Beware the Curves

little knots down in Citrus Grove, and aren’t talking about anything else—just the murder and the automobile factory.”
    At three-thirty-five o’clock that afternoon the city council of Citrus Grove met in a special session and took steps to change the zoning ordinance so that the property belonging to Stella Karis was zoned for a manufacturing district.
    With the passing of the ordinance, the Citrus Grove Clarion assured its readers that the industrial expansion for which the farsighted officials had been quietly campaigning during the last few weeks was assured.
    Drude Nickerson remained “unavailable” for questioning.
    Stella Karis telephoned twice while I was out. She left a message with Elsie Brand. Elsie Brand took it down in her shorthand book and relayed it to me when I came in. It was to the effect that Miss Karis had said she would like to see me, that she “simply couldn’t express her gratitude in words.”
    I let it go at that.

CHAPTER 15 …

    A LARGE PART of the detective work in a murder trial consists of getting the backgrounds of the trial jurors. As soon as the case was set for trial, Bertha and I Went to work on the venire from which the twelve jurors who were to try the case would be selected.
    Bertha worked on the older men and the older women. I worked on the younger ones.
    It was of course unethical and would have been a contempt of court to have talked with these people about the case, to have shadowed them so that they knew they were being shadowed, or to have engaged in any other activities that might be deemed to influence them.
    However, there was no law against chatting casually with some of their friends or digging into the records and finding out where they had acted as jurors before, what kind of cases they were, and how they had voted.
    It was a long tedious job but in the end we had a pretty good collection of condensed biographies.
    Barney Quinn took these biographies and broke them down into short summaries. Then he took the short summaries and broke them down into an elaborate code. A short, straight mark at the top of a square opposite a prospective juror’s name meant he was honest and upright, but acceptable. If the mark leaned to the left, it meant he was so upright he’d lean over backwards. If the mark was down at the bottom of the square, it meant the man was obstinate, pigheaded and bigoted. If the mark was horizontal, it meant he would lie down when the going got tough.
    In between times I’d keep checking on the facts. The day before the trial Stella Karis gave me a ring. “You don’t ever come to see me, Donald.”
    “I’m busy day and night.”
    “You have to eat.”
    “I don’t eat. I gulp.”
    “I could watch you gulp. I have something to tell you.
    “About what?”
    “About the case you’re working on.”
    “What about it?”
    “Mr. Hale has been to see me.”
    “The deuce he has!“
    “Uh-huh, several times.”
    “What does he want?”
    She laughed seductively. “I’ll tell you, but not over the phone.”
    “Honestly, Stella, I haven’t the time right at the moment for—”
    “This concerns a witness in the case.”
    “I’ll see you.”
    “When?”
    “How about tonight?”
    “Dinner?”
    “Make it after dinner,” I said. “I have a dinner date. Is nine o’clock too late?”
    “No, come on in. I’ll be waiting.”
    I put in the day cleaning up the last of the jury list, getting things ready, and dropped in to see Stella about five minutes to nine.
    As she opened the door and bent toward me, the neckline of her dress disclosed curves, and as she turned to lead the way into her apartment, a tantalizing bit of leg showed from a generous split in the tight-fitting skirt.
    We had coffee. Then we had liqueurs. Then she said, “Donald, Mr. Hale wants to manage my properties.“
    “How nice!” I said.
    “You told me I should have some bank—”
    “Look here,” I said, “are you so absolutely crazy that you would turn your properties over to anything Hale Was managing?”
    “He’s organizing an investment company.”
    “How very, very nice—for Cooper Hale!”
    She said, “He’s very friendly. He hates you.”
    “I can bear up,” I told her.
    “He thinks that I hate you, too.”
    “He does?”
    “Uh-huh. I told him that you never came to see me any more. He wanted to pump me about you.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “And he told me something that he said no one knew anything about.”
    “What?”
    “A rancher by