Nipped in the Bud (25 page)

“Relax, will you?” Inspector Piper took the long-dead cigar from his lips, continuing not unreasonably, “Now what could anybody do that hasn’t been done? Chief Robles is cooperating perfectly, every policeman in this end of the Territory has been instructed to keep an eye out for that blue Cadillac.”

“There should have been a road block established on the Ensenada highway, to stop them.”

“Hildegarde, be reasonable. By the time you got hold of me and I got hold of Robles it had been over an hour and a half since your phone call from the Trempleau girl. She’d had time enough to get up here long before then.”

The schoolteacher looked at him coldly. “If you’d only showed up here at a reasonable time—”

“I was only helping John Hardesty work out final arrangements for tomorrow with the San Diego police. It’s a complicated thing, taking two female prisoners back to New York. Somebody has to make plane reservations, and all that. And there has to be a policewoman along for the trip.”

“You and your arrangements!” she snapped. “It’s my private opinion that you were in some dive, watching the cootch dancers! You smell slightly of stale beer and dime-store perfume.”

“All right,” the inspector conceded. “Suppose I did drop into one of the places up the street to have a look at the floor show? It’s a liberal education, and I’m a big boy now.”

“You’re a big something, anyway. And …”

“I even happened to run into some of our friends there,” he continued. “Art Wingfield and Thallie were at a ringside table at the Ritz, cozy as two bugs in a rug. Holding hands, too.”

“I’m not interested at the moment in alcoholics enamorous.”

“They only had a pitcher of
cerveza.
You were right about one thing, though. That romance is about to burst into full flower. Thallie was really giving him the works.”

“You joined them, I suppose? But you didn’t stay long.”

“I did not join them. They didn’t have eyes for anybody else. And I didn’t stick around after the floor show was over because there was a little too much ‘Honey, you like buy me one dreenk?’ for my taste.”

Miss Withers sniffed. “The B-girls probably picked you for an easy mark because of that bright new necktie. I have a feeling, Oscar, that you can take it off and save it for some other occasion. The television party tomorrow is off, I’m very much afraid.”

“Say, you really do have a hunch that something is wrong, don’t you?” Piper stared at her curiously. “You figure that Dallas Trempleau somehow actually wormed the name of the murderer out of Ina—or something that led her to guess it—and that now she is being fool enough to walk right up to the guy and admit that she knows all?”

“Something like that, perhaps.”

“Playing cagey, huh? What bee is this you’ve got in your bonnet, anyway?”

Miss Withers gave him a look. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Oscar. But the phone call from Dallas was surprising, to say the least—almost out of character. And it doesn’t entirely ring true. Why should she have called me at all?”

“That’s easy. Because something that shyster lawyer, that prize pupil of yours, said when he was down there, made her think that you might know where I was. She wanted you to have me here at midnight. It’s only a little after eleven now; she’ll show up.”

“I wonder.”

“Well, why wouldn’t she come?”

“That isn’t quite it.” The schoolteacher walked across the room, then turned abruptly. “Oscar, I wonder if she took that nasty little .28 revolver with her on her mysterious excursion? Or, if not, what happened to it?”

“Well!” he said. “You don’t really think—”

“I’m afraid you’re all too right,” Miss Withers interrupted bitterly. “Or if I do, I don’t think clearly. Somewhere along the line I’ve accepted a false premise; I’ve been misdirected. You know, don’t you, that magicians perform their tricks by misdirection? I only hope that tonight some innocent person doesn’t get murdered because of my stupidity.”

“Horsefeathers. You’re worse than John Hardesty.”

“What about him?” she asked quickly.

“Oh, just a wild idea.” The inspector looked at his watch. “He can tell you when he gets here—he only stopped off to send some telegrams.”

Miss Withers winced slightly at the word “telegrams.” “All the same,” she insisted, “I still think that a murder has been arranged and will take place—will take place just about now, somewhere under our very noses. Meanwhile we only sit here and twiddle our thumbs.” The schoolteacher sighed. “Oscar, if we only had an inkling of what was behind Dallas Trempleau’s phone call.”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“My guesses are much better than yours, as you very well know. But we’ve got to do something. Why don’t you ring Sascha Bordin’s room again and see if he’s come in yet?”

“Okay,” Piper said wearily. “But, as I told you, a man his age isn’t very likely to be back in his hotel room at this hour on his first night in Tijuana.” But he tried, and surprisingly enough Bordin answered his phone, and, his hair tousled, even obligingly joined them a moment later in shirt sleeves. “I was just sitting down to type out the notes I made on my interview with the elusive Miss Kell this afternoon,” he confessed. Bordin looked at the inspector warily. “I suppose our official friend here thinks I stole a march on him?”

“Not at all,” Piper said. “It’s the assistant D.A.’s toes you’re stepping on, if anybody’s. Though I’d be interested in learning how you knew the Kell girl was in Ensenada at all.”

“Why—” Bordin began.

Miss Withers remembered the little trap into which she had fallen, and said hastily, “Not an unnatural inference, since the girls weren’t here and there was no other place for them to go. Anyway, Sascha, there was no harm done. And …”

“No harm,” said Piper, “except you tipped them off to what was planned for tomorrow.”

“I did,” the lawyer admitted. “With a purpose. I thought that if anything would shock the Kell girl into telling the whole truth—” But he shook his head. “I got nothing new. You can even read the notes if you want. If the case ever does come to trial, I’ll make all I can of the fact that now Ina thinks she heard somebody in the apartment hallway after she saw my client leave; but it’s not what I’d hoped for.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Withers brightly, “you didn’t use enough of the right technique—the
in vino Veritas
approach.” She told him about Dallas’ plying the girl with wine and cognac.

Bordin looked completely incredulous. “What? You mean to say that alcohol would work like scopolamine and pentothal to release buried memories?”

“The only answer to that is that it
seems
to have worked, in Ina’s case at least,” the schoolteacher pointed out. “Only unfortunately we don’t have the slightest idea of what it was that Dallas managed to uncover.” She told her former prize pupil all or almost all of the phone conversation that had set all this spinning.

“Now,” the inspector took over, “what we want to know is this. What was dropped during your interview with those girls down in Ensenada this afternoon that might help us figure out where they’ve gone?”

Bordin thought, and slowly shook his head.

“No names were mentioned at all?”

“Not in front of me. I found it hard to get anything out of Ina Kell with the Trempleau girl around. It was almost as if—”

“As if Ina were afraid?” the schoolteacher pressed.

Bordin nodded slowly. “Or under some sort of strain. When I bore down on her too hard she burst into tears.”

“A woman’s refuge. Well, thank you, Sascha.”

“I wish I could help you further,” the lawyer told them. “Honestly, I can’t.”

“Thanks,” Piper told him. “That’s all, I guess. Oh—unless you have some idea of where your client, Junior Gault, might be at the moment?”

Bordin said, “My guess is that he’s on his way to Tahiti, or Baffin’s Bay or Guatemala, or any place where he might get lost and stay lost. But I have no direct information—I don’t even know where to send my bill.” He nodded pleasantly and went out.

“I still don’t like him,” the inspector said.

“At the moment I don’t like anybody or anything,” Miss Withers snapped back. She stalked up and down the room. It was now more than three hours since the phone call. “Oscar,” she said finally, “it’s getting on for twelve o’clock. No word from the Mexican police and, what’s worse, no word from either of the girls.”

“Women,” he pointed out sensibly, “are usually late for appointments.”

“
I’m
not that sort of woman,” the schoolteacher reminded him, “and neither is Dallas Trempleau if I judge her aright. She wouldn’t have asked me to have you here at midnight if she hadn’t expected to meet us here at midnight. Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless she wanted us both to stay put, where we couldn’t possibly get in the way of something she’d planned!” She shook her head. “That’s too farfetched, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t …” he began. Then there was a knock at the door.

“Eureka!” cried Miss Withers, and rushed to fling it open. But instead of the girl she had expected she stared into the pleasant, surprised face of John Hardesty, assistant D.A., far off his beat but still clutching his briefcase.

“Just looking for the inspector,” he explained. “The hotel is full up, and I thought maybe he’d let me bunk in one of the beds in his room.”

“There’ll be no sleeping for any of us this night,” said Miss Withers grimly, and told him why. “Not until we find out what’s happened to the Trempleau girl.”

“You think something may have happened to her, then?” Hardesty sat down, and began to ask quiet, probing questions. “You gathered from the phone call that she wanted the inspector here at midnight in his official capacity? You thought that she intended to come here and denounce the actual but hitherto unsuspected murderer of Tony Fagan, or maybe even lure him up here and hand him over for arrest?”

“Why—something like that, I inferred at the time.” The schoolteacher was very thoughtful. “Now just what did she say? She said, ‘
I know, now!
’”

“That could mean several things,” the D.A. pointed out. “She could have known something important about the murder, or she could have known that somebody else—somebody other than Ina, presumably—knew. In other words, that the jig was up.”

“Yes, maybe she wanted to come here,” put in the inspector, “and give herself up!”

“You’re not especially funny,” snapped Miss Withers.

“Nobody was trying to be,” Piper said. “Tell her, John.”

Hardesty nodded. “Well, you see, Miss Withers—Junior Gault’s escape wasn’t exactly a surprise to us.”

“What?” she gasped. “You mean it was a put-up job?”

“Not exactly. He was at least technically quite in the clear at the moment, and properly speaking he isn’t a fugitive at all. But it was the idea of some of my superiors to let Gault have a taste of freedom, to see what he’d do with it.”

“And he certainly did, didn’t he?” Piper grinned.

“A guilty man would flee, and an innocent one remain; is it that simple?” Miss Withers looked dubious.

Hardesty looked very wise. “Anyway, don’t worry about Gault.”

“You mean to say you know where he is now?”

“Just about. He’s been watched every step of the way since he walked out of his family’s house. We had a report on him from Kansas City, and Albuquerque, and he was recognized getting off a TWA plane around noon today at Los Angeles airport. Not easy for a man to disguise that slight limp he has, you know. He hasn’t been reported since noon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d be arriving in San Diego on one of this evening’s late flights.”

“Oh,
no!
” gasped Miss Withers.

Hardesty nodded. “Junior has something on his mind, and we intend to find out what it is. Maybe plant a bug—a concealed microphone—in his room when the time comes.” The inspector nodded.

Two little boys playing with gadgets, the schoolteacher thought. Looking for miracles, for the easy way, for the answer in the back of the algebra book. “You mean you think Junior Gault is coming out here to meet somebody?” she demanded.

“Yes,” said the assistant D.A. “We think it’s very possible. And just in case it’s needed, I happen to have brought along a warrant for—” He stopped suddenly, and they all turned their heads toward the hall door. Outside there was unwonted commotion, sounds of heavy footsteps, of gay feminine laughter, and voices raised in singing something about potatoes being cheaper and tomatoes being cheaper and now’s the time to fall in love.

“Well!” cried Miss Hildegarde Withers, and rushed to the door just in time to see Nikki Braggioli engaged in carrying a slight, redheaded miss into his suite.

“
Ina!
” gasped the schoolma’am, in a very schoolma’amish tone. “Ina Kell!”

The young couple broke suddenly apart, but their eyes were still shining. “It’s all right,” Nikki said hastily. “We want you to be the first to know. We’re in love.”

“How very interesting,” said Miss Withers coldly. She pushed through the door after them. “But there is a time and a place for everything.”

Nikki gaily picked up the song cue, and in his high tenor rendered something about now being the time for love, honey, because you’re near me.

“Now’s the time to make some sense!” snapped the schoolteacher. She faced the girl. “Young lady, where have you been? What’s been going on? Where is Dallas?”

“Don’t know,” Ina said. “Don’t care.”

Miss Withers had had, she felt, just about enough. She grasped the girl firmly by one shell-pink ear, much as she might have taken one of her third-graders down the hall to the principal’s office, and led her out.

“Hey!” Nikki cried indignantly. “I mean to say, really!” He followed after, but the schoolteacher pushed him firmly in the brisket with her free hand and shoved him back inside. Then she led the bewildered but unresisting girl into her own suite and slammed the door.

“Oscar!” she cried. “Mr. Hardesty! See what I’ve found!”

“Bingo!” said Oscar Piper, putting down his cigar.

“Great Godfrey!” said Hardesty. “If it isn’t little Ina—”

“Hello,” the girl murmured feebly, and then whirled on her captor. “You can’t do this …”