Read Online Date for Murder by Louis Trimble - Free Book Online Page A

him.
    “Thanks,” he said. “Miss Manders was smart enough to lock Link’s door, Chief, after she realized it was murder.”
    “Messed everything up, huh?” The Chief showed his distrust for women.
    “I think not,” Mark said. He explained how she had kept from disturbing prints on the doorknob. They started upstairs, Idell and Bayless behind them.
    Leona remained in the breakfast room, apparently occupied with her own thoughts.
    “Who is that dame?” the Chief asked, glancing back. “And who all was at this party last night? The way these rich people carry on don’t make sense half the time.”
    “Leona Taylor,” Mark said in answer to the first question. “New York showgirl, I think. A friend of Link’s and of Grant Manders. I don’t know much about her. The party was made up of the people here—you’ll meet them soon enough—and Myra Cartwright.”
    “Myra, huh?” the Chief said, sounding wise. “She go home?”
    “I took her home.”
    “Yeah? What time?”
    Mark grinned at the Chief’s tone. “About four. I got back to the station before four-thirty.”
    “I’ll ask Babe,” the chief said, but his tone told Mark he didn’t mean it. “What were you doing up here, huh?”
    Mark wondered just how much he should tell the Chief about the shooting. He decided it would all come out sooner or later and it was best to hide nothing.
    “Idell Manders pulled into my station about one this morning, for gas,” he said. “She bought two gallons. A car came off the Palm Springs highway as she drove past it and shot at her. They turned and started chasing her, so I got in the jalopy and followed.” He said it slowly, using the slow drawl he had cultivated. “I found her hiking back about a half mile this side of Coachella. She can tell you the rest of it.”
    “Shot at her, huh!” The Chief didn’t sound overly surprised. “I tell you these rich folks are nuts,” he added, lowering his voice on the off chance Idell quite a ways below might hear him. “Hit anything?”
    “Got the top of the car once,” Mark said. “She set the throttle and jumped out. Skinned herself up, but not badly.”
    “You see the guy chasing her?”
    “Not very well. It was a black convertible sedan. The plates were dusted over. It was a foreign-sounding exhaust, deep and powerful.”
    “What happened to her car?” the Chief wanted to know.
    “It wasn’t her car,” Mark said with heavy emphasis. “It was Link’s.”
    The Chief stopped in the middle of the hallway and said, “Huh?” He sounded surprised. He took a stubby cigar out of his mouth and bit off the end. He put the cigar back in his pocket and began to chew with a steady, cow-like rhythm. “Mistook her for him, huh?”
    “I hope so,” Mark said so fervently that the Chief glanced at him.
    The Chief waited until Idell reached the landing.
    He pointed to a phone on a stand by the head of the stairs. “This hooked up?”
    “Go ahead,” she nodded.
    He called his office and gave sharp orders to the man there to go out and haul in the convertible. Idell gave him its description; she didn’t know the license number, only that it was New York registered. When the Chief had finished, he came back to where Mark stood idly puffing his pipe.
    “Which room is which here, huh?” the Chief demanded.
    Idell pointed west along the broad hall. “On this side,” she said, indicating the side where the stairs opened into the hall, “the far end room is empty; Clinton Jeffers used that bath. It opens into the hallway as well as the room. Next to that is Chunk Farman, and next to him his cousin, Maybelle. That door next to the stairs is a linen closet. Then on this side of the stairway is Link’s room. Next to it is an empty, and then Uncle Frank.”
    “All these others private baths?” the Chief asked.
    “Yes. The bath between Clint’s room, on the far end across the hall, and Leona’s, next to it, she uses altogether. Next to her is Grant’s room, and