His wife, Myrna, smiled a bit timidly at me. She is a round, warm, dull, comfortable woman. She bore three daughters for Willy, and that seems to have been the extent of her participation in life. No beautician, no couturier could ever make Myrna Pryor look like anything other than precisely what she was — a farm girl from the Highland area. Maybe with his neurotic murderous sister, and all his other highly-charged relatives, Myrna was exactly what Willy had wanted and needed. And it had helped the blood, if the bouncy health of Jigger, Dusty and Skeeter was any indication.
I nodded and spoke to Dodd and Nancy. They sat side by side on a creation neither couch nor chair — something resembling an upholstered coffee table with a back six inches high.
The only other person in the room I knew by sight was the plain clothes partner of the uniformed patrolman who had come to wake me up Sunday morning.
Willy performed the introductions quickly and clearly. The wiry big-handed blonde who looked as if she had been nailed to a barn to dry in the sun was Neale Bettiger, Mary’s golf partner. A wide, impassive, sleepy-eyed man was Captain Joseph Kruslov, in charge of the case. I asked him if he was related to Gus at the plant.
“Brother,” he said.
A tall, stooped, sick-looking man with grey bags under his eyes was Mr. Stine, Commissioner of Public Safety. The plain clothes cop was named Hilver. Chief of Police Sutton was colorless, rolypoly and asthmatic. When he spoke he honked. Willy skipped over a police stenographer sitting stiffly, uncomfortably at a corner desk and introduced me to a mild little guy sitting off by himself. He looked like a frail bank teller until you took the second look. Then you saw the sardonic cut of the mouth, the alive quick eyes, the unexpected thickness of the wrists. “This is Mr. Paul France. He’s a licensed investigator and I’ve asked him to sit in, with Chief Sutton’s permission.”
Willy shooed me to a chair next to the sun-dried blonde, rubbed his hands together and said, “Well, Chief, I guess we can get started.”
“Captain Kruslov will ask some questions,” the chief said.
Kruslov paced to the center of the room. “We called you people together to see if we can come up with anything we missed so far. We’re interested mostly in anybody any of you could have seen hanging around, acting funny, anything like that. We’re sort of thinking of a snatch. We’ll take up this angle first. Miss Bettson?”
“Bettiger. No, I didn’t see a thing. Mary and I played twenty-seven holes. At the end of eighteen we were even in holes and even in score so we played another nine. I won three and two. I didn’t see a thing out of line.”
“How did she act? Same as usual?”
“Oh yes. We gabbed, kidded around, talked about people. She was fine. Nobody was lurking about, if that’s what you mean.”
“Now will you tell the chief and these people what you told Sergeant Hilver this morning.”
Miss Bettiger looked uncomfortable. “Well, I don’t think it was important. It was just talk.”
“Go ahead, please.”
“We talked about men. We do that a lot, I guess, maybe too much. Mary was laughing about what she called her ‘reserve love nest.’ She said there was this man who had been making a big play and he kept trying to give her a key to a place he had rented somewhere in town. She said if she ever wanted to hide, that would be the place, because he wouldn’t dare give her away.”
“Did she tell you his name?”
I did not dare look over at Dodd and Nancy. I was afraid of what I’d see on their faces. “No, she didn’t tell me his name. She just said he’s married. She made a big joke of it.”
Kruslov turned to Mr. Pryor. “Mr. Pryor, do you think Miss Olan could be at that apartment or room or house she spoke of to Miss Bettson?”
“Bettiger,” the girl said.
“Sorry. Miss Bettiger.”
Uncle Willy said hotly, “I think it’s a damned outrage to suggest any such thing. Mary is a good girl. She’s unpredictable, but basically good. She’d be no part of any cheap arrangement like that. If she was I’d... I’d throw her out of my home. I’m raising three daughters here.” I saw the bulge of his brown forearms and was convinced.
“I still think we have to consider that as a possibility,” Captain Kruslov said. “Now, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond. Did you notice anything at all suspicious about Saturday night?”
They looked at each other and I read Nancy’s lips as she said to go ahead. “No,” Dodd said. “It was a perfectly standard evening.”
“Did Miss Olan drink too much?”
“I... well, yes. Frankly, she did.”
“Was she in the habit of drinking too much?”
“No.”
“Why did she drink so much Saturday?”
“I don’t think she intended to. I think she made a mistake ordering. She got thirsty playing golf and she should have started on something tall instead of cocktails.”
“Did you witness the quarrel between her and Mr. Sewell?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Would you tell us about it?”
“That’s very simple. Clint was trying to help her. He wanted her to stop drinking. She got nasty about it, but Clint didn’t. He just kept coaxing her and after she made quite a little scene at the bar, she let him lead her out of there. I thought he handled it rather well. It really wasn’t anything important.”
“A drunken woman is a despicable thing,” Willy said firmly. “It is always important.”
“I mean the quarrel wasn’t important, Mr. Pryor.”
“Did you or your wife notice anyone hanging around, or see anything you thought odd at the time?”
“No sir. I guess we left a few minutes before Mr. Sewell left with Miss Olan. I understand he planned to drive her home and take a cab from here. Later he told me that...”
“Never mind that. You saw nothing out of line.”
“No sir.”
Kruslov turned to me. He moved closer to me than he had to the others. He looked more intent. I gave him exactly the same story I had given the two cops. He took me over it twice. I didn’t especially care for his manner. I wondered if he was getting even for the times I had chewed out his brother.
“So when she drove away you went right to bed.”
“I’ve told you that.”
“What time was it?”
“Two-thirty. Something like that.”
“You went right to sleep.”
“Yes. I was tired.”
“Your landlady says you didn’t get in until four.”
“Does she? I can’t help that. I was in by two-thirty, and asleep by no later than two-thirty-five. She must be mistaken.”
“She is positive that a car drove in at four.”
“Captain, I’m a very sound sleeper. Your sergeant over there can verify that. It is entirely possible that one of my less responsible friends drove in at four and couldn’t wake me and drove away again.”
He dropped that line and went back to the questions he had asked the others. “Did you see anything suspicious? Did any car follow you? Anything like that?”
“No, I didn’t see...”
“What’s the matter?”
“I just remembered something. Mary and I sat out in her car in my driveway for a few minutes and talked. Somebody came into the driveway, backed out and went away. I figured they were just turning around. I just now remembered it.”