“Kingsley.” I gave him the Beverly Hills address. “He manages a cosmetic company in the Treloar Building on Olive. The Gillerlain Company.”
Webber looked at Degarmo. Degarmo wrote lazily on an envelope.
Webber looked back at me and said: “What else?”
“I went up to this mountain cabin where the lady had been staying. It’s at a place called Little Fawn Lake, near Puma Point, forty-six miles into the mountains from San Bernardino.”
I looked at Degarmo. He was writing slowly. His hand stopped a moment and seemed to hang in the air stiffly, then it dropped to the envelope and wrote again. I went on: “About a month ago the wife of the caretaker at Kingsley’s place up there had a fight with him and left as everybody thought. Yesterday she was found drowned in the lake.”
Webber almost closed his eyes and rocked on his heels. Almost softly he asked: “Why are you telling me this? Are you implying a connection?”
“There’s a connection in time. Lavery had been up there. I don’t know of any other connection, but I thought I’d better mention it.”
Degarmo was sitting very still, looking at the floor in front of him. His face was tight and he looked even more savage than usual. Webber said: “This woman that was drowned? Suicide?”
“Suicide or murder. She left a goodbye note. But her husband has been arrested on suspicion. The name is Chess. Bill and Muriel Chess, his wife.”
“I don’t want any part of that,” Webber said sharply. “Let’s confine ourselves to what went on here.”
“Nothing went on here,” I said, looking at Degarmo. “I’ve been down here twice. The first time I talked to Lavery and didn’t get anywhere. The second time I didn’t talk to him and didn’t get anywhere.”
Webber said slowly: “I’m going to ask you a question and I want an honest answer. You won’t want to give it, but now will be as good a time as later. You know I’ll get it eventually. The question is this. You have looked through the house and I imagine pretty thoroughly. Have you seen anything that suggests to you that this Kingsley woman has been here?”
“That’s not a fair question,” I said. “It calls for a conclusion of the witness.”
“I want an answer to it,” he said grimly. “This isn’t a court of law.”
“The answer is yes,” I said. “There are women’s clothes hanging in a closet downstairs that have been described to me as being worn by Mrs. Kingsley at San Bernardino the night she met Lavery there. The description was not exact though. A black and white suit, mostly white, and a panama hat with a rolled black and white band.”
Degarmo snapped a finger against the envelope he was holding. “You must be a great guy for a client to have working for him,” he said. “That puts the woman right in this house where a murder has been committed and she is the woman he’s supposed to have gone away with. I don’t think we’ll have to look far for the killer, chief.”
Webber was staring at me fixedly, with little or no expression on his face but a kind of tight watchfulness. He nodded absently to what Degarmo had said.
I said: “I’m assuming you fellows are not a pack of damn fools. The clothes are tailored and easy to trace. I’ve saved you an hour by telling you, perhaps even no more than a phone call.”
“Anything else?” Webber asked quietly.
Before I could answer, a car stopped outside the house, and then another. Webber skipped over to open the door. Three men came in, a short curly-haired man and a large ox-like man, both carrying heavy black leather cases. Behind them a tall thin man in a dark gray suit and black tie. He had very bright eyes and a poker face.
Webber pointed a finger at the curly-haired man and said: “Downstairs in the bathroom, Busoni. I want a lot of prints from all over the house, particularly any that seem to be made by a woman. It will be a long job.”
“I do all the work,” Busoni grunted. He and the ox-like man went along the room and down the stairs.
“We have a corpse for you, Garland,” Webber said to, the third man. “Let’s go down and look at him. You’ve ordered the wagon?”
The bright-eyed man nodded briefly and he and Webber went downstairs after the other two.
Degarmo put the envelope and pencil away. He stared at me woodenly.
I said: “Am I supposed to talk about our conversation yesterday—or is that a private transaction?”
“Talk about it all you like,” he said. “It’s our job to protect the citizen.”
“You talk about it,” I said. “I’d like to know more about the Almore case.”
He flushed slowly and his eyes got mean. “You said you didn’t know Almore.”
“I didn’t yesterday, or know anything about him. Since then I’ve learned that Lavery knew Mrs. Almore, that she committed suicide, that Lavery found her dead, and that Lavery has at least been suspected of blackmailing him—or of being in a position to blackmail him. Also both your prowl-car boys seemed interested in the fact that Almore’s house was across the street from here. And one of them remarked that the case had been killed pretty, or words to that effect.”
Degarmo said in a slow deadly tone: “I’ll have the badge off the son of a bitch. All they do is flap their mouths. God damn empty-headed bastards.”
“Then there’s nothing in it,” I said.
He looked at his cigarette. “Nothing in what?”
“Nothing in the idea that Almore murdered his wife, and had enough pull to get it fixed.”
Degarmo came to his feet and walked over to lean down at me.
