Respectfully
I lifted the needle and ran it over again. It did things to me. I don't only mean it was a relief. It made my heart feel funny. But then, after some more routine stuff, came this:
Confidential-file Nirdlinger
SUMMARY-investigators' verbal reports for week ending June 17th:
Daughter Lola Nirdlinger moved out of home June 8, took up residence in two-room apartment, the Lycee Arms, Yucca Street. No surveillance deemed necessary.
Widow remained at home until June 8, when she took automobile ride, stopped at drug store, made phone call, took ride two succeeding days, stopped markets and store selling women's gowns.
Night of June 11, man caller arrived at house 8:35, left 11:48. Description:-Tall, dark-age twenty-six or seven. Calls repeated June 12, 13, 14, 16. Man followed night of first visit, identity ascertained as Beniamino Sachetti, Lilac Court Apartments, North La Brea Avenue.
I was afraid to have Lola come down to the office any more. But finding out they had no men assigned to her meant that I could take her out somewhere. I called her up and asked her if she would go with me to dinner. She said she would like it more than anything she could think of. I took her down to the Miramar at Santa Monica. I said it would be nice to eat where we could see the ocean, but the real reason was I didn't want to take her to any place downtown, where I might run into somebody I knew.
We talked along during dinner about where she went to school, and why she didn't go to college, and a whole lot of stuff. It was kind of feverish, because we were both under a strain, but we got along all right. It was like she said. We both felt easy around each other somehow. I didn't say anything about what she had told me, last time, until we got in the car after dinner and started up the ocean for a ride. Then I brought it up myself.
"I thought over what you told me."
"Can I say something?"
"Go ahead."
"I've had it out with myself about that. I've thought it all over, and come to the conclusion I was wrong. It's very easy when you love somebody terribly, and then suddenly they're gone from you, to think it's somebody's fault. Especially when it's somebody you don't like. I don't like Phyllis. I guess it's partly jealousy. I was devouted to my mother. I was almost as devoted to my father. And then when he married Phyllis-I don't know, it seemed as though something had happened that couldn't happen. And then-these thoughts. What I felt instinctively when my mother died became a dead certainty when my father married Phyllis. I thought that showed why she did it. And it became a double certainty when this happened. But I haven't a thing to go on, have I? It's been terribly hard to make myself realize that, but I have. I've given up the whole idea, and I wish you'd forget that I ever told you."
"I'm glad in a way."
"I guess you think I'm terrible."
"I thought it over. I thought it over carefully, and all the more carefully because it would be most important for my company if they knew it. But there's nothing to go on. It's only a suspicion. That's all you have to tell."
"I told you. I haven't even got that any more."
"What you would tell the police, if you told them anything, is already a matter of public record. Your mother's death, your father's death-you haven't anything to add to what they already know. Why tell them?"
"Yes, I know."
"If I were you, I would do nothing."
"You agree with me then? That I haven't anything to go on:
"I do."
That ended that. But-I had to find out about this Sachetti, and find out without her knowing I was trying to find out.
"Tell me something. What happened between you and Sachetti?"
"I told you. I don't want to talk about him."
"How did you come to meet him?"
"Through Phyllis."
"Through-?"
"His father was a doctor. I think I told you she used to be a nurse. He called on her, about joining some association that was being formed. But when he got interested in me, he wouldn't come to the house. And then, when Phyllis found out I was meeting him, she told my father the most awful stories about him. I was supposed not to meet him, but I did. There was something back of it, I knew that. But I never found out what it was, until-"
"Go on. Until what?"
"I don't want to go on. I told you I gave up any idea that there might be something-"
"Until what?"
"Until my father died. And then, quite suddenly, he didn't seem interested in me any more. He-"
"Yes?"
"He's going with Phyllis."
"And-?"
"Can't you see what I thought? Do you have to make me say it?…I thought maybe they did it. I thought his going with me was just a blind for-something, I didn't know what. Seeing her, maybe. In case they got caught."
"I thought he was with you-that night."
"He was supposed to be. There was a dance over at the university, and I went over. I was to meet him there. But he got sick, and sent word he couldn't come. I got on a bus and went to a picture show. I never told anybody that."
"What do you mean, sick?"
"He did have a cold, I know that. A dreadful cold. But-please don't make me talk any more about it. I've tried to put it out of my mind. I'm getting so I can believe it isn't true. If he wants to see Phyllis, it's none of my business. I mind. I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I didn't mind. But-it's his privilege. Just because he does that is no reason for me to-think this of him. That wouldn't be right."
"We won't talk about it any more."
I stared into the darkness some more that night. I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman. The woman was a killer, out-and-out, and she had made a fool of me. She had used me for a cat's paw so she could have another man, and she had enough on me to hang me higher than a kite. If the man was in on it, there were two of them that could hang me. I got to laughing, a hysterical cackle, there in the dark. I thought about Lola, how sweet she was, and the awful thing I had done to her. I began subtracting her age from my age. She was nineteen, I'm thirty-four. That made a difference of fifteen years. Then I got to thinking that if she was nearly twenty, that would make a difference of only fourteen years. All of a sudden I sat up and turned on the light. I knew what that meant.
I was in love with her.
Chapter 10
Right on top of that, Phyllis filed her claim. Keyes denied liability, on the ground that accident hadn't been proved. Then she filed suit, through the regular lawyer that had always handled her husband's business. She called me about half a dozen times, always from a drugstore, and I told her what to do. I had got so I felt sick the minute I heard her voice, but I couldn't take any chances. I told her to be ready, that they would try to prove something besides suicide. I didn't give her all of it, what they were thinking and what they were doing, but I let her know that murder was one of the things they would cover anyway, so she had better be ready for it when she went on the stand. It didn't faze her any. She seemed to have almost forgotten that there was a murder, and acted like the company was playing her some kind of a dirty trick in not paying her right away. That suited me fine. It was a funny sidelight on human nature, and especially on a woman's nature, but it was just exactly the frame of mind I would want her in to face a lot of corporation lawyers. If she stuck to her story, even with all Keyes might have been able to dig up on her, I still didn't see how she could miss.