“No, no,” Drake said. “This was two weeks before the murder. I had a tip the car sometimes stood out in front of the apartment house until the small hours of the morning. So I went up and checked through the traffic violations on the off-chance I might find something. I did.”
Mason said gleefully, “Hot dog! Wait until I slap him in the face with that and ask him how it happens that Inez Colton is paying the fines on his traffic citations. He claimed he didn’t know anything about her, had never seen her in his life.”
Mason pocketed the photostatic copy, and said, “Let’s eat, and then go call on Miss Colton, and see what she has to say. Della, you can take a shorthand notebook. Work as inconspicuously as possible, take down every word of the conversation.”
Della Street said, “Gosh, I’m too excited to eat.”
“Let’s us go to the Home Kitchen Café,” Mason said. “We can get a good square meal there.”
“Expense account?” Drake asked.
“Expense account,” Mason said.
At the Home Kitchen Café, they were waited on by the same waitress who had waited on Mason at lunch the day he had interviewed Serle. “Heard anything from Hazel?” the lawyer asked.
“Not a word,” she said. “No one’s heard anything.”
“Come on,” Drake said. “Let’s order.”