The Case of the Blonde Bonanza

CHAPTER SIX

A routine court hearing on Tuesday morning developed into a legal battle which ran over into the afternoon and it was three-thirty that afternoon before Mason checked in at his office.

"Hello, Della," the lawyer said. "What's new?"

"Mostly routine," she said. "How did the court hearing go?"

Mason grinned. "Things were looking pretty black and then the attorney on the other side started arguing with the judge over a minor point and the argument progressed to a point where there was considerable heat on both sides. By the time the hearing was finished the judge decided it our way."

"And what did you do?" she asked, with exaggerated innocence. "I suppose you just stood there with your hands in your pockets while the attorney and the judge were arguing."

"I tried to act the part of a peacemaker," Mason said. "I poured oil on the troubled flames."

Della Street laughed. "I'll bet you did just that."

"What's new with our case involving the curvaceous blonde, Della?"

"There seems to be a lot of activity centering in Riverside," she said. "Paul Drake reports that Harrison Boring has gone to Riverside. He is now registered in the Restawhile Motel and is in Unit 10.

"Drake's man also reports that Boring is being shadowed by another agency."

"You mean he's wearing two tails and doesn't know about either one?" Mason asked.

"Apparently not," Della Street said. "Of course, under the circumstances Drake's man is being most discreet and is relying as much as possible on electronic shadowing devices which send out audible signals to the car following. He thinks the other agency is using contact observation with no electronic shadowing. So far, Boring apparently isn't suspicious. Paul says the man is hurrying around, covering a lot of territory."

Mason settled back in his swivel chair. "Hurrying around, eh?" he said musingly.

"Here's the mail," Della Street said, sliding a stack of letters across Mason's desk.

Mason picked up the top letter, started to read it, put it down, then pushed the pile of mail to one side, sat for more than a minute in thoughtful silence.

"Something?" Della Street asked.

"I'm toying with an idea," Mason said, "and hang it, the more I think of it, the more plausible it seems."

"Want to talk it out or let it incubate?" she asked.

"I think I'd like to talk it out," Mason said, "and let's see if it isn't logical. Boring was working on lost heirs, obscure estates. Yet when Foster tried to backtrack his activities, he couldn't find anything. Nevertheless, Foster is a pretty thoroughgoing chap and he has the inside track. In the first place, he knows all the routine methods of investigation and in the second place he knew exactly where Boring had been and what activities he had engaged in. Yet nothing that he has been able to uncover gives any clue to what triggered Boring's break with him."

Della Street, knowing that Mason was simply thinking out loud, sat thoughtfully attentive, furnishing him with a silent audience.

"So suddenly Harrison T. Boring comes to Dianne Alder," Mason said, "and ties her up on a contract, but the contract is so disguised that neither she nor anyone else who might look at the contract would tumble to the fact that it was a lost heir's contract; the sugar-coating disguised the pill to such an extent that the whole thing looked like a piece of candy."

Della Street merely nodded.

"Now then," Mason went on, "Montrose Foster. Regardless of the fact that he's a little terrier, but no one's dummy, he begins to think that perhaps he should start working on the case from the other end and is anxious to find out who Boring has been seeing."

Again Della Street nodded.

"He is having Boring shadowed. He undoubtedly knows that Boring is seeing Winlock. But Winlock doesn't seem to be the solution to the problem, at least as far as Foster is concerned.

"Now, that's where we're one step ahead of Montrose Foster. We know that whatever lead Harrison Boring may have uncovered, he followed it to Dianne Alder. Dianne Alder is the target in the case, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

Mason was silent for a few seconds, then he said, "Yet, having found Dianne Alder and having tied her up, Boring suddenly lets her go.

"Now, why?"

Della Street merely sat looking at him, making no comment.

"The reason is, of course," Mason said, "that the advantage Boring intended to get from his contract with Dianne-and that must have been a considerable advantage for him to put out a hundred dollars a week-has been superseded by something much more profitable to Harrison Boring."

"Such as what?" Della Street asked.

"Blackmail."

"Blackmail!" she exclaimed.

"That's right," Mason said. "He started out on a missing heir's contract and he suddenly shifted to blackmail. That is about the only explanation that would account for his going to all that trouble to sign Dianne up on a missing heir's contract and then suddenly drop her."

"But why would blackmail tie in with missing heirs?" she asked.

"Because," Mason said, "we've been looking at the whole picture backwards. There aren't any missing heirs."

"But I thought you just said Dianne was a missing heir."

"We may have started in with that idea," Mason said, "but it's a false premise and that's why we aren't getting anywhere, and that's why Montrose Foster isn't getting anywhere. Dianne Alder isn't a missing heir; this is a case of a missing testator."

"What do you mean?"

"Dianne's father was killed some fourteen years ago, drowned accidentally while boating in the channel, but his body was never found."

"Then, you mean…?"

"I mean," Mason said, "that his body wasn't found because he wasn't dead. He was rescued in some way and decided to leave the impression that he was dead. He went out and began life all over and probably amassed something of a fortune.

"He probably was tired of his home life, wanted to disappear the way many men do, but never had the opportunity until that boating accident."

"So then?" Della Street asked, with sudden excitement.

"So then," Mason said, "we start looking for a wealthy man-someone who has no background beyond fourteen years ago, someone who couldn't divorce his wife because he was supposed to be dead, someone who has since remarried, someone who is exceedingly vulnerable, therefore, to blackmail.

"Dianne, as his daughter, would have a claim which could be enforced."

"But didn't Dianne's mother take all of the estate?" Della Street asked.

"All that she knew about," Mason said. "All the estate that Dianne's father left at the time of his disappearance. But technically he was still married to Dianne's mother. Technically anything that he acquired after his disappearance and before the death of Dianne's mother was community property."

"Then," Della Street said, with sudden excitement, "the key to the whole thing is George D. Winlock."

"Exactly," Mason said. "Winlock, the wealthy man whom Harrison Boring is cultivating at the moment; Winlock, the real estate speculator who showed up in Riverside about fourteen years ago as a salesman, who started plunging in real estate, became wealthy, and is now one of the town's leading citizens; Winlock, who has a high social position, a wife who really isn't a wife… No wonder Boring was willing to let Dianne off the hook! He had landed a bigger fish."

"I take it," Della Street said, "that we go to Riverside."

Mason grinned. "Get your things packed, Della. Put in some notebooks and pencils. We go to Riverside."

"And we see George D. Winlock?"

"We make some very careful investigations," Mason said, "and we are very, very careful indeed not to upset any apple carts, not to make any accusations, not to jump to any false conclusions, but very definitely we see George D. Winlock."

"And when we see him?"

"We see him as Dianne Alder's attorney, and the minute we do that I think you will find that Harrison T. Boring's blackmail has been dried up at the source. And, since Boring has repudiated his contract with Dianne, whatever we can get for her by way of a settlement will be pure velvet to her.

"How long will it take you to get some things packed, Della?"

She smiled. "Five minutes. I've been through this same thing so often that I'm now keeping an overnight bag in the coat closet."