The Case of the Cautious Coquette

Chapter 9

Mason held the door open for her and they walked down the steps together.

“I wish you’d tell me where we’re—” She stopped abruptly.

“What’s the matter?” Mason asked.

“That’s my car!” she exclaimed.

“Where?”

“That sedan over there.”

“You’re certain?”

“Of course I’m not absolutely certain. It looks like my car.”

“Just which one is it?”

“Right across the street, the one parked down next to the alley. The light brown sedan with the red wheels and the white side-walls.”

“All right,” Mason said, “let’s go take a look and see if it’s yours.”

They crossed the street. Lucille walked around to the left-hand side of the car, opened the door, and said, “Good heavens, yes! This is my car and my keys are in it.”

“Don’t you usually leave your keys in it?”

“In the garage, yes. I leave the garage door locked and my keys are in it then, but whenever it’s parked on the street I always take the keys out.”

“Didn’t you use the car today?”

“No.”

“How did you get to my office?”

“In Arthur’s car.”

“All right, what do you want to do with your car — take the keys out and leave it here, or...?”

“I want to drive it right back into the garage where it belongs.”

She climbed in behind the steering wheel, angrily twisted the ignition keys, and jabbed her foot on the starter.

The starter whirred, the motor caught, raced for a moment, backfired, sputtered, raced and backfired again.

“Perhaps you have your choke too far out,” Mason said.

“The choke isn’t out,” she said.

“I’ll walk around to the garage,” Mason told her, “and open the doors. That motor certainly doesn’t sound right.”

“Well, it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know whether someone’s playing a joke on me or what, but — Arthur’s a good mechanic. He was supposed to put new wiring on the car and — I don’t know what he did. It was running all right, only the wiring was a little worn.”

“It’s probably connected wrong,” Mason said. “You can drive across through the alley and up to your garage. I’ll walk over and open the door. I guess you can get the car that far. Then we’ll look under the hood and see what’s wrong.”

He walked across the street and up the alley.

Behind him, he could hear the car sputtering, banging and backfiring as Lucille Barton nursed it across the street. Then the shaft of her headlights illuminated the garage doors. Mason fitted the key to the padlock, removed the hook of the padlock from the hasp on the door, flung back the right-hand door, groped on the inside for the catch which held the garage door, then suddenly paused in mid-motion.

The beam of headlights from Lucille Barton’s car illuminated the legs of a sprawled figure which was stretched out on the floor of the garage. The shadow of the door hid the rest of the man’s body.

Abruptly the motor slowed and almost instantly sputtered and died.

Lucille Barton, jerking open the left-hand car door, came out from behind the wheel with one swift, leg-revealing motion. She dashed over to Mason’s side. “What’s that?” she demanded. “Who’s in there?”

Mason said, “That seems to be a man who’s either sleeping, drunk or dead. Suppose we take a look.”

He found the chain catch on the inside of the door, pulled it down far enough to release the door, swung it open a few inches, then stopped as reflected light from the headlights gleamed on the sinister red pool which had welled out from the bullet hole in the man’s head.

“Apparently,” Mason said, “he’s dead.”

She took a tentative step forward, then suddenly drew back. Mason could hear the hissing intake of her breath.

“Well?” Mason asked.

“What kind of a frame-up is this?” she demanded. “What have you been doing? What kind of a deal are you trying to rig up on me?”

Mason, moving so that he could look down on the features of the dead man, said, “I think, Lucille, we’ll put the question the other way. What sort of a deal have you been trying to frame on me?”

She said, “I’m beginning to see it all now — this whole business, this... all this stall about the gun and the car and the garage, and... so that’s why you wanted to go in the garage.”

Mason frowned, said nothing, but stood looking down on the body of Hartwell Pitkin who, by Lucille Barton’s own admission, had been her first husband. He was now very evidently quite dead.

Lucille, looking past him, suddenly recognized the man. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, and flung her arms around Mason’s shoulders to Steady herself.