The story so far: Detective Rocky Stone has been hired by Wanda Marcellus, aide of Congressional candidate George Wilson, for the purposes of discovering financial improprieties by the incumbent, Congressman Howard Dixon. While investigating the unusual amounts of telephone poles and booths on the streets of town, Rocky is approached and offered a bribe by Dixon's legal counsel, Carl Franklin. Rocky turns him down and follows him to the office of spiritualist advisor Inglehoff. Busting into the office, Rocky finds Franklin in a trance, and when Inglehoff triggers him with a word, Franklin bolts, drives through the streets of Los Diablos with Rocky following close behind. Suddenly and inexplicably, Franklin turns wildly and drives his car off the pier at San Carlos Beach. Later, Rocky discovers connections between the spiritualist Inglehoff, both Geroge Wilson and his wife Martha, and the prominent businessman and philanthropist Gilbert King. In the last episode, Rocky and George Wilson follow the candidate's wife to Van Meter's Restaurant, where she has met with Gilbert King's wife:
It all looked perfectly innocent, but I wasn't about to let it go. I saw the look on Martha Wilson's face back in the candidate's office. Everyone did, and they all thought the same thing I did: that something wasn't connected right in that head. Her face looked fine, now, and she smiled at some things King's wife had to say and looked concerned at others, just like anyone would have done at any normal lunch.
I watched, waited for someone to join them. My job was to look inconspicuous: even though a hat makes a good cover, in a restaurant someone would have noticed the man in the hat. I took mine off. I still had the morning paper in my pocket and I started to read. I did the crossword, or at least appeared to do so. I filled in a word every spare moment, and in the meantime caught sight of a reflection of the two women in a mirror on the back wall.
Ten minutes passed, and they gabbed of this and that without a care in the world, neither one of them taking a glance toward the door, nor over a shoulder, not even so much as a twitch of the eyeball. After a time, a waiter infiltrated their space with a couple of salads, and, once placed, quietly retreated. I looked at the other people surrounding the bar area. They were all far too busy with each other to notice a pair of women in the corner, each eating, or talking, or in some cases, both. Apart from me, no one was there alone. I spotted a man on the far end sandwiched in between two brunettes, one of which wore a tall yellow hat that shouldn't have been bought for any occasion. She stumbled off a bar stool and drifted past Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. King without stopping, or looking, and a few seconds later, their waiter returned with a couple of bowls of soup.
The clock read one o'clock and the lunch crowd started to file out. I ordered another ginger ale. Gordon, the bartender, noticed where my eyes were focused and grumbled something I wasn't supposed to hear, but did. The two women were engrossed in their conversation, taking a bite every now and again to make it look like they were having a meal. They were nearly done. Martha said something to make Mrs. King laugh, and when the laughing was over, things got very quiet. Martha fed herself as if she really meant it now, but she was worried about something, it was written all over her face.
Mrs. King spoke slowly and carefully to her. Martha Wilson nodded as if she understood, but whatever she understood made her more nervous.
The waiter came by for a final pass, said something politely to them. Mrs. King answered him. He responded and reached for the check, and when he did, Martha turned to her handbag, placing it on the table. Mrs. King handed her some cash and Martha put it together with her own, handed the whole wad to the waiter. All eyes were on that cash. All but mine. While the business was taking place, Mrs. King deftly dropped something into the handbag on the table, quietly enough that Martha didn't notice, and the waiter didn't notice. A twinge of a grin connected on her face. She knew she had gotten away with whatever she had planned. She never saw me.
They said their good-byes and I knew I needed to get ahead of them. George Wilson must have been getting antsy in my car and I had a job for him. I dropped a couple bucks on the bar and tripped it out. Wilson's eyes were saucers as I crossed the street. He reached over and pushed the driver's side door of my Buick open so I would get in that much faster.
“She'll be out in a second,” I said quickly. “In case you were wondering, her luncheon companion was a woman. Ever met Gilbert King's wife?”
“Clarissa? Yes, of course...”
“She just slipped something in your wife's purse when she wasn't looking,” I said, and at that moment the doorman led the two ladies out of Van Meter's. Martha appeared to return to a happier mood and they were talking and laughing again. I quickly turned to Wilson and gave him the plan: “Get out and meet your wife. Make it look like a chance encounter. You just happened to meet a client here. Gloss over the fact she was waiting for you one minute and gone the next. Don't even mention it. And if you can, try to find whatever it was Clarissa King put in her handbag.”
Wilson's wife raised a hand to hail a taxi and when he saw it knew the time to think about it was over and it was for him to act. Within a second he was out the door, but as he did, he took the time to ask me: “And what will you do?”
Clarissa King had already said goodbye to the candidate's wife and was walking down Olvidados. She had a lovely walk that was more of a bounce than anything else, and it would take a better man than me to hold back a smile at the sight of it. “She's going to see someone else,” I thought out loud. “I'd like to know who it is.”
Where will Clarissa King go, and what will Rocky find out when she gets there? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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