The D.A. Breaks an Egg

23

In Brandon’s office the next morning the two compared notes.

Sheriff Brandon, grinning gleefully, said, “You certainly said a mouthful when you said you never won anything by being on the defensive, and that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Lord knows, though, I hate to think what would have happened if Carr hadn’t had those jewels.”

“We sure took a chance,” Selby admitted, “but from a political standpoint we were dead pigeons if we hadn’t done something of the sort... You can begin to get a picture now, Rex.”

“Well,” Brandon conceded, “we’re getting parts of the puzzle which begin to fit together, but it’s not any picture yet.”

“It’s darn close to a picture,” Selby said. “Carr was using Moana, and at the same time making her pay for it. He was getting her out of some scrape, but that shrewd devil was smart enough, and cunning enough, to plan to kill two birds with one stone.”

Brandon said, “Keep talking, Doug.”

Selby thought for a few moments, then said, “I think Moana got herself into some sort of a scrape. I think that she went to Carr. I think that Carr saw a heaven-sent opportunity to clean up something else that was bothering him. In the person of Moana Lennox he had a young woman of good family whose word would be taken as gospel in any case...”

There was a knock at the door of Brandon’s private office.

“What is it?” Brandon asked.

A deputy said, “Horace Lennox is out here and his sister Moana is with him. He says that it’s very important they see you at the earliest possible moment.”

“I’ll say it’s important,” Selby grinned. “Rex, it looks as though this is the break we’ve been waiting for.”

Brandon nodded. “Tell them to come in and then see that we’re not disturbed for a while. No matter what happens don’t let anyone else in.”

The deputy nodded, withdrew, and a moment later ushered Horace and Moana Lennox into the office.

Horace said, as soon as the door was closed, “I’m not going to waste any time with preliminaries, gentlemen. My sister told me a story and as soon as I heard it, I knew that it was something she should tell you. I’ve had some difficulty in getting her to come up here, and I may say that no one — no other member of the family — knows that we’re here, or knows Moana’s story.”

“We were just speculating about what Moana’s story must be,” Brandon said. “Suppose you sit down and tell us, Moana.”

Horace and his sister sat down. “Go ahead, Moana,” Horace said.

She looked him over with the hard, green eyes of a trapped animal. There was no sign of tears or of lids swollen from crying. She was still a gambler, still looking for the breaks, and the only reason she was surrendering was because she could find no other alternative. A hard little schemer, brought to bay, she sized them up with the cold eyes of a professional fighter searching for an opening.

“Go ahead, Moana,” Horace urged.

She said, “The only reason that I’m telling you this is because... because I have to.”

“I can well understand that,” Brandon said, studying her face.

She said, “I went to A. B. Carr. I wanted him to protect me. He’s messed everything all up. Now he expects me to clear him.”

“What did you consult him about? Why did you go to see him?” Horace asked. “Go ahead, tell these men the story just as you told it to me.”

She said, “I don’t know whether you gentlemen know anything about my family background. My mother has made a fetish of respectability. Well, I guess I didn’t do so good. Things happened that I just didn’t want Mother to know anything about. It all started back in July when Darwin Jerome and I were going to get married. I knew Mother wouldn’t approve and I just didn’t care. I decided to run away with Darwin and get married.

“He fixed things all up. We told Mother that we were going up to spend the week end with Connie Kerry, and Connie, knowing what we were planning to do, agreed to front for us so that it would appear we were up there, until I could send Mother a telegram announcing that I was Mrs. Darwin Jerome...” She hesitated for a moment, and the look of calculating defiance left her eyes as she contemplated the misty memories of that July night.

“Go on,” Horace said impatiently.

She said, “I’ve always been very fond of Darwin, but he’s a heel. I knew he had weak points but he was likable and sophisticated in his whole attitude toward life. He wanted me to take a chance that I wouldn’t take, a chance I couldn’t take.”

“What?” Selby asked.

“On the road to Yuma it turned out that he was already married. He’d married a girl in France when he was overseas. He told me that he knew it would be all right, and that he could send her money and she’d get a French divorce. He was perfectly willing to go ahead and marry me there in Yuma, but I had visions of what would happen. That French girl would learn he had married again. She’d make trouble and... well, you can see what a position I’d be in. The bride of a bigamist — no binding ceremony — and somehow I had an idea that that might be a very bad position to be in with Darwin Jerome. A girl who is going to toss everything away in order to marry Darwin wants to be darn certain she’s got him, and that he’s tied up good and tight legally.”

“So what did you do?” Brandon asked.

She said, somewhat regretfully, “Oh, well, I let my head dominate my heart. I told him nothing doing. I told him to take me back home, and... well, he wanted me to spend the night in Yuma and we had an argument, and that was that. We separated.”

“Then what?” Horace prompted.

“Then,” she said, “I was in a fix. I simply had to get back, and I had to get where I could communicate with Connie and tell her what had happened. I could have taken the bus, but I knew Darwin would be down at the bus station looking for me. I just left him flat. I started to hitchhike.

“I walked across the bridge over the river into California and saw a lot of cars lined up at the California checking station. I just stood around as though waiting for the car in which I was riding to be cleared. Finally I saw a man with whom I thought I could take a chance. A nice-looking young fellow who was all alone. I walked up to him and... well, anyway, he gave me a ride. He was Frank Grannis.

“Frank Grannis was a perfect gentleman. Naturally I wasn’t foolish enough to tell him any of my story or to give him a name. I told him that I had to get to Los Angeles to see about a job, and that I had to be there by nine o’clock in the morning in order to land the job. It was quite a line I handed him. He had planned to stop in Brawley all night, but after he heard my story he decided that he’d keep on driving.”

Selby, listening with frowning concentration, said, “Wait a minute. How did Darwin Jerome know that you were riding with Frank Grannis? And as I size things up, he must have known.”

She said, “I’m coming to that. Darwin waited around the bus depot at Yuma. When I didn’t show up, he finally realized what must have happened. He passed us on the road, driving like the wind. I recognized the car. He must have been going at least eighty-five or ninety miles an hour.”

“Well?” Selby asked.

She said, “He wasn’t so dumb. He knew that I was going to have to get home to Madison City some way. He thought he stood a chance. There’s no question but what Darwin is — or was — completely infatuated with me. He had been looking forward to a marriage ceremony which wouldn’t be binding, and a honeymoon which would. I upset his calculations. Darwin is a happy-go-lucky individual, but when it comes to a showdown, and if anyone crosses him, he becomes hard as nails.”

“What happened?” Selby asked.

“As it turned out, he thought the reason I’d refused to go ahead was because of some other man who had come between us. When I didn’t go to the bus depot, he felt certain — and he’s insanely jealous.

“There’s a boulevard stop just before you come to Madison City with a bright overhead light. Darwin was waiting there. He spotted us when we drove up. I knew that he had, but Frank Grannis didn’t. Frank said he simply couldn’t go on and wanted to know where I wanted to get out. I’d been making him sleepy for the last half-hour by repeatedly yawning. I told him to put me out any place and I’d keep on hitchhiking. So he stopped the car at the auto camp. I kissed him good-by — just a friendly kiss, the way a regular hitchhiker would treat a nice boy who had given her a long ride, and started walking ostensibly to invite another ride.

“Darwin, of course, had seen me kiss Frank good-by. He’d seen Frank go to the motel. He was jealous and angry and hurt. He really thought Frank had followed us to Yuma and was the reason I’d refused to marry him. I simply couldn’t convince him Frank wasn’t an old friend. I slapped his face, and we quarreled again and then finally he took me home.

“He was willing to do that much to keep up appearances. I told Mother that I’d been taken violently ill, and thought I’d better come back home, and the next day I called Connie and fixed things up so that she’d back up my story.”

“And how did Carr enter the picture?” Selby asked.

“Well,” she said, “you can imagine how I felt when I saw that Grannis had been arrested on a hit-and-run charge. I simply can’t imagine how they ever picked on him. I knew that he wasn’t guilty. Of course, he was talking vaguely about a girl hitchhiker whom he’d picked up and who could give him an alibi. I’d given him a purely fictitious background and made it as vague as possible and... well, you know how it is on a pickup like that. You talk awhile and are more or less impersonal and fuzzy about backgrounds.

“I didn’t want to see him convicted wrongfully, and yet I couldn’t come out and relate the circumstances without getting myself in an awful mess, and letting Mother know I’d lied to her, and all that, so... well, I went to Carr.”

“I see. And what did Carr say?”

She said, “Carr wanted money. I didn’t have any money. I told him about my jewelry. Carr suggested that he’d look it over.”

“And then what?”

“Carr looked at the jewelry and said that he’d see Grannis got out of it and that I wasn’t involved; but he said that he wanted to do it his way and that I was not to come forward with any statement no matter what happened. That suited me all right. And Carr told me that any time within a year when I wanted to redeem the jewelry for a thousand dollars I could have it back, that that would be his fee.”

“And what about the burglary?” Selby asked hopefully. “That was Carr’s idea so that you wouldn’t...”

“No,” she interrupted, “that was my own idea. I thought that was the best way of accounting for the missing jewelry. I wouldn’t have had to say anything about it if it hadn’t been that Dorothy Clifton came to visit us. I knew that Mother would want to show her the antique jewelry, the heirlooms which I had. She spoke about the stuff at dinner that night.”

“I see,” Brandon said, disappointment in his voice. “Carr then really didn’t have anything to do with that fake burglary?”

“Not a thing.”

“Wait until she tells you the rest of it,” Horace said. “Go ahead, Moana. Try and be as brief as possible, because these men have work to do.”

She said, “Well, Carr reported to me from time to time. Of course, this is a relatively small town and it would never do for people to think that I was consulting Carr. I couldn’t go to his house and he doesn’t have an office here. Even if he had, I couldn’t have gone there. So Carr would telephone me at times and meet me at various places. He finally told me that he’d been trying to get the case against Frank Grannis squared up. That he’d offered to make all sorts of concessions to the authorities down there in Imperial County, but they wouldn’t even give him a tumble. I didn’t like the way he was talking. I thought perhaps he was trying to give me some sort of a double-cross, and actually accused him of it. But he insisted that he was working for my best interests, and that was all he had in mind, but that it was a difficult job to get the case squared without letting anyone know that he’d located the alibi witness. I could appreciate he was up against a problem there but that’s what I was paying him for.

“Finally Carr phoned on Tuesday that he had everything fixed. He said he had a girl who would swear that she had ridden with Grannis. He said she was a Daphne Arcola from Windrift, Montana, and that I was to meet her at the park that night. Carr said he’d try and join us.”

“Go ahead,” Selby said eagerly. “He arranged to meet you in the park the night that Dorothy came?”

“Yes. I knew that she was going to arrive sometime during the evening, and knew I couldn’t get away until after the house had settled down, so I told him that I’d have to find out how things were coming and let him know; that it would be difficult for me to call him. So he said that either he or Daphne Arcola would call me sometime during the evening. Well, she called and I didn’t think anyone remembered about it. I told her very briefly I’d meet her and Mr. Carr in the park at eleven-ten. I felt certain everything would be quieted down by that time.

“Well, everything would have been all right only Mother told Dorothy to leave her convertible in the driveway and leave the keys in it; that in case anyone had to take a car out they could move hers. Well, I was afraid that all that noise would waken Dorothy, and of course she was in the guest room, which is right over the driveway. It would have to happen that way.”

“Go on,” Selby said eagerly. “What happened? What happened when you got to the park?”

“Well, I got to the park. Daphne Arcola was waiting on the corner. I recognized her at once from the description, and she got in the car with me. Then we drove to the place in the park where we were to meet Mr. Carr.”

“And what happened?”

“We shut off the engine and waited for a minute or two, and then Daphne said she thought she saw someone over in the shadow of some shrubbery. She said she’d go over and take a look. I told her that it was foolish, because if Mr. Carr were there he’d come over to meet us, that he wouldn’t expect us to get out and go over into the shadows. But she thought perhaps something had gone wrong and that he was afraid to come out to the automobile, but wanted one of us to come over there.

“She jumped out of the car and ran over into the shadows and I lost her for... oh, I don’t know, two or three minutes. I was beginning to get frightened when she suddenly came running back to the car, and said to me, ‘Moana, go home just as fast as you can. Don’t ever admit to anyone that you’ve met me, or that you know me, or that you’ve been out of the house this evening. I’ll get in touch with you later on and explain.’ And with that she slammed the car door and ran across the grass. Naturally, I was terribly disturbed. I ran over the dirt path in making a hurried turn.

“I wasn’t as much frightened as I was angry and upset. I wanted to get the thing over, and I... well, all that mystery, all that intrigue. I seemed to be getting mixed into things deeper and deeper. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Mr. Carr always seemed so fatherly, and so dignified, and such a bulwark of strength, and so completely assured of what he was doing... well, I knew all that stuff was wrong and that I was getting into a mess, but... well, Mr. Carr influenced me, that’s all.”

“Then Daphne Arcola had left her purse in your car, or rather, in Dorothy Clifton’s car, and you didn’t know it was there?” Selby asked.

She nodded. “I took the machine back and left it in the driveway. I thought I’d worked it so no one would know anything about what had happened. I went into my room, cut a hole in the screen, unhooked the screen, undressed in the dark, got into bed, and then started screaming.”

“And that’s all you know?” Selby asked.

“That,” she said, “is the entire story.”

“Did Daphne Arcola get in touch with you later?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. She told me to sit tight, that she and Mr. Carr had everything under control.”

“Last night,” Selby said, “we had every reason to believe that Carr got Frank Grannis out of jail by temporarily putting up a surety bond. He got him to a place where he could meet Daphne Arcola and there they fixed up a story. Do you know anything about that?”

The hard green eyes regarded Selby with cold appraisal. “Isn’t that enough — what I’ve already told you?”

“I want it all,” Selby said. “You’ve held out too much too long. You should have told us all this sooner.”

She said, “You detest me, don’t you? And yet I got into all this trouble simply because I tried to be a good sport and help a man out of a predicament. After all, it was nothing in my young life. I could have sat tight and said nothing. Then I wouldn’t have lost my jewelry and wouldn’t have been in all this mess. I wish now I’d really been selfish.”

“Did you,” Selby asked, “see Frank Grannis last night?”

“Yes,” she flared defiantly.

“Where?”

“At a motel.”

“Who was there?”

“Daphne, A. B. Carr, and some stooge of Carr’s. I believe he’s a real estate man from Fallhaven.”

“And what was the purpose of that conference?”

“To fix it up so Daphne Arcola could tell a convincing story. I told her absolutely everything that had happened, and Frank Grannis told her everything that had happened as he remembered it, and... well, Daphne and Frank sort of got their stories ironed out.”

“And Carr was there?” Selby said, unable to keep the triumph from his voice. “He helped in getting this story straightened out, helped in planning this perjury?”

“No,” she said. “Carr was at the motel, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with the conference. He got us all together and said, ‘You folks probably want to visit for a while. When you’re finished I’ll talk about the case and find out what it’s all about so I can prepare my defense’ and then he went out.”

Brandon glanced questioningly at Selby.

Selby said, “I believe we can get him for subornation of perjury and criminal conspiracy. But we’ll probably need to prove an overt act. We’ll have to get Grannis to testify for us. We should be able to do that all right, because now we’re in a position to deduce what must have happened, and how that hit-and-run charge was framed on Grannis in the first place. However,” Selby went on, “we’d better let that wait until we’ve made certain Miss Lennox has given us all the facts as she is familiar with them.”

Selby turned to Moana. “Do you think there’s any possibility that Daphne Arcola killed Rose Furman when she got out of the car?” he asked.

The green eyes met his for a moment, then wavered, then returned to meet his defiantly. “I don’t know. I have no idea what happened.”

“She was gone long enough to have committed the murder?”

Moana said scornfully, “How long does it take a person to stick a knife in another person, Mr. Selby?”

Selby acknowledged the point with a smile. “That’s not a definite answer to my question, however.”

She said, “I’d prefer not to answer the question just as you asked it. She was gone at least three minutes. It seemed longer.”

Selby glanced inquiringly at Horace Lennox.

Horace said, “That’s all of her story, gentlemen.”

“Carr didn’t know that you were coming here?” Selby asked.

She shook her head. “No one knows. Horace sweated it out of me. He knew that Dorothy wasn’t the one who had driven the car that night and so he... well, he went to work on me.”

She glanced at her brother and suddenly there was bitter anger in her eyes. She said jealously, “He’s so completely wrapped up in that Dorothy person that he doesn’t care what happens to his own sister!”

“It isn’t that, Moana,” Horace interposed quickly. “I love you, and I love Dorothy. I knew Dorothy was innocent. Good Lord, you wouldn’t let her become involved in a murder simply to save you from the consequences of gossip, would you?”

She said, “A really smart lawyer would fix it so I didn’t have to sacrifice myself.”

“Perhaps your friend Mr. Carr would,” Horace said sarcastically.

She looked at him appraisingly as though seeing him only as an attorney and not as a relative.

“I think perhaps he would,” she said. “In fact, I know he would. But you dragged the story out of me and then took me up here, and now — now, I’m licked.”

Brandon glanced at Selby.

Selby said, “Don’t tell your story to anyone for a while, Moana. Just go home and keep your own counsel. The sheriff and I will talk things over and see what can be done. And thanks a lot, Horace, for your co-operation.”

“Yes,” Moana said, as she arose from the chair she had been occupying, and started for the door. “Thank you very much, Horace, for your co-operation and desire to save your pretty little fiancée — at no matter what cost to your sister!”