enough to drive the car right back here to the motel?”
He exhaled smoke and studied it thoughtfully. “The theory is that she didn’t know Calhoun got the license number. It’s logical. She couldn’t have seen him chasing her, in the dark, and he didn’t shoot because he fell down and lost the gun. And if she left it somewhere else, she’d have to walk back, with the chance of being seen.”
“But she was seen. And she didn’t go into the office.”
“There’s a rear entrance. Out of sight from here.”
“How soon did they find the car?”
“In less than thirty minutes. As soon as Calhoun could make the town and report it, the Sheriff drove out to tell her, and see if she was all right. He didn’t know but what she’d been killed too. And the first thing he saw when he drove in was that same Dade County license right there in front of Room Fourteen.”
”Was she asleep when he knocked? He’d be able to make a pretty good guess.”
“No. She was in her nightdress and dressing-gown when she came to the door, but she was wide awake.”
“Is that the straight dope? Or gossip?”
“It’s just what was in the papers. That Sheriff keeps his business under his hat. And so does Redfield. Magruder talked a little, but I understand he was stepped on for it.”
“Did she explain why she was awake at that time of day?”
“Yes,” Ollie replied. “She said it was a phone call. Just before he got there.”
“Who was it?”
“A wrong number. Or that is, the wrong motel. Some woman that sounded about half-drunk wanted to talk to a party that wasn’t even registered.”
I nodded. “So she had to shuffle through all the cards to be sure?”
“Yeah.”
Just then another customer came in. I went back across the road. Josie had been in to make up the rooms. I switched on the air-conditioner and sat down to see if I could make sense of what I was doing. The only thing that was really apparent was that I was going to get my head knocked off. In less than twenty-four hours I’d been warned by two different sets of people to leave town or get hurt. And since I had no intention of doing it, I must be crazy.
Two sets of people? Yes. It almost had to be. Redfield was a complex man I didn’t understand at all yet, and potentially a highly dangerous one, but I simply couldn’t believe he was corrupt—or corrupt enough to be at the bottom of all this. Maybe the savagery in him was warping his judgment, but it could be the result of an honest conviction she was guilty and that she had beaten him. Therefore, he probably didn’t even know who the other was, and I did have two separate outfits bent on getting rid of me.
And they might do it. I had no illusions about that. He had all the power of the Sheriff’s office behind him, and some of the things he could do to you with only a slight misuse of it would make your hair curl. And as for the other one—he’d said the acid was only a hint. That was self-explanatory. And ominous.
It always led back to Langston’s murder. And more and more it looked as if somebody had deliberately tried to frame her. The telephone call that morning could have been an honest mistake, but I didn’t think so. It was too convenient. The woman who’d left Strader's car at the motel knew the Sheriff would be knocking on the office door inside half an hour to tell Mrs. Langston her husband was dead, and that flushed and dull-eyed appearance of having just been roused from sleep is too nearly impossible to fake to be anything but genuine. So she had to be awake. Pawing through registration cards and arguing with an apparent drunk would guarantee it.
Then, if you could assume the whole thing tied together, where did I start? There was no lead at all in the acid job. Strader, I thought. It all began with him, and whatever he’d come up here for. So far, nobody had found out what it was, so at least I was starting even. But Strader had come from Miami. Well, that presented no great problem. . . .
The phone rang. When I picked it up, a woman’s voice said softly, “Mr. Chatham?”
“Yes,” I said. “Who is it?”
“You wouldn’t know me, but I might be able to tell you