Great Detectives (1984) Anthology by David Willis McCullough

Author:David Willis McCullough [McCullough, David Willis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6

In the parking lot behind the building, Professor Helen Haggerty was sitting at the wheel of the new black Thunderbird convertible. She had put the top down and parked it beside my car, as if for contrast. The late afternoon sunlight slanting across the foothills glinted on her hair and eyes and teeth.

“Hello again.”

“Hello again,” I said. “Are you waiting for me?”

“Only if you’re left-handed.”

“I’m ambidextrous.”

“You would be. You threw me a bit of a curve just now.”

“I did?”

“I know who you are.” She patted a folded newspaper on the leather seat beside her. The visible headline said: “Mrs. Perrine Acquitted.” Helen Haggerty said: “I think it’s very exciting. The paper credits you with getting her off. But it’s not quite clear how you do it.”

“I simply told the truth, and evidently the jury believed me. At the time the alleged larceny was committed here in Pacific Point, I had Mrs. Perrine under close surveillance in Oakland.”

“What for? Another larceny?”

“It wouldn’t be fair to say.”

She made a mock-sorrowful mouth, which fitted the lines of her face too well. “All the interesting facts are confidential. But I happen to be checked out for security. In fact my father is a policeman. So get in and tell me all about Mrs. Perrine.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Or I have a better idea,” she said with her bright unnatural smile. “Why don’t you come over to my house for a drink?”

“I’m sorry, I have work to do.”

“Detective work?”

“Call it that.”

“Come on.” With a subtle movement, her body joined in the invitation. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You don’t want to be a dull boy and make me feel rejected. Besides, we have things to talk about.”

“The Perrine case is over. Nothing could interest me less.”

“It was the Dorothy Smith case I had in mind. Isn’t that why you’re on campus?”

“Who told you that?”

“The grapevine. Colleges have the most marvelously efficient grapevines, second only to penitentiaries.”

“Are you familiar with penitentiaries?”

“Not intimately. But I wasn’t lying when I told you my father was a policeman.” A gray pinched expression touched her face. She covered it over with another smile. “We do have things in common. Why don’t you come along?”

“All right. I’ll follow you. It will save you driving me back.”

“Wonderful.”

She drove as rapidly as she operated, with a jerky nervousness and a total disregard for the rules of the road. Fortunately the campus was almost empty of cars and people. Diminished by the foothills and by their own long shadows, the buildings resembled a movie lot which had shut down for the night.

She lived back of Foothill Drive in a hillside house made out of aluminum and glass and black enameled steel. The nearest rooftop floated among the scrub oaks a quarter of a mile down the slope. You could stand in the living room by the central fireplace and see the blue mountains rising up on one side, the gray ocean falling away on the other. The offshore fog was pushing in to the land.

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