The Picture Ranch 67

Flaherty looked over at the other gold-shield man, who was just lighting another coffin-nail from the lit end of his last one,

‘Baxter, ride in the blood-wagon. See if they wake up on the way or in the hospital. I’ll meet you back at the precinct.'

Whoever lay in the back of the ambulance was alive, for the time being.

‘You know anything about this, Fisher?’

I didn’t get the chance to answer, before Miss G gave a girlish chuckle I’d never have expected to leave her mouth in a raccoon’s age and said,

‘I declay-ah, I don’t believe Mistuh Fishuh ree-ally knows much about anythin’, Suh.’

To his credit Flaherty left both his eyelids unbatted at Eleanor’s audition for Scarlett O’Hara. He did look at me and say,

‘Well, do yah, Rhett?’

I told him to knock it off and asked who was in the ambulance.

‘You know this Henry well?’

I nodded, ‘Some.’

‘I don’t know him at all. Never come out this far if I can help it. Too many movie types. Can’t stand ‘em’, present company excepted, Miss G.’

Whether working in an archives department doing secretarial work counted as being “movie people”, I had never really considered before. Maybe it did. Maybe that made me movie people too, since I’d done so much work for movie folks in the past.

We were inside the Encino Store. The crockery and glasses were mostly smashed except for one half-drunk soda on one of the E-z-wipe, Formica-topped tables in a booth. There were receipts, invoices and other papers turning brown in the spilled coffee on the floor. Henry must have been in the meat wagon, because he wasn't behind the counter.

Flaherty waved a hand at the mess,

'Think they found it?'

Miss G and I said 'What?' at the same time. I don't know what she wished for, but I wished she'd never walked into my office.

The cop shrugged one shoulder,

'Whatever they were looking for, naturally.'

I hoped that the deeds were still in my bag that I'd left in the Hispano-Suiza. Although I'd seen no sign of the bag in the dinky sportster Miss Gräfenberg had come to the rescue in, for sure.

Miss G looked Flaherty in the eye,

'How's Henry?'

'Who is Henry?' Flaherty answered.

'The guy in the meat-wagon,' I said.

The cop gave an honest-to-goodness belly laugh,

'The guy in the meat-wagon is a dame.'

I saw Miss G's jaw drop, and knew I hadn't concealed my surprise any better, when Flaherty said,

'Never seen anyone look so flabbergasted at a crime scene, unless it's a corpse.'

'So who was it?' I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, towards the door.

'Hell if I know. If you're so interested we could go down to the precinct and discuss it, but I got a feeling it would be a waste of my time. You can go, just don't leave the county.'

We left before he changed his mind, then headed south to see Dean.