Nipped in the Bud (17 page)

Vito’s face lighted up like a lantern. “If they’re here, I’ll find.”

“It won’t be so easy this time, now that they’ve got the wind up. Probably they’ve hidden the car in some garage and then holed up in an apartment or motel. Perhaps now they’ll even go to the extremes of doing their own cooking.”

The boy grinned. “Nobody hides a big blue Cadillac where I can’t find.”

“Very good. And remember, this time they mustn’t guess that we’re on the trail, or everything is ruined.” She reached in her handbag for the inevitable five-dollar bill, but Vito informed her that on a slack day like Monday, and especially for such an old and valued customer, he would accept a retainer of only two dollars. As he tucked the money away she added, “If you do get any clues, leave a message for me at the Primero.”

He nodded and was gone. The schoolteacher went on inside the lunchroom, feeling just a shade more hopeful now that she had set her little brown bloodhound on the scent again. She sat down at the counter to wait while the chef made up Talley’s snack, and a moment later was surprised to see a familiar face in the doorway. It was Nikki Braggioli again, now dressed—or undressed—in red shorts and a brownish-yellow flowered Hawaiian shirt, quite unbuttoned.

“Looking for me?” she sang out.

Obviously he hadn’t been; his face fell and for a moment it seemed that Nikki would turn and bolt. But he recovered himself and graciously accepted her apologies for the surprise visit earlier and an invitation to sit down. “I was looking for some
huevos rancheros
” he confessed. “Wonderful for hangover, and have I got one! You too?”

“Certainly not—” Miss Withers began. Then, “Yes, perhaps in a way I have.”

“Two on the
huevos,
” Nikki sang out to the man at the grill. “
Muy calor.
” He lowered his voice. “I had a good time last night, they tell me. Last thing I remember, I was dancing the cancan at the end of the chorus line at the Bali Hai.”

The schoolteacher said she was sorry to have missed it.

“I am sorry not to have stayed home.” He sighed. “Not one but
two
pretty girls in my bedroom, and I have to be out!”

Miss Withers sniffed. “Perhaps it is just as well. Though if you’d been at home they might have at least dropped a hint about where they were running off to.”

“Then you’re still set on making them go home? Why must you drive away my playmates?”

“You can find other playmates,” she said tartly. “I haven’t noticed any shortage of young women hereabouts.”

“Ah, but none so pretty, so gay—and so rich!”

“You are really fond of them, young man?”

He held up three fingers close together. “We’re like this. On weekends, of course, I’m in love with my fiancée, but weekdays I take turns being in love with those girls. Though I think perhaps the turn of one comes oftener than the other.”

“Naturally,” agreed the schoolteacher. The
huevos
had been set down before her, and turned out to be eggs fried in liquid brimstone. As she gulped down a bit of the fiery concoction she brushed away a tear and said, “It would be too bad if something unpleasant happened to her, wouldn’t it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She is in grave danger here, unless I miss my guess.”

Nikki considered that. “Because of all that money?”

“Money enters into it, but—”

“You think somebody wants to kidnap her?”

Thinking of John Hardesty and the inspector, Miss Withers smiled wryly and nodded. “I know it. Those girls shouldn’t be cruising around down here alone. They need more protection than a little pistol can give them. They weren’t joking when they wanted you to find them a good private detective for a bodyguard, you know.”

“A strong right arm, you think, is indicated?” A very, very thoughtful look came into Nikki’s eyes.

“Exactly. I think they’d both be very grateful, and appreciative—” She rose suddenly. “Well, I must be getting back to San Diego. Thanks very much for the eggs.” Miss Withers marched out to her car and drove away—but instead of heading toward the border she simply drove around the block. Sure enough, as she came down the Avenida again she saw Nikki, easily spotted in his flaming red shorts, coming out of the lunchroom. He hurried off down the street in the opposite direction, and she cruised slowly along at a very respectful distance. This was almost too good to be true.

It was. Down at the far end of the block Nikki Braggioli suddenly stepped off the sidewalk and slid in behind the wheel of a battered, but serviceable looking British MG roadster, whipped it out into the street and took off with a tremendous roar. A moment later, in spite of all she could do, he was out of sight. All that Miss Withers had discovered was that Nikki knew, or thought he knew, where Ina and Dallas had gone.

There was nothing more to be done here at the moment, the schoolteacher realized. But she suddenly remembered that certain formalities were in order before she could cross the line. She drove back to the veterinary’s office, and this time found Dr. Doxa in, a smiling, beady-eyed beanpole of a man in last week’s white jacket.

Breathlessly she stated her business, adding that she was in a great hurry. And anyone with half an eye could see at a glance that her dog was free of rabies or hoof-and-mouth disease or anything else. She put down two one-dollar bills on the desk.

“But, señora—beg pardon, señorita—if the animal has been bitten—”

“Talley hasn’t been bitten by anything, unless possibly a local flea, since I made the fatal mistake of bringing him down across the border with me yesterday!”

“As you say.” Dr. Doxa nodded, then hunted through the drawers of his desk and came up with a printed form. He picked up a fountain pen, and then put it down again. “First, may I see the bill of sale for the dog, please?”

“I am not in the habit of carrying it about with me!”

“You can then show me the registration papers?”

“They’re at home, not here. But you can see the tag on his collar….”

The man sighed and shook his head, but his eyes shone with the innocent delight of a child beginning a favorite game. “Señorita Weethers, what can I do? There is nothing to show that the dog, he is your property.”

Even then a five-dollar bill tactfully slipped across the desk would probably have sufficed. But Miss Withers had got up on the wrong side of the wrong bed that morning, she was suffering from incipient indigestion and what was very possibly sleeping-pill hangover—remembering that coffee last night. “Is this a racket?” she demanded. “How much are you trying to squeeze out of me?”

There was a short, stiff silence. Dr. Doxa’s dark eyes clouded, and his face set like concrete. “I can do
nada
for you,” he said, with a formal little bow that pushed her miles away. “Perhaps at the
Ayunamiento
…?”

The schoolteacher retired, in some confusion. But she gathered herself together. After several false starts she found the city hall; she stood in line at five separate windows before finding the right one, and finally located a clerk who thought he remembered an ancient ordinance about dog licenses. Yes, here it was. Dogs owned by foreigners visiting or traveling in the Territory must be registered and licensed, at a fee of innumerable pesos per annum, under a law passed at the time the first greyhound track had opened.

“But my dog isn’t—” she began, and then realized that the less said about Talley and greyhounds the better. It came to a little less than five dollars, American, and she reached into her purse. But it was not to be that easy. Before the license could be issued she must show a certificate from the
Jefe de Policía
showing that no animal of Talleyrand’s description had been reported during the last six months as lost, or strayed, or stolen.

The policeman at the
Jefatura,
after she had cooled her heels outside his office for over an hour, bit his pencil and smiled and said that all her troubles were over. He would be most happy to make an immediate search of the records, and if she would come back tomorrow at this very same hour, or perhaps the day after—of course, bringing with her a veterinary’s certificate that the animal was in good health.

So passed the afternoon. Miss Withers was caught in a complex Rube Goldberg machine of Latin bureaucracy; she was the unhappy sparrow in the old story who flew over Beverly Hills and somehow got into the goddamndest badminton game!

So this was what they meant when they talked about “a Mexican standoff’! But, she finally remembered, there were more ways than one to skin a cat.

Finally she drove up across the long bridge to the port of entry, at the last minute drawing out of the line of traffic and pretending to inspect a tire until she saw one of the northbound cars ahead of her getting its spot check. That should mean, if her deductions were correct, that the next two or three vehicles would pass through Customs with a minimum of formality. And at this hour it was unlikely that her particular red-faced Nemesis of yesterday’s night shift would be on duty.

She pulled back into line, and when her turn came she told the first inspector that she was born in Iowa, and the second that she had purchased nothing in Tijuana. She was waved on, and her heart leaped within her. The coupé leaped too as she hastily let out the clutch, only somehow she had put it into reverse instead of first, and the car slammed smartly backward against the next in line. The collision was noisy, but not hard enough to damage the bumpers. And then suddenly from the rear of her rented vehicle came fearful though muffled howls, and the frantic scrabbling of paws trying to dig their way out.

“
Just
a minute, sister!” barked the customs inspector. “Open it up, please.”

So, for the lack of a piece of paper, they turned back to Tijuana. “Exiled!” cried Miss Withers in deep vexation of spirit. “And all because you couldn’t keep quiet for another little minute!” Talleyrand, who had been talked into the luggage compartment deal much against his better judgment, sulked alone in the back seat.

There was nothing for it but to stop and pick up some of the immediate necessities of life in the shopping section of the town; one couldn’t go on indefinitely without dog food, a toothbrush, and certain articles of wearing apparel. There was no telling how long she would have to stay down in Mexico—unless she disposed somehow of Talley, which was unthinkable. Perhaps someday another veterinary would open up an office.

Miss Withers came back into the lobby of the Hotel Primero, loaded down with parcels and dragging or rather dragged by the poodle, and then was surprised by a hail from the desk clerk, who even managed a toothy smile. It seemed that a phone call had come in for her but one
momentito
ago….

“Vito, already?” she gasped. “What was the message?”

No message. Considerably disappointed, the schoolteacher climbed the stair, opened a can of dog food for Talley, and then proceeded to bathe and change into her new garments. They were, perhaps, a bit on the gay side. But she had certain plans, and in this town the only way to be inconspicuous was to be as conspicuous as possible. She left the poodle polishing the bottom of his dish and was just starting out again when here came Vito up the stairs under full steam, obviously bursting with excitement. “No!” she cried. “You haven’t located—”

His finger was to his lips, and with a wary glance behind him he motioned toward her door. Once inside, the boy said in a most conspiratorial air, “Careful! Somebody is snooping, I think.”

“
What?
”

“I just come in and ask for you at the desk. And suddenly a man comes up and offers me a dollar to tell him what it’s all about and what errands I run for you.”

Miss Withers gasped. “Why, the nerve of that clerk!”

Vito shook his head. “Not the clerk, another man. A curly-haired, good-looking foreigner in a fancy shirt. I took the dollar—”

“You accepted a dollar bribe from Nikki Braggioli? Why, Vito!”

“Sure. More better this way. I tell him you send me to find out where you can see dorty movies from Havana.”

The schoolteacher sat down suddenly in a chair, spluttering. Finally she said, “Very well, Vito. What’s done is done. Come tell me, what did you find?”

In a stage whisper, he told. This time it hadn’t been so easy. The girls hadn’t taken a train out of town, because there was none to take. They had not chartered a plane at the little local airport. Nor had they gone back across the line into the United States, because Vito had a wide acquaintance among the peddlers who hawked pottery pigs and bulls and horses on the bridge twenty-four hours a day, and would certainly have noticed two little girls in a big Cadillac….

“Young man, will you please come to the point? I don’t want to know where they’re
not!
”

He nodded. “Finally I check the filling stations. The gorls stop at the gas station on the corner by the Foreign Club very, very early this morning, and fill up their car with much gas and oil, also extra cans of gas and water.”

“But where could they drive to?” she demanded. “I know they couldn’t have set out for Mexico City or anywhere, because the only motor roads in Baja California peter off in the desert, leading nowhere.”

“Yes, ma’am. But they also ask for a road map, and want to know about the new highway that runs just south of the border all the way to Mexicali and San Luis. The cousin of a friend of mine wipes their windshield.”

“Mexicali?” Miss Withers frowned.

“Yes. But the new highway it is to be built soon, it now exists only on paper. The old road is passable for a jeep perhaps, more better for burros. Much sand. I do not think—”

“I see, Vito! Good work. It’s obvious that they took a chance, but that they will get stuck in the sand and have to be pulled out. Probably then they’ll be heading back here sometime this evening, very worn out and weary and perhaps in a more vulnerable mood.” She nodded. “It would hardly be worthwhile setting out after them—”

Vito shook his head emphatically. “It would not! Because—”

But Miss Withers was making new plans. “I must gather reinforcements. Perhaps I’ll even have to try to put through a long-distance phone call from here. And speaking of phone calls, why didn’t you leave a message when you called me earlier?”