Cool & Lam 15 - Beware the Curves

to-”
    “Arrangements have already been made,” Bertha interrupted with firm finality. “You don’t need to go into that, Mr. Quinn. You can count on our co-operation and assistance.”
    Quinn thought that over, looked into Bertha Cool’s cold, pale eyes, pursed his lips, played with a pencil for a minute, then said to Mrs. Endicott, “I’m going to want a retainer.”
    “How much?” she asked.
    “This isn’t going to be a cheap case.”
    “I didn’t ask you to make it a cheap case.”
    “Twenty thousand dollars,” he said.
    She opened her purse and took out a checkbook . “The man who was responsible for all this,” she said, “is Cooper Hale.”
    Quinn held up his hand. “Don’t mention any names. All that you know is that John Ansel is innocent. You leave the rest to me.”
    “Very well,” she said.
    Quinn looked at me. “And I’ll depend on you folks to get the facts.”
    Whenever a client was making out a check Bertha considered the moment sacred. The slightest sound, the intrusion of a comment might be an interruption.
    Bertha sat there, holding her breath, while Mrs. Endicott’s pen moved over the tinted oblong of paper. When the check had been signed, Bertha let out the breath she had been holding during the operation. She watched the passage of the check from Mrs. Endicott’s hand to Barney Quinn’s hand. Then she inhaled a deep breath.
    “When do we eat?” she asked.

CHAPTER 10 …

    The moring newspapers had headlines: “MURDER SUSPECT ENTERS POLICE TRAP.”
    There was quite a story. The six-year-old murder mystery of Karl Carver Endicott, a multimillionaire, who had extensive oil interests throughout the country as well as a substantial acreage in citrus lands, and had been mysteriously slain in his home, was on the point of being solved, according to police.
    Police had long had a good description of the killer. A man who at that time was driving a taxicab, but who had since become prosperous through real estate and other investments, had furnished a most detailed description of the last man who had seen Endicott alive.
    Police had long acted on the theory that the killer, whoever he might have been, had been actuated by romantic motives. They also knew that the fatal weakness of their case was that Drude Nickerson, the former taxi driver, was the only person who could furnish eyewitness identification.
    Therefore, as a last desperate resort, police baited a trap with the co-operation of the press.
    When an unidentified hitchhiker had been killed near Susanville, police had arranged for Drude Nickerson to keep out of circulation for a few days. They had made a tentative identification of the body of the traffic victim as that of Drude Nickerson and, thanks to co-operation on the part of the press, had lulled the suspect into a false sense of security.
    Having kept under cover for years, John Dittmar Ansel , who was himself supposed to have perished in the Amazon years before, had come into the open. Almost within a matter of hours of the announcement that police were closing their files in the Endicott murder case because of the death of the only witness who could make an identification, John Dittmar Ansel and Elizabeth Endicott, the wealthy widow of Karl Carver Endicott, had appeared in Yuma, Arizona, had taken out a marriage license and were on the point of becoming man and wife when police, who had been waiting in the wings, so to speak, had swooped down upon the pair, whisking Ansel off to jail.
    No charges had as yet been made against Elizabeth Endicott, but the district attorney of Orange County announced that he wanted to question her as a material witness and intended to do so. His questioning, he indicated, would seek to determine whether Mrs. Endicott had known that Ansel was alive and where he had been concealing himself during the past six years, the number of times Mrs. Endicott had seen Ansel , what steps if any she had taken to assist in his concealment, and whether she knew anything concerning the murder of her husband which had not previously been disclosed to authorities.
    The newspapers pointed out that it was to be remembered Mrs. Endicott had left the house shortly before the murder. The time of the murder had been accurately fixed and Mrs. Endicott had an alibi of sorts in that apparently she had been purchasing gasoline for her automobile at a point some two miles from the house at the exact time the murder had been committed.
    The district attorney