The Eleventh Hour

by Robert Bruce Sinclair

  “I don’t know. Here, I guess.”

  “You can’t stay cooped up here all the time — you’ll go stir-crazy. Come on out and have supper with me. It’s Friday — say, I’ll take you to a place where you’ll get the best pot roast you ever sunk a tooth in. Reasonable, too. Only have it Fridays. Come on. Unless” — he looked from one to the other — “you two have other plans.”

  Conway preferred to take Bauer in small doses, and he had already had enough for one day. But there was no telling what the sergeant might think if he refused.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said. “How about you, Betty?”

  “Fine. I’ll go up and change.”

  “Care for a beer while we’re waiting?” Conway asked as Betty went into the house.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” The detective headed for the kitchen with no further urging.

  “What’s been happening? Anything new?”

  “Nah.” Bauer reached into the icebox, removed a bottle of beer, and unerringly opened the drawer in which the opener was kept. A memory like an elephant, Conway reflected. Not to mention a skin. “I been using up energy and gasoline and getting nowhere.”

  “How about Taylor? Have you found him?”

  “We’ve found sixteen Harry Taylors in the phone book, but none of ’em is the Harry Taylor who knew you. Like I told you, I don’t think it makes any difference if we find him or not — it only makes me mad that we ain’t been able to.”

  The sergeant had found one of the good glasses and was pouring his beer as Conway finished making his own drink. “How did you make out with the girl? You must have done all right.”

  “What girl?”

  “What was her name — Elsie Daniels? The one who first reported the car. Remember, you told me you had to see her, and fix Ramsden’s saying the police had found the car? I notice she hasn’t said anything to the papers.”

  “Oh, her.” The sergeant’s voice expressed his scorn for Miss Daniels and his own achievement. “She’s so dumb I don’t think she can read. All she saw in the papers was the pictures of her and this crumb she’s so nuts about. I talked to the two of ’em together. So help me, if Greta ever behaved like that in front of anybody, I’d walk out on her. Disgusting.”

  “What do you mean? From the pictures she looked like a nice, simple, attractive girl.”

  “Simple is right. And what can you tell from them newspaper pictures? Look at the ones of me.” The recollection depressed Bauer to such an extent that he finished his beer and took another bottle from the icebox.

  “At any rate, you kept her from spoiling Ramsden’s story to the papers.”

  “Yeah, but I thought I might be able to get a little more information if I saw ’em both together. It’s a good thing I talked to ’em separately first, or I’d never of got anything. All they could do was hold hands and paw each other and giggle. Like when I said, ‘It was a few minutes after ten when you saw the car park, right?’ she says, ‘Oh, it don’t seem like it could of been as late as that, does it, hon?’ and she giggles, and he giggles, and she nuzzles herself into his neck, and I wished I could slap a pair of bracelets on ’em with a ten-foot pole in between.”

  “So you got nothing new out of them?”

  “Nah. It’s lucky a political speech happened to come on the radio. Otherwise they wouldn’t of known if it was ten o’clock or Tuesday.”

  Conway thought of the importance he had placed on having witnesses to the time the car was parked, and realized how dangerously close he had come to having nothing of the sort. He had, of course, made sure there were witnesses when he parked. He had not expected the time to be established as accurately as it had been, but, if the detective was right, his fate had rested in the laps of two lovesick morons. He gave a silent vote of thanks to Senator Taft.

  “I’d better get cleaned up myself,” he said. “Be with you in a minute.” The sergeant was moving toward the refrigerator. “Have another beer,” Conway said as he went through the door.

  Chapter nine

  Bauer drove into the parking lot behind a National drugstore on Beverly Boulevard. They got out of the car, and Bauer led the way into the store. Conway expected him to head for the cigar counter or the telephones, but the detective led the way to an unoccupied booth, motioned Conway and Betty to be seated, and handed them menus. Becoming aware of Conway’s expression, he laughed.

  “Surprised, eh? Bet you didn’t even know about the food here. Well, you’re in for a real surprise when you taste that pot roast. Of course, they got other things too, if you don’t like pot roast. But order pot roast for me.” He started sliding out of the seat. “Got to phone and check in.”

  Conway watched the detective disappear into a phone booth. He looked around at the chromium splendor and neon garishness; he heard the orders being called at the counter and smelled the unappetizing blend of food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The place was hot, crowded, noisy, and even more resplendent than its sister emporium in which Helen and he had had coffee before going to the movie; his one desire was to get out as quickly as possible. He motioned to a waitress who passed the booth several times, but she, in common with most of her kind, had more important things to do and stared straight through him. He thought of the steaks reposing in the refrigerator at home and asked himself why he had allowed himself to be inveigled into coming to this pavilion of indigestion. Then his annoyance gave way to concern as another idea struck him: Why had Bauer wanted to inveigle him into coming here? He glanced at Betty, but she was surveying the establishment as though it were a moderately interesting anthill.

  A waitress finally came to the table. “Pot roast for you, Betty?” Conway asked.

  “Chocolate milkshake,” she said. “No — on second thought, I’ll have a lemon phosphate. I don’t want to spoil my dinner.”

  Conway ordered for himself and Bauer, and he and Betty sat in the silence which had come to be habitual between them at meals. From where he sat he could see the detective in the phone booth; was it, he wondered, a routine checking in, or was it part of some devious scheme? He saw Bauer emerge from the booth, walk around the cosmetics counter, and speak to the waitress whose attention he had earlier tried to attract. He could see only a bit of her profile, but there was something vaguely familiar about her. As Bauer left her, Conway picked up the menu and studied it; he was pleased to discover that the machinations of the detective no longer upset or disturbed him. He had only to be patient for a little while: he knew that Bauer would tip his hand very quickly. He had no doubt as to his ability to cope with the mental gyrations of the sergeant. It was Betty he had to worry about.

  “Order yet?” Bauer asked as he slid into the booth.

  Conway’s eyes came up from the menu; he had apparently been unaware of the detective’s approach. He nodded. “Prices are certainly reasonable,” he said as he put the menu aside.

  The waitress brought two large plates, covered with food, which might have been titled “Study in Monochrome.” The meat was gray, the potatoes were gray, the vegetables were gray. Different shades of gray, to be sure, but still gray. Conway made a mental note to remember this dish if ever he began to gain weight: it could be counted on to overcome any temptation to overeat.

  “Wait’ll you try that,” Bauer said as he attacked the contents of his plate. Then he noticed the glass in front of Betty. “That all you’re having?” he demanded.

  She favored him with an oversweet smile. “Every once in a while I go on a diet,” she said. “Just whenever I get the idea — and feel strong enough to resist food. This is the first time I’ve had enough will power in quite a while.”

  Conway took a small bite of the meat; it was quite as bad as he had anticipated, and he looked at Bauer. The detective was struggling manfully.

  “Not quite as good as usual,” he said. “But just the same, it’s okay, isn’t it? I mean, for the price?”

  “The prices are certainly reasonable,” was the best Conway could manage. He won
dered how much of this fodder he would have to choke down in order not to offend the detective.

  “That’s the only thing Greta and me ever fight about,” Bauer said.

  “What is?” Conway asked. He welcomed conversation; it might take his mind off the food.

  “Money. That is, wasting it — extravagance.”

  “That’s not uncommon,” Conway said.

  A forkful of pot roast paused on its way to Bauer’s mouth, and he looked at Conway. “I guess not,” he said. “I guess even married couples fight about one thing another every once in a while. Did you and your wife have many — er — disagreements about money — or anything?”

  “No-o,” Conway said. Why should Bauer bring this up now, he wondered. And in Betty’s presence. Had she been telling the detective of Helen’s real character? He was on record with the police that their married life had been a happy one. He had to stick to his story; and no matter how well Betty had known Helen five years ago, she could not contradict his version of their marital relationship. “No,” he said, “less than most people, I think. We had very few in the four years we were married.” Betty looked at him but said nothing.

  “Not about money?”

  “No,” Conway said, and then it dawned on him. The waitress Bauer had spoken to passed close to the table, and Conway happened to glance up so that he saw her face from a low angle, and in that instant he remembered her. It was the woman who had served Helen and himself in that other National drugstore. It was so absurdly clear now that it was difficult not to laugh aloud. But — how much had she heard that night? What had she said to arouse Bauer’s suspicion? “We only quarreled about silly little things. Even quarrel is too strong a word—”

  “What kind of silly little things? I’m just asking,” the detective explained, “because I might get married one of these days, and if I do I don’t want any trouble. Maybe you can give me a few tips.”

  “Well, let me think.” Bauer could easily have confronted him with the waitress, and had her identify him, but that, Conway could only assume, would have been too easy. The sergeant must have gone to considerable trouble to have her transferred to this store for this one night so that she would be less readily recognizable; he would be hurt to learn that his elaborate stratagem had been so quickly seen through. “Things like — well, I hate to tell you this, because I don’t like to think about it. But we had a misunderstanding the day she — the last day she was here.” Conway, ever conscious of Betty, knew that he had to guard against overdoing it.

  “What was that?” Bauer asked, his dinner now entirely forgotten.

  The temptation to tease the sergeant along was too great. “She’d withdrawn the money from the bank the day before, as you know, and we were going to open a new account after we’d had lunch. Well, there was a misunderstanding — I thought she’d brought the money with her, and she thought I had. So we had a little tiff about it — nothing serious, and we made it up right away, but now I’d give anything if I hadn’t lost my temper even that little bit. That’s why I’ve still got the money in the house — it was too late, then, to go home, pick it up, and get back to the bank.”

  Bauer said “U-um,” and Betty was again looking around the store, seemingly paying no attention to them.

  “Well, that’s the kind of thing I mean. We were both a little quick-tempered, and we’d have occasional flare-ups, but they never lasted more than a few minutes.”

  “Well, if that’s all—” Bauer said, sounding more disappointed than reassuring. “And anyway you made it up, you say.”

  The sergeant was being unusually subtle, and Conway hurriedly decided to take no chances on being left out on a limb without having concluded his recital.

  “Yes, we did. But that wasn’t all — we had another spat that night.” He caught a gleam in the detective’s eye. “Oh, we made that up, too. But it makes you feel pretty rotten to realize that on the last day we were ever going to have together—” Conway was tempted to let his voice break the least bit, but decided it was inadvisable in Betty’s presence.

  “You don’t have to feel so bad about it,” Bauer said. “Come on, get it off your chest. You’ll feel better.”

  “It was even sillier than the other. When we left the house to go to dinner, I asked her if she had some money — I only had a few bucks in my pocket. I guess she thought I asked if she had the money. Anyway, when we found we were early for the picture we went across the street for a cup of coffee. I only had a few cents, so I asked her to let me have a dollar, and she opened her purse and I saw the whole roll of money. Well, I thought it wasn’t very bright to carry that amount of money around at night, and I said so. So she got mad and asked what did I expect her to do, and I said I didn’t expect her to walk around with a red flag — she was wearing that red scarf — asking to be hit over the head. Then she said, ‘Here, you take it if you think I’m apt to get hit over the head,’ but I didn’t want her flashing it around in the drugstore, so we waited until we got into the theatre, and she gave it to me there.” Conway’s voice became almost a whisper. “Then we held hands all through the picture.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Bauer demanded. “Don’t you see what happened? Some guy saw her with that dough, thought she still had it after the movie, and knocked her off for it.”

  Conway realized he had been stupid not to mention it; he had been so wrapped up in his original plan that he had failed to take advantage of an accident which would have served to divert suspicion even further from himself. But it was too late now to be of use; since he had not spoken of it before, it was necessary to minimize its importance.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said, “it was so trivial I’d forgotten about it. And I’m sure nobody saw it — she only took the dollar out of her bag, and I happened to see the rest of the money in the wallet.”

  “Can’t be sure,” Bauer said.

  “I suppose it’s possible that someone might have walked past the booth at just the right second, looked down and happened to see the wallet in her purse,” Conway went on. “But it never even occurred to me until now.”

  “Um-m,” said the detective. “Well, it don’t get us anyplace much, just saying that somebody might of seen the dough. Still—” He tried another mouthful of food and worked at it for some time before he looked again at Conway. “Say, this potroast is terrible tonight. I guess neither of us is very hungry, eh? What say we blow?”

  “Fine with me.”

  “You know, sometimes I don’t mind being on a diet a bit,” Betty said.

  When they reached the car, Bauer stopped suddenly. “I forgot to call and check in,” he said. “Wait here in the car. Won’t be a minute.”

  Conway was conscious of Betty’s sidelong glance as they sat in the car, but she said nothing. He knew, of course, that Bauer was talking to the waitress, checking the details of his story. He could think of nothing that would not dovetail; the waitress could have heard little of the preliminary conversation, he was sure.

  He lit a cigarette and pondered on Bauer’s technique. If this man is typical of the detective force, he reflected, it’s a wonder anyone’s in jail. When Bauer emerged from the rear entrance a few moments later, Conway realized that he was regarding him with genuine fondness.

  “Have to go back down to Headquarters,” Bauer said. “Never a minute’s peace.”

  “Something up?”

  “Yeah — I think they picked up another round-shouldered guy with a dark suit. I’ll drop you home.”

  Conway waited for the sergeant to bring up the subject of the waitress and his suspicions. But nothing was said, and Conway realized it was too much to expect the detective to acknowledge himself wrong a second time. I wish he’d stop getting these ideas, Conway thought; a few more bum deductions and he may start not liking me so much.

  They rode home in a silence so unusual that Conway knew Bauer must be feeling very dejected indeed. “Thanks for the dinner, Sergeant,” he said as they
stopped in front of the house.

  “And thanks for the chance to try out my will power,” Betty said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I’ll take you out some night when we all have better appetites,” Conway said.

  “That’ll be after I’m off this case,” Bauer said. “Be seeing you,” he mumbled as he drove off.

  “Maybe you’ll appreciate my cooking now,” Betty said as Conway unlocked the door. She headed straight for the icebox. “You didn’t eat enough of that wood-pulp to affect your appetite, did you?”

  “I could force myself to dally with one of those steaks if it were sufficiently rare,” he said. “What a smart girl you were.”

  “Not always.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “We’ll take that up later. Is it warm enough to eat in the patio?”

  “It’ll be perfect — I’ll set up a card table. But first, I’ll manufacture a Martini or two — I think we’re entitled to it.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “I guess you are.”

  Chapter ten

  The dinner was an unqualified success. They ate by candlelight in the little patio, screened from the wind and the prying eyes of any neighbors. Betty was gay and talkative, and because she kept the conversation away from the murder, or any mention of Helen, Conway was able to let down his guard and enjoy himself. It was, he realized, the first human companionship he had taken pleasure from in many months. She had read almost everything he had written, and she discussed the stories with relish and intelligence. Only once did they skirt dangerous ground, when she ventured the opinion that his more recent stories had lacked the vigor and brightness of his earlier work. She sensed his tightening, and quickly turned the conversation into other channels.

  “I’m going to clear the table, stack the dishes, and do them in the morning,” she said when they finished. “You can help clear, if you like. Then we can sit down and have coffee.”