Owls Don't Blink

Chapter Twenty-Three

I sat in Rondler’s office, a bright light illuminating my features. A court stenographer was taking down every word I said. A couple of detectives sat watching me with the intense concentration which one sees on the faces of men around a poker table.

Edna Cutler and Roberta Fenn occupied chairs on one side of the room. Bertha Cool sat opposite them on the other side, and Emory Hale was seated beside Bertha.

Rondler said, “Apparently, Lam, you located Roberta Fenn in Shreveport and brought her with you to Los Angeles.”

“Any objection?” I asked.

“The New Orleans police were looking for her.”

“They didn’t tell me so.”

“You knew the newspapers were trying to find out what had happened to her.”

“I didn’t know newspapers were entitled to any priority. I knew her life was in danger. I wanted to give her a break.”

“How did you know it was in danger?”

“Because she was mixed up with Edna Cutler, and, between them, if they ever got their heads together, they knew too much.”

“You mean about this Craig killing?”

“That and other things.”

“Tell me about Craig.”

“Cutler had been doing some business in oil properties for Roxberry. Cutler kept everything in his wife’s name so that the account showed on the books as Edna P. Cutler, although Edna didn’t know anything about it, and Roxberry had never met Edna. A lot of the property that stood in Edna’s name was property which Roxberry really owned. It was oil property. Roxberry died. The wildcat wells came in. Because the deals had been highly confidential, there were no papers covering them. Marco simply sat tight. He stood to clear up half a million dollars if he could keep the trust element of the oil properties a secret, and if he could get a divorce decree holding that all of the property that was in Edna Cutler’s name had been placed there for convenience, merely so it wouldn’t be in his name, that it was in reality his separate property acquired with funds which he had had prior to his marriage.”

Sergeant Rondler started slapping the tips of his fingers against the top of the desk. “That part is all more or less obvious,” he said.

I said, “The rest of it is just as easy. Craig began to smell a rat. Cutler had gone too far then to back out. He waited until Craig was out with Roberta, masqueraded as the love bandit, jockeyed Craig into a position where he had to put up a fight, and shot him.

“Edna Cutler had a faint suspicion Roberta had some information which might be of help to her. She followed Roberta to New York, missed her, found her in New Orleans, got acquainted with her, also got acquainted with Nostrander. Nostrander gave Edna an ingenious legal recipe for turning the tables on her husband. Edna took it. She kept Roberta in ignorance of what was going on. Cutler walked into the trap. Later on, when Edna sprang it on him, he knew he had to break down Roberta Fenn’s testimony and make her admit the whole thing was a conspiracy. If he could do that, he could get a court to hold that Edna was estopped from raising the point that service had not been made on her. That was his only chance.”

“Cutler admits that,” Rondler said, “but that’s all he admits.”

I said, “He hired Hale. He thought a New York lawyer could do the gumshoeing better than a Los Angeles killer, but he got Hale to hire a Los Angeles detective agency. In the meantime, Hale had located Edna Cutler, then, through Edna, he’d found Roberta. He’d tried to soften Roberta up and had failed, so he turned us loose on the job. He never did get anywhere with Edna Cutler, she simply wasn’t making any slips.”

“How” about these newspaper clippings and the gun?”

“Roberta probably left the newspaper clippings there. Someone else found them and planted the gun.”

“Why?”

“Oh, just to make it look good.”

Rondler said, “The gun doesn’t match up. The bullet which killed Craig wasn’t fired through it.”

I nodded.

Hale said, “I hope you’re not insinuating that I planted anything.”

I looked at him and said, “You were a babe in the woods. Pretending to fly to New York the night you intended to pull your fast one.”

“What do you mean?” he sputtered.

“I don’t know what you intended to do with Nostrander. You may have intended to browbeat him, bribe him, or perhaps impersonate a Federal officer. Probably you were going to offer him a bribe. In any event, you wanted an alibi. Nostrander stayed too long in Roberta Fenn’s apartment. You followed him there, and couldn’t imagine what was holding him, because you knew Roberta wasn’t there. About two-twenty in the morning, you knew you didn’t dare put off seeing him any longer. You went up to find out what was keeping him.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Hale blustered.

I turned to Rondler. “Naturally, he wants to deny it, what with the murder at two-thirty.”

“Do you have any proof of all this?” Rondler asked.

I nodded my head toward Roberta Fenn.

Roberta Fenn said, “This man went up to my apartment.”

I grinned at Hale.

He said, “That absolutely is not true. It’s a case of mistaken identity. I must have a double.”

Rondler played tunes with his fingers.

“What happened up there?” he asked me.

“Where?”

“Up in Roberta’s Fenn’s apartment when Hale went up and saw Nostrander?”

“I don’t know. Hale is the only one who knows. You’ll have to get him to tell you.”

“I tell you I was never up there,” Hale said.

Rondler asked Edna, “How did you happen to get in touch with Roberta Fenn?”

“I put an ad in the paper for her.”

“In a Los Angeles paper?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought her life was in danger, and I wanted to protect her.”

“Where was she? Where had she been staying here in Los Angeles?”

“I don’t know.”

Rondler looked at Roberta. “Where were you staying?”

“In a hotel,” she said, “but I can’t tell you the name of it.”

“Do you know where it was?”

“No. It was — I was sort of tight when I went there.”

“Did you get tight all alone?”

“No. I was with somebody.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. It was a pick-up.”

Rondler looked at me and grinned.

I didn’t say anything.

“Why did you walk out on the New Orleans cops?” Rondler asked me after a while.

“Because I had work to do.”

“What?”

“I wanted to find Roberta Fenn.”

“Why?”

“Because I too thought her life might be in danger.”

“Why?”

“Because Marco Cutler had got the New Orleans process server thoroughly sold on the idea that he’d actually served the summons on Edna Cutler. Under those circumstances, all he needed to do was-to get Roberta Fenn out of the way and it would be the process server’s word against Edna’s. The court would be pretty apt to take the process server’s statement.”

Rondler said, “Well, it’s a nice theory. The trouble is that we haven’t got a damn thing on anybody. Marco Cutler says that you are the one who shot at him, that he just went up to see his wife, that he never touched the fuse box. He found the door open. You shot at him as he came into the room, then grabbed him in the dark and threw him over your head.”

“He shot,” I said.

“Well,” Rondler demanded irritably, “where’s the gun?”

“The window was open. It must have gone out of the window in the struggle.”

Rondler said, “One of the tenants says you opened the window.”

“I went over to the window and looked out. That probably brought on the confusion. You know how excited people get.”

Rondler said to Hale, “And I don’t suppose you’ll admit seeing Nostrander the night he was murdered?”

“Who, me?” Hale asked.

“Who the hell did you think I was talking to?” Rondler asked.

Hale said with dignity, “I was in New York. Look up the records of the airplane passengers.”

I grinned at Rondler. “Look up the records of the airplane company, and you’ll find that the man who made the trip to New York weighed a hundred and forty-six pounds. Hale weighs about two hundred. Marco Cutler is the lad who answers that description.”

“Preposterous!” Hale said. “The records of the airplane company are in error.”

I lit a cigarette.

Rondler said, “Well, I guess that’s all of it. You folks can go, but don’t any of you leave the city without my consent. In a way, you’re all in custody as material witnesses, and will be under surveillance.”

We all filed out into the corridor. Hale said to Roberta Fenn, “I regret the deception I practiced on you. I got acquainted with Edna Cutler. I couldn’t get anything out of her, but I did get her to give me a letter of introduction to you. You’ll understand how it is.”

“Oh, sure,” Roberta Fenn said. “It’s all in a lifetime.”

I stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ve had a hard siege of it,” I said. “I’m going home and go to bed.”

Bertha looked at me with those glittering, intense eyes of hers, said, “Let me talk with you a moment, Donald.”

She hooked her arm through mine, drew me off to one side. Her voice was positively motherly. “Now, Donald. You must get some sleep. You’re all in.”

I said, “Certainly. That’s why I’m breaking up the party.”

She lowered her voice, said out of the side of her mouth, “If you’re going to get that gun and try planting it, it’s too dangerous. Tell me where it is and I’ll get it.”

“What gun?” I asked.

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Bertha said. “Do you think I don’t know an agency gun when I see it? Where’s the other one?”

I said, “In my apartment in the upper dresser drawer.”

“Okay. Where do you want it?”

“Just any place. Under Edna’s apartment window. Don’t leave any tracks.”

Bertha said, “Trust me. I think they’re shadowing you. Is the gun Cutler used on you out of the way?”

“For a while — I hope. By then I should worry.”

Roberta Fenn came walking directly toward us, “May I intrude for just a moment?” she asked.

Bertha said, “It’s all right. I’m finished.”

Roberta’s eyes were caressing me. She gave me both her hands. “Darling!”