Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, July 1959

A deed of dark violence can cast a pall on honeymoon happiness, even when it may be no more than a nightmare possibility. And when the bride is the daughter of a police officer—

I

The California sunshine was warm and thick; a slight breeze of buoyant, sparkling air moved restlessly through the palm trees. They were lying close together by the edge of Desert Spa’s gleaming pool.

A boy in white, starched coat brought an extension telephone from the Spa, plugged it in with practiced efficiency, tucked the receiver against Jerry’s ear. From the curve of his arm, Bina heard metallic buzzings that sounded vaguely like the voice of Jerry’s secretary, Lorraine.

Then he replaced the instrument, handed it back and tightened his arm around Bina. “Even on a guy’s honeymoon.”

“No!”

“The Hanlon deal’s cooking.”

“If it’s just a few days...”

“Weeks probably. Even months. Some nights.”

For a long time they lay without moving. Then he kissed her and sat up, reaching for his towel. And with this motion, the languor, the lovely drifting endlessness broke. Time rushed in upon them with a terrible pressure. And fear.

Bina sat up, expertly twisting dark hair into a loose circle, pinning it up. “Maybe,” she tried to keep her voice light, “I should stay out here until we find a house.”

“You can’t hunt houses in Beverly Hills from Palm Springs.” He was sliding her feet into wooden sandals. The old strain was back in his voice, almost hidden under a new man-of-the-house tone of command. “Look, angel, we had the most secret courtship in history — thanks to your father. From now on, it’s cards on the table.”

Bina walked beside him to the hotel office. “The papers,” she said tightly.

While Jerry paid their bill, the clerk handed her the Los Angeles papers he had been saving for her. “Back in the world again, huh?” he commiserated.

In their room, they went through the stack of papers carefully. And when they had finished, Jerry said, “I told you. You’re not scared to go back now, are you?”

Bina smiled at him uncertainly, “I don’t think so — not with you.”

There had only been two notices of their marriage. One in a gossip column: “Jerry Crevellin’s gone and done it, and we’re wishing him all happiness with the beauteous Bina (Ryan) — whose father is a real, live detective on the Beverly Hills Police Force, in case you didn’t know.”

The news account read: “Jerald Crevellin, prominent, young Beverly Hills broker, was married yesterday at Las Vegas to Bina Ryan. Miss Ryan was secretary to Mr. Crevellin’s aunt, the late Mrs. Clarissa Crevellin, well known social leader,”

Bina released her breath. “They don’t make it sound like we married too soon.”

“Only your dad counts months so hard.”

Bina couldn’t really blame Jerry for his bitterness toward her father, she reminded herself later as she drowsed contentedly beside her husband in the car, conscious of his strong hands on the wheel, his handsome, tanned face under the thatch of blond hair, bleached almost white from the desert sun.

The worry lines, too, that had bothered her, were smoothed away. It was a miracle, really, she thought, that he had ever wanted anything to do again with Detective Lefty Ryan or his daughter, Bina.

From the first moment, on that horrible night when the doctor’s call had brought the police and Bina to find Clarissa’s body still at the bottom of the stairs, Lefty had seemed to have it in for Jerry Crevellin.

It was Lefty, who had insisted on an intensive search of the house, finger printing, the works. Lefty, who had questioned and re-questioned Jerry in his office after Clarissa’s diary had fretted about his friendship with Dennis Moresby.

It had seemed to her that Lefty’s usual bluntness had a thrust of vitriol, as he faced Jerry. “Your aunt was a little worried about some of your friends. You did handle her investments?”

“I did.” Jerry had been magnificent about it, Bina thought, his voice unsteady from shock and grief, but his answers given quietly, without resentment. “I came from Boston several years ago when Aunt Clarissa offered to set me up in an office of my own, with her business as a starter.”

“You had a brokerage business in Boston?”

“It was a partnership.”

Lefty’s square fingers thrummed. “Couple of places in your aunt’s diary, sounded like she was wondering whether you were mishandling — or planning to mishandle — her money. Did you know that?”

Jerry met Lefty’s probing gaze firmly. “No, I certainly didn’t know it,” he said. “Or I would have checked everything over with her.”

“This Dennis Moresby she seemed to be upset over your seeing. He a stock broker too?”

“He is.”

“But you weren’t investing — or planning to invest — any of your aunt’s capital through him?”

“No.”

And then Lefty asked the question Bina had prayed he wouldn’t ask. “Did you know your aunt had her secretary checking up on you?”

Bina’s purse slid out of suddenly damp fingers. She stooped for it, avoiding Jerry’s eyes.

“No, I didn’t.” His voice was definitely startled.

Bina broke in then, spots of color on her cheeks. “She sent me to a few big parties. But I saw noth—”

“Was Dennis Moresby at any of those parties?” Her father turned on her sharply.

She glared at him angrily, but she knew better than to try an, “I don’t remember” on Lefty, who hated evasion as a plague. “Of course, Mr. Moresby and his wife were there,” she flared. “They are in the crowd that Mr. Crevellin is in. Mr. Crevellin was friendly with the Moresbys just as he is with thirty other couples.”

“No secret conferences?”

“No!” The denial burst out to cover her instant of hesitation. You couldn’t, she reasoned with quick defiance, call Jerry’s sitting with the Moresbys at a table in a crowded room secret. And their absorbing conversation could have been politics, or the weather!

But finally, it was the look on Lefty’s face when he came raging out of their rustic, canyon house the night Jerry drove Bina home after her long day of writing sympathy acknowledgments at the Crevellin house.

Jerry had asked to take her home dutifully, and then forgotten her, driving with jaw clamped in a pale and tortured face, a man suffering under the weight of things life had piled up against him. Finally, he had remembered to thank her for her sympathetic report on him in her father’s office. But he did even this absently, as though he was still too shocked by the whole affair to consider it real.

It was then they turned into the Ryan drive and Bina saw Lefty slamming out to meet them. She called a quick goodbye and jumped from the car, hoping Jerry would get safely out of range before Lefty reached the driveway.

But Jerry had not even noticed her father. He got out of the car politely to see her to her door — and Lefty knocked him down! Then, while Jerry sprawled, dazed, spitting gravel, Lefty had jerked him to his feet and shoved him back into his car like a criminal, with a terse threat.

“Get out of here and stay out! You’re not getting my daughter involved in a murder rap!”

No, she couldn’t blame Jerry. Bina moved closer to him in the car now, slid her arm through his. “Darling.”

“Uh huh?”

“You don’t mind...?”

After a minute, he kissed the top of her head. “If you call your father?”

Her words tumbled out on a torrent of feeling she couldn’t dam any longer. “He’ll be crazy because I deceived him, ran away to get married. Knowing it’s his fault. Knowing if he hadn’t knocked you down that day, I wouldn’t have called to apologize, met you to explain — gone on meeting you... But he’ll forgive me. I’m all he has. And — he’s a great guy, Jerry. You’ll see.”

His arm pressed hers hard against him. “Calm down, sweet. The shooting’s over. Even your smoke-eating old man should be able to see I’ve proved my point. You’re married to me and not dragged into any mess. Invite him to dinner if you want. Why shouldn’t we all be friends?”

She sat there quiet, her cheek against his sleeve, watching the lights of the city creep around them. Dope, she thought, worrying about Jerry, the sweetest, squarest guy in the world. Jerry, who could fall in love with a girl who had checked on him, heckled him!

II

They came in over the Hollywood freeway, that wound above the dingy, east section of town, giving the panoramic scope of a great-city. She was on a new speedway of her own, Bina thought. The same world, but married to Jerry, suddenly a new one. Exciting, warm, promising. A world of height and depth and thrilling vistas. A world where you dreamed with your eyes wide open. Where every beat of time was measured and heavy with love.

At Beverly Hills, they cut over to Wilshire and followed its winding curves west for a mile before turning up the narrow drive that hugged the lavish slab of apartment building Jerry called home. On the other side of the drive a thirty-foot excavation yawned.

Bina whistled. “They’ve been busy while you were away.”

“Must be going to build a skyscraper from the size of that hole.” Jerry swung the car into its parking stall. Loaded with suitcases and tennis racquets, they went in through the back entrance, and took the small service elevator.

“Married or not,” Bina observed, “I feel guilty going into a man’s apartment.”

“You won’t feel guilty by the time you’ve scrubbed the cobwebs out of that refrigerator,” Jerry assured her.

At his door, he put down his luggage, turned his key in the lock, and gathered Bina up, suitcases and all.

“You’ll break your back!” Bina cried, laughing, as he carried her over the threshold.

“Isn’t that what husbands are for?”

He stood there in the smart cubicle of hall laughing with her, and then suddenly sniffed. “Lobster thermador!”

“Silly,” Bina laughed.

At this minute, Toto moved around the corner and came toward them, with his slippering, half run. His Oriental face glistened with grinning excitement.

“Welcome. Welcome!” He made a giggling bow.

Jerry slid Bina from his arms and together they stared at the houseboy, who had left the Crevellin place after Clarissa’s death to work for her young, clubwoman friend, Marge Norris.

“It is lobster thermador.” Jerry beamed at the boy.

“How do you happen to be here tonight?” Bina demanded.

Toto giggled again. “I a loan,” he said. “Missa Canby, your secretery, tell Missa Norris you come today. Missa Norris tell me come make dinner.”

“Good old Marge,” Jerry approved. “You can help me get this junk into the bedroom, Toto.” He picked up his suitcases and rounded the corner into the living room — to bump into Bina, who had stopped dead still.

“You have guest,” Toto remembered, belatedly.

“Hello.” Lefty Ryan stood across the room with his stiff cop’s carriage, hat in hand, his dark suit looking more uniform than suit, his face coolly expressionless.

Bina ran across to him and wound her arms about his neck, sobbing. “Dad! Dad!”

His arm tightened around her, but his expression did not change. Sniffing, she wiped her eyes on his tie. “I knew you’d have to forgive me, Lefty — and congratulate us.”

“Sorry. That’s not exactly it.”

She ignored the coldness of his tone and rushed on. “You’re staying to dinner! We talked about having you to dinner on the way in, didn’t we, Jerry?”

Jerry put down the luggage and advanced toward his father-in-law resolutely, if a little warily. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I got off to a bad start with you, sir, but — I’m going to do my best to change your opinion. And — to make Bina hap—”

Before Lefty’s flinty gaze, Jerry’s voice trailed off, his proffered hand dropped. “I came around to tell you some new evidence turned up on the Crevellin case,” Lefty’s cold eyes moved from Jerry to Bina.

Bina stood very still, her breath catching in her throat. “New evidence,” she said weakly.

Jerry’s face tightened. “There was never any ‘Crevellin case’,” he said.

“There might have been if my daughter had done her job honestly.”

“What do you mean, ‘honestly’?”

“Told your aunt all she saw at those social functions.”

“What new evidence?” Bina broke in.

Lefty swung around to her. “A piece of Mexican jade that looks like it fits the piece found on the floor of Clarissa’s bedroom the night she was — the night she died.”

“That silly jade business again.” Without thinking, almost automatically, Jerry offered Lefty a cigarette.

Lefty waved the pack aside. “That ‘silly jade business’ is going to make it a case,” he snapped.

“No!” Bina moaned.

“It was too big a thing to pass over,” Lefty said tersely. “Jordon and I have never been satisfied. The cleaning woman swore it wasn’t on the floor in front of the chaise when she swept that morning. Mrs. Crevellin didn’t own any Mexican jade. Bina hadn’t worn any of her bracelets that week. Then who dropped that first piece of jade in front of the chaise where Mrs. Crevellin was found? It was never cleared up, any more than the bump on the back of her head.”

Anxiously Bina glanced over at Jerry, smoking furiously. “Please, father—”

Jerry crushed out his cigarette. “We appreciate your — continued interest in our behalf, Detective Ryan. But I’m still satisfied with the coroner’s conclusion in regard to that. If you’ll recall, my late aunt was alone that afternoon after Bina went home. It was Toto’s afternoon off. The cleaning woman came only for three hours that morning. It seems far more plausible that she could have overlooked that piece of jade on the carpet than that anyone could have broken into the house, gotten past the gardener unseen, and left no fingerprints of any kind. As to the bump, my aunt died of a heart attack that afternoon. She could have fallen trying to call the doctor.”

“There was a phone upstairs,” Lefty snapped. “She certainly wouldn’t have started downstairs. Your doctor wasn’t too happy with the verdict,” he added darkly. “It was his private feeling that that bump on her head would have contributed to her death, but he hadn’t thought her heart was bad enough to stop beating from just the shock of falling down some stairs.”

“Who found the second piece of jade?” Jerry said. “Where was it found?”

Lefty’s eyes glinted ominously. “I found it,” he said. “Yesterday morning. Down between the second and third flagstones of our front walk.”

“That’s fantastic!”

Lefty’s gaze moved to Jerry. “And your marriage is going to be a big help,” he said, with an almost savage bitterness in his voice.

Bina stood frozen, unable to believe what she had heard, helplessly staring at her father and Jerry, squared off like a couple of fighters, Jerry parrying, Lefty slugging.

Jerry said sardonically. “You’ve turned in the jade?”

“It’s safe,” Lefty snapped. “And the Chief will have it when he gets back from his vacation Wednesday — whether anything happens to me or not.”

“If you’re trying to say—”

“I’m not trying to say anything, I’m saying it!”

“But this is ridiculous.”

“Save your opinions. You’ll have a chance to air ’em — plenty of chance — before this thing’s cleared up.” He strode across the thick carpet, stopping once before Bina. “Want to come home?”

Bina answered, feeling she was talking to a stranger in a horrible dream, “No, Lefty.”

At the door, he muttered a last, harsh epithet before he slammed out. “Lobster thermador!”

Bina’s fears melted during the crazy-quilt evening. Wonderous luxury of steaming bath and exquisite food. Fussed over by a solicitous Toto and a gay and gentle Jerry. Then suddenly choking on the lobster because it conjured up a vision of one of Clarissa’s formal dinners.

Sharing the phone with Jerry to answer Marge Norris’ welcoming call, which was followed by other calls from friends Marge had alerted. Exulting with him that Marge, one of Clarissa’s close friends, had chosen to use her influence to ease them back into her — and Jerry’s — crowd.

And then, between the glowing plans and warm chit-chat, stretches of frightened hopelessness. What lay beneath Lefty’s grim warning? Did he expect Jerry would be actually indicted for Clarissa’s murder? And that she herself would be accused—

Finally, in the privacy of their room, Jerry’s smiling caress. “Thanks for staying with me.”

She slid out of her robe, tucked the top of her pajamas into the pants, and did backflips. Try and cry doing backflips. Then she rolled back onto her shoulders, stretched slim legs toward the ceiling and did a fast bicycle routine.

“You haven’t asked me,” she said thickly, still standing on her head, “if I dropped those two pieces of jade.”

Jerry was laying out his clothes for morning, placing the socks neatly beside the tie. “Are you kidding?” he said indulgently.

She stared at him, then lowered her feet to the floor and sat up to stare at him right side up. All evening she had felt he was covering up anxiety for her sake, but this was an awfully good job.

He grinned at her a little ruefully as he helped her up “Didn’t you see through Lefty’s trick?”

“Trick?”

“I expected something of the sort. But nothing quite so — brutal. You may have noticed, sweet, he doesn’t like me. And the way I see it, it’s not just a natural antipathy. It’s more like a... well, an occupational allergy.

“A rich man can’t endure a pauper son-in-law. A Professor abhors getting stuck with a ditch-digging relative. To Lefty’s cops-eye-view, that piece of jade, that bump on the head, are unsolved clues, making Clarissa’s death a possible murder. And me — since she was having me checked — a likely suspect.”

“A murder suspect,” Bina said, thoughtfully. “And a police officer couldn’t stand drawing a murder suspect for a son-in-law. That may be it. I’ve never seen dad so wrought up. But I still don’t see what trick—”

“The second piece of jade, of course! He found it so conveniently — where it would do us the most harm. You notice he didn’t turn it into the Chief.”

“But Wednesday—”

“He won’t turn it in Wednesday either. Because there is no piece of jade. He wants you to lie awake worrying tonight. And tomorrow he’ll make a bargain with you. If you’ll agree to come home he won’t turn the ‘evidence’ in.”

Bina considered this in silence for a moment, her lips tight. “I’ve never known dad to deal under the table — or bargain—”

“You’ve never known him to lose a daughter to a murder suspect either. You’ll see. When he becomes convinced we won’t scare, he’ll calm down.”

His confidence was reassuring. Deliberately, Bina took refuge in it, drifting off into a half-sweet, half-troubled sleep. Sounds diminished and fell away, but she could still hear faint, arguing voices.

III

Unfortunately, in the hard light of early morning, the picture looked different. Jerry had left early for his office, and Lefty seemed to frown at her across her breakfast tray. Lefty’s curt voice rang in her ears. “A man can’t be half-crooked. A man is either crooked or straight.”

Lefty had made a direct statement, a direct charge, with every appearance of sincerity. Could her father lie to her, even to get her back? Even the remote possibility that he had lied was very hard to accept.

She dressed quickly. A plaid skirt, a white, turtle-neck sweater. Rolled her shining coil of dark hair into its accustomed small circle at the nape of her slender neck.

Toto snapped off the sweeper as she passed him on her way to the back door. “I breeng your car — Missa Crevellin?”

“Don’t spoil me, Toto. I couldn’t stand it when you go back to Marge.”

She went down to the car stalls where her small convertible looked presumptuous among the line of Cadillacs and foreign models. As she backed it carefully around in the handkerchief space and crept out the drive, she avoided looking into the yawning abyss of excavation at her left.

She found herself wondering if Toto felt jolted the way she did each time he called her “Missa Crevellin.” It had been so terribly recently that he had called Clarissa that. Bina wished he could go back to calling her Mees Ryan. But of course he couldn’t.

Lefty was in his usual third booth at Frascati’s when Bina slid in opposite him. He looked up, not too surprised, and plainly relieved.

“I kinda hoped you’d remember my lunch hour,” he said, patting her hand.

Bina lowered her eyes. Honeymoons were wonderful things. Marriages were wonderful when it was a marriage like hers. But not if it lost her Lefty! Somehow, she had to go back, and make up for all the weeks she had deceived him. Earn her way back into being his daughter again.

Lefty made it easy by coming right to the point with his usual, blunt ease. “Sure, honey, I know you didn’t see this guy on the quiet because you wanted to. I expect you thought he was cruelly broken up, and you had to help him over a rough spot. You’ve always been like that. And pretty soon he couldn’t do without you. So you married him.”

Bina nodded, blinking back quick tears. “I hoped you’d call the hotel. I left the number in my note.”

“I had it propped by the phone,” Lefty admitted. “I probably would have weakened if I hadn’t kept getting mad so often. And finally I found that piece of jade between the flagstones.”

Bina took a sip of coffee to fortify herself, then let him have it. “Jerry says you didn’t find any jade. That you’re holding it over us so I’ll agree to a divorce.”

Lefty’s eyes narrowed. “Not turn it in, eh? That’s a neat deduction. Fits him to a T. You want to know how I got that boy stacked? You don’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. He figures things, just naturally, so they’ll come out one hundred percent right for Jerry Crevellin.”

“Please... you just don’t know Jerry.”

A waitress brought Lefty more coffee. He took the opportunity to dig into his inside pocket for an envelope with his name penciled across it. When the girl had gone, he tossed it across to Bina.

She opened it. Its contents was hardly a shock. Somehow, she had known it would be something like this. A report from the police laboratory, signed by the chief technician, whose signature she knew well. It said that the piece of jade, which Detective Ryan had turned in Saturday, had been tested thoroughly and was definitely, by rock structure analysis, identical with the supplementary piece in the Crevellin file. It would be turned over to the Chief when he returned on Wednesday.

“And how do you have it figured?” she asked quietly. “Do you think that I fought with Clarissa over Jerry, and left her in a rage that brought on her heart attack? And that I carelessly dropped a piece of jade from one of my own bracelets, and another piece as I came home?”

“I don’t think you dropped that jade. I never said you did and I’m not saying so now.”

She gave him a level look of battle. “Making it nice for yourself?”

Lefty laughed. “Sure. But if you had dropped it the night you came home from Clarissa Crevellin’s, it wouldn’t be there now. Luckily, I can prove that much.”

Bina’s relief was mixed with a rising bewilderment. “But who would want to plant a damaging piece of false evidence on me?”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t, Lefty.”

Lefty sighed, and tapped his coffee cup with an extended forefinger. “Well, let’s go back,” he said. “Remember the night you told me Clarissa had sprung the watchdog job on you?”

“Yes.”

“You were mad, clear through. You said the woman was out of her mind and you wouldn’t work for her anymore. You’d liked her up to that point. Remember what she said?”

Bina was leaning across the table, held by Lefty’s steady eyes. And, as though hypnotized, she saw the scene in the Crevellin study again in painful detail. Clarissa, immense and lumpy in her white chiffon robe, sitting behind her dead husband’s enormous desk.

“I did think,” she was quavering, “I could entrust my husband’s business to a member of the family. I have so much work to do on my League Committee this year, you know, and on the Christmas charity drive. Especially, when Jerry knows the estate will be his some day. But if these things are true—”

“Bina, I heard it from a very intelligent friend. This Dennis Moresby is so smooth. He involves men like Jerry, who have money in their care, by promising to make them extra money for themselves on the side.”

“But Jerry wouldn’t—!”

“I hope not.” Clarissa mopped her florid face with her lace handkerchief. “I sincerely hope not. And yet, my friend’s husband was tossing away her fortune, and she blames Moresby. After all, fond as I am of Jerry, I must face it. He’s hinted he was having some sort of trouble in his business in Boston when I offered to back him out here.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t dishonest trouble. And he’s so terribly fond of you.”

For an instant, Clarissa’s quivering bulk quieted. “I always thought so,” she said, her voice holding a sigh of wistfulness. But then her jeweled fingers began plucking at the desk blotter again. “But I can’t shut my eyes to the fact that my friend thought her husband was fond of her. She didn’t think he cared a fig about money. That’s why he deceived her so completely in his treacherous scheming.”

With a guilty start, Bina controlled her shudder as Lefty’s hand closed on her arm. His sympathetic eyes were still boring into hers. “You’re going to have to tell me, Baby.”

Bina fought a compulsive impulse to lay the whole disturbing problem before him as she’d always done in the past. But this time she couldn’t confide in Lefty. She just couldn’t. This time, in spite of his stern code of dealing only with facts, Lefty was prejudiced. She couldn’t explain to him how Clarissa, who was such a dominant clubwoman, could become jittery about business. He would use one case of jitters to forge a lethal weapon against Jerry.

She said, “Clarissa told me she wanted to be sure Jerry was not having secret meetings with Dennis Moresby. That was all, Lefty.”

Lefty’s lips tightened. He sighed. “Okay, we’ll play it your way. Did Clarissa Crevellin have Jerry’s secretary checking on him too?”

“Lorraine Danby? Oh no.”

“Why not?”

“She... she didn’t feel she knew her well enough.”

“That the only reason?”

“Yes... yes, of course.”

“Did the old girl have any special suspicions?”

“No.”

“You were awfully riled up when you got home over a pretty normal attitude for a woman trying to protect her property.”

Bina said with a sudden rush of honesty, “Jerry was so wonderful to her — thoughtful, affectionate. She had no right to suspect him of any crookedness.”

Lefty snorted. “You’d be surprised how thoughtful and affectionate a crook can be — especially to his victim.”

“Dad. Jerry’s no crook!”

“You didn’t know it,” Lefty said drily, “but you were in love with the guy then. That’s why I tried to get you to walk out on the whole deal. But you didn’t. You didn’t because you were afraid to let someone else check on him. Wasn’t that it?”

Bina winced. “You’re hurting me, dad.”

Lefty released her wrist, muttering absent apologies. But his gaze continued to bore into her. “I’m not saying there was anything out of the way about your falling for him. He’s the kind of guy, maybe, the help always goes for. I can even see how you, being your mother’s daughter, would try to keep peace between him and his aunt. But now his aunt’s dead. Somebody who knows we’re not satisfied about her death, is trying to frame you.”

“What... what do you want me to do?”

“Go down with me Wednesday to the Chief. Call the shots straight. Tell him everything you know about Jerry Crevellin.”

“I know he doesn’t wear jade bracelets.”

“It could be somebody who didn’t like your marrying him. Or somebody who figured they could make a father hush things up — call off the blood hounds.”

Bina sighed. “Maybe we should talk to Jerry.”

Leaning sharply forward across the table, Lefty growled at her explosively. “Bina, snap out of it! I’ll be the happiest cop in town if he’s okay. You know that. But he married you too fast — almost like he was grabbing for a shield. Can’t you get it through your head. If his aunt was standing in the way of something he wanted, it just could be you’re standing in the same place now.”

Bina felt like a winded fighter reeling back from a series of wind-up blows. But she faced her father with flashing eyes. “You’re being ridiculous, and you know it!”

Lefty’s hard gaze fought hers for a long minute, then he acknowledged defeat with a heavy sigh. He pushed back his dishes and reached for the check. “All right, we’ll do it alone. But if you change your mind, Baby, you’ve still got a home. And that city job you always wanted is open now.”

She didn’t answer or look at him.

He dropped an awkward hand on her shoulder. “Take care of yourself.”

IV

It was twelve-thirty by the time Bina got back to the apartment. There was a call from Jerry. She called his office. Lorraine Canby’s crisp but friendly voice said, “Well, Bina! I mean, Mrs. Crevellin! You two really surprised us!”

“We surprised ourselves,” Bina said.

“Best wishes! Just a minute, please—” While the girl answered the other phone, Bina shook off a sudden feeling of uneasiness. She reminded herself firmly that she had always liked and admired Jerry’s secretary, who had come out with him from his Boston office, even if Clarissa had not.

So what if Jerry had taken Lorraine to dinner a couple of times during those weeks she had been checking on him? Why should she have mentioned it to Clarissa? Jerry had been spending so much time in the social end of his business, leaving Lorraine practically running the office. And Clarissa didn’t want her even calling the house on the many evenings Jerry was there because she sounded “uppity — as if she owned both the office and Jerry”. So how else could he plan the work of his office?

Abruptly Bina became conscious of Jerry’s “hello”. He laughed at her startled gasp. “Do you, or don’t you want to speak to your husband?” he said.

“I’m just dying to, darling.”

“Bless you. As long as we both shall live.”

“How’s the Hanlon deal coming?”

“About to explode. I’m having dinner with the son and his lawyer. How’s that for a rotten way to spend our first real evening at home? If it wasn’t so important I’d get out of it somehow.”

Bina allowed herself a small moan of disappointment, but then said cheerfully, “Well, it’ll give me a chance to get your pipe and slippers located. She had promised herself she would never try to monitor Jerry’s plans, as Clarissa had.”

But when she left the phone, she had a sudden sympathy for Clarissa. Her day suddenly flattened out. Jerry was such a vibrant person. He could fill your life so full that when he was gone, you felt lost.

Toto served her lunch at one end of the long dining table, as he’d always served Clarissa. She exclaimed over his flakey rolls and crisp salad. She sounded, she thought in a kind of detached dismalness, a great deal like Clarissa. Pouncing with such bright restlessness on each detail of her household.

“The cleaner come thees morning,” Toto reported. “He say he return thees afternoon, so if you have the clothes to send.”

“Oh. Oh yes!” Clarissa, of course. She must unpack her clothes. Go through the closets. She had literally thrown them at the hangers when she and Jerry brought them from her house last week. She had drawers to fix. Relief welled up in her. She had so many things to fill in the day. Things she could think about, things to keep her mind from going off into unpremeditated, dark paths of the past.

Toto followed her into the living room with his tray of dishes. “Velly nice place here, Missa Crevellin.”

With a slight shock, Bina realized she hardly knew what this place of Jerry’s looked like. Last week when she brought her clothes, and last night when they arrived, she had been too full of her own uncertainties and decisions to see it. Now she followed the Oriental’s admiring gaze to the tropical plants against gleaming glass walls, the deep cushioned, modern-hued furniture, the recessed fireplace.

“It is beautiful,” she said.

“You build a house soon?”

“We hope to.”

“Velly nice.”

There was only the glow of friendly joy on Toto’s face, yet for an instant, Bina had the uncomfortable feeling he was seeing the lucky working girl who had played her cards right and was now reveling in her good fortune.

She hurried on into the bedroom, half amused, half irritated at her sudden sensitivity. So what if people did think she had married Jerry for his money? She hadn’t. So it didn’t make any difference what they thought.

She had sorted through her suits, laying aside two for the cleaner, when another and colder thought struck her. Jerry, she must face it, had no money at all except the income from his young brokerage business. It was Clarissa’s fortune that made him a wealthy man. If people thought she was after Clarissa’s fortune, or Jerry was after her fortune, it might make a very grave difference.

Desperately she slid back the doors of Jerry’s closet and sorted through his suits. Three of them could stand pressing. She was deciding what drawers to start straightening as she checked through his pockets, depositing the small accumulation on the lowboy.

There were plenty of drawers. She’d have to mark the ones she chose, she thought humorously, or she’d lose her lingerie.

A snapshot of a girl standing before a boat was in the pocket of a light-weight summer suit. The pretty face was familiar. Bina bent closer. The girl was laughing, her hair windblown. But it was the same slender nose with the delicately flaring nostrils, the same wide eyes, and full, curving lips... it was Mrs. Dennis Moresby.

With fingers suddenly trembling, Bina stared at the picture. Her mind desperately sought balance. So what! The Moresbys were friends of Jerry’s. Dennis Moresby probably liked this snap and had given it to Jerry. Was that anything to break out in a cold sweat over? Maybe he had used it to scribble something on the other side. But the opposite side was blank.

Deliberately she dropped the picture and went on with her sorting. It lay on the top of the pile of odds and ends smirking at her. Belligerently, Bina faced herself in the mirror.

“So Lefty did get through to you,” she accused her reflection bitterly. “You’re thinking there could just possibly be something to Clarissa’s suspicions of the Moresbys. All right. Then ask Jerry about it. You don’t need to tell him Lefty was talking to you today. He knows Clarissa pointed their pictures in the paper out to you, that you saw them once or twice briefly at those parties. Just ask him.”

Lefty’s voice was loud in the room. “Call the shots straight.”

Toto knocked on the door. “Missa Crevellin say you like paper to see ad for house maybe.”

“Thanks, Toto.” It was like Jerry’s comforting presence in the room telling her to calm down, keep her mind on their new life. She kicked off her shoes and curled up in the chair by the window with the paper.

But she didn’t reach the ad section. Leafing toward it, she passed the sport page, and turned back to it for something her eye had caught in passing. A sailboat. And before the wheel, Dennis and Terry Moresby. Readying their boat, Jennifer, the caption read, for a year’s cruise to the Galapagos, Papeete and other heavenly spots.

The doorbell rang, sending an electric shock through her. Lefty?

But Toto came in hidden behind a mass of roses arranged in a bowl of glazed pottery, shaped and painted to resemble a chubby dog. The note read: “Pogo, our watchdog. Now all we need is the house. Pogo loves Bina. Jerry loves Bina.”

Bina chuckled, then shuddered. Watchdog. Lefty had said Clarissa had used her for a watchdog. Carefully, she set the vase on the small table, rearranged the roses. She couldn’t evade the thought any longer. To save her happiness and Jerry’s, she was going too have to play watchdog once more. The plan had been evolving relentlessly in her mind, patterned after the stories she had coaxed out of Lefty all her life and remembered so vividly.

She looked up Dennis Moresby’s number and called it. Told the maid she would like to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Moresby.

Terry Moresby’s high, hoarse voice came on, tinged with a trace of sulkiness. “This is Mrs. Moresby.”

“I’m Jan Criler, of the Times,” Bina said rapidly. “We want to do a feature article in connection with your trip.” She tried to make it sound as if this was a break for the paper, and a bigger break for the Moresbys.

Terry Moresby said, “But Mr. Moresby gave an interview to the Times last week.”

“I know that,” Bina dissembled quickly. “But this one will feature you and Mr. Moresby, how you happened to buy the boat, consider the trip — how it has affected your lives.”

“That I could tell you!” The sulky voice sounded away from the phone, repeating this joke.

Presently a man’s voice came on. “Hello. You still there?”

“Yes.”

“This is Dennis Moresby. We’ll be glad to give you an interview. Maybe you’d like to see the boat.”

“Well... I... uh—” Before Bina could come up with the right excuse, Dennis Moresby’s voice boomed graciously, “We’ll pick you up at the main Times entrance at three-thirty. Okay?”

“Okay, And — thank you.”

Not quite two hours. Bina stuffed the mound of odds and ends back into Jerry’s suits and hung them back in his closet. She slid back the door of her own wardrobe and ran a nervous hand along her dresses. Luckily, her clothes were suitable. She chose a dark skirt, blouse and jacket. Tucked her horn-rimmed reading glasses ostentatiously in her jacket pocket, and rummaged through her suitcase for one of her old notebooks and pencils.

She completely rearranged her hair, accentuated the curve of her lips with a make-up pencil, made her eyebrows darker and wider. She looked, she thought, like some of the girl reporters who had come to get society items from Clarissa. She knew she’d be running a slight risk, of course. But the Moresbys traveled in a different set, and were rarely in town. She didn’t think there was much danger that they would penetrate her disguise and recognize her.

At the kitchen door, she paused to tell Toto if Jerry called, she had gone house hunting. “And,” she added cautiously, “I may not be home for dinner. If I find myself in the neighborhood of any old friends, I’ll probably stop.”

“Yiss, Missa Crevellin.”

V

The afternoon was sparkling clear. As Bina drove swiftly along Wilshire, her tension eased. There was no longer any sense of shock at the thought of Terry Moresby’s picture being in Jerry’s pocket. Over the phone, the girl had sounded childlike and spoiled. She’d probably liked the shot of herself and had dozens made to pass out.

But Bina was glad she was checking out the Moresbys. Tomorrow, she could tell Lefty definitely just what connection Jerry had with them. And they wouldn’t be dragged into it any further.

It was fortunate, she thought that the Moresbys had seen her only once or twice briefly at parties. And that she and Jerry had had no wedding pictures in the paper.

It wasn’t, she told herself violently, that she was afraid to tell Jerry. It was just that she couldn’t bear his thinking right now that maybe she didn’t trust him.

In the newspaper morgue, she called for every possible article mentioning the Moresby’s boat, or similar trips to Tahiti. By the time the Moresby’s open sports car slid up to the main entrance, she felt she could at least keep up with the conversation.

Terry Moresby slid over to the middle of the seat to let Bina in. She was a very pretty woman close up, Bina observed. Her graying hair was protected by a swathing of veils. Her sand-colored, silk suit was expensively simple, enlivened by a wide row of exotic bracelets of many-hued, semiprecious stones. But nothing so lovely, Bina observed, as Mexican jade.

Dennis Moresby navigated the city traffic with brisk impatience. “No use talking in a stupid town,” he said, “when you can do it on a boat.”

Terry Moresby said, “A poor excuse is better than none.” She winked at Bina, laughing her sulky laugh. “Anything to get down on that boat.”

Bina returned her smile. “Are boats a new love, or has your husband always been this way?”

“As long as I’ve known him,” Terry Moresby said. “They had to custom-build our wedding ceremony, you know. ‘Will you, Terice Bayles, take this man and Jennifer, to be your lawful married husband and boat?”

Dennis’ rugged face relaxed in a grin. “She never stops yamming, but you couldn’t hire her to stay at home.”

Terry sighed, looking down at the jeweled spikes of her shoes, the persimmoned half-moons of her pedicure. “Ten more days of living,” she mourned. “Then it’s trousers and dishpan hands.”

Desperately, Bina tried to draw Dennis Moresby out about his brokerage business. But his mind was already ahead, down on the boat. Yes, he felt it was safe, leaving his office to shift for itself. He had a good man taking over. He called him at various points along the coast.

Bina decided to take the plunge. She said she had interviewed another Beverly Hills broker and his aunt not too long before. And she’d been shocked to hear since of the aunt’s death. Did they know Mrs. Crevellin?

There was a distinct pause. Bina was sure she could feel an almost physical effort of the man and woman beside her to keep their eyes straight ahead.

Terry Moresby said, “Yes. We knew Mrs. Crevellin.” Her voice sounded flat. She made a halfhearted attempt to warm it. “We were shocked to hear of her death, of course.”

“Her nephew — what was his — name?”

“Jerry,” Dennis Moresby said.

“He seemed very fond of her.”

There was another brief silence. Terry Moresby broke it with elaborate disinterest. “Yes, I guess he was.”

Bina let the talk flow back to the boat. She was angry at herself for being so stupid. Lefty would have had them talking of Jerry and thinking they brought him up. She had only assimilated enough of Lefty’s technique to realize what an amateur she was at getting information.

At least, she thought, she had learned one thing. Whatever deal they had — or were about to have with Jerry — if they had any deal — had not been helped by Clarissa’s death. Or had it? Was this the stiffness of fear?

Dennis signaled from the wharf, and the man on their boat brought the dinghy to pick them up. They rowed out through anchored boats to the Jennifer.

Terry was splashed, and she gave a scream of temper. Dennis said, “You shouldn’t wear clothes like that down here.”

“For ten more days I shall remain civilized,” Terry said balefully. But she was the first up over the side of Jennifer.

Bina had a sudden struggle with herself not to show wide-eyed excitement. Except for the smelly fishing barges Lefty had taken her on, she had never been on anything afloat. This graceful craft, with its shining brass and fresh paint was a place of pure enchantment.

Terry assured her it was a tub. She showed her everything on deck, and below in the tiny, stainless steel galley.

“Can you imagine cooking down here in a storm?” she groaned, “with the pans sliding and the food sloshing. And washing dishes in that sink afterwards. Washing dishes! You lie on deck and dream of dish washers and maids and bubble baths! Boats! Ha!”

She called up to Dennis’s deck hand. “Frank! I want a new faucet down here! And did you get that leak fixed in the water tank?”

“How about some grub?” Dennis called down.

Terry tied an enveloping apron about her. With speed and skill, she opened cans, broiled bits of bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, added piles of anchovies, smoked oysters, cheeses onto a tray, surrounded them with English biscuits and crackers.

Bina carried the fragrant assortment up the steep companionway steps, marveling at Terry’s sure-footedness behind her with the martini tray.

“It’s a gift of goats and sailors,” Terry grimaced. She called out, “Soup’s on!” and they settled into long chairs to watch the dusk deepen over the water and the boat lights twinkle on. The Jennifer moved beneath them like a cradle.

“Who wants a city?” Dennis said.

Over the second martini, Bina managed to edge out a few facts from his torrent of plans. This was only their second long trip. They were rank amateurs. Except for that one long haul to Tahiti, they were week-end cruisers with the rest of the land lubbers.

“And it’s Terry’s fault,” he finished. “We made the first trip with the guy I bought the boat with and his wife—”

“It wasn’t so bad with another woman aboard,” Terry sighed.

“We’ll make better time without two women having to go ashore to buy out the shops at every port. But anyway, when this guy was transferred east, I sold his half to another fellow. But he had trouble over it and sold it back to me. Terry can’t stand her own company, and she’s so damn fussy about a crew.”

“You have to be sympatico with every living soul aboard for a stretch like this, cramped on this tub,” Terry snapped.

“I suppose you would,” Bina agreed. The details of the trip were beginning to fascinate her. She pulled her mind firmly back to her own problem. “Your bracelets are so unusual,” she murmured. “Did you get some of them in the native shops on your last trip?”

“Yes.” Fondly, Terry sorted out each foreign-bought — bracelet, searching her memory for the port from which it had come.

“I have a small collection of Mexican jade,” Bina broke in lightly. “I love it.”

Terry Moresby’s eyebrows arched incredulously. “You do?” She dropped her braceleted arm to her side as though closing the subject, and reached for her martini.

“Don’t you — like Mexican jade?”

“No. I don’t have any. None at all.”

A chill touched Bina. The pretty girl opposite her was determined to drop the subject of Mexican jade. Why? Did it have too many memories?

Dennis Moresby, as though hearing the unspoken question, grinned across at his wife. “You used to like it well enough. We listed to starboard all the way down the coast carrying the damn stuff. Then all of a sudden, you can’t stand the sight of it, and toss it all in the pot of some welfare drive.”

“What drive? When?” The excited questions slipped out before Bina could stop them. Her embarrassed laugh was genuine. “I mean—” she floundered, “maybe I could buy up some of the pieces. I’m sure they were unusual and lovely.”

“I don’t remember who I gave them to,” Terry said impatiently. “It was over a year ago. I’m sorry.”

The tensing excitement in Bina died down into disappointment. “Oh well,” she managed, “maybe I’ll tire of mine, too.”

An hour later, Frank rowed across to shore and, to Bina’s dismay, returned with a huge hamper from the thatched restaurant. Its colored lights shimmered in a long rainbow out through the darkening waters.

“Nonsense,” Dennis laughed away her frantic objections. “Don’t pull that deadline stuff on me. You have to eat somewhere.”

He raised their chairs several notches. Frank brought out a table. And to soft, island music they had caught in Papeete on their recorder, they ate Hawaiian chicken and iced, ginger-scented fruits.

Tranquil peace warred with tension in Bina, as she watched Dennis Moresby waving a hand toward the shoreline.

“And almost three million lunkheads live in houses.”

If he were a sharp, underhanded operator, she thought dismally, his cover was too perfect for an amateur like her to pierce. How, she wondered with growing desperation during the next hour, could Lefty have gotten him to expose his methods of trapping victims like Marge’s ex-husband and Jerry into losing money in secret, crooked stock maneuvers, when he wouldn’t talk about business?

“I’m a seafarer by choice,” Dennis Moresby said smugly to Bina. “But my wife hates really long trips.”

“I just hate to go alone,” Terry flared. “If Jerry Crevellin had just had the gumption to marry that girl and—” She stopped so suddenly, her voice made a little hiccoughing sound.

Bina sat frozen, her arm with the wrist watch still held up beside the candle. “Jerry Crevellin?” Her words sounded small and cold like her body felt.

Dennis Moresby frowned across at his wife, quite obviously realizing that she had taken too many Martinis “Terry has just managed to break our promise of secrecy to a friend,” he said. “As long as she’s acted like it’s a state secret, I’d better tell you — as long as it’s understood it’s strictly off the record.”

“It’s understood,” Bina said.

“Well, Jerry Crevellin bought the half interest in Jennifer a year ago. He’d sailed a lot back in the Atlantic and was all het up about this boat. We planned that when he got his business in tighter shape, we’d do a lot of sailing together. Then he found out his aunt disapproved of boats. And when Clarissa Crevellin disapproved of anything, she went whole hog.”

“So the weak-kneed idiot sold us back his half,” Terry burst in, “without even telling his aunt about it as far as we know. And we had such plans for cruises for the four of us!”

Terry got the words up through her stiffening throat. “Didn’t the — the girl Jerry Crevellin was to marry have anything to say about it?”

Dennis Moresby looked at his wife and said, “Ha.”

“We can understand now why she didn’t have anything to say,” Terry laughed. “Jerry was real secretive about her. Never did tell us her name. Only that I’d get along well with her on a cruise. But it must have been this girl he married. And she was his aunt’s secretary!”

VI

The hands of her watch said eleven as Bina turned the key in the apartment door. If her luck held out, she’d beat Jerry home.

But his briefcase was on the coffee table.

She tiptoed into the darkened bedroom, but even as her finger reached for the light, his voice sprang out of the darkness, blurred with sleep and sharp with exasperation. “Bina?”

She gave a startled scream, then switched on the light. “Darling! I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Where in the world have you been? I broke away early and came home—”

“And I was gone.” Remorsefully, Bina sat on his bed, bent to kiss him. “I thought it would be a late one. Toto told you where I was.”

“He said you had gone house hunting.” There was a curious edge to Jerry’s voice. “I don’t mean to be overly curious, but I thought the message a little casual.”

She took a long breath and raised her head determinedly, relieved that Toto had forced her into the truth. Why shouldn’t Jerry know where she had been? He’d understand why she had to check the Moresbys before the police insisted on doing it.

To her surprise, she heard herself saying instead, “Toto is a dear muddlehead. I told him I might drop in on a friend. I did — a very old and dear friend I knew in school. I didn’t expect you so soon or I wouldn’t have stayed so late.”

Jerry’s face didn’t change, but it was as though he’d lowered some barrier between them. “I’d been thinking you’d ganged up with your father against me.”

She caught him by his thatch of blond hair and shook him with playful violence. “You crazy loon! I love you. I’ll always be on your side, remember that!”

When she crept into bed later, he was already asleep. She was glad. Her earlier excitement had taken its toll. She felt very tired and a little forlorn. Had she chosen sides? Of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t even promised her father she wouldn’t tell Jerry about his turning in the jade. Jerry was still convinced there was no second piece of jade, or — as Lefty thought — that it wasn’t going to be turned in. As long as he thought either of these things, he would not suspect she had been forced to check the one woman she knew who might have left it on her path.

And Terry Moresby hadn’t.

Lefty was a smart cop, but this time he was off his rocker. He had, as Jerry said, a cop’s-eye-view of the world, and he couldn’t see beyond it. She could never convince him of Jerry’s inborn, natural kindness. That instinct or solicitude, which he had turned upon Clarissa, and now upon her. She thought of the hundred of plans he had made for their lives during those short, ecstatic honeymoon days — plans for their home, their family, their vacations, all complete with details for her comfort, her happiness. Darling, darling Jerry. Hers alone...

Then through her drowsing, a sudden spasm of pain. This girl Jerry had mentioned to the Moresbys so secretly. This girl he was planning to marry. The one they were so sure was Bina Ryan. Her mind forced the thought upon her. This girl was not Bina Ryan. Before Clarissa’s death, Jerry had never looked twice at Bina Ryan!

Bina was wide awake now. Her throat was dry and tight, her heart pounded crazily. Desperately, she chided herself. Was she losing her mind? How did she know Jerry hadn’t looked at her? He’d told her so, hadn’t he? That he’d been hooked the first time he saw her. So what if he hadn’t shown it. He was a gentleman. He wouldn’t.

She had never in all her life had nightmares, or been afraid of the dark. But now she was afraid. Really afraid. She thought of crawling in with Jerry, whose breathing was so peaceful, so regular.

And then the feeling of terror abruptly increased. She seemed to feel his eyes open, burning into her in the darkness.

Bina woke to flooding sunlight. From the bathroom Jerry’s baritone rose in joyous song above the hissing shower.

In another minute, he was coming in, toweling his hair, looking enormous in his white terry cloth robe and slippers.

“Top of the morning, Chipmunk!” He came over to sit on her bed, and pull her onto his lap. “I love you! Love me?”

She wound slim arms around his neck and nestled her cheek against the rough cloth of his shoulder. “Check with me later,” she yawned.

“Do it now.” He kissed her until she laughed and gasped under the exuberant pressure of his lips and arms. All the happiness of their lives together flooded back to her. Like a drink of potent wine, heady, stimulating.

He brought her a glass of orange juice. “If you feel like breakfasting up,” he said, “I had Toto set us up on the balcony so we could count cars.”

“Be ready in three minutes.”

She washed, twisted up her hair in one smooth movement, and slid into one of the new housecoats Jerry had bought her in the little shop in Palm Springs. She laughed as she caught herself humming Jerry’s crazy bathroom tune. She felt buoyant with love and eagerness. There didn’t seem to be a middle way, she thought. Life was forlorn, filled with nightmares and misgivings. Or it was crazy, wonderful adventure. How could she choose anything but Jerry?

The whir of the electric toaster, the bowl of red roses on the patch of linen-covered table were small, domestic anachronisms on the smart, iron-grilled balcony. Below them, colored cars raced the curving boulevard.

Jerry tossed aside the morning paper as Toto pulled back her chair. “We’re having scrambled eggs and kidneys,” he told her. “I think you ran off a couple of pounds yesterday.”

“You scared them off shouting at me in the dark,” Bina retorted.

He reached over for her hand. “I’m sorry.” His grin was apologetic and boyish. “I guess I was kind of half scared you’d left me. You’re such a half pint, I pretend I’m taking care of you. But I’m not fooling anyone, am I? You’re the stalwart of the family. I lean on you. I knew that last night in the midst of my fuming.”

“You’re just lucky you’re cute,” Bina chortled.

“Eat your grapefruit.” He released her hand. “Think how soon it’ll be hot cereal.” He mimicked, “Of course Mommy eats her cereal. Good, hot cereal!”

Breakfast was over too soon, and she was taking him to the door laughing with him, holding him with senseless banter, dreading to see him ago.

His eye was on the mantle clock. “I’ll just have time now to give Lorraine a couple of letters that have to go out today before my lunch appointment,” he said.

“Be home early tonight?”

“You bet. Have Toto whomp us up a banquet and lock you in.”

“I’ll be in,” she laughed.

When he was gone, she hurried back to the kitchen. She relayed to Toto Jerry’s order of a banquet for two tonight, adding, “I’ll be gone for lunch. I’m going to look through more houses.”

This, she told herself with guilty humor, was not too far from the truth. And, if Jerry called, he would chalk up the impulse of house-hunting to the cereal discussion at breakfast.

The doorbell broke into her thoughts. “I’m out,” she instructed Toto hastily. She dare not run the chance of a long interruption until she had the job done she’d set herself today. Time was too precious. Tomorrow was Wednesday.

She escaped into the bedroom and listened through the door to Toto’s mumbled explanations. Then, to her sharp dismay, she heard Marge Norris’ good-natured, sharp voice in the hall.

“Nonsense. She’s not out. Why Jerry just left as I came in. She wants to see me.”

Bina stepped back into the hall. “Of course I do,” she said.

“Darling!” Marge advanced upon her, crackling with radiant energy from her crisp, dark hair to the rapid tapping of her high heels, and looking as she always did, in spite of the full schedule of her days, immaculately and expensively groomed.

Even when she had been one of Clarissa’s close friends and Bina, the secretary, she had called her darling. But now she added a hug. “It’s monstrous, breaking in on a honeymoon,” she cried, “but you know Meddlesome Marge. Toto, bring us a pot of coffee, that’s my boy. We can chat in the bedroom.”

Bina proceeded her in, smiling helplessly. Marge was so used to making herself at home at the Crevellin house, she was only proceeding according to habit. After all, as she had so often reminded Clarissa, she had really introduced Jerry to her younger crowd, fixing him up in business as well as society, keeping him content to stay out here. And when you carried all that to its logical conclusion it really meant that she had kept him content out here for Bina. In simple justice it was only right she should have the same privileges here as at Clarissa’s, and the same responsibilities.

“I had to come over,” Marge was saying as she closed the door behind her. “I’ve been frantic about you two ever since I read the paper.”

Her concern was so abrupt, Bina stared at her. “Paper?” she echoed blankly.

It was Marge’s turn to stare pityingly. “You mean you and Jerry didn’t see it?”

“No. What?”

Marge opened her commodious pocketbook and whipped out a small, clipped newspaper article, explaining it even as she handed it to Bina. “That fool police department — I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’d forgotten your father — has found some new evidence of some kind that apparently throws a monkey wrench into the coroner’s verdict of accidental death.”

Bina held the clipping in cold fingers. One paragraph slashed out at her, “...Captain Murray, who was back at his desk last night for the first time since his vacation...” So he’d come home early. He’d be sending someone for her today. This morning. Before—

Marge’s voice stopped her as she was halfway to her closet. “Do you have any idea what this evidence could be?”

“No — yes. Yes, I do. A piece of Mexican jade that matches the one found in Clarissa’s room. My father found it — on our front walk.” Bina slid the zipper of her housecoat and stepped out of the garment.

“Oh, darling!”

Vaguely, Bina felt relief at the single note of sympathy in Marge’s moan, “How ghastly for you! Do they have any idea who put it there?”

“No.” With frantic haste, Bina moved down the line of her clothes. A dark suit, she thought. Something quiet she could get into quickly.

“Mexican jade, was it?” Marge’s voice was clipping along at its usual swift pace. “I don’t know a man who’d be caught dead with it. God, what a ghoulish thing to say! But it must have been a woman. Bina, I want you to listen to me.”

“Yes, Marge.” Bina buttoned the coat of her suit, snapped ear rings onto her ears and then pulled them off. She mustn’t wear anything she could lose.

“You don’t think Jerry killed Clarissa, do you?”

“Of course I don’t!”

“Then quit sticking out your neck to protect him.”

Bina caught her breath, evading Marge’s eyes. “I don’t know anything that—”

“I know what you know. I’m afraid I started Clarissa on that witch hunt about Jerry, because my ex, Wally, had played ducks and drakes with my money and he was seeing a lot of the Moresbys. But since then, I found I was wrong. It was just a woman Wally was lavishing my money on.”

“Marge, I’ve got to—”

“Now all that sneaking off of Jerry’s that bothered Clarissa was probably a girl. You know how determined Clarissa was about his marrying ‘the right girl’”

Toto’s knock rescued Bina. She brought in the tray of coffee and poured Marge a cup.

“Two lumps,” Marge instructed, “with no cream. You shouldn’t use cream and sugar. Cream is all right, or sugar. I know you felt it was innocent, and were trying to protect Jerry when you didn’t even mention he’d always sat with the Moresbys at those parties. And I’m sure now they’re harmless.”

“They are, Marge.”

“But this girl, whoever she is. She may not be so innocent. She may have thought marrying Jerry was pretty hopeless with Clarissa in the picture. I’d like to have that girl found. Because Clarissa was older, but still one of my closest friends. That’s something I’ll never want to forget.”

Bina pulled her hat low over her eyes, collected purse and gloves. Then she faced Marge determinedly. “Marge, please believe me. Clarissa was my friend, too. If she was killed, I’ll find the one who did it.”

“It wasn’t any girl in our crowd,” Marge said. “Most of them were after Jerry, but none of them made the grade. That secretary of his guarded him like—” She broke off to stare at Bina abruptly. “That Lorraine was with him back in Boston, wasn’t she? He sent for her.”

Bina nodded dumbly.

“Clarissa never liked her. Always felt she was up to something.”

Bina’s fingers clamped hard into the soft leather of her purse. “Lorraine was out of town the week Clarissa — died. I’m going to find out why.”

“Darling, you’d better let the police look into it. If she did—”

“I can take care of myself, Marge. And if Lorraine is in the clear, why should she or Jerry be dragged through this any further. I’ll try to get the investigation stopped. Maybe the bracelet was mine. I got panicky and denied it.”

“Now wait! You can’t go off half cocked.”

“I won’t. You’ll see. We’ll work it out.”

The ringing doorbell sent a charge of fear through her. Marge’s eyebrows lifted questioningly. “The police?”

Bina could only stare, her lips whitening.

They heard Toto’s feet padding up the hall. And Marge went into action. She moved to the door with her swift, sure walk and whispering quickly to the passing houseboy. “I’ll see him, Toto! Mrs. Crevellin is not here!”

“Yiss, Missa Norris.”

Through a crack in the hall door, they watched Toto repeating the message to two policemen.

“I’ll hold them till you get away.” Marge whispered.

As Bina made her way stealthily across the kitchen, she could hear Marge’s calm voice saying, “Good morning, officers! Did you want Mrs. Crevellin, too? Toto tells me she’s gone house-hunting. Sounds gruesomely lengthy, still it’s harrowing, and she might give it up any minute. We might as well wait long enough for some coffee. Toto, would you be a doll? Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen, and I’m dying to hear about that new evidence.”

VII

As her car slid out past the empty police car Bina’s strained features relaxed a little. She’d have a good half hour before the two officers could escape from the spell of Marge’s skillfully arranged hospitality. There was a hypnotic quality about Marge’s managing. Even Clarissa had tired of it periodically; but always returned for more. Bina was lucky, she thought, to have Marge on her side. And she herself was lucky, for she had a good excuse now for getting Lorraine to talk. A new job opening she’d just heard about should be of interest to Lorraine and possibly loosen her tongue.

Her watch told her it was one o’clock when she was a few blocks from Jerry’s office. She swung into a gas station and dialed. Lorraine’s cool, deep voice said, “Jerry D. Crevellin, Company.”

“Hi, Lorraine,” Bina said, trying to sound gaily casual. “Has Jerry left for his lunch date?”

“Yes, he has — Mrs. Crevellin.”

“Good. The name is still Bina. And you’re having lunch with me.”

“I’m sorry, Bina, but—”

“You can do those letters after lunch. This is terribly important, Lorraine.”

“Well—”

“I’ll pick you up in front of the office in — can you be down in five minutes?”

“All right.”

They drove to an Italian place near Hollywood, where Bina was sure they wouldn’t be interrupted by friends.

Against the avocado green leather of the booths, Lorraine’s proud, small-featured-face resembled a finely-chiseled cameo. A strange thought drifted through Bina’s mind. Had Jerry been aware of Lorraine’s beauty?

Over her guest’s protests, Bina ordered Chianti with their lasagna. “This is an occasion.”

“Oh?” There was a startled, guarded glow in Lorraine’s dark eyes.

Bina took a breath. She smiled at the girl across the table wryly. “Did you know I always envied you?”

As she had hoped, the words jolted Lorraine. Her voice warmed with surprise. “Envied me?”

Bina nodded. “The way you answered the phone. It... well, it gave Jerry’s office prestige. The way you looked in the office, too, so glamorous. The way Jerry felt about you...”

“The way Jerry felt about me?” The girl’s vitality leaped out from behind a fast-lifted guard

This was the hard part. Bina forced her voice on to fresh depths of confidence, her eyes to a wider candor. “Yes — that his whole business revolved around you, depended on you.”

“Oh.” The dark head relaxed back against the green booth. The corner of the full lips lifted in secret humor.

“Just before Mrs. Crevellin’s death, when you left town for a fortnight he was so concerned about you that his aunt teased him about it.”

Lorraine’s slim body had stiffened again. She picked up her Chianti and sipped it, avoiding Bina’s eyes. “I had the flu,” she said shortly. “Jerry drove me out to my sister’s.” Her gaze flicked down to her watch. “You said something about an occasion?”

Bina laughed. “I’m sorry! I forgot how short a lunch hour is! I’ll be brief. For years there’s been a job — a city job — I’ve had my eye on. The woman was about to retire, then changed her mind. I took the secretary job with Mrs. Crevellin while I waited. Yesterday, I learned the job is open. I think I could help you get it.”

For a minute, the dark eyes opposite flashed brooding shock. “Did you — mention this to Jerry?”

Bina managed a shaky laugh. “Heavens, no! He’d shoot me on sight for even thinking of it. But it’s almost twice your salary, and a real executive spot. You could handle it perfectly. It’s really a quite exceptional opportunity.”

Lorraine finished her lasagna before she looked up again. Then she said quietly, “Thanks, Bina. It was nice of you to think of me.”

“But you don’t want it?”

Lorraine smiled. “No. My job with Jerry is not the top, maybe. But it’s taking me where I want to go.”

“Well—” Bina said, “I guess that’s all that matters.” While she picked up her change from the bill tray, Lorraine expertly brushed on lipstick.

“You’re a nice gal, Bina,” she said in her cool, deep voice. “But I don’t want to be an executive. Just an executive’s wife.”

Jerry’s car was in the parking lot when Bina dropped Lorraine off at the office.

“I won’t mention our secret to Jerry,” Lorraine promised. “And thanks again.”

Bina didn’t care right now whether she mentioned the city job to Jerry or not. Just so Lorraine kept so busy for the next hour that she didn’t have time to consider what Bina might be doing.

By freeway, it took only half an hour to get out to Alhambra. While service station attendants filled her car with gas, Bina checked the local phone directory. This was a long shot. If only they listed phones by ‘Frances and Charlie’, with a cocktail hour informality...

Her finger moved with trembling eagerness over the page. “Was it Babson? Babor?...” It stopped with a jolt of certainty. “Babcock! That was it. She was sure. Babcock, Aline... Babcock, Bret... There was only one Babcock, Charles. She wrote the street address hastily in her memo book. The attendant gave her directions on how to get there when she signed her gas card.”

She turned north from the freeway, checking the dashboard clock. She could do it, and still not be late for dinner with Jerry. After last night, she had to be home on time. Providing, she amended, with a sudden feeling of panic, the police allowed her to have dinner at home tonight.

But if this was Lorraine’s sister, and she found out what she hoped to find, she could handle the police.

She brushed a blowing curl back from her eyes, and was surprised at the coldness of her fingers. It was lucky, she thought wryly, that Marge hadn’t come along. Marge would be blowing up a storm over her not going straight from lunch to the police. Marge would be saying, “Don’t you know a gauntlet when you get it in the face?”

But Lorraine’s last words weren’t a gauntlet. They couldn’t be. Lorraine wouldn’t have uttered them with that intent unless she was determined to wound and be hateful. And Lorraine didn’t hate her. Bina was sure of it. The girl was in love, all right — with someone she knew through Jerry’s office. So naturally she wanted to keep her job there. But it didn’t have to be Jerry!

The sight of Charlie Babcock’s home gave Bina hope. It was on the outskirts of town — a three-room affair set far back on a couple of acres of ground to make room for several family-size, excursion trailers that were displayed with For Sale signs on them under the scrawny walnut trees. It didn’t look, Bina thought, as though Lorraine’s meticulousness ran in the family.

A heavy-muscled, shirt-sleeved man pulled himself up from a lounge chair beneath one of the trees, and approached Bina’s car when it turned into the drive.

“Lady,” he began, with the unmistakable accent of salesmanship in the jovial tone, “you turned in the right drive. This is your lucky day.”

“I hope so,” Bina said.

“I’m gonna show you the neatest little job on—”

“I want to see Mrs. Babcock.”

He stopped in mid-sentence, dropping his hand from the car door he had been gallantly opening, to give a disgruntled nod. “Francie? She’s in the house. Drive up further to make room for customers, please.”

The screen door squeaked open promptly and a plump young woman, in crushed gingham house coat invited Bina in. It was plain she was delighted with visitors, regardless of their business.

“Gosh, you look real smart. I wish I was selling something on nice days like this. I offered to trade places with Charlie, but Charlie’s no dope.”

“He almost sold me a trailer before I could get by him,” Bina said, returning Francie’s smile.

“He does real good with the things, you’d be surprised,” Francie carolled. “Two, last year, and then we took the third and went around the country, saw more places than I ever saw before — all the National parks and New York City, I’ll never be happy living in one place again. Charlie put in a phone for me last week, but every place I want to call is long distance, seems like, and you can’t really start talking without mortgaging your land.”

“No, you can’t,” Bina agreed and found herself wondering how so loquacious a woman had ever gotten into the same family with Lorraine.

Almost as though she had caught the thought, Francie bubbled on. “My sister now, in Beverly Hills — you know what it costs to even start saying anything to her? And she’s so ridiculously careful, she’ll never sneak one on her business phone. Honesty is nice, but it’s not as though her boss would care or even know the difference. He’s loaded. And he thinks the sun rises and sets in Lorraine. Have you had your lunch.”

“Yes,” Bina said. “Thank you.” She opened the leather insurance folder she had found in her glove compartment. “And I have another appointment that’s rather urgent in Los Angeles.” She pulled out a pamphlet, praying that Francie’s loquaciousness wasn’t a cover for a curious and suspicious mind.

Apparently it wasn’t. Francie gave only a fleeting glance at the brochure, waiting with polite impatience for Bina to state her business, so that she could go on unburdening herself.

“It’s your sister I want to talk to you about,” Bina said. “She’s taking out a health and accident insurance policy.”

“Lorraine is? Well, forevermore! She didn’t tell me nothin’ about it. Not a word. But, of course, I hardly ever see her now, and when I do, seems like there are so many things to get caught up on.”

“Yes,” Bina said. She was beginning to feel panicky. Could she ever lure Francie to the point? An could Francie keep her mind there long enough to answer her questions? She said firmly, “I’m checking on her health record.”

“Oh, Lorraine’s as healthy as I am. You’d never know it to look at her, and I don’t blame you for wondering.”

“It’s just routine,” Bina said hastily. She consulted the pamphlet, careful to hold it out of Francie’s line of vision. “In December of last year, you took care of her for two weeks. December first to the fifteenth. Are you prepared to confirm as a witness her statement that her ailment was influenza? And that she was only moderately ill—”

Francie was blinking above her sociable smile. “What in creation are you talking about?”

Bina grasped her pencil tighter, and ‘tried again. “The company just needs a witness to the fact that your sister’s illness last year was a virus infection. Since you attended her I’m sure you — must know whether it was or not.”

Francie’s laughter rang out. “I guess you think I’m awful dumb,” she said. “But honest, I haven’t got an idea in the world what you’re talking about! Lorraine didn’t have flu last year. December third is my birthday, so I ought to know. She wasn’t here. We’d just got back a week or two before ourselves and—”

A gasp broke into her words. “Oh, now I remember! Lorraine did come out here a couple of nights before — I guess it was the first. Her boss drove her out. But if she thinks I’m doin’ any swearing to a big company that she stayed here, or that I nursed her for flu when I didn’t, she’s mighty mistaken!” A touch of angry color had crept into her plump cheeks.

Bina said curtly, “I don’t see why she would put down that she had the flu if she didn’t.”

“Well, just between you and me,” Francie exploded, “she had her reasons. Bad ones. She’s got herself into more boxes than you could shake a stick at for that good-for-nothing. And it looks like she’ll go right on doing it.”

Bina listened impatiently. Francie was talking fast enough now, and to the point. But she wasn’t making sense. Bina had to make her explain before she remembered she was giving away family secrets! She said severely, “My company does not like fraud.”

She forced herself to look stern.

Francie gave an exasperated snort. “Oh, my sister’s not trying to cheat your company. She just had to fly back east to the sanitarium that week to see that poor, alcoholic blob she has for a husband.”

“Husband!” Bina was horrified by the startlement in her own voice.

Francie stopped short, staring at her. “You mean my sister used her single name to the insurance company, too?”

“Yes... yes, she did,” Bina murmured, relieved.

Francie shook her head, frowning unhappily. “Charlie says I’m always getting things screwed up. But this would have come out. Lorraine’s so smart in some ways, I don’t know how she can be so dumb in others. Hanging on to that no good bum. It’s on his account she’s getting this health insurance, see? To pay his bill if she folds up. That’s why she’s out here now, slaving away for his old partner — just to hold that no good’s job for him. And if you ask me, the whole things a waste of time. He’ll never keep a job again.”

Her rising indignation overcame her better judgment. “I’m going to call Lorraine right now and tell her what a mess she’s got us all into!”

“Oh, no!” Bina cried, “don’t do that!”

“We’ll have this out once for all. She made a bad mistake when she thought I’d start sneaking and lying for her!”

Bina grabbed her arm desperately. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Babcock! I can work it out. You just forget it!”

But Francie shook her off. “And I ought to reverse the charges!” She was moving angrily toward the phone, when Bina gave up and headed for the door.

“Give me Crestview six-eight—” Bina heard as she walked rapidly back to her car. To her sudden consternation, she saw that a car had driven into the driveway behind her, blocking her path. Charlie was leaning over the door, already launched on a jovial harangue.

Bina stepped on the starter, and backed gently against the car’s front bumper, rousing the two men from their conversation. She leaned out to shout cheerily, “Could I get out, please?”

Charlie leaped back obligingly, and was shouting instructions for backing to his prospect, when the house door slammed.

“Charlie!” Francie’s voice was sharp with command, and Bina stayed frozen, her hands clenched on the wheel, her eyes on the car behind her moving so slowly out toward the street.

“Charlie!” Francie was closer, and there was a frantic belligerence in her tone now that seemed to Bina to be shrilling, “Stop that woman!”

But Charlie called back as he ran toward the street, “Keep yer shirt on, Francie. There! You’re fine, lady. No one coming! Back right out!”

Miraculously, the drive was empty behind her. Charlie’s arms swung with her as her car backed into the street. He was waving goodbye to her as Francie reached her husband’s side, talking excitedly.

VIII

With determined restraint, Bina kept herself from pressing her foot to the floor as she headed back to the freeway. She was safe, she told herself firmly. By the time Francie had gasped out her story, it would be too late for Charlie to get Bina’s car number. If he started pursuit, her car could out-race his trailer.

After a mile or so, she relaxed. Charlie would not take his wife’s account too seriously. He’d think she just hadn’t understood what Bina was there for. If Francie wanted to call the police, he’d be against it. Why advertise how she got everything mixed up?

And, with the danger of being held at the Babcock’s ended, Bina spirits suddenly soared. She was going to make it home before Jerry, all right. And she had her answer! The simple — unbelievably simple — answer to the one thing that really had frightened her.

Lorraine did not love Jerry! Lorraine had no reason to kill Clarissa because she stood in the way of her marrying Jerry — or to frame Bina, herself, for murder.

The little car sped back over the speedway now with a contented hum. Everything Lorraine had said at luncheon made beautiful sense when you added to the picture an alcoholic husband, who had been Jerry’s partner in Boston! It also made it clear why Jerry could never explain Lorraine to Clarissa or the “trouble” he’d had in his Boston office. Clarissa hadn’t approved of alcoholics any more than she had of boats. But Jerry wasn’t letting his old partner down. Sympathetic Jerry. Wonderful Jerry!

Tonight she could tell him what she had done — if she was lucky — before the police got there. Then they’d explain everything to Lorraine, so she wouldn’t be upset over the business with her sister.

And, as for that silly jade business, she would go through her bracelets again. She might have missed the culprit that had dropped the broken pieces at Clarissa’s and at home, and started Lefty off on his wild crusade, which was really only injured pride rebelling against having a possible murder suspect for a son-in-law.

She breathed in the good sea air with relief and a warm gratefulness as she drove the last curving mile to the apartment. Everything was going to be all right now. She had carried the thing through and it had come out the way she knew it would.

Swinging into the driveway she maneuvered expertly along the narrow strip of concrete beside the white slab of the building, and back into her car stall. She fairly ran up the back stairs.

But in the kitchen, she stood suddenly still, moaning softly, “Oh, no!”

It was definitely Marge’s fine, Italian hand. A couple of silver shakers were hers. And a few dozen of her initialed glasses were among the confusion of bottles, lemons, oranges, cherries, olives, ice cube trays and caterer’s boxes of hors d’oeurves that littered sink and work table.

Numbly, Bina moved on into the darkened dining room and stood unnoticed, watching the gay and familiar scene. It might have been ‘Cocktail hour at Marge’s’. The same crowd. Toto beaming as he wound his way dexterously among them with his tray of glasses.

Bina’s eyes sought out Jerry. He was beside Marge in the vortex of the hilarious group, that seemed to be welcoming Hal and Jan Edwards.

Marge was declaring between shrieks of delight, “Hal, you were divine. A consummate ham!”

“And that cop gave you a real grilling,” Jerry grinned.

Jan Edwards murmured, “I only hope they didn’t follow us here.”

“There she is!” It was Marge who had seen Bina. She dashed over to pull her into the midst of the group. “Darling, there was an officer here again this afternoon, waiting to haul you in. I called Hal from the kitchen phone, and he rang us back. He said that you and Jan had gone to a movie, he didn’t know which one.

“We put the cop on the phone to hear. And he gave up and left. Isn’t it wonderful! I mean, just like in mystery books. I do like to see those cops get slapped down — or at least, disappointed — when they go around rattling sabers, making it ghastly for you and Jerry just because you got married.”

Jerry said, “You were so late, we were afraid you had been picked up.”

Silence crackled around Bina suddenly while they waited for her response. She still felt numb, and a little incredulous. “It was — nice of you,” she managed weakly.

It was humorously inadequate. In the shock of anti-climax, Bina tried again — and to her horror, heard herself lashing out at Marge, “But my father is still on the police force!”

Racing for the bedroom, she could hear Marge’s contrite wail. “Me and my big mouth! I always forget—”

Bina shuddered as the bedroom door slammed behind her. She hadn’t meant to say that either. They’d think she was in a frightful mood. She must be in a frightful mood. She stood in the middle of the floor, arms crossed and pressed tight against her body to control her trembling. And then Jerry came in behind her.

“Well—” he said disapprovingly.

“...that was quite an exhibition,” she finished for him through chattering teeth.

“Marge was just—”

“...trying to be kind. I know. I know. And I’m glad she got the police away, because I have to — we have to—”

Jerry’s arms closed around her, “We have to go on back to the party,” he said gently, “and explain.”

She turned to fling her arms around his neck and cool her hot face against the smooth weave of his suit. Everything was all right now. She struggled hard against the quick relief of tears, until finally she could talk.

“You see, Lefty did turn in the jade,” she cried, “so I had to see the Moresbys, and they told me about the boat. And I found out why Lorraine lied about going to her sister’s to recover from an attack of the flu. And now, before the Chief picks me up—”

She was standing alone now. Jerry had withdrawn his arms and stepped back. He was frowning at her. “So you’ve been playing cops and robbers — with my friends,” he said quietly.

The numbness was back again. She stood helplessly, watching his tight face until anger released her. “It looked as if your friends had framed us for murder!”

“No one has framed us except your father,” Jerry said. “That scare headline in the paper Marge showed me tonight was just another step in his plan of forcing you to give him some names, so he can really work up a case.”

“That’s not true!” She was screaming and couldn’t stop. “Lefty’s no monster! Do you think he’d drag me through a murder trial just to get my marriage annulled?”

“Yes. And I think he’d enjoy sending me up on circumstantial evidence!” Jerry seemed suddenly to realize that his shouting could easily be heard in the next room. He lowered his voice, but did not moderate his anger. “It makes no sense — trying to pin something on Lorraine! You and Lefty are not dragging her into this mess!”

Bina moaned miserably. “Just what do you want to do?”

“Sit tight. Call Lefty’s bluff. Let the thing blow over. You look as if you’d been run down by a truck, Powder your nose while I go out and make our apologies.” He gave her a hard imitation of a smile, dropped a cold kiss on her forehead, and was gone, closing the door with determined quietness.

Bina swayed. She sank down on the edge of the bed, her thoughts in a turmoil. She was having those queer shocks of vertigo she had felt a couple of times on an unfamiliar street when a glimpse of a familiar skyline had convinced her her sense of direction had betrayed her.

She’d been running so hard, so fast... Was it in the wrong direction?

Marge opened the door far enough to poke a man’s hat through the aperture, and toss it in.

Bina laughed weakly. “Come in and beat me some more, Marge. I deserve it.”

“How groveling can you get?” Marge shut the door behind her and breezed in. “I’m just lucky you aren’t the shooting kind. Darling, I do know what a hideous thing it was, dragging in the crowd on you — of all nights.”

“I’m tired, Marge — confused.”

“It’s so important for you to get off on the right foot with them. I thought if they were in here helping you, instead of somewhere else listening to these stupid rumors...” She was rummaging for powder and a comb, bringing them over to Bina.

“Thanks, Marge. I do look like a wreck.”

“You’ve been busy. Did you get the dope on the lady?”

“Yes. I found out she’d lied about being at her sister’s in Alhambra the week of Clarissa’s death. I also found out where she actually was at the time. It had nothing to do with Clarissa.”

“Are you sure? If she had her eye on Jerry, as Clarissa thought, she must have realized she’d never get him and a fortune with Clarissa alive.”

“No... no, Marge. She wasn’t after Jerry! She’s married!”

“Well, what difference does that make?” Marge asked.

For a stunned moment, Bina stared at the air in front of her. Then she spun around to the mirror and began a fast repair job on her face. Her vertigo was gone. A surge of furious energy possessed her. “Marge, I’ve got to see Lorraine before the police pick me up. I know it’s all right. But I have to talk to her. Please help me slip out.”

“Well — I think it’s a foolish thing to do and — okay, okay.” She abruptly acknowledged defeat. “I’ll have Toto back out your car.”

On her way to the door, Marge paused. “I have a: better idea. Listen—”

She went out quickly, leaving the door ajar so Bina could hear her good-natured shout to the crowd.

“The party moves on!” she informed them in a barker’s loud tones. “There’ll be a special supper served in the dining room of the Beverly Hills Hotel in one-half hour! There’ll be dancing, there’ll be drinking, there’ll be gaaaaaaaity! Don’t rush, folks! Step right up for your hats and coats!”

During the general hubbub of departure, Jerry came up behind Bina. “Ready, sweet?”

Marge had followed him in. “Bina and I are coming along after we’ve done the phoning for the reservations,” she said. “They can be preparing for the gang while you’re on the way down.”

“I’ll stay and drive you.”

“You will not!” Marge snapped. “You’re the host, and you’ll get them herded to the tables, Buster, or half of them will end up at the Beverly Wilshire.”

She urged, pushed, wheedled, and eventually, Bina heard her triumphant yell as she shut the door on the last of the gang.

Marge met her at the door with a cocktail. “Drink this. Pull yourself together,” she said. “It will take them a few minutes to sort themselves into their buggies. While they’re jostling and crowding they won’t see you making off.”

Bina gulped the martini, realizing that if it would stop her nervous shudders, she’d get a lot further with Lorraine Canby. Gratefully, she felt the release of raw nerves as the strong liquor warmed her.

“I’ll do the phoning,” Marge said. “You make your call fast, and I’ll wait for you in front of the hotel, so we can go in together. No one will ever know you left the party. Now what’s the ghastly hotel number?” She was dialing as Bina went out through the kitchen and down the back stairs.

IX

Twilight had changed now to thick darkness, and Bina felt her way carefully down the unfamiliar stairs. Halfway across the parking space, she ran into the fender of her own car. Marge had remembered every detail, as usual, in her elaborate planning. Toto had backed her car out and swung it partially toward the drive.

She reached into the dashboard and turned on the headlights. They flashed across the flimsy barricade into the yawning excavation, making it seem almost in front of her. Nervously, Bina opened the car door and tested the emergency brake before she climbed in. Everything frightened her suddenly. If she could just get through tonight.

She had one foot raised to enter the car when a man’s hand closed on her arm, jerking her back. Another hand slid over her mouth, smothering her cry.

She struggled violently, feeling the uselessness of the exertion. The man pulling her back was iron-muscled, relentless. She heard his sharply barked order, “Okay! Hurry it up now!” more as a rumble against her than a voice.

A second man grabbed the purse from her hand. She could hear his fingers expertly rifling through its contents. It snapped shut again, and he moved past her to the car. By the light of the dashboard, she saw his arm reaching in to put the key into the ignition lock. In mounting terror, she watched as he pressed the starter and then, as the engine came to life with a roar, the accelerator.

Every muscle in her tensed to combat the next move of the man holding her. She knew now why the car had been swung around facing the yawning horror of the excavation.

The man at the car door turned on a flashlight. In its beam, she could see him adjusting the small, pebble-like block around the accelerator. The drone of the engine rose to an even more vibrant roar — stayed that way as the man moved back. These were no amateur murderers. Bina knew of the block trick. There would be no way of kicking it out in the split second between the time they tossed her into the car and it went hurtling through that barricade!

She didn’t wait for her captor to make the first move. In a convulsion of terror, she struggled frantically to free herself. But his arms clamped like steel bands around her, cutting off her breath. He began to drag her... and the old vertigo was back, making it seem as though he were moving her away from the car instead of toward it!

Dimly she saw the man at the car make his final move. One hand on the brake button, one on the gear. Then everything happened together. He leaped back — and the car shot ahead, plunging, with a splintering sound, through the barricade.

For one terrible instant it tilted in midair. Then, with engine roaring into a strange death crescendo, it left the ground behind, and followed the curving arc of its lights until everything was swallowed in the sudden, sickening crash from the depths of the excavation!

The steel-firm arms around her dropped away. The words of her captor were no longer a. mere rumble against her, but a voice that she instantly recognized. She swung around with a startled moan. His hand closed on her shoulder.

“You all right, Baby?”

She whispered back dizzily, “Yes, dad. But—”

“Up those stairs fast then. And quiet. It would be a shame if we’ve wrecked that car for nothing!”

The other man was Sergeant Ames. He said tersely, “Okay.”

Stealthily but swiftly they felt their way up the narrow, steep stairs, and across the service porch to the empty kitchen.

Sergeant Ames turned a warning glance at them from his post by the partially open dining room door. He gave Lefty a go-ahead nod. Cautiously, they crossed the kitchen to listen at his shoulder to a series of faint clicks. Someone was dialing the phone in the front hall.

Joe Ames exchanged a silent look with Lefty, then edged noiselessly through the door into the darkened dining room. Bina and Lefty followed, as Toto’s excited voice shrilled from the front hall.

“Plice? I make report, please! Ac-cident! Bad ac-cident! Terrible! Lady killed! Come, please!”

He gave the address in a dithering singsong, and hung up with a last plea for haste.

Bina glanced at Lefty, then Joe. They were making no move to go on, just waiting tensely.

Now Marge’s emotion-charged voice relaxed them. “Well done, Boy. Get down there and check now, before the crowd—”

The ringing phone cut her short. “Wait a minute,” she called to the houseboy. They heard the click of a lifted receiver. “Hello?” Marge’s voice changed to a frantic wail. “Oh, Jerry! Darling! It’s happened! It was horrible! Really horrible!”

Bina’s knees buckled. Lefty’s strong arm went around her, supporting her, but his fingers tightening on her wrist warned her to be silent.

Marge’s voice went on determinedly. It had become a little less hysterical. “Don’t feel too badly, darling! She was working for the cops. That’s why she married you — she told me! Isn’t that gruesome? Said she had it all sewed up — you and Lorraine!”

Bina’s strength returned in a sudden hot rush of protest that drowned all reason. “That’s a lie, Marge Norris!” she screamed.

Instantly, all was commotion. Lefty’s arm dropped from around her. He and Joe Ames were stiffly alert as Toto raced around the corner of the hall, his round face blanched with fear. Marge was right behind him.

Lefty’s voice broke the heavy silence. There was a droll edge to his curt tones. “Touching, Mrs. Norris. Sounded real touching.”

Toto’s arm made a lightning movement. Joe Ames was on him in one fast lunge. He slammed him back against the wall, and gripped his wrist, twisting it until he cried out. A knife went clattering to the floor.

Lefty said, “You may as well carry on through, Baby. Frisk her. You know just how to go about it.”

Miserably, Bina stumbled forward. So Lefty knew she had been playing cops and robbers, too. She ran light searching hands down over Marge’s dress. Words came back to her from their old, childhood games. “No hidden weapons, Chief.”

Marge had recovered her breath and temper. “Well, isn’t this cozy!” she flared.

“As soon as Jerry shows,” Lefty said coldly, “we’ll go down to the station.”

There was a screaming gasp. Joe Ames had grabbed Toto in a sudden attempt at flight.

“Get hold of yourself, Toto,” Marge glowered at him. “There’s no reason you should be scared of a cop.”

“Not even if the jade pieces came from his watch charm?” Lefty asked blandly.

“No! No!” Toto shrilled. “I no have watch charm!”

“The cleaning woman remembered different today,” Lefty said. “She saw it on your bureau — along with all those stubs from the Caliente tracks.”

A hissing gasp of dismay was draining the last color from Toto’s grey face. He began a singsong of shrill despair. “I no kill Missa Crevellin... I no plant the jade on Missa Bina...!”

“It was your afternoon off the day Mrs. Crevellin died. Why did you sneak back in?”

“Missa, Norris, she pay me to call for time downstairs.”

“To call for time—” Lefty’s frown broke into an expression of shocked admiration. “My God, that’s it!”

He wasn’t making any more sense than Toto was, Bina thought dazedly. “What’s it?” she demanded.

“Why the phone company swore there’d been no receiver off the hook. We knew Clarissa’s fall could have caused her death. But there were things that added up to fear. She’d dropped one slipper, her glasses half way across the room. Knocked over a small table in the hall...”

He snapped at Toto harshly, “You scared her, after you’d plugged the downstairs line into the time recording. She wasn’t able to dial out on her own phone, so she tried to make it to the downstairs phone. She stumbled — or her heart wouldn’t take it.”

Abruptly, Toto broke out of his listening trance. “I no scare her!” he screamed. “Missa Norris, she called Missa Crevellin! Say Missa Bina want to marry Missa Jerry. Put something in Missa Crevellin’s medicine—”

Marge’s voice cut in furiously. “Toto, you poor maniac! What an imagination!”

“Did you give Mrs. Crevellin medicine that day, Bina?”

“Of course. I did every day.”

“If you’re cherishing the thought that I killed my closest friend,” Marge whirled on Lefty, “just say so. And you’ll lose your badge. When a police officer makes an absolutely unfounded accusation — he’s heading for trouble.”

Admiration flickered again in Lefty’s eyes as he returned her gaze. “You are a manager, aren’t you, Mrs. Norris?” You weren’t trying to kill Clarissa Crevellin, probably. You were just trying to scare her into getting rid of Bina — after Jerry confided in you that he was falling for Bina. You had to nip that in the bud, didn’t you? Because Jerry Crevellin was the reason you dropped your husband so fast.

“I doubt if it bothered you too much when your little game proved too much for Clarissa’s heart, because you weren’t too sure she would even go for your marrying her pet nephew. Even if you promised to help her keep a curb on his side investment tendencies.

“We have a few facts and witnesses, too,” he went on grimly. “You see, somebody paid the switchboard girl downstairs to check on Bina’s calls. And Toto got lazy and put in a couple from the apartment instead of the phone booth downstairs. This girl was a conscientious little cuss, and she came to us.”

A line of white was forming slowly around Marge’s well-cut mouth. Her voice leaped out hoarsely. “The lousy, little sneak!”

The front door banged open. Running steps sounded through the apartment rooms. Then Jerry burst out into the hall.

For one crazy lurch of her heart, Bina watched him unsure of where he fitted into this sudden pattern of horror. Half expecting him to go to Marge Norris...

But his eyes passed Marge and stopped on her. “Bina.”

She was crying when he reached her. She went on crying, burying her cheek deep in the hollow of his shoulder, feeling the jolting of his body with each gasping breath, hearing his hoarse, heavenly whisper, “Are you all right, sweet?”

“Yes,”

“Bina — if anything had happened to you—”

Then suddenly the joy, the peace came to a sudden end as Lefty’s hand clamped down on Jerry’s shoulder.

“No!” Bina lashed out at her father in furious reflex. “You haven’t got anything on him!”

“I’ll get something,” Lefty’s curt voice held a strange note. As Bina stared at him, he added, “A medal, maybe. After we got together on things, he did a first rate job of straight man this evening while we let Marge play out her hand.” Lefty nodded at Ames to take his prisoners away.

Bina’s bewildered eyes turned back to Jerry. “You — knew it was Marge tonight? You left me with her?”

“It was a lousy trick,” Jerry agreed.

“Among a half-dozen other lousy tricks,” Lefty conceded. “But this guy looks out for you, Baby. Before he’d play along on this one, he made me explain just how I knew you weren’t involved in murder when I turned in that second piece of jade.”

“How did you know?” Bina gasped.

“The flash flood.”

“In January?”

“Sure. If you’d dropped that second piece of jade on your way home from Clarissa’s that last night, I couldn’t have found it two days ago. Marge Norris wasn’t hep to our canyon or she’d never have planted that jade where she did. She’d have known that flood took everything but the front porch, and I hauled in dirt to fill around every one of those flagstones.”

“I should have thought of that, too,” Bina moaned. “Lefty, I think I’ll give up my badge.”

“Guess I’m stuck with her,” Jerry said to Lefty.

“Yeah, you might as well keep her. She’s no good to me.”

A bursting warmth spread through Bina as she watched: the slow grin of camaraderie exchanged between the two men. She wiped the last traces of tears away with a shaking hand. “A couple of schmoos,” she jeered blissfully.