The Case of the Petticoat Murder

Chapter Seventeen

AS PULLED out the chair at my desk, Stan dropped the phone in its cradle. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

“What's up, Stan?”

“You know all the fussing around you did over that handbag we found in Nadine's strongbox?”

“What about it?”

“Pretty expensive bag, it seems. Worth about two hundred bucks.”

“You mean you've got something on it? That's what the phone call was about?”

He nodded. “It was Lost Property, Pete. They've just found out who it belonged to.”

“Who?”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Stan.”

“You can't beat Lost Property, Pete! Those guys've—”

“Stan, who did the bag belong to?”

“Edna Hardesty.”

For an instant, the name didn't register. “Who?”

“Edna Hardesty, Pete. That black-haired girl that gave us the cold eye when we asked her to let us talk to Dr. Campbell.”

“Oh, sure. Campbell's receptionist.”

“Little Miss Fish Eye.”

“Well, I'll be damned.”

“You see the way she had her ear in that intercom when we came out of Campbell's office?” he said.

“Sure. She didn't miss a word.”

“Maybe she didn't like the idea of anybody else even talking to the guy. You know?”

“Could be, Stan. But let's stick to what we know. How'd Lost Property pull it off?”

“They worked all night.”

“Yes, but how did they pull it?”

“Well, they started in with the manufacturer's code number inside the bag. The company that makes them is just a little one-horse outfit, maybe twenty guys in all, and the two brothers that own the shop work right along with everybody else. You know the kind of place?”

“All I know is that I wish you'd get on with it.”

“It's one of these outfits that does everything by hand. Every stitch and every cut is done that way. That's what makes those things so damn expensive.”

“I kind of suspected that all along,” I said. “But what about Lost Property?”

“They get one of these brothers out of bed and talk to him a while. It turns out he's a real nice guy, so he takes them down to the office, just like that guy at the Joyner Translation Bureau did with me, and gives the boys a look at the records.”

“And the records showed that Edna Hardesty bought—”

“You're getting ahead of the game, Pete.”

“All right,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Well, what the records usually show are exactly what bags go to any given outlet. They number the bags with consecutive serial numbers, and they keep a record of what goes where, just like banks do with new bills sometimes. So all they have to do is look at a bag's serial number and they can tell you where it was sold, and when the store got the shipment, and so on.”

“And?”

“And the only exception is when somebody's knife slips, or somebody makes a slip some other way. They inspect every bag four times, and if it isn't perfect, it doesn't go out. They cancel that serial number and sell the bag to their employees for just what it cost in the way of raw material. They're culls, and the employees can buy them for maybe fifteen or twenty bucks, depending on what kind of leather it is. The point is, there's never anything really wrong with these bags; it's usually some little thing that nobody but an expert would even notice.”

“And that's what the bag we found in Nadine's strongbox was? A reject?” I shook my head. “That's hard to believe.”

“That's because you didn't have a magnifying glass handy. Anyhow, after they cancel the serial number on the list of stuff going out, they add a couple little marks to it on the leather to make sure nobody slips up and sends it out anyway. Then they enter the serial number in another book, and when one of the employees buys the bag, they write his name down beside the number to show exactly where it went.”

“Careful outfit.”

“Too big a reputation to take chances with.”

“Who bought the bag in the first place?”

“Some young guy just learning the trade. Lost Property was talking so fast I muffed his name.” He shrugged. “Doesn't make any difference, anyhow. The point is, he bought this beautiful hunk of alligator hide and gave it to Edna Hardesty as a present.”

“Boy friend?”

“Don't know. Maybe he just figured he was making an investment.”

“When did he give it to her?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“Lost Property find out anything else about this

“Just that he'd given Edna the bag and she'd turned right around and given him the air.”

“They do any checking on Edna Hardesty herself?”

“No. They said they'd been asked to establish ownership, and they think they've done it. But they also said that if we wanted them to go any farther, just let them know.”

“If they went any farther, they might be taking our jobs away from us, Stan. As Barney Fells would say, from here on in that handbag is our own special meat.”

“Well, well,” Stan said musingly. “Little Miss Fish Eye.”

“I just hope we're not making too much out of it.”

“That'd be pretty difficult, wouldn't it? What're you doing — dumping in the ice cubes again?”

“Not exactly. I was just mulling it around a little.”

“Well, how many ways are there to mull it? How do you mull it?”

“The same way you do. We know that Nadine Ellison kept a very expensive handbag locked up in a strongbox. Why she did it, we don't know. What we do know is that it wasn't her handbag; it was Edna Hardesty's. How it got from Edna to Nadine, we don't know. But we do know Edna works for Dr. Clifford Campbell in his office. What the relationship between Edna and Campbell is, we don't know. What the connection between Edna and the dead girl is, we don't know. But we do know Nadine phoned Dr. Campbell at his home and threatened him.” I paused. “That jibe out with your take on it, Stan?”

“All the way — but I'd go a little farther.”

“How much farther?”

“A couple more things we do know is that Edna Hardesty tried to give us a stall when we wanted to see Dr. Campbell, even though Campbell didn't have any patients and she knew we were cops. Second, when we walked in on Campbell, he tried to stall us with that business about pineal bodies. If we hadn't stopped him, he'd still be talking about brains.”

I looked up at the clock. It was a quarter of seven.

“You feel like having a spot of coffee with a young lady, Stan?”

“You mean Edna Hardesty?”

“Yes.”

“She's young, all right. But a lady?”

“That stall she gave us might have been strictly office procedure around there, Stan. It might not have been anything personal at all.”

“I'm laughing,” he said.

“Did Lost Property give you her address?”

He glanced at his scratch pad. “It's the Misener Apartments, on Fifty-first between Lex and Third.”

“That's less than half a block from Campbell's office building.”

“I noticed that. Very handy.”

“Handy for what?”

“Who knows? Maybe Edna and her boss might want to drop over to her place for a drink or something.” He grinned. “You know I haven't got an evil mind, Pete. Why ask me something like that?”

“I want to hit her before she leaves for work,” I said. “You mind holding things down a while?”

“Not this time, Pete. That Edna Hardesty is one girl you can have all to yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“No sacrifice, believe me.”

I had almost reached the door when the phone rang, and I paused while Stan answered it, listened for a moment, and then replaced the receiver very carefully and shook his head.

“Who was it?” I asked.

“Pickled Lii,” he said. “You're in bad trouble, Pete. She says if you don't arrest her letter carrier by noon today, she'll have the FBI arrest both of you.”

“Well,” I said as I turned to leave, “another day has officially begun.”