“He thinks you spirited a witness away, and he doesn’t like the way everybody pulled out of town last night without saying anything to him. He also thinks he should have questioned Corla Burke. He thinks the murder gave you some kind of a lead on her. You’ve got to square the whole thing. It’ll take a good story.”
“I know it will,” I said.
We went to the hotel. I told Bertha a button was loose on my shirt, and asked her for a needle and thread. She became unexpectedly maternal, and offered to sew it on for me, but I stalled her along.
As soon as her door closed, I beat it for the elevator. It wasn’t much of a walk around to the place where Helen Framley had lived. I stood at the foot of the stairs long enough to make sure no one was around, jabbed the needle into my thumb and squeezed out blood. I tiptoed up the stairs — and tiptoed down.
Bertha Cool was talking on the telephone as I came in. I heard her say, “You’re certain of that?… Well, pickle me for a herring… You’ve investigated at the airport?… That’s right. We’ll leave here on the afternoon plane. I’ll see you in Los Angeles this evening… That’s fine. Give them my congratulations. Good-by.”
She hung up and said, “That’s funny.”
“You mean that Endicott didn’t show up?” I asked.
Her little eyes glittered hard at me. “Donald, you do say the damnedest things.”
“Why?”
“How did you know he didn’t show up?”