“You see my lawyer,” Grannis said, “and that’s all I’m going to say. I’ve talked too much already.”
Selby got to his feet. “All right, if that’s the way you feel about it, Frank. I thought perhaps we could help you.”
“Sure,” Grannis said, “I know the way you want to help.” He raised his chin and drew his extended forefinger across his throat.
“All right, if that’s the way you want to have it,” Selby said. “Come on, Rex, let’s go.”
They left the visitors’ room. The El Centro sheriff, waiting for them, asked, “Did you get anything out of him?”
“Something,” Selby said, “but I don’t know just what. I don’t know just what the significance of it is.”
“Boy, that lawyer of his is a smooth one. How do you suppose a guy with no more money than he has managed to get a high-powered lawyer like that?”
“Darned if I know,” Selby said, “but he certainly seems to have a high-powered lawyer.”
“You can say that again.”
“Well,” Brandon asked as they left the jail, “what do you make of Grannis?”
“The kid hates to lie,” Selby said. “He can hardly look us in the eye when he’s talking about what happened last night. And, because he hates to lie, he’s trying to tell the truth as far as he can and then resort to lies when he has to.”
“You don’t believe all of that stuff about the bond, do you?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I’m telling you, Doug, there’s something funny about that. They got him out for some particular purpose. They were taking a risk on getting him out and they knew it. They didn’t intend to risk their money any longer than was necessary. They had to have him out for some particular purpose and they put up the bail money and got him out. Then, as soon as they’d accomplished that purpose, they put him back in.”
Selby said, “Well, you can gamble on one thing. Frank Grannis, a stranger in California, didn’t pick A. B. Carr as the man to represent him simply by some form of telepathic communication. He got the best criminal lawyer in the country and that wasn’t accident.”
“What do you think it was?” Brandon asked.
Selby said, “I don’t think it was money. I don’t think Grannis has that sort of money. There’s nothing to indicate it.”
“Go ahead, son,” Brandon said, “you’re doing fine. Keep right on talking.”
“Therefore,” Selby said, “Carr is going to do something for Grannis, and Grannis must be going to do something for Carr.”
“Perhaps be a witness?”
Selby nodded.
“But,” Brandon said, “it’s the other way around, Doug. Carr is the one who is digging up the witness.”
“And that,” Selby said, “is the part that simply doesn’t make sense. Grannis should be doing something to help Carr in return for Carr’s legal services. In place of that, Carr seems to be acting purely in the interests of justice and with no thought of compensation — and you know that’s not right.”
Brandon opened the door of the big county sedan, slid in behind the steering wheel. Doug Selby got in from the other side. Brandon backed out of the parking place, said, “Well, we keep running around in circles every time we try to follow old A. B. C.’s back tracks.”
“Wait a minute,” Selby said suddenly. “I wonder if I haven’t got something after all, Rex.”
“What?” Brandon asked.
Selby said, “Remember when we met Horace Lennox at the office last night?”
“Uh-huh.”
Selby said excitedly, “Remember we talked with him about Dorothy Clifton and he said he was going to stay by her, and we asked him if he’d seen the family and he said he’d talked with his mother and Steve?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But,” Selby said, “he didn’t say he talked with Moana.”
“Well, he must have talked with her,” Brandon said. “She was probably even more bitter than his mother. She’s in a position... say, wait a minute.”
“Exactly,” Selby said. “The reason he didn’t talk with Moana is because she wasn’t there. And A. B. Carr was somewhere, and Frank Grannis was somewhere. And whenever we’d start crowding Frank Grannis on where he was, and who else besides his lawyer was with him, he’d shift his eyes and get evasive.”
“But what in the world would he have been doing meeting Moana Lennox?”
“That,” Selby said, “could be the pay-off, Rex.”
“What do you mean?”
“Grannis couldn’t pay Carr enough money to compensate old A. B. C. for representing him. But perhaps he could do something for old A. B. C. that would help Carr make money from another client.”
“But why should Moana be... gosh, Doug, you don’t think she could have...” Brandon let the sentence remain unfinished.
Selby said, “I don’t want to jump at conclusions, Rex, but something important happened last night and Grannis talked with someone whom he doesn’t dare mention... Let’s just start checking up on where certain people were last night.”
Brandon grinned, pushed his foot down on the throttle. “Now we’re getting somewhere, Doug. It sounds like a darn good theory.”
“It isn’t a theory,” Selby said, “only a hunch.”
“Far as I can see it’s a darn good hunch, Doug. I bet it pays off.”
Selby said, “It’s the way Carr would do the thing.”
“Wish we could beat him at his own game,” Brandon said. “Wouldn’t we be justified in using fire to fight the devil with, Doug?”
Selby shook his head. “Our hands are tied, Rex. As representatives of the law we have only two weapons we can use — brains and two-fisted honesty.”
“Honesty can’t stand up to the sort of ingenious trickery old A. B. C. uses,” Rex Brandon said bitterly. “He thinks nothing of bribery and...”
“I said Two-Fisted Honesty,” Selby reminded the sheriff. Brandon thought that over for a moment, then grinned. “I gotcha now, Doug.”
19
Horace Lennox, his face drawn, and with deeply etched lines at the corners of his mouth, entered the sheriff’s office, and said, “You sent for me, sir?”
“Yes, Horace. Doug Selby and I want to talk with you for a minute.”
“Yes, sir. What about?”
“It’s about your sister, Moana.”
Horace raised his eyebrows.
“You’ve decided to stand up for Dorothy Clifton on this thing?”
“Naturally.”
Brandon said, in a kindly voice, “Horace, it gets back to what happened the night this girl was murdered. Dorothy says that someone took her car.”
Horace nodded.
“I’m afraid your mother thinks that’s merely something Dorothy made up,” Selby said.
“I’m afraid so.”
“But you know, and I know that someone must have taken her car.”
Horace nodded.
“Could it have been Moana?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Moana’s secretive. She likes to play ’em close to her chest, but she wouldn’t have done a thing like that. If she’d taken the car, she’d have come forward and said so.”
“Did you see her when you got home last night?”
“No.”
“But you have talked with her?” Brandon asked, glancing significantly at Selby.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Where was she when you arrived home last night? Asleep?”
“She wasn’t home. She’d gone up to see her closest friend who lives at Santa Barbara. Poor kid. I guess she was pretty much upset with all the publicity, and so forth. The Lennox clan isn’t accustomed to... well, to seeing its name in the paper, particularly in this connection.”