I said, “You knew you couldn’t run those cuties into our hotel. Must’ve had a reason for wanting someone to think it might work, when it wouldn’t. Expect you meant to get the madam up in Lanerd’s suite just long enough to throw suspicion on her for the murder you were going to commit. She knew Gowriss’s friends down at the Blue Blazer. She hung around there all the time. It would have been easy for the D.A. to assume she’d been paid to put Lanerd out of circulation, since he’d been in the café at the time of the shooting, too. And might have seen Gowriss, himself. She was a good decoy. The more notice we took of her, the better.”
He came for me, lunging with the handcuffs.
I let Schneider take him.
Chapter thirty-five:
Keys and keys
The curvaceous statuette was on the ornamental table in the foyer of Ruth’s apartment when we went in. I stroked it gently.
“Nearly gave me amnesia, me proud beauty.”
Ruth fluffed her hair in front of the mirror. “What I can’t understand, why’d Keith Walch sneak in here yesterday? He couldn’t have known you were coming.”
“No.” I followed her into the kitchenette, helped with the ice cubes. “Matter of keys. Keys were the crux of it.”
“Probably make something of that if you worked at it. Crux — who stole keys.”