“I’ll take it up, next board meeting.” I told her how I figured it. “Keep in mind that Lanerd knew it was Walch who busted into the Millett suite wearing Dow’s jacket. Tildy’d have told him; they’d have talked about Walch plenty before then; her reference to calling off the elopement because of ‘the way things stood’ showed that. Whether, before she left for the studio with Hacklin, she knew or guessed that Roffis had been killed and heaved in her closet, that’s beside the point. Point is, Lanerd knew Walch was after him. That’s why he had his gun at ready when I came in the suite.”
“He wouldn’t have wanted to shoot Walch, if he knew about the boy.”
“Maybe not. Hard to say. Walch having caused Tildy so much grief. But Lanerd didn’t want to get killed. He left Tildy’s suite about five minutes before you came across the hall from his rooms. Hacklin told him to hop over to the studio to chase Tildy. Instead, he went down to the lobby, phoned MacGregory. He learned she hadn’t returned, so he phoned Nikky, found Tildy was there. She must have convinced him it wasn’t wise to let Hacklin know where she was. So he rang Hacklin upstairs, reported she was on her way home to Lexington.”
“Where do the keys come in?”
“They’re coming. Right about then you were scooting out of 21MM across to Lanerd’s suite. In a minute I followed. We talked until Yaker showed up and I got that screwy call from the sizzle sister down in the Steeplechase.” Ruth had the normal curiosity of a nice girl about how Edie and her sex-tettes operated; I sketched it out, well’s I could.
“I can’t believe Dow would be interested in that sort of — cheapie.”
“Doubt if he was. But Yaker was. Lanerd wouldn’t have objected to having the head of a group which, among other things, was responsible for rating radio programs, under obligation to him. I hustled down to the cocktail bar, soon’s I left you. Walch was there. Edie had a key in her bag. One I suppose Walch had just handed her, in the belief he was passing over the key to Yaker’s room. He’d gotten that from Crew Cut earlier in the evening, on the pretext of sneaking the con girls up there, used the room to borrow stationery, wrote a note to Tildy, poured melted wax on his finger tips.”
She curled up on the divan. I dittoed beside her.
“When Walch saw that 21MM key on the floor where I’d sort of accidentally bounced it, he knew he’d made a bad error. That was the key he’d taken from Roffis. He’d meant to leave it in Lanerd’s fancy cream-colored jacket. He still had the 21CC key with him because he’d need it to get back in Lanerd’s rooms. It must have dawned on him that the key he’d actually stuck in the chocolate-checked coat was the one to Yaker’s room. It wouldn’t do to have anybody find that, start wondering how it got there.”
“The tangled web.”