Kept Women Can’t Quit

I grabbed a pad of paper and wrote, “The room is bugged. Follow my lead.”

I shoved that in under her eyes and she laughed throatily and said, “Well, Donald, after all, you’ve been doing a lot of very difficult work for me and I thought it would be a good thing if we sort of brought each other up to date.”

“Well, let’s sit down,” I said, “and I’ll see if I can get a drink... oh, dammit! I can’t get a drink. They won’t serve me anything alcoholic.”

“Why? Do they think you’re a minor?”

I said, “I’m being more or less held in protective custody.”

“What happened, Donald?” she asked.

“Well, let me think,” I said. “I’ll have to kind of figure things out. Sit down over there. I’ve got to powder my nose. I’ll be right with you.”

She sat on the davenport. I put my finger to my lips and sat down beside her. I took the pad and wrote: “Follow my lead. Tell me all the wild-eyed stories you want, but don’t tell me anything you don’t want the police to know. They probably have about three separate bugs in this room. I’m going to tell you facts, but be careful what you say in reply. Don’t ask me specific questions because I may not be in a position to answer.”

After she had read the note I tore it up, tiptoed over to the bathroom door, flushed the note down the toilet, rattled the knob of the door, came back and said, “Well, it sure is nice to see you. I was looking forward to a lonely evening — that is, I anticipated a lonely evening. I wasn’t looking forward to it with any enthusiasm.”

“Can you tell me what happened, Donald?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m not going to tell you all of it because I have some things I want to keep in the background, but here’s generally what happened: I came up here looking around to try and find your lost love for you, and, of course, by the time I really got into the game he had been murdered and I was scrambling around trying to find out something about the murder.

“Now, I’m not particularly interested in the murder because I know you’re interested in the fifty thousand. Tell me, Hazel, were you fond of him?”

“Sure I was fond of him,” she said. And then added, “I’ve been fond of lots of people. When a person has fifty grand it is easier to be fond of him.”

“You’re sure he had it?”

“Oh, yes. He was loaded with money.”

“But you’re sure he had fifty grand?”

“Well, he had quite a slug of money, Donald. He promised me sixty thousand.”

“He promised you?”

“Yes, he was going to give it to me as sort of a nest egg.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, you know what happened. He began to start talking about doing this and doing that and doing the other, and getting more and more vague about what he was going to do with me. Well, it wasn’t very long before I found out about that Evelyn Ellis. You know, a woman has ways of finding out those things. I guess there’s something intuitive in our makeup.”

“And then?” I asked.

“Well, Donald, if you want me to tell you the whole truth, I made a big mistake. I didn’t play my cards right. In place of just getting in and beating that other woman’s time, I made a fool of myself.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, I accused him of cheating on me and made a scene and all the things that it comes easy for a woman to do under circumstances like that, but which actually are the last things in the world she should do.”

“Then what?”

“Well, then I knew he was getting ready to skip out. I thought he’d leave me fairly well provided for, but the beast just walked out without leaving me anything. That’s why I got you to try and find him. If you could have found him I’d have got money out of him.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. I told you he’d talked sixty grand to make it look big, but that’s only a figure. I probably would have got fifteen or twenty thousand. You see, I was using you and your partner in sort of a come-on. I’m afraid I’m not very honest, Donald.”

“How would you have gone about making him come through?”

“I know too much about him.”

I closed one eye in a wink and said, “Now listen, Hazel, I want to get this straight. Is there any chance that he was mixed up in that robbery of the armored truck?”

“I don’t think so, Donald. I don’t think there’s a whisper of a chance.”

“Tell me the truth. Did you know Baxley?”

“He called up once or twice. I don’t know how he got my number.”

“You had never had any dates with him?”

“Heavens, no.”

“You told me you said yes to Standley in front of an altar. Was that true?”

“No.”

“You never married him?”

“I said yes to him, but it was in an automobile, not in front of an altar.”

I wrote on the pad: “Keep talking. Never mind what you say. Keep talking.”

She looked at me speculatively and went on, “I suppose you think I’m something of a tramp and I guess perhaps I am. I don’t suppose you have any idea what it means to a girl to realize that she s forfeited her right to the one thing a woman really needs, and that’s security.