, paying particular attention to the stitching on the side.
“Think the label’s phony?” Alburg asked.
“The label’s genuine,” Mason said. “It might have been taken from another coat and sewn on this one... Wait a minute, here’s something! This sewing is fresh. The stitches are a little different in color from those other stitches.”
His fingers explored the lining back of the place where he had found the fresh sewing. “There’s something in here, Morris.”
Mason looked at the restaurant proprietor, then hesitated.
“You’re the doctor,” Alburg said.
Mason suddenly became wary. “There are certain peculiar circumstances in connection with this case, Morris.”
“Are you telling me?”
Mason said, “Let us assume that this coat was originally purchased by this young woman. That means at one time she was quite wealthy, comparatively speaking. Then she must have gone away hurriedly and left the fur coat behind. She wasn’t there to take care of it, there was no one else on whom she wanted to call or on whom she dared to call to take care of it.”
“And then?” Della asked.
“And then,” Mason went on, “after an interval, during which the moths got into the coat, she returned. At that time she was completely down on her luck. She was desperate. She went to the place where the fur coat was located. She put it on. She didn’t have money enough to go and have it restored, or repaired, or whatever you call fixing up a fur coat.”
“She was broke, all right,” Morris Alburg said.
“She came to this restaurant and got a job. She must have been hard up or she wouldn’t have taken that job. Yet when the pay check is all made out and she knows she has only to ask Morris for it, she suddenly gets panic-stricken and runs out, leaving the fur coat behind her, also the check for her wages.”
Morris Alburg’s eyes narrowed. “I get it now,” he said. “You’re putting it together so it’s just plain, like two and two. She’s been in prison. Maybe she poured lead into her boy friend during a quarrel. May be she beat the rap, but was afraid to be seen with her fur coat. She...”
“Then why didn’t she store it?” Della Street asked.
“She didn’t want anybody to know she was mixed up in this shooting. It was something that she did, and they never identified her... Wait a minute, she may have been picked up for drunk driving. She gave a phony name and wouldn’t let anybody know who she was. She drew a ninety-day sentence in the can, and she went and served it out — serving under some phony name. Take this name she gave me — Dixie Dayton. That’s phony-sounding right on the face of it... She’s been in jail.”
Della Street laughed. “With an imagination like that, Morris, you should have been writing stories.”
“With an imagination like I’ve got,” Morris said ruefully, “I can see police walking in that door right now — the trouble I’m in — a crook working here. If she’s wanted they’ll claim I was hiding her... Okay, so I’ve got friends at headquarters. So what?”
“Keep it up,” Della Street laughed. “You’re certainly dishing it out to yourself, Morris. You’ll be having yourself convicted of murder next — being strapped in the death chair in the gas cham...”
“Don’t!” Morris interposed so sharply that his voice was like the peremptory crack of a pistol. “Not even to joke, don’t say that.”
There was silence for a moment, then Alburg regained his self-control, nodded his head emphatically. “That’s the story,” he said. “At one time she was rich. She got tangled up. Maybe it was marijuana. That’s it. She went to a reefer party, and she was picked up. Six months she got, right in the can. That’s why the fur coat was there in the closet, neglected all the time she was in jail. Then, when she got out, the moths were in it...”
“And then,” Mason said, smiling, “when she went in she was wealthy, when she came out she was broke.”
Alburg gave that frowning consideration. “How come?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Mason told him. “It’s your story. I’m just picking flaws. If she was a wealthy society dame who got picked up at a reefer party, and served six months, how does it happen that when she came out she had to get a job as a waitress?”
“Now,” Alburg said, “you’re really asking questions.”
“Tell us about how she left,” Mason invited. “Just what did happen, Morris? We want facts now, no more of your imaginative theories.”
Alburg said, “She simply walked out, just like I told you. I heard the bell ring a couple of times, the bell the cook rings when food is taken off the stove and ready to be picked up. You don’t like to hear that bell ring because it means the waitresses are falling down on the job.”
“How many waitresses?” Mason asked.
“Five waitresses, and I have a man who handles the trade in the booths on this side. He’s been with me a long time. The booth trade is the best because you get the biggest tips.”
“All right, go on, what about the waitress?”
“Well, after I heard the bell ring a couple of times I went back to investigate. There was this stuff on the shelf by the stove — food that was getting cold. I start for the waitresses to bawl them out. Then one of the customers asked me what was taking so long. I asked him who was waiting on him; he tells me what she looked like. I knew it was Dixie. I went around looking for her. She’s nowhere. All the food on the shelf was for Dixie’s tables.
“I sent one of the girls to the powder room. ‘Drag her out,’ I say. ‘Sick or not, drag her out.’ She wasn’t there. Then the dishwasher told me he’d seen her. She went out the back door and ran down the alley.
“Well, you know how things are. When an emergency comes up you have to take care of the customers first, so I started the girls getting the food out to the tables, made them take an extra table apiece, and... well, then I came in here to pass my troubles on to you.”
“Did this waitress make friends with the other girls?”
“Not a friend. She kept her lip buttoned.”
“No friends?”
“Didn’t want to mingle around. The other waitresses thought she was snooty — that and the mink coat.”
“Well,” Mason said, “I gather that...”
A waiter pulled aside the green curtain, tapped Alburg on the shoulder, and said, “Beg your pardon, Boss, but the police are here.”
“Oh-oh,” Alburg said, and glanced helplessly over his shoulder. “Put ’em in one of the booths, Tony. I can’t have people around the restaurant seeing me being questioned by the police... I knew it all along, Mason, she’s a crook, and...”
“The other booths are all full,” the waiter said.
Alburg groaned.
“Tell them to come on in here,” Mason said.
Alburg’s face lit up. “You won’t mind?”
“We’ve gone this far with it, and we may as well see it through,” Mason said.
Alburg turned to the waiter. “Plain-clothes or uniform?”
“Plain-clothes.”
“Bring ’em in,” Alburg said. “Bring in a couple of extra chairs, Tony. Bring in coffee and cigars, the good cigars — the best.”