I thanked him and went back to the motel. Alex's room next to mine was still empty. I checked with my own answering service in Hollywood. Arnie Walters had left his number for me and I called Reno.

Arnie was out of the office, but his wife and partner Phyllis took the call. Her exuberant femininity bounced along the wires: "I never _see_ you, Lew. All I hear is your voice on the telephone. For all I know you don't exist any more, but simply made some tapes a number of years ago and somebody plays them to me from time to time."

"How do you explain the fact that I'm responsive? Like now."

"Electronics. I explain everything I don't understand electronically. It saves me no end of trouble. But when am I going to _see_ you?"

"This weekend, if Arnie's tabbed the driver of the convertible."

"He hasn't quite done that, but he does have a line on the owner. She's a Mrs. Sally Burke and she lives right here in Reno. She claims her car was stolen a couple of days ago. But Arnie doesn't believe her."

"Why not?"

"He's very intuitive. Also she didn't report the alleged theft. Also she has boy friends of various types. Arnie's out doing legwork on them now."

"Good."

"I gather this is important," Phyllis said.

"It's a double murder case, maybe a triple. My client's a young girl with emotional problems. She's probably going to be arrested today or tomorrow, for something she almost certainly didn't do."

"You sound very intense."

"This case has gotten under my skin. Also I don't know where I'm at."

"I never heard you admit that before, Lew. Anyway, I was thinking before you called, maybe I could strike up an acquaintance with Mrs. Sally Burke. Does that sound like a good idea to you?"

"An excellent idea." Phyllis was an ex-Pinkerton operative who looked like an ex-chorus girl. "Remember Mrs. Burke and her playmates may be highly dangerous. They may have killed a woman last night."

"Not this woman. I've got too much to live for." She meant Arnie.

We exchanged some further pleasantries in the course of which I heard people coming into Alex's room next door. After I said goodbye to Phyllis I stood by the wall and listened. Alex's voice and the voice of another man were raised in argument, and I didn't need a contact mike to tell what the argument was about. The other man wanted Alex to clear out of this unfortunate mess and come home.

I knocked on his door.

"Let me handle them," the other man said, as if he was expecting the police.

He stepped outside, a man of about my age, good-looking in a grayish way, with a thin face, narrow light eyes, a pugnacious chin. The mark of organization was on him, like an invisible harness worn under his conservative gray suit.

There was some kind of desperation in him, too. He didn't even ask who I was before he said: "I'm Frederick Kincaid and you have no right to chivvy my son around. He has nothing to do with that girl and her crimes. She married him under false pretenses. The marriage didn't last twenty-four hours. My son is a respectable boy--"

Alex stepped out and pulled at the older man's arm. His face was miserable with embarra.s.sment. "You'd better come inside, Dad. This is Mr. Archer."

"Archer, eh? I understand you've involved my son in this thing--"

"On the contrary, he hired me."

"I'm firing you." His voice sounded as if it had often performed this function.

"We'll talk it over," I said.

The three of us jostled each other in the doorway. Kincaid senior didn't want me to come in. It was very close to turning into a brawl. Each of us was ready to hit at least one of the others.

I bulled my way into the room and sat down in a chair with my back to the wall. "What's happened, Alex?"

"Dad heard about me on the radio. He phoned the Sheriff and found out where I was. The Sheriff called us over there just now. They found the murder gun."

"Where?"

Alex was slow in answering, as though the words in his mouth would make the whole thing realer when he let them out. His father answered for him: "Where she hid it, under the mattress of the bed in that little hut she's been living in--"

"It isn't a hut," Alex said. "It's a gatehouse."

"Don't contradict me, Alex."

"Did you see the gun?" I said.

"We did. The Sheriff wanted Alex to identify it, which naturally he couldn't do. He didn't even know she had a gun."

"What kind of a gun is it?"

"It's a Smith and Wesson revolver, .38 caliber, with walnut grips. Old, but in pretty fair condition. She probably bought it at a p.a.w.n shop."

"Is this the police theory?"

"The Sheriff mentioned the possibility."

"How does he know it's hers?"

"They found it under her mattress, didn't they?" Kincaid talked like a prosecutor making a case, using it to bring his son into line. "Who else could have hidden it there?"

"Practically anybody else. The gatehouse was standing open last night, wasn't it, Alex?"

"It was when I got there."

"Let me do the talking," his father said. "I've had more experience in these matters."

"It hasn't done you a h.e.l.l of a lot of good. Your son is a witness, and I'm trying to get at the facts."

He stood over me with his hands on his hips, vibrating. "My son has nothing whatever to do with this case."

"Don't kid yourself. He's married to the girl."

"The marriage is meaningless--a boyish impulse that didn't last one full day. I'm having it annulled. It wasn't even consummated, he tells me."

"You can't annul it."

"Don't tell me what I can do."

"I think I will, though. All you can do is annul yourself and your son. There's more to a marriage than s.e.xual consummation or legal technicalities. The marriage is real because it's real for Alex."

"He wants out of it now."

"I don't believe you."

"It's true, isn't it, Alex, you want to come home with me and Mother? She's terribly worried about you. Her heart is kicking up again." Kincaid was throwing everything but the kitchen sink.

Alex looked from him to me. "I don't know. I just want to do what's right."

Kincaid started to say something, probably having to do with the kitchen sink, but I talked over him: "Then answer another question or two, Alex. Was Dolly carrying a gun when she came running back to the gatehouse last night?"

"I didn't see one."

Kincaid said: "She probably had it concealed under her clothes."

"Shut up, Kincaid," I said calmly from my sitting position. "I don't object to the fact that you're a bloodless b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You obviously can't help it. I do object to your trying to make Alex into one. Leave him a choice, at least."

Kincaid sputtered a couple of times, and walked away from me. Alex said without looking at either of us: "Don't talk to my father that way, Mr. Archer."

"All right. She was wearing a cardigan and a blouse and skirt. Anything else?"

"No."

"Carrying a bag?"

"I don't think so."

"Think."

"She wasn't."

"Then she couldn't have been carrying a concealed .38 revolver. You didn't see her hide it under the mattress?"

"No."

"And were you with her all the time, between the time she got back and the time she left for the nursing home?"

"Yes. I was with her all the time."

"Then it's pretty clear it isn't Dolly's gun, or at least it wasn't Dolly who hid it under the mattress. Do you have any idea who it could have been?"

"No."

"You said it was the murder gun. How did they establish that? They haven't had time for ballistics tests."

Kincaid spoke up from the far corner where he had been sulking: "It's the right caliber to fit the wound, and one sh.e.l.l had been fired, recently. It stands to reason it's the gun she used."

"Do you believe that, Alex?"

"I don't know."

"Have they questioned her?"

"They intend to. The Sheriff said something about waiting until they nailed it down with ballistic evidence, Monday."

That gave me a little time, if I could believe Alex. The pressures of the night and morning, on top of the uncertainties of the last three weeks, had left him punchy. He looked almost out on his feet.

"I think we all should wait," I said, "before we make up our minds about your wife. Even if she's guilty, which I very strongly doubt, you owe her all the help and support you can give her."

"He owes her nothing," Kincaid said. "Not a thing. She married him fraudulently. She lied to him again and again."

I kept my voice and temper down, for contrast. "She still needs medical care, and she needs a lawyer. I have a good local lawyer waiting to step in, but I can't retain him myself."

"You're taking quite a lot into your hands, aren't you?"

"Somebody has to a.s.sume responsibility. There's a lot of it floating around loose at the moment. You can't avoid it by crawling into a hole and pulling the hole in after you. The girl's in trouble, and whether you like it or not she's a member of your family."

Alex appeared to be listening. I didn't know if he was hearing me. His father shook his narrow gray head: "She's no member of my family, and I'll tell you one thing for certain. She's not going to drag my son down into the underworld. And neither are you." He turned to Alex. "How much have you already paid this man?"

"A couple of hundred."

Kincaid said to me: "You've been amply paid, exorbitantly paid. You heard me fire you. This is a private room and if you persist in intruding I'll call the management. If they can't handle you I'll call the police."

Alex looked at me and lifted his hands, not very far, in a helpless movement. His father put an arm around his shoulders: "I'm only doing what's best for you, son. You don't belong with these people. We'll go home and cheer up Mother. After all you don't want to drive her into her grave."

It came out smooth and pat, and it was the clincher. Alex didn't look at me again. I went back to my own room and phoned Jerry Marks and told him I had lost a client and so had he. Jerry seemed disappointed.

chapter 14.

Alex and his father vacated their room and drove away. I didn't go out to see them off but I could hear the sound of their engines, quickly m.u.f.fled by the fog. I sat and let my stomach unknot, telling myself I should have handled them better. Kincaid was a frightened man who valued his status the way some previous generations valued their souls.

I drove up Foothill to the Bradshaw house. The Dean was probably another breakable reed, but he had money, and he had shown some sympathy for Dolly, over and above his official interest in the case. I had no desire to continue it on my own. I needed a princ.i.p.al, preferably one who swung some weight locally. Alice Jenks met this requirement, more or less, but I didn't want her for a client.

A deputy was standing guard at the gatehouse. He wouldn't let me in to look around but he didn't object to my going up to the main house. The Spanish woman Maria answered the door.

"Is Dr. Bradshaw home?"

"No sir."

"Where can I find him?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I think Mrs. Bradshaw said he's gone for the weekend."