[Continuing chapter fourteen]
“Three Hundred North Maple,” Casey said. “How do I get there?” He started the Bentley. “More to the point, what way will they be going?”
“West on Sunset to La Cienega,” Desiree shouted over the roar of the engine. “Down to Santa Monica Boulevard, then west maybe a mile.”
“Let’s just hope that Mrs. Harlow is the homebody type when it comes to breakfast. If they’ve gone somewhere else, we’ll never find them. Never catch up with them in time.”
“In time for what?”
“In time to stop Eve Adams doing to Jean Harlow what she did to Lily Cross,” Casey said.
It was one of the few times in their so-far brief acquaintance that Casey had seen Desiree silenced by anything. She might have said “Oh,” out loud, but if so it was inaudible over the Bentley.
Hurtling along the snake-like residential streets, looking for a way to connect with Sunset Boulevard, Casey regretted that he’d not asked Hart for instructions on operating the big car’s supercharger. Oh, well; there’s always the possibility that Hart doesn’t know himself. With luck, he wouldn’t need the blower: the Bentley moved like an SE-5a in a dive after a fat Hun two-seater, and as the road got rougher Casey was grateful for the car’s big steering-wheel. It not only helped him control the car, it gave him something to hold on to.
Looking to his right, Casey saw Desiree gripping the edge of her seat with one hand, and the top of her door with the other. Her eyes were wide, her mouth tight to the point where the lips were little more than thin, pale lines. He shouldn’t have, but he smiled at this. This is payment for those moments of terror while you were driving, he thought to her.
“Here!” Desiree shouted. “Turn right here!”
They were on Fountain, and now Casey knew more or less where he was. A few blocks more, and there was Sunset. Another right turn, left at the five-way intersection with Hollywood Boulevard, and now they were moving on a straight line west to the end of Hollywood.
There was blessedly little traffic on the roads at this time of morning, for which Casey was grateful. He prayed that there were no cops on the prowl for speeding drivers. Even at the speed he was going now, they were a good ten to fifteen minutes from the Harlow home. And Sunset wasn’t the best of roads, he knew, on the strip between Hollywood and Beverley Hills.
“What are you going to do?” Desiree shouted over the noise of the engine and the wind.
“Don’t really know,” Casey shouted back, not taking his eyes from the road. The light ahead was red; he braked and put the Bentley into neutral, hoping there was nobody coming along Western in either direction and he could safely run that red.
“Why do you think Eve killed Lily?” Desiree’s voice was still pitched to be heard over the Bentley in full roar, and Casey winced.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you later. But I always knew that whatever Telford did, he didn’t do alone. I wasn’t able to put all of the pieces together until tonight.
“It was your notes that proved it, for me,” he added, sparing her a glance.
“Well, thanks for enlightening me,” she said as Casey slipped the car back into gear and accelerated through the vacant intersection. “I know so much more now than I did a minute ago.” Casey grinned, but did not bother trying to enlighten her further.
The pre-dawn was beginning to turn the sky behind them a dull mauve. Dawn patrol time, thought Casey. He’d never liked being awake this early, not since the war. The Garden of Allah appeared ahead and to the right, disappearing behind them as he turned south on La Cienega. For a moment Casey thought he heard the sounds of partying coming from the apartment complex.
“Casey?” Desiree tapped him on the shoulder.
“What?”
“I think we’re being followed.”
“Why?”
“Why do I think that, or why are we being followed?”
“I’ll take either, if you’ve got ‘em,” Casey said. He slowed to make the right onto Santa Monica.
“Well, I’ve seen headlights a couple of blocks behind us for the last five minutes or so. Could have been there before that, I don’t know. But when we turned onto La Cienega back there, he turned too. I’ll bet you next week’s salary he turns onto the Boulevard after us. As to why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s Jerry. Maybe the whole party crowd is following us. It’s the sort of game they like to play.”
“Charming folks,” Casey said.
“Left here,” Desiree murmured. “This is North Maple.”
In the half-light of the coming morning, Casey knew the Harlows’ house by the haphazardly parked car in front of it. Whatever Eve Adams was planning, she’d apparently already begun.
No, they weren’t too late. People were only now emerging from the car: four in all, a man and three women.
One of the women held something in one hand, extended away from her body awkwardly as though trying to prevent it from touching any part of her beyond the hand that held it.
“Good God,” Desiree said. “Where did Eve get a gun?”
“I don’t know,” Casey said, taking the car out of gear and letting it coast past the people now gathered on the lawn. “I have an idea, though.”
He didn’t have much time to come up with a plan of action. Not that there was much he could have done in the way of subtlety, anyway. It was accepted practice, in the RFC and RAF, that if you encountered a superior German force while on patrol, you went after them anyway. In retrospect that seemed a rather stupid idea. But it was probably the only appropriate course of action for here and now.
“Try to stay behind Eve,” he told Desiree. “If I can distract her at all, get the others into the house. Go around the back if you can. But get them away. And call Detective Grey if you get a chance.” He fished Grey’s card from his suit jacket and gave it to her.
“You’re not going to do something stupid?”
“Of course I am. What else is there?”
Next Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five
Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen
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