The D.A. Breaks an Egg

And there, in midsentence, the report ended.

Selby, Brandon, and Hardwick bent over the typewriter studying the report.

“Well, that’s as far as she got,” Hardwick said. “Someone came and picked her up. Someone who was in one hell of a hurry. You note that she’d promised to complete this report and send it to Mosher at his hotel. She didn’t have time to do that. She didn’t even have time to finish the sentence. Whatever hustled her off to Madison City was something important and mighty urgent. And her client was calling for her. She didn’t call Mosher at the hotel, and he didn’t hear anything from her because she was dead. She must have been killed within a very short time after she arrived in Madison City.”

“Now,” Brandon said, “let’s start finding out how she got to Madison City. That may be important.”

“Her car’s down in the parking lot that’s reserved for tenants of the apartment house,” Hardwick said. “We’ve covered that. She didn’t go in her car.”

Selby said, “It would be interesting to find out just what she was working on. She was originally in Windrift on another job. Then Mosher hired her. That job took her to Madison City and while she was there she got in touch with someone who wanted her for a job of considerable importance.

“She evidently insisted that she return here to make a complete report to Mosher before she returned to Madison City. When she returned to Madison City she was to ride with her new client — not in her own car. Why?”

“Probably,” Hardwick said, “because she was to go on an undercover job where she’d be with someone as a friend or relative or something of that sort. The car’s registered in her name and would be a giveaway.”

“Let’s look around,” Selby said.

Sylvia Martin said eagerly, “We could see whether she had any clothes with her. Apparently she didn’t, Doug, and... there’s a purse over on that desk.”

Selby said to Hardwick, “One of the strange things about the case was that there was no purse found by the body of the murdered woman. That set us all off on a false lead.”

Hardwick opened the purse on the desk. “This looks like the one she must have been carrying. It has her driver’s license and all that in it. I tell you she was going on an undercover job and she didn’t want to have a thing on her that would disclose her identity.”

“Now, who the devil would hire a woman private detective in Madison City, Doug?” Rex Brandon asked. Selby shook his head.

“I don’t suppose she was foolish enough to leave books containing a list of her clients around the apartment,” Brandon said. “And yet she must have kept some books.”

“She was pretty cagey from all we could find out about her,” Hardwick said. “Played them very close to her chest. The most logical person whom you’d expect to hire a private detective is a lawyer. You got any lawyers out there who go in for private detectives?”

Selby gave the matter frowning consideration, then shook his head.

“You sure got one out there,” Hardwick said, grinning. “Doesn’t old A. B. Carr practice out in your bailiwick now?”

“More or less,” Brandon said stiffly.

“He’s supposed to have retired, or be trying to retire,” Hardwick went on. “That’s a laugh. That guy has a finger in a lot of things. He’s acquired enough influence around here so he very seldom shows up in court any more. He very seldom has to. The way he can fix things is a caution.”

Selby said, “His wife knew Daphne Arcola. Seems peculiar that there’d be so many coincidences involving him.”

“They’re not coincidences with him,” Hardwick pointed out. “It’s what you might call a law of cumulative recurrence. You start doing business with a bank, and first thing you know it’ll turn out that Carr got the banker’s son out of a scrape two years ago and the banker is very anxious to see that Carr is kept satisfied. You get mixed up in a real estate deal and you’ll find that Carr kept one of the brokers from losing his license a year ago last September, and when you get into court... well, I guess I’d better stop right here. Only don’t think that little things are a coincidence when you’re having dealings with that fellow. You cross his back trail every time you start walking. That’s not coincidence. It’s because he gets around.”

Brandon said, “I’d like to put him where he wouldn’t get around so much.”

“Who wouldn’t,” Hardwick retorted. “Didn’t you fellows pretty nearly have him nabbed awhile ago?”

“He married the prosecution witness, or the one whom we would have had to call as the prosecution witness,” Brandon said.

“Oh, that’s right,” Hardwick chuckled. “I remember now. I heard something about that. Well, what do you want to do here, fellows?”

“I’d give a lot to find out just who she’s been working for,” Selby said. “That other job she was on in Windrift, Montana, might mean something.”

“I may be able to help you on that one,” Hardwick said.