The statement jarred her. The wheel wriggled nervously under her fingers. She considered his words for several minutes of thoughtful silence.
“But there’s no body — no corpus delicti.”
He laughed. “That doesn’t mean a damned thing here,” he said savagely. “You certainly stuck your white neck out this time. The greenest rookie cop on the force can collect positive evidence a bomb was planted in that car. And that was certainly no accident. Don’t you know what accidental death means?”
The girl said slowly, “That leaves me in something of a jam. Papa will be angry.”
Horne burst into savage laughter. “Papa will be angry! The prize understatement of the year. Who is Papa?”
“Shut up!” she lashed back. “I didn’t mean it that way. Papa is my Papa.”
“How did you mean it? And what has Papa to do...?”
She cut in. “Papa... they’re expecting a hundred thousand. The insurance company’s ninety thousand—”
“You’ll never see,” Horne stated emphatically. “And when I get to a telegraph office, you’ll not see the forty-five thousand.”
She smiled at him but made no reply.
“Look,” he continued puzzledly, “a moment ago you said you saved my life, you bought me to prevent someone from killing me. Why?”
The girl was a long time in answering. She steered the car through the rain, watching the road. Finally she said, refusing to meet his eyes,
“I like you. I like you a lot. I think... I think I love you. And Papa said I could have you. For a hundred thousand.”
Horne let the answer ride for five minutes of deep silence. This “Papa” must certainly be a BTO. “Papa” and somebody else referred to as “they.”
Unless the girl was a graduate of an asylum.
These people were using, or preparing to use, an animal hospital as a means of milking money from the insurance company — and possibly other companies. That in itself wasn’t new. All sorts of schemes have been tried, many of them successful for a while. Here and there a policyholder dies, leaving a tidy sum to an institution to which he owes an emotional debt.
But first the local detective must be gotten out of the way; he handles an insurance account and is in a position to smell an unripe odor in short order. Very well, away with him!
But this girl beside him said no. She liked him, she liked him a lot. She even thought she was in love with him. She loved him to the extent of one hundred thousand dollars, ten thousand of it her own money. She loved him to the extent of murdering a man whose policy she expected to furnish the remaining ninety thousand dollars. All for love of him.
Certain institutions were full of people who thought like that.
He said suddenly, thinking out loud,
“How come they fell for this fantastic proposition?”
“They’re a couple of damned money-sucking hogs!” She was bitterly emphatic about it. “I suppose the sheer audacity of it appealed to them. And I had to agree to take you out of circulation and keep you out! Not,” she added warmly, “that I object to that part of it.”
A couple of money-sucking hogs. Two others, besides herself. And there was Channy—
He decided to ask it indirectly. “Channy wasn’t a whole lot of value to you, then. Alive, I mean.”
She answered no, and let it ride. Horne made a mental note to come back to Channy in a few minutes.
This girl loved him (she thought), to the extent of a right smart sum. But he had never seen her before the night she walked along the sidewalk beneath his window. Quite apparently she had seen him before that night — long before. She had known him long enough to feel sorry for him when her two cohorts decided to rub him out. She had known him long enough to shell out ten thousand dollars and kill for ninety more. That takes some knowing, he reflected ruefully.
“How long?” he asked aloud.
“How long what?”
“Do you claim to have known me?”
“I’ve had a lot of fun with you, Jack. For the better part of a year. You’re like a very dear friend.”
“I think you’re bats.”
She laughed. “I had to know you, Jack. You were a gumshoe; we made it our business to know all about you. Jack, I’ve kept my good eye on you for months. I know your every habit, good or bad. I know what you do in the daytime and where you go at night. In short, my stupid little playmate, I’ve been your constant companion. You’re an open book to me.”
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“No,” she rolled her head in amusement. “Since the other day, you’re Betty’s. That’s me. You’re mine, all mine. How do you like your new owner?”
“We’ll talk about that some day when I believe you. When I believe any of this fairy tale. Slavery went out with Lincoln. Or hadn’t you heard?”
She laughed in his face and spoke two words.
He cut back with, “You’re a cold... cold...”
“Go on; say it. A cold bitch. Sure. I know what I want. Money. And I’m getting it. I’ve also got you. I think I’m going to be very happy.”
“Until,” he reminded her, “I find a telephone.”
She waggled a gentle finger in his face. “You aren’t going to be near a telephone, baby doll. Not for a long time.”
“Want to bet on it?” he chided.
“Don’t ever doubt it!” she said severely. “You’re mine, darling, all mine, to do with as I please. And when I’m done with you, you won’t be allowed to live five minutes longer. I own you like a farmer owns a cow!”
“There’s a slight difference,” Horne reminded her stiffly, “between me and a cow.”
“So there is.” Keen, ribald amusement rippled across her attractive face. She chose to misinterpret his protest. “Yes, I’ll concede that. Wrong sex.”
“That isn’t what I meant—”
“But I do,” she snapped back. “As you’ll discover. You’ll have to earn your keep, Jack.” She pointed to the dash compartment. “Get me a cigarette. Want one?”
“No.” He put a cigarette between her lips and held a match to it. She thanked him by blowing smoke in his face.
“Let’s get back to Channy.”
“That ass! Why talk about him? He served a purpose.”
“I want to talk about him because he interests me. He is the weak link in the chain. And I’m going to use him, redhead, to smash your racket.”
She shrugged. “The name is Betty.”
“If Channy had lived — what then?”
“He would have been useful as an errand boy.”
“You paid him too much money to run errands. He had a pretty good income since he appeared in Boone some years ago.”
The girl sent him a sidewise glance.
“A moment ago you said I was crazy, that you didn’t believe all this.”
“I can believe the parts I witnessed. What about Channy’s wife?” He asked that for the reaction, knowing well Channy never actually had a wife.
She shook her head. “Not married.”
“No?” Horne ran his tongue between his teeth and felt pleasure in delivering the jolt. “Then why did he come to see me about a divorce?”
Her auburn head jerked around towards him, startled.
Abruptly, she peered out the window for a place to stop. A darkened filling station loomed up on the side of the road after a few minutes of tense, pregnant silence. She braked the Buick and pulled off the road, letting the car roll to a stop by a locked gasoline pump. There were no lights around them.
And then she faced him, pulling her knees up on the seat between them.
Sharply, “Channy visited you? When?”
“The morning of the same day you killed him.”
“What did he want?”
“A divorce, he said.”