Nipped in the Bud

by Stuart Palmer

  Miss Withers came closer to Ina. “Just one thing more, child. You’ve been fairly helpful. But the phone call was at eight-thirty, and you and Dallas must have left Ensenada shortly thereafter. Allowing an hour or at most an hour and a half to drive the sixty miles, just where have you been since then? Why didn’t you come here to me?”

  “Dallas told me to, but I’m sick and tired of doing what she says! And I ran into Nikki down in the lobby, and we went out and had something to eat.”

  “All this time?”

  “We sat a long time over coffee!” Ina insisted. “Nikki made me drink a lot of black coffee, and then he walked me up and down the street for a while until I began to feel better. And then one thing led to another, and—well, it does take a little time to get m-m-married!”

  19

  “He who asks questions on Thursday dies on Friday.”

  THE BLUE CADILLAC HAD swung off the highway a few miles south of Chula Vista, in that brown and barren no man’s land between San Diego and the border. It moved aimlessly east and north and west again along the back roads, past deserted lemon groves and truck farms, coming at last into a raw, new subdivision of half-finished small-down-payment-for-G.I.-homes, boxlike houses all smelling of spilled plaster and paint and sawdust.

  The big car slid quietly into the gaping door of a garage, and its light flickered out. There were soft noises, furtive, shuffling sounds, the scratch of a match and then the quick crackling of flames, loud enough to drown out the monotonous sound of heavy drops falling one after the other from the front window of the car to splash on the raw, new concrete of the garage floor. Overhead a flight of Navy planes roared by.

  “Married!” repeated John Hardesty foolishly, and sat down suddenly in a chair.

  “Married, to Nikki?” said Miss Withers.

  “Yes!” bubbled the girl. “I know it was awfully sudden, but that’s the only way I could ever take the leap. It happened in Mr. Guzman’s office, with a ring Nikki bought from a sidewalk peddler. It really isn’t a proper wedding ring—” She displayed her finger, graced with a massive silver circlet carved to represent some grinning Aztec deity.

  “A wedding ring is a wedding ring,” admitted the schoolteacher. “But there’s a time and a place for everything.”

  “The time for a wedding ring is when a boy is in the mood,” Ina said firmly.

  “Speaking of that,” spoke up Oscar Piper. He went over to open the hall door and beckon to the bewildered and belligerent young man who was stalking up and down outside. “On second thought,” said the inspector dryly, “I guess you can come in after all.”

  “Darling!” said Nikki Braggioli, not to the inspector. He came into the room like an avalanche. “What have they been doing to you?”

  “It’s all right,” the girl reassured him quickly. “Nobody gave me any third degree or anything.” Her voice sounded more confident now, surrounded as she suddenly was by the strong right arm of her new husband. “You see,” she carefully went on to explain to the others, “Nikki and I just came back here to pick up his suitcases. Then we’re going back down to Ensenada and get my stuff, and head straight for New York in his car. I know I have to testify and get it all over with—” This last was for the benefit of John Hardesty, who still appeared to be in a state of shock.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But when the trial is over Nikki and I are going to come back to Hollywood, where he has a wonderful starring contract waiting at Metro!”

  “A career isn’t everything, though,” the bridegroom said lightly. “If you want to, dearest, I’ll settle for a little penthouse in New York, or a farm in Connecticut.”

  “Just a minute,” interrupted the schoolteacher. “Far be it from me to produce any wet blankets at a moment like this, but isn’t there supposed to be an immigration problem in the way?”

  “Oh, that!” Nikki grinned engagingly. “That’s all fixed. You see, I’ve had my quota number and entry permit all straightened out for a couple of weeks, only I found I had reasons for not wanting to hurry away from here, and Ina is all of them. I found out that I wasn’t in love with her part of the time, but weekends, too. It wouldn’t have been fair for me to marry Miss Mary May Dee when I was in love with somebody else, would it?”

  “Of course not!” The girl suddenly stood on tiptoe and kissed him, very warmly indeed. “Wow, what a charge!” she breathed dreamily as they broke apart. “That beats liquor all hollow.”

  “Okay, fun’s fun, but …” began the inspector, with amused impatience.

  But Miss Withers spoke up hopefully. “I have an idea! Why don’t our two lovebirds kiss some more? Perhaps love can further intoxicate Ina to the point where she’ll recall the one essential clue we all want her to remember—something to do with Byron’s poetry, wasn’t it?”

  The girl looked perfectly willing, but Nikki Braggioli stiffened, the English side of his ancestry coming to the fore. “I say!” he said. “It’s a bit public.”

  John Hardesty cleared his throat, and for a moment the schoolteacher imagined that he was considering offering himself as a substitute. But he only ran his hands through his hair, in a baffled and unhappy manner.

  “That’s enough of fooling around,” the inspector decided. “You two can …”

  “But, Oscar!” cried Miss Withers. “Shouldn’t they stick around? After all, Ina is our only link with Dallas Trempleau, and any minute she may remember the missing clue. I only wish I could help her by remembering more Byron. There’s ‘Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.’ Or ‘The Devil hath not, in all his quiver’s choice, an arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.’ Or ‘Childe Harold to the dark tower came….’ Don’t any of those strike a chord, young lady?”

  Ina slowly shook her head.

  “As I was about to say,” continued the inspector coldly, “you two can run along. But I suggest you stick around next door. One place is as good as another for a honeymoon, and we’d rather you didn’t try to leave town at the moment.”

  “I don’t see what authority …” Nikki Braggioli began.

  But Ina touched his arm and shook her head. “We’ll be right next door,” she said. “Until the inspector and Mr. Hardesty say it’s all right for us to go.” She turned toward Miss Withers. “And if I should happen to remember anything …”

  The inspector finally shooed them out of the room, and then glared at Miss Withers. “Hildegarde, sometimes you surprise me. Where’s your sense of—of romance?”

  “Where’s Dallas Trempleau?” countered the schoolteacher.

  “Well, you certainly won’t find her by quoting corny poetry!”

  John Hardesty said softly, almost to himself, “‘Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare …’ That’s from Childe Harold, too,” he added.

  Miss Withers shot him a sympathetic glance, and then faced Oscar Piper. “Well, Oscar, perhaps this is the time and the place for unorthodox methods. Are you getting anywhere with all your official channels and your radio broadcasts and dragnets and alerted police? The minutes are ticking away, the clock is running out …”

  Then the phone rang. The schoolteacher seized it eagerly, and then after a moment held out the instrument to the inspector. “Yes, speaking,” he said. “Yes. Yes.” Then he listened for several minutes, said “Thanks,” and hung up. He turned to the two who waited, grinning.

  “They’ve got her,” Hardesty said.

  “No,” Piper admitted. “But for your information, that was the agent in charge at the U.S. port of entry, reporting to me directly at the request of the San Ysidro police. Dallas Trempleau crossed the border sometime around ten-thirty this evening, alone and in a hell of a hurry.”

  “No, Oscar!” cried Miss Withers.

  “Yes, Oscar!” he came back. “At least a girl driving a big blue Cadillac, wearing a scarf around her head and a fur jacket and having—the examiner happened to notice—exceptionally nice legs, came through
with the first wave of the crowd from the races and the jai-alai games. She said she was born in New York, which matched the license plates on her car, and that she had nothing to declare, and when she got her okay she drove off up Highway 101 as if all the devils in hell were after her.”

  “I thought so,” said John Hardesty, brightening.

  “So Dallas is on the other side of the international border,” the schoolteacher said slowly. “Gone to keep an appointment, and I’m afraid very much I know what sort of appointment it was. Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Both men stared at her blankly.

  “Obviously,” said Miss Withers, “if Dallas went to meet somebody, then somebody went to meet her! Why wait until tomorrow to check alibis, or to see just who is dead or maimed or missing? There are only a few suspects. Why not check on them now, before anyone has a chance to confuse the trail?”

  There were times when the inspector was surprising, and this was one of them. “Okay,” he said. “Hildegarde, if I had my hat on, I’d take it off to you. Let’s go.”

  But she shook her head. “I’m getting a bit old and creaky for that sort of rushing around. And, besides, somebody ought to stay here.” She motioned toward the adjoining suite.

  “You mean somebody has to keep an eye on the newlyweds?” Hardesty asked.

  She nodded. “It would only pile confusion upon confusion if they got panicky and started to dash off somewhere right in the midst of things. Besides, there is always the possibility that little Ina will have a brainstorm, and let her subconscious loose. I want to be around when and if that happens.”

  Oscar Piper gave her an odd look. “I think you may be up to something,” he said slowly. “Because you know darn well that if those kids tried to go anywhere, we could have them dragged back in a few hours, especially since they’d be driving in that circus wagon of his. And I somehow don’t think that you put any more stock in that poetry stuff than I do.”

  “No, Oscar? You’re wrong.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded. “But I still think that you have an idea that Dallas has put her head in a noose because of something she found out from Ina, and that therefore Ina is in danger too.”

  “In great danger,” admitted the schoolteacher. “Whether she knows it or not.”

  “But …” he protested.

  “Stop butting. You two men go ahead; I’ll hold the fort. Round everybody up, and we’ll have a showdown. I hope.” Miss Withers added the last two words in a whisper. After they were gone, the schoolteacher pulled an easy chair over to the hall door, opened it a scant inch and, with all her lights turned out, settled down to wait. She knew or thought she knew what the eventual outcome must be, but not how or why or when.

  She got up once to make an unsuccessful telephone call, and a little later to receive one from Vito, of all people. “Thank you for the information,” she said. “But, young man, at this hour you should be at home and in bed!”

  “Is not much home since my father die,” the boy explained. “Sometimes this guide business is very good late at night, only I would rather work with you on being a detective. Besides, I have to wait for the bed until my cousin gets up early and goes to work. You have something for me to do, no?”

  “I have something for you to do, yes.” And she told him.

  Then the schoolteacher settled down in the easy chair again, her mind going around and around in circles, tying up loose ends, untying them again, and sometimes cutting the Gordian knot and starting over.

  Eventually she must have drifted off to sleep, in spite of her good intentions. For minutes or hours later she jerked awake to see John Hardesty standing in the doorway staring at her, his finger on the light switch. The assistant D.A. looked more harried than ever, and his hair was tangled as a haystack. “You all right?” he wanted to know. “I saw your door ajar …”

  “Hush!” said Miss Withers, still trying to cling to the disappearing skirts of her dream. “I want to remember something. It was a very odd dream. There were pretty girls dancing to horrible, off-key music, and singing something about ‘Things are not what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream …’”

  “More poetry,” Hardesty said coldly. “And that isn’t even Byron, it’s Gilbert and Sullivan.”

  “I know, I know.” The schoolteacher was suddenly worried. “Where’s Oscar?”

  “He stopped off to make a phone call—to see if there’s anything new over San Diego way. Be here in a minute.”

  Miss Withers relaxed. “Well, speak up. You obviously have something on your mind.”

  “Yes, I have,” admitted the assistant D.A. very soberly. “This whole thing has gone to pieces.”

  “But it’s always been in pieces! We only have to put them together the right way, and …”

  “Listen,” he said. “With the help of the Mexican police, the inspector and I have located everybody …”

  “Not everybody!” Miss Withers gasped.

  “Everybody but Dallas Trempleau,” he corrected himself. “Ruth Fagan was in the bar and grill of her hotel on the Calle Coahuila. She was learning the samba from a sleek character with long sideburns, who, it seems, hangs around there for the purpose of entertaining lonely lady tourists. She claims to have been there all evening, but no corroboration except from the gigolo, who would swear that she’d been there since Christmas Eve if he saw the chance of a fast buck.”

  “Not the best alibi,” Miss Withers admitted. “Go on, please.”

  “Thallie Gordon was at Ciro’s, surrounded by a crowd of admiring sailors who had recognized her from her appearances on television, and who were almost fighting for the chance to dance with her and get her autograph and the promise of a pinup picture.”

  “Understandable. And Mr. Wingfield, how was he taking it?”

  Hardesty shrugged. “He had already taken it—on the lam. He wasn’t around. Thallie said they’d had a fight earlier in the evening and parted company. She said it was because he wanted to get married tonight and she didn’t, a fairly unlikely story. Particularly since according to the inspector she’d been trying to get him to make an honest woman out of her for months. As you may know, they have connecting rooms at the hotel over in San Diego, where his group is located.”

  “I didn’t know,” admitted Miss Withers. “But nothing surprises me any more. Still, I can see …” She stopped suddenly. “But you said you’d located everybody.”

  He nodded. “Wingfield we finally found at the Papillon Bar up the street, feeling no pain whatever and buying phony drinks made of vermouth cut with tea for a flock of the so-called hostesses. I imagine he was also promising them tryouts for television.”

  “Men,” said the schoolteacher. “By the way, you didn’t happen to run into my former prize pupil, Sascha Bordin, anywhere on your search of the town, did you?”

  “Bordin? We weren’t looking for him.”

  “I was,” Miss Withers admitted. “I phoned his room a while ago, and he was out. I wanted to ask him if, on his visit to Ensenada, he had spilled the beans to Dallas and Ina about Junior Gault being out here, or supposedly headed here. But I guess it doesn’t matter too much.”

  Hardesty rubbed both hands through his hair. “This whole case is going to hell in a handbasket. We’ve even located Junior Gault—he was picked up about an hour ago by the San Diego police, in the Greyhound bus station. Just arriving …”

  “Or possibly leaving?”

  “Possibly. Anyway, he’s being held.”

  “He’s being held? But aren’t they all?”

  The assistant D.A. looked more puzzled than ever. “No, why should they? None of them can be properly considered as suspects.”

  “Everyone,” said Miss Withers firmly, “can be considered as a suspect, at this stage.”

  But Hardesty wasn’t listening. He wrinkled his nose. “Excuse me,” he said apologetically. “But I keep thinking I smell something.”

  “Good heavens!” cried Miss Withers. “You do! It’s e
xhibit A—look in the wastebasket!”

  He looked, and stared down in wonderment at the smashed skull of a smallish mammal, and at a perfectly good bottle of milk, stained on the outside with blood.

  “I’m not out of my mind, or much out anyway,” the schoolteacher told him. “That is the skull of a goat. I smashed it with one deft whack, using the milk bottle.”

  John Hardesty drew away a little, as if he expected to defend himself.

  “The murder of Tony Fagan last December,” she went on, “was a woman’s crime. He was lying there unconscious, having been beaten into insensibility, and a woman came along and did him in—using the weapon nearest at hand, a full milk bottle, just left outside the door by the milkman. Fagan had an exceptionally thin skull, I understand….”

  Hardesty nodded slowly. “Felonious assault by Junior Gault, topped off with murder by—” He stopped, smiling wryly. “You remember my starting to tell you that I came out here with two warrants? The first was for Ina Kell, to make sure she’d come back and tell the truth. The second one was for Dallas Trempleau.”

  “Ah!” said Miss Withers.

  “I’ve been figuring,” he continued, “that today Dallas learned something, quite possibly from Ina when she had the poor kid practically non compos mentis from slugged champagne, which told her that to protect herself she had to commit still another murder. So she took off, dumped the Kell girl en route, and went to meet her next victim somewhere just north of the line.”

  “An ingenious idea,” the schoolteacher admitted. “Or do I mean ingenuous?”

  “Anyway,” he finished, “it’s no good. Because as far as we can find out, Dallas didn’t go across the border to meet anyone, or at least nobody went to meet her.”

  “You mean, all her potential victims are still safe and sound down here in Tijuana?”

  He nodded.

  “Of course, there is this to be considered—” Miss Withers broke off as there came a ring at the phone. “Oscar?” she cried. “Oh, Vito!” She listened a moment, said, “Thank you, young man,” and hung up. “Just my assistant,” she explained, “reporting with interesting but not immediately important information. I was hoping it was the inspector. You know, I’m getting a little worried about him.”