“You mean Amelia Jasper and Susie?”
“That’s right. My God, but you’re dumb! Can’t you even look behind you and see whether or not a couple of amateurs are trailing along behind?”
“Not when a girl’s undressing in a bedroom window,” I said.
Bertha sighed and shook her head. “That’s what comes of having a man for a partner. I should buy you polarized glasses.”
“You should for a fact,” I said. “They followed me, is that right?”
“No. They were watching the house.”
“I know, but after I showed up, they followed me.”
“That’s right. They’d been afraid of Lucille. They didn’t know just where she entered the picture. They thought she was a detective. They found out, of course, from reading the newspaper accounts of the shooting in the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT that you’d been there and had a woman with you. They read her description. They knew that Lucille had been hanging around the clubs and cocktail bars where they were working. They didn’t know just what she wanted. They were close enough so they could hear her bedroom conversation with you through the open window. She signed her own death warrant when she said she’d seen people moving around in the cabin where Minerva Carlton and Dover Fulton were killed after the three shots had been fired.”
Elsie Brand tapped on the door and said, “The adjuster from the insurance company is here. He wants to see Donald Lam.”
A beatific grin suffused Bertha Cool’s features.