“So rather than get a New Orleans detective agency for a routine job, he pays us a fancy price, and traveling expenses, and a per diem from Los Angeles here.”
“You were already in Florida. He seemed to be pleased when I told him that. I told him you could be here a couple of days before we arrived.”
“All right, he was pleased. He hired us to come in and work on this case because he had confidence in us. And he knew where Roberta Fenn was all the time. ”
Bertha stared at me as though I’d done something utterly incomprehensible like tossing a brick through the plate-glass window in the drugstore behind us.
“It’s the truth!” I said.
“Donald, you’re absolutely crazy! Why should a man come all the way to Los Angeles and hire us at fifty dollars a day with an extra twenty for expenses, to find a woman in New Orleans whom he said was missing, but who wasn’t?”
“That,” I said, “is the reason I’m not getting in any taxicab and going to police headquarters. You may if you want to. There’s the cab, and knowing you as I do, I feel quite certain you have enough money to pay the fare.”
I started walking toward the hotel.
Bertha came striding along after me. “You don’t need to be so damned independent about it!”
“I’m not being independent. I’m simply keeping my nose clean.”