looking for false notes, and there it was, an indication that he had until recently worn a beard.
Josephine expressed astonishment that Celere was alive. She said she had never given up hope that he had somehow survived. She took his hand and said, “Oh, you poor thing,” when he told his story. She seemed happy to see him, Bell thought, but she turned quickly to the business of the race.
“You couldn’t have come at a better time, Marco. I need help keeping the aeroplane running. It’s getting pretty worn down. I’ll have my husband put you on the payroll.”
“There is no need for that,” Celere replied gallantly, “I will work gratis. After all, it is in my interest, too, that my machine win the race.”
“Then you better get to work,” said Bell. “Weather’s clearing. Weiner of Accounting just announced we’re taking off for Palm Springs.”
MINDFUL THAT ISAAC BELL was watching him like a hawk, Marco Celere waited patiently to have a private conversation with Josephine. He made sure he was never alone with her until after she arrived at Palm Springs. Only the next morning, while they fueled the machine for the short flight to Los Angeles, did he dare to chance speaking. They were alone, pouring gasoline into the overhead gravity tank, while the mechanicians joined the police in clearing spectators from the field.
Josephine spoke first. “Who died in the fire?”
“I found a body in the hobo jungle. Now Platov doesn’t exist.”
“Dead already?”
“Of course. A poor old man. They die all the time. What did you think?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Maybe married life confuses you.”
“What do you mean?”
“What is it like?” Marco teased. “Being Mrs. Preston Whiteway?”
“I postponed my ‘honeymoon’ until after the race. You know that. I told you I would.”
Marco shrugged. “This is like opera buffa.”
“I don’t know anything about opera.”
“Opera buffa is the funny kind. Like vaudeville comics.”
“This is not funny to me, Marco.”
“To me, it’s worth getting shot.”
“How? Why?”
“It’s just that if something were to happen to Preston Whiteway, you would inherit his newspaper empire.”
“I don’t want his empire. I just want to fly aeroplanes and win this race.” She searched his face, and added, “And be with you.”
“I suppose that I should feel grateful you still feel that way.”
“What would happen to Preston?”
“Oh, now Mr. Whiteway is ‘Preston’?”
“I can’t call my husband Mr. Whiteway.”
“No, I suppose you can’t.”
“Marco, what is it? What are you getting at?”
“I just wonder, will you keep helping me?”
“Of course. . What did you mean, if something happens to Preston?”
“Such as Harry Frost, your insanely jealous former husband, murdering your new husband.”
“What are you saying?”
Marco reached over and turned back the sleeve of her blouse, uncovering the bandaged bullet wound on her forearm. “Nothing you don’t already know about the man.”
38
A LOUD, BRIGHT CARNIVAL pitched its tents near Dominguez Field, just south of Los Angeles, and was doing a roaring business from the spillover of the quarter-million spectators who thronged to cheer the arrival of the last two contestants for the Whiteway Cup and send them off to Fresno in the morning.
Eustace Weed was sick with fear over the impending order to contaminate Isaac Bell’s aeroplane fuel and had no desire to go to a carnival. But Mr. Bell insisted that “all work and no play made Jack a dull boy.” He backed up this observation with five dollars’ spending money and strict orders not to bring any change back from the midway. A friend of Mr. Bell’s, a guy Eustace’s age named Dash who’d been hanging around, placing a lot of bets on the race, ever since Illinois, walked over with Eustace from the rail yard and promised they’d meet up later to walk back to the support train.
Eustace won a teddy bear by knocking over wooden milk bottles with a baseball. He was debating mailing it to Daisy or delivering it in person – as if somehow everything would turn out fine – when the toothless old barker who handed him his prize whispered hoarsely, “You’re on, Eustace.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow morning. Drop it in Bell’s gasoline tank right before he takes off.”
“What if he sees me?”
“Palm it when you fill the tank so he don’t.”
“But he’s sharp as all heck. He might see me.”
The toothless old guy patted Eustace’s shoulder in a friendly way and said, “Listen, Eustace, I don’t know what this is about and I don’t want to. All I know is, the fellows who told me to pass you the message are as bad as they get. So I’m advising you, whoever this sharp Bell is, he better not see you.”
The carnival had a Ferris wheel in the middle. It looked eighty feet tall, and Eustace wondered would they leave Daisy alone if he rode to the top and killed himself by jumping off. Just then, Dash showed up.
“What happened? Lose all your money? You look miserable.”
“I’m O.K.”
“Hey, you won a teddy bear.”
“For my girl.”
“What’s her name?”
“Daisy.”
“Say, if you married her, she’d be Daisy Weed,” Dash joked like it was a new idea. Then he asked if Eustace was hungry and insisted on buying him a sausage and a beer that went down like sawdust and vinegar.
TWO HARD-FACED MEN with hooded eyes were waiting for Isaac Bell outside the
“Remember us, Mr. Bell?”
“Griggs and Bottomley. You look like you tangled with a locomotive.”
“Feel that way, too,” Griggs admitted.
Bell shook their hands, taking Bottomley’s left in deference to his sling, and told the detective-mechanicians, “They’re O.K., boys, Tom Griggs and Ed Bottomley, Southern Pacific rail dicks.”
The Van Dorns looked down their noses at the railroad police, who commonly represented the bottom of the private detective heap, until Bell added, “If you remember the Glendale wreck, Griggs and Bottomley were instrumental in getting to the bottom of it. What’s up, boys?”
“We had a hunch you’d be the Van Dorn ramrodding the Josephine case.”
Bell nodded. “Not something I want to read in the newspaper, but I am. And I have a funny feeling, based
