Jeffers. “But I didn’t shoot Niles. Someone else had that pleasure.”
We hit a pothole in the pavement as we turned off of Sunset onto one of the winding streets that lead into the hills above Los Angeles. The car bounced gently. Dash woke up and yawned.
“How do you like that?” said Jeffers. “How big was that hole, Fritz?”
“Big hole,” said the driver.
“And we hardly felt it. Is this a car or is this a car?”
“It’s a car,” I agreed.
Dash looked around dreamily and turned his head toward Jeffers, who leaned in front of Bette Davis toward me.
“Advice, Peters,” he said. “Don’t be a smart ass. You cut me up and I’m not making an issue of it, but my good will can go only so far.”
Dash hissed and Jeffers snapped backward.
“Keep the cat quiet or I throw him out the window,” Jeffers said.
“You can try,” I said. “But I don’t think he likes you and he has all his teeth and claws.”
Jeffers backed up further. “Just keep him quiet.”
Bette Davis smiled at the rattled Jeffers and reached down in my lap to scratch Dash’s head. Dash loved it.
There was no more conversation as we went up into the hills.
Below us, beyond Sunset, we could see the lights of the city. A year ago the city would have been almost dark below us, but the blackouts had been eased as the threat of Japanese invasion lessened.
Hans turned on the radio and we listened to Lanny Ross singing “Be Careful It’s My Heart.” Jeffers hummed along with Ross.
We were about as high up as you can get, when we pulled into the driveway of a modest one-story brick house with a great view. There were two other cars in the driveway. Fritz got out first and opened the door for me and Davis. We got out. The night had turned cool. I could feel Davis shivering at my side.
“Don’t bother to look at the address, Peters,” Jeffers whispered to me as he guided me toward the door. “We borrowed the place for the night. Owner’s in New York on business. We didn’t have time to get his permission.”
I didn’t say anything. On the surface, what Jeffers was saying was welcome news. He didn’t care if I knew the address because it didn’t matter if I led the cops back here, which might mean that he didn’t plan on killing me. Why bother to advise me about not looking at the address if I was going to be dead?
On the other hand, he might just be shrewd enough to know that I’d figure this out and the information might make me less likely to give them trouble.
However, I was an eyewitness to his murdering Grover Niles and I had hit him with Claudette Colbert. But he had just told us that he hadn’t shot Niles. Why bother to deny it if he was going to shoot me anyway?
I was thinking all this through when we went through the front door and were led to our right through another door and into a library where three people were sitting. Two of them I recognized. One, the woman, I didn’t. The two men were seated, one in an overstuffed chair, a book in his lap, the other—Andrea Pinketts—at the end of a matching couch, a thin cigar in one hand, his legs crossed. The woman, a slightly chunky but still pretty if overly made-up blond version of Claire Trevor, stood against the bookcase looking more than a little nervous. She kept twisting the ring on her finger and looking at the man in the overstuffed chair.
“Thank you, Jeffers,” the man in the overstuffed chair said. He was dressed in a dark three-piece suit with a wide, red-and-white striped tie and a matching handkerchief in his pocket. “You and your assistants may wait just outside the door.”
Jeffers smiled broadly. The smile made it clear that he did not wish to stand outside any door. The smile was particularly unsettling because the light in the library was bright and the cuts on his face were red and ugly. But he and the Katzenjammer Kids left.
“You may put the cat down, Mr. Peters. Drink, Miss Davis?”
“No, thank you,” she said, sitting
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