“Yes.”
“Lazaroff and Kendricks were working on a script until about two-thirty. They share an apartment. They have a cleaning woman, but she doesn’t sleep there, so there’s no one to back them up. But they alibi each other.”
“And Groom?”
“He was with a dame. He left her at half-past one and stopped in at the Mocambo for a couple drinks. He told me three or four people he spoke to, so he probably did.”
“He could have telephoned, too,” Simon observed.
Condor brooded silently, poking his toothpick about in his bicuspids.
“There’s one thing I’m puzzled about,” Simon said presently. “Ufferlitz must have known quite a few people outside. Why does it have to be someone from this unit?”
“It just seems a good place to start. The cook says he never had anybody home except people he was mixed up in business with, except sometimes a girl he was trying to promote. Besides, from what I hear nobody else was crazy about visiting him anyway. Then, when he came home to dinner yesterday evening, he said he wasn’t in to anyone unless it was from the studio.”
“What about the business he was in before this?”
“He cut himself off from all those mugs when he got to be a producer. We keep tabs on some of ’em, so I know that. But I don’t know any of ’em who’re sore with him.”