She thought about it. The shield of haughtiness slipped slightly from her eyes. “Which chair may I take, Ed?”
I got out a handkerchief, dusted off a chair, and she smiled at the gesture. “If Señora Isabella had lived, my husband was legally clear — provided he made the payments stipulated by his promissory note. The old lady had refused to press charges, and the matter was settled.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said.
“Now, however, if Elena Sigmon has the note and that very incriminating statement in Van’s handwriting, she’s in a position to do more than make mere trouble.”
“What makes you think Elena—”
“Who else, Ed? When Fred Eppling told Elena that her grandmother’s old portfolio was missing, Elena passed it off lightly. Quite casually she said the brief case would probably turn up.”
I gave Natalie Clavery an intent look. “You don’t like Elena at all.”
“Frankly, I have an instinctive abhorrence of her. We were all strangers here. We expected a bereaved girl. Instead, we were treated to a misbegotten brat!”
“Strong words.”
“Wait until you’ve known Elena better,” Natalie Clavery said. “I think her father’s influence has destroyed any good qualities that might have been in Elena. At any rate I’ve got to get that handwritten statement of Van’s back.” She looked at me obliquely. “Do you know what it will do to a man of my husband’s temperament to be publicly branded a thief?”
I remembered the way Clavery’s nerve-wracked body had twitched on the carpeting in Fred Eppling’s office. “I’ve an idea.”
“He would kill himself,” she said simply. The polished surface didn’t crack, but I glimpsed the things that lived in her eyes. My very first impression of her returned stronger than ever. Underneath the gloss there was plenty of woman. The man to whom she gave herself would never need or even want another woman.
“Van Clavery, in one respect at least, is a very lucky man,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said simply. “He happens to be my husband.”
“If he filched that portfolio himself,” I pointed out, “it would save him forty thousand dollars, not to mention the pleasure of destroying a statement of guilt.”
“And I’m not above wishing he had done so,” she said candidly.
“He could then have rung in Fred Eppling to throw suspicion from himself.”
“But he didn’t, Ed.”
“Would you tell me if he had?”
“No,” she said. “But I’d have no reason for being here right now if he had.”
“Maybe he glommed onto the brief case and didn’t tell you.”
She shook her head, gave me a patient look. “He would have told me. He knows he can trust me. He would have been considerate, sparing me unnecessary worry and anxiety. No, you know the truth of it — the brief case has fallen into unknown hands.”
“And Jean Putnam knew whose hands?”
“Isn’t it possible?” she asked. “People have been killed for less value than a promissory note in amount of forty thousand dollars, not to mention evidence of embezzlement that someone might regard as of equal value.”
“If I happen to turn up the brief case, do you want me to bring it to you?”
“Oh, no,” she said with a motion of her hand. “Deliver it to Fred Eppling. Van made one mistake, Ed. The single mistake he’s made in his life. Later he faced it, squared it. We want the old señora’s wishes carried out, that’s all.”
“Since you put it that way,” I said, “I’ll do my best for you.”
“We will pay a reasonable fee, of course.”
“I’ll charge you one, of course.”
A faint laugh came from her. “I feel a little better now. You — big, ruffian-looking man that you are... You have revised my first impression of you. You are a paradox.”
“Most of us are. Just two-legged bundles of contrasts.”
She rose gracefully and moved toward the door. She paused and said casually, “Van didn’t want me to see you, but I had to satisfy myself. Now I’m glad. I’m also glad I don’t have to fight you, Ed. For Van I should fight in any way, with any means at my disposal.”
“Okay,” I said, “and I’m one of the means.”
“I hadn’t quite thought of it that way. Do you resent it?”
“A little,” I said honestly. “But I haven’t been given many choices since Jean Putnam picked up a phone and called my number.”
When Natalie Clavery was gone, I ankled over to police headquarters. They didn’t know a damn thing I didn’t know. They’d picked up no trace of Ben McJunkin, and I had a moment filled with the illogical premonition that they never would.
They’d talked with Jean Putnam’s roommate, Lura Thackery, getting no more from her than I had. Jean Putnam’s nearest and dearest friend was certainly keeping her skirts clean.
Back in the office, I picked up the phone and draped a handkerchief over the mouthpiece.
I hesitated. Then I reached forward and dialed Lura Thackery’s number, and the swing of the dial reminded me of a screw tightening.
Eleven
Her polished little voice said, “Hello?”
I didn’t speak right away, letting her listen to the emptiness of the open phone line. Her voice went up a notch: “Hello?... Who is calling, please?”
I frown on certain language in the presence of a lady; but I had to remember that McJunkin, or whoever was behind him, would not have been civilized with Lura Thackery. They’d have left no doubts in her as to her position and their intentions.
As McJunkin might have done, I let out a heavy breath and said softly, “You cruddy, big-mouthed bitch.”
The alien idiom caused her to shrink in silence. My pulse rate picked up a beat. Her failure to question the reason for the call or demand the identity of the speaker meant that she believed she knew who was calling and why. My first hunch about Lura Thackery had been correct.
“You were warned to stay away from Ed Rivers,” I said.
“I didn’t go to him,” she said in a voice edged with panic.
“You talked to him.”
“He came to me. You’ve got to believe me!”
“Rivers isn’t telling it that way,” I said. “Then he’s lying. He’s trying to fool you. I gave you the diary, didn’t I? I promised to mind my own business.” Diary?
I pulled erect in my office chair. Whose diary? Jean Putnam’s?
“Why do you keep hounding me?” Lura was saying. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”
“You’re in it whether you like it or not,” I said through the handkerchief.
“I don’t want to be in it!” Her voice had gone shrill.
“That’s tough. Rivers is the one who might make the kind of trouble I don’t like. The cops, they got rules. They’ll handle you with kid gloves. Rivers makes his own rules sometimes.”
“You’re scared of Rivers!” she cried.
“Listen, you crummy slut—”
“And you hate me... I know it... Everyone hates me. My mother. My father. Even the psychiatrist.” She was nearing hysteria. “You’re looking for an excuse to make me like Jean. Why should I do anything more for you?”
“Because I say so, creep. You got to take your pick. Me or Ed Rivers.”
I slipped the handkerchief from the phone and quietly hung up.
Unhappily, I sat. I hadn’t liked doing it. I was sorry for the misty-eyed girl with the transluscent skin who had walked too closely to the dark edges of life.
I waited, giving her time. Ten minutes. Twenty.
I began to frown at the phone. Then it rang. I let it ring a second time before I picked it up.
“Nationwide Detective Agency,” I said. “Ed Rivers speaking.”
“This is Lura Thackery.” Her voice was unsteady, with intermittent snubbing sounds, the aftermath of hard sobbing.