a trip,”
“But he intended to drive all night?”
“A good part of the night.”
“Then wouldn’t it be natural for him to take the gun?”
“He’d driven all night lots of times before, but had never taken it. He’d always left it here for me.”
“Did your husband tell you he was taking the gun?”
“No.”
“How then do you know it was gone?”
“Because when I looked in the bureau drawer after he had left the gun wasn’t there.”
“It had been there before?”
“A couple of days before. I know that much.”
“You don’t know whether your husband was carrying it with him or whether he put it in a suitcase?”
“No.”
“Now, you identified the contents of the suitcase?”
“Yes.”
“How, when and where?”
“They took me to Petaluma. The car was being held there.”
“It was your husband’s car?”
“Yes.”
“Where do the Berkeley police get in on it?”
She said, “Don’t be silly. They’re investigating all angles. If I’d had a young lover, as you suggested, and had conspired to kill George off, the conspiracy would have taken place here in this county and the lover would be here. Therefore, the Berkeley police are working on it. They’re pretending that it’s a matter of co-operation with the Sheriff of Sonoma County, but I’ve known all along what they were up to.”
“Tell me about the suitcase.”
“It was just exactly as I had packed it.”
“You packed your husband’s things?”
“That was one of the wifely duties I took over when I married him.”
“How long have you been married?”
“About eight months.”
“How did you happen to meet him?”
She smiled and shook her head.
“Was Bishop a widower?”
“No. There was a first Mrs. Bishop.”
“What happened to her?”
“He bought her off.”
“When?”
“After she began to — to get suspicious.”
“There was a divorce?”
“Yes.”
“A final decree?”
“Certainly. I tell you we’re legally married.”
“You wouldn’t have taken a chance otherwise, would you?”
She looked me straight in the eyes. “Would you?”
“I don’t know. I’m asking.”
She said, “I have had my eyes open for a long time, and I went into this with my eyes open. I also went into it with the determination to play square in the event I got a square deal.”
“Did you get a square deal?”
“I think I did.”
“Do you ever get jealous?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think there’s anything to get jealous about, and even if there were, I wouldn’t run up my blood pressure over something you can’t help, something that’s — well, unavoidable.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
“How much later?”
“I don’t know.”
She said, “For your information I think the police will be having the house watched. They seem to think there’s something pretty shady about the situation. They’ve handed me a good line and now they’re going to keep a watch and see if George comes back home or if some other man should happen to come here.”
“In that case,” I said, “they’ve probably got me tagged already.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Your line will be tapped,” I told her. “You say your husband’s things were just the way you had packed them?”
“Yes.”
“He hadn’t unpacked a thing?”
“No.”
“Then no one else had unpacked them?”
“What do you mean?”
“No one had searched the suitcase or the bag?”
“I don’t think they had.”
“Do the police have any idea you know what they’re up to?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Have they questioned you — about your married life?”
“They’ve questioned me, but not about that.”
“How much money did your husband carry with him?”
“He always carried several thousand dollars in a money belt.”
“You don’t know anything else that would help?”
“Nothing except what I’ve told you.”
“Thanks,” I said, and started for the door.
“You won’t say anything about what I’ve told you — to the police — about Garvanza?”
I shook my head.
“After all, it’s only a hunch, a vague suspicion.”
“That’s all.”
“But somehow,” she said, “I think I’m right.”
“So do I,” I told her, and walked out.
It must have taken John Carver Billings the Second two days of concentrated thought to think up the alibi he had hired us to “discover.”
It took the police less than two hours to bust that alibi wide open.
The last radio news of the evening announced that Los Angeles police, somewhat skeptical of young Billings’s alibi in the Maurine Auburn murder case, had asked San Francisco police to check.
San Francisco police had checked.
The two girls who had been “located” by a private detective agency for John Carver Billings the Second had been sought by police.
One of the young women had purchased a new wardrobe and started on a vacation trip for South America. She was not immediately available. The other one, Sylvia Tucker, twenty-three, employed as a manicurist in a local
