'In the end, the existence of that story became a mystery even to him,' Amy said softly.
Evans looked at her, eyebrows raised. 'Beg pardon?'
She shook her head. 'Nothing.'
'I think I've told you everything I can,' Evans said. 'Anything else would be pure speculation. I'm an insurance investigator, after all, not a psychiatrist.'
'He was two men,' Amy said. 'He was himself ... and he became a character he created. Ted believes that the last name, Shooter, was something
Mort picked up and stored in his head when he found out Ted came from a little town called Shooter's Knob, Tennessee. I'm sure he's right. Mort was always picking out character names just that way ... like anagrams, almost.
'I don't know the rest of it - I can only guess. I do know that when a film studio dropped its option on his novel The Delacourt Family, Mort almost had a nervous breakdown. They made it clear - and so did Herb Creekmore - that they were concerned about an accidental similarity, and they understood he never could have seen the screenplay, which was called The Home Team. There was no question of plagiarism ... except in Mort's head. His reaction was exaggerated, abnormal. It was like stirring a stick around in what looks like a dead campfire and uncovering a live coal.'
'You don't think he created John Shooter just to punish you, do you?' Evans asked.
'No. Shooter was there to punish Mort. I think . She paused and adjusted her shawl, pulling it a little more tightly about her shoulders. Then she picked up her teacup with a hand which wasn't quite steady. 'I think that Mort stole somebody's work sometime in the past,' she said. 'Probably quite far in the past, because everything he wrote from The Organ-Grinder's Boy on was widely read. It would have come out, I think. I doubt that he even actually published what he stole. But I think that's what happened, and I think that's where John Shooter really came from. Not from the film company dropping his novel, or from my ... my time with Ted, and not from the divorce. Maybe all those things contributed, but I think the root goes back to a time before I knew him. Then, when he was alone at the lake house . . .'
'Shooter came,' Evans said quietly. 'He came and accused him of plagiarism. Whoever Mr Rainey stole from never did, so in the end he had to punish himself. But I doubt if that was all, Amy. He did try to kill you.'
'No,' she said. 'That was Shooter.'
He raised his eyebrows. Ted looked at her carefully, and then drew the pipe out of his pocket again.
'The real Shooter.'
'I don't understand you.'
She smiled her wan smile. 'I don't understand myself. That's why I'm here. I don't think telling this serves any practical purpose - Mort's dead, and it's over -but it may help me. It may help me to sleep better.'
'Then tell us, by all means,' Evans said.
'You see, when we went down to clean out the house, we stopped at the little store in town - Bowie's. Ted filled the gas tank - it's always been self-service at Bowie's - and I went in to get some things. There was a man in there, Sonny Trotts, who used to work with Tom Greenleaf. Tom was the older of the two caretakers who were killed. Sonny wanted to tell me how sorry he was about Mort, and he wanted to tell me something else, too, because he saw Mort the day before Mort died, and meant to tell him. So he said. It was about Tom Greenleaf - something Tom told Sonny while they were painting the Methodist Parish Hall together. Sonny saw Mort after that, but didn't think to tell him right away, he said. Then he remembered that it had something to do with Greg Carstairs
'The other dead man?'
'Yes. So he turned around and called, but Mort didn't hear him. And the next day, Mort was dead.'
'What did Mr Greenleaf tell this guy?'
'That he thought he might have seen a ghost,' Amy said calmly.
They looked at her, not speaking.
'Sonny said Tom had been getting forgetful lately, and that Tom was worried about it. Sonny thought it was no more than the ordinary sort of forgetfulness that settles in when a person gets a little older, but Tom had nursed his wife through Alzheimer's disease five or six years before, and he was terrified of getting it himself and going the same way. According to Sonny, if Tom forgot a paintbrush, he spent half the day obsessing about it. Tom said that was why, when Greg Carstairs asked him if he recognized the man he'd seen Mort Rainey talking to the day before, or if he would recognize him if he saw him again, Tom said he hadn't seen anyone with Mort - that Mort had been alone.'
There was the snap of a match. Ted Milner had decided to light his pipe after all. Evans ignored him. He was leaning forward in his chair, his gaze fixed intently on Amy Milner.
'Let's get this straight. According to this Sonny Troots
'Trotts.'
'Okay, Trotts. According to him, Tom Greenleaf did see Mort with someone?'
'Not exactly,' Amy said. 'Sonny thought if Tom believed that, believed it for sure, he wouldn't have lied to Greg. What Tom said was that he didn't know what he'd seen. That he was confused. That it seemed safer to say nothing about it at all. He didn't want anybody - particularly Greg Carstairs, who was also in the caretaking business - to know how confused he was, and most of all he didn't want anybody to think that he might be getting sick the way his late wife had gotten sick.'
'I'm not sure I understand this - I'm sorry.'
'According to Sonny,' she said, 'Tom came down Lake Drive in his Scout and saw Mort, standing by himself where the lakeside path comes out.'
'Near where the bodies were found?'
'Yes. Very near. Mort waved. Tom waved back. He drove by. Then, according to what Sonny says, Tom looked in his rear-view mirror and saw another man with Mort, and an old station wagon, although neither the man nor the car had been there ten seconds before. The man was wearing a black hat. he said ... but you could see right through him, and the car, too.'
'Oh, Amy,' Ted said softly. 'The man was bullshiting you. Big time.'
She shook her head. 'I don't think Sonny is smart enough to make up such a story. He told me Tom thought he ought to get in touch with Greg and tell him he might have seen such a man after all; that it would be all right if he left out the see-through part. But Sonny said the old man was terrified. He was convinced that it was one of two things: either he was coming down with Alzheimer's disease, or he'd seen a ghost.'
'Well, it's certainly creepy,' Evans said, and it was - the skin on his arms and back had crinkled into gooseflesh for a moment or two. 'But it's hearsay ... hearsay from a dead man, in fact.'
'Yes ... but there's the other thing.' She set her teacup on the desk, picked up her purse, and began to rummage in it. 'When I was cleaning out Mort's office, I found that hat - that awful black hat - behind his desk. It gave me a shock, because I wasn't expecting it. I thought the police must have taken it away as evidence, or something. I hooked it out from behind there with a stick. It came out upside down, with the stick inside it. I used the stick to carry it outside and dump it in the trash cabinet. Do you understand?'
Ted clearly didn't; Evans clearly did. 'You didn't want to touch it.'