Kept Women Can’t Quit

Sellers did some rapid thinking, turned to the other two, said, “All right, play it smart if you want to. It isn’t going to buy you anything. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to. I searched Hazel Downer’s apartment awhile back. I’m going to search it again. This time it’s going to be a real search.

“As soon as reinforcements show up, Donald, Bertha and I are going to take a little walk. We’ll hold Hazel until we see what develops.”

“You’ve got nothing on her,” Ashby said. “I can get a writ.”

“Keep your nose clean and you may spring her without a writ and in half the time,” Sellers said. “Standley Downer wasn’t murdered until this morning. I can tell within a couple of hours whether San Francisco wants her held or not.”

“Where are we going?” Bertha asked Sellers.

“Down to your office,” Sellers said.

“Then what?”

“We’re going to look in Donald’s little camera package,” he said.

Bertha turned to me. “What the hell did you want a camera for, Donald?”

“To take pictures with,” I told her.

Sellers chuckled, “You come with me and I’ll show you what he wanted it for, Bertha.”

Knuckles pounded on the door.

Sellers opened it. Two men stood on the threshold.

Sellers grinned and said, “This is Ashby. He’s her attorney. This is Hazel Clune, alias Hazel Downer. Serve the search warrant on her and take this place to pieces, then go to her apartment and take it to pieces — I mean really take it to pieces.

“Come on, Donald. You and Bertha and I are going down to your office.”

Chapter 5

Frank Sellers stopped the squad car in front of the office building, parking in a red zone, and said, “Camera supplies, eh, wise guy? Thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you?”

Bertha barged out of the car, looking straight ahead, her jaw pushed out, eyes glittering, saying nothing to anybody.

We rode up in the elevator. Bertha stalked into the office and said to the receptionist, “Did you get that package wrapped to return to San Francisco?”

The girl nodded.

“Unwrap it,” Bertha said.

Dorris Fisher knew Bertha well enough not to argue. She opened a drawer, took out a pair of scissors and cut through the wrappings on the package which was addressed to the Happy Daze Camera Company in San Francisco.

Dorris Fisher got the wrappings off the box. Sellers looked down at the excelsior-padded contents, fished out the thirty-five millimeter camera, looked it over frowningly.

“What’s this?” he asked.

I said, “In our work we have to have photographs. This was a bargain and I bought it.”

Bertha glared at me in speechless anger.

Sellers seemed puzzled, then his fingers explored further down in the interior of the box. Suddenly his lips twisted in a grin. “Well, well, well,” he said, and pulled out the box of five by seven enlarging paper. “What do you know?”

Sellers turned the box over in his hand, reached in his pocket, pulled out a penknife.

“Now look,” I said, “that’s enlarging paper. It can only be opened in a darkroom where there’s absolutely no light. Otherwise you’ll ruin it. If you want, I’ll go in the closet where it’s absolutely dark and open it and—”

“How nice,” Sellers said. “We’re going to open it right here in broad daylight. If there’s anything in there that can’t stand the light of day, Pint Size, we’ll let you do the explaining.”

Sellers started to cut the seals, then stopped, looked at the box thoughtfully, grinned and put his knife away.

“Of course, Donald,” he said, “you couldn’t have taken the paper out and put fifty grand in the box without cutting the seals. You did it very cleverly and with a very sharp knife so it hardly shows. Now, Bertha, I’m going to show you something about your double-crossing partner here.”

Sellers pulled the lid off the box, disclosing the package wrapped in black paper on the inside.

“Don’t open that black paper, Sergeant,” I warned. “That’s enlarging paper and light will ruin every sheet of it.”

Sellers ripped the black paper off, threw it in the wastebasket, ripped off the inner wrapping of black paper and then stood goggle-eyed staring at the sheets of photographic enlarging paper.

I tried to hold my face without expression. It was a good thing Frank Sellers and Bertha were looking at the paper.

“Well?” Bertha said. “What the hell’s so funny about this?”

Sellers picked up one of the sheets of paper, looked at it, inspected the shiny glaze of the coated surface on one side, then turned the paper over to the uncoated side. He picked up three or four sheets and studied them separately.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

I walked over and sat down.

Sellers hesitated a moment, then dove back into the box, pulled out every bit of excelsior, dumped it on the floor, turned the box upside down, tapped on the sides as though looking for a false bottom or something.

He looked up at Bertha. “All right,” he said, “I should have known the little bastard would do something like that.”

“Like what?”

Sellers said, “This is a dummy package, Bertha. Don’t you get it? It’s a decoy.”

“What do you mean?”