Felony File Read Online Free Page B

been
curled in her armchair with the latest House Beautiful, while the new
one rolled on a blanket on the floor. The new one, Luisa Mary, was
fulfilling the prophecy of that nurse in the obstetric ward: she was
a live wire all right, and her hair—coming in more vigorously by
the day—as red as Alison's.
    " I have no doot," said Mairi MacTaggart in
the door to the dining room, "she'll turn out left-handed, the
way she has of going backwards at things. You stay where you are,
it's only the steak to broil—give the man time for a drink."
    Certainly, when Mendoza was settled in his armchair
with the drink (having necessarily provided El Señor, the alcoholic
half-Siamese, with his own half-ounce of rye) Luisa Mary was
energetically making swimming motions backward and complaining
vociferously that she was no nearer her objective—the complicated
tangle of the other three cats—Sheba, Bast and Nefertite—curled
on the big, round, velvet ottoman.
    " We're going to be in before Christmas if
possible," Alison was exulting. "It's going to be hell,
sorting everything out, but Mairi says better to do it at this
end—Lord, we've been here five years, not all that long, but the
things you accumulate—"
    Cedric the Old English sheepdog galloped into the
room with Mairi in hot pursuit. "The creature!" she said
crossly. "In the wading pool all summer and footprints all over,
and now bringing in the mud—"
    Mendoza leaned back and shut his eyes. One of these
days he might quit the job, and spend more time with the feudal
household his Scots-Irish girl had wished on him. Or maybe not ....
With the rye warm in his stomach, he was thinking again about that
very sharp operation at Bullock's. Dimly, the same presentiment
Palliser had known moved in his mind.
 
    TWO
    ON SATURDAY MORNING, with Sergeant Lake off and
Sergeant Farrell sitting on the switchboard, they got Nick Galeano
back; he'd been off yesterday. He'd heard about the Bullock's job on
the news, and was interested to hear what had showed. But Piggott and
Schenke on night watch had left them a new heist to work, with at
least one suggestive lead—the bartender who'd been held up thought
he recognized the heister as some dude around the neighborhood.
Galeano and Conway went out on that.
    Five minutes after Mendoza came in, he hailed Conway,
Palliser and Grace into his office, looking pleased. Hackett had a
witness coming in, the second pharmacy clerk from Thursday night's
heist; he showed up about eight-thirty and told Hackett just what the
other one had. His name was Donald Hopper.
    " Could've knocked me down with a feather,"
he said. "A dame! With a real cannon, and who takes chances with
a female with a gun?" He gave a faithful description: maybe
about five-five, really stacked, shoulder-length blonde hair, a good
deal of make-up, "and real loud clothes, a print dress all sorts
of colors, and a bright-red coat. That's about it."
    " Just think this over," said Hackett.
"Could it have been a man dressed up?"
    Hopper didn't have to think. He laughed. "No
way," he said instantly, "and Bob'd say the same. I was
near enough to tell—no way was that padding, see, and it was a
dame's voice, a dame's hands—you couldn't mistake it. That idea
don't go. It's damn funny all right, a female heister, but that's
what it was, Sergeant."
    Hackett started to type up a statement for him to
sign. He wondered if the female heister was in anybody else's records
somewhere around.
    Glasser waited until nine o'clock to call the jail.
He was assured that both subjects were in a condition to be
questioned. "Care to sit in on round two?" he asked Wanda.
    " At the jail, yes."
    It had stopped raining about ten o'clock last night,
but was looking threatening again. Today, everybody had worn
raincoats.
    At the jail Glasser talked to the booking sergeant
first. "Anything show in the medical examination? A doctor did
look at both of them?"
    "They were both just drunk," said the
sergeant, bored. "Doctor