“Or, looking at it from your mother’s standpoint, I have dragged the Lennox name into the mud, committed a murder, stolen the family heirlooms from Moana, and...”
“Dorothy, are you kidding?”
“I wish I were. It’s a bad dream. Horace, I need you. Grab a plane and get out here.”
“Dorothy, is this a gag to get me out there for some celebration or something? Remember that I’m a struggling young attorney, and having just opened an office...”
“Horace,” she interrupted firmly, “I feel a strong sympathy for women who have hysterics. I’ve pinched myself black and blue, trying to convince myself it’s some hideous nightmare. In short, as I have written so many times during my practice days on the typewriter, ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.’ ”
“The good men are coming,” Horace announced. “We’ll grab the first plane. Rest assured, Bright Eyes, that Sir Galahad is riding to the rescue.”
“Not Sir Galahad,” she said. “There are connotations of righteous virtue reeking about that character. What I need is someone who can take me in his arms and make me forget that I am being cast in the role of defendant by the local constabulary.”
“Hold everything until I get there,” he said. “I’m riding a white charger which will be all spotted with mud. I think the regularly scheduled planes will get me in to Los Angeles around six o’clock in the morning, your time, but I think there are some independent flights on which I can save a little money, and they’ll leave whenever they have a load. Anyway, I’ll come walking in on you. You’ll be at the Madison Hotel?”
“Better inquire at the jail first.”
She was reassured by his laugh, although she could detect a note of nervousness in his voice.
“You sit tight and hold everything, Princess. I’ll be right out.”
She hung up the phone with a feeling of relief.
12
Rex Brandon called Selby on the phone and said, “Doug, I think we’ve finally got our corpse identified.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Rose Furman. She has an apartment in Los Angeles, in the Pocahontas Apartments.”
“How did you get the identification, Rex?”
“Through her shoes. She has a very narrow foot, and it’s difficult for her to get shoes. This shoe store has been selling her shoes on special order for four or five years. They know her because they’ve delivered shoes to her apartment, and she has a charge account. Aside from that, they don’t know much about her. Sometimes she’d come in and buy one or two pairs of shoes, sometimes three or four pairs. Then they wouldn’t see her again for months. I’m going into L.A. Want to come along?”
“Sure,” Selby said. “How about taking Sylvia along?”
“Sure thing.”
Selby said, “Well, we’d better tip her off, and let her follow in her own car. We’ve been in enough trouble for one day taking reporters along with us.”
“I’ll say we have.”
“I’ll get hold of her,” Selby said.
“How about it, Doug? If this looks like the girl, do we go in her apartment and look around?”
“We use our judgment. But before we make a move we’ll have a complete identification. You have her picture. We’ll get someone to identify the picture positively. Then, if we find out she’s missing from her apartment, and we have a positive identification, and the man in the shoe store identifies the photograph, I see no reason why we shouldn’t go in.”
“It’s okay by me,” Brandon said.
“I’m getting a line on a little stuff here and there,” Selby said, “but I...”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Brandon interrupted, “something’s happened. The Blade is out on the streets. It must be darned near forty minutes early. I can hear the newsboys screaming at the top of their lungs.”
“Well,” Selby said, “we’ll see if...”
“Just a minute, here’s one of the deputies. He’s got a paper... Oh, oh, Doug, this looks like something!”
“What is it?”
“That’s why they wanted to get out on the streets and grab the credit,” Brandon said. “Otto Larkin has grabbed the whole front page of the paper.”
“What’s he done?” Selby asked.
“According to the paper,” Brandon said, “he’s arrested the person who committed the murder, and... and damned if he hasn’t arrested Dorothy Clifton, Doug... and The Blade claims he’s found the murder weapon and bloodstained clothing in the suspect’s hotel room... and there’s merry hell to pay.”
Selby said, “Throw the paper in the car, Rex. We’ll read the lurid details on the way to Los Angeles.”
13
Selby read The Blade aloud to Rex Brandon while the sheriff piloted the big county car over the Los Angeles highway.
“Well,” he said, “we have to read The Blade to find out what Daphne Arcola was doing here. Listen to the statement she made to Harry Elrod. This is in quotes, Rex, as her story:
“During the latter part of July, the twenty-ninth to be exact, I found myself temporarily out of funds in Yuma, Arizona.
“A young chap offered to take me part way to Los Angeles which was my destination. He said he would drive until he got too sleepy to go on. His first name was Frank. He was driving a car with a Missouri license. I’m almost certain he said his last name was Grannis.
“He drove me as far as Madison City. He told me he was too sleepy to try to go on, and said he was going to stay at a motel. He was a perfect gentleman, and offered to get me a single room if I desired to wait and go on with him next morning. However, I couldn’t do that, despite the fact that it was then well past midnight. I had to be in Los Angeles and decided I would hitchhike on through.
“A motorist gave me a ride within five minutes of the time Frank let me out of his car, and I didn’t think any more of it until I read in the paper a Frank Grannis had been arrested in Madison City on a hit-and-run charge. I returned to Madison City to investigate, because if this Frank Grannis is the same man who gave me a ride to Madison City, I know he couldn’t have been involved in any accident. I was with him from the time he left the checking station on the Arizona-California border until he turned in for the night at Madison City.
“This is the reason I came to Madison City. I wanted to investigate the hit-and-run case because I understood Frank Grannis was arrested here, then taken to some other county.
“Imagine my surprise when I awakened this morning to find the county officials not only had me listed as being murdered, but also calmly invaded my bedroom by means of a passkey without so much as a knock on the door.”
Brandon said, “Why, I’m the one who arrested that Frank Grannis, Doug. The highway police found this dead Mexican outside of Holtville. He’d evidently been riding a bicycle and a car had hit him, knocked him over into the ditch, and the driver had kept right on going. A piece of the headlight lens was found just to the side of the highway at the scene of the accident, and another piece a little farther over toward the ditch. The police telephoned all along the highway asking us to search transient garages and auto courts for a car with a broken headlight lens.
“I remember one of the deputies located this Grannis car. The headlight on the right-hand side was broken, there was a big dent in the fender on the right side and the man who owned the car admitted he had driven up from Tucson the day before, driving until late at night.