Kruslov gave a grunt of satisfaction. “There’s a new fact. It could mean something. Did the car lights shine on you?”
“Yes they did. The top was down. I’ll tell you more than I have to, Captain. At the moment we were illuminated, I happened to be kissing Miss Olan.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I kiss her goodnight. Now here’s some more while we’re at it. We made a date to go up to the lake yesterday. I went anyway, thinking she’d show up. She was going to pick me up at noon. It was entirely possible that I would have been pounding my ear, so I gave her a key. I went in and got it, and took it out to her. So that if I was still sleeping she could come in and drag me out of the sack so we wouldn’t be held up. But I assure you, Captain, that the key I gave her is not the love nest key she spoke to Miss Bettiger about. I had no such designs on Miss Olan. No, that doesn’t sound right. I had designs, I’m that normal. But they didn’t include setting up a menage of that special type.”
The phone on the free form desk rang. The police stenographer jumped, picked it up timidly, spoke into it in an inaudible voice.
He held the phone out. “For you, Captain sir.”
Kruslov walked heavily over and took the phone. “Yes...? Yes... I see... Where...? No, that’s okay... Yes, I’ll tell them.”
He hung up. He had his own little sense of drama. He walked back to the middle of the room and said, “They found her.”
“Is she all right?” Uncle Willy asked.
“She was strangled to death. Probably some time Saturday night. Her body was dumped in the brush up in the hills, a half mile or so off the main road. Damnedest thing. There was a troop of Brownies on a hike yesterday. What the hell are Brownies? One little girl wandered off and saw the body and was too scared to tell anybody. Today she was so upset her mother finally got her to talk and drove her up there to prove it was just the little girl’s imagination. But it wasn’t. She got hold of the state troopers.”
In the long silence Willy said softly, “Oh my God.”
Myrna leaned forward and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook gently. I looked over at the Raymonds. Nancy held her head high, her face tilted slightly upward. From a long high window, a sort of skylight effect, the light of the pale grey day came down, touching the delicacy of her face, the parted lips. Cherry glow of fire made a highlight on the soft line of her jaw. It was a face almost without expression, clear, clean and perfect. If there was any expression, it was as though she listened for some expected sound. Dodd sat with his head bent, staring at his large clenched fist as though he held something small there, captive.
Stine had a high weak voice. “Willy, I’ll tell you this. I’ll tell you this definitely. And Jud Sutton will back me up, I know. No man assigned to this case is going to get a complete night’s rest until we’ve got the person or persons who did this thing.”
“I appreciate that, Tom,” Willy Pryor said in a low voice. He turned and faced the fire, hard brown hands locked behind him.
Kruslov broke into the mood with his heavy factual voice. “We’ll forget the kidnaping angle for right now. Let’s all put our heads together as long as we’re here and figure out who might want to kill that girl. Who hates her?”
Miss Bettiger, surprisingly, was the one who answered. “I guess I, or nearly anybody who knew Mary, could make out a list of the people who didn’t like her. She didn’t go around trying to make friends. She had a lot of friends, but she snubbed a lot of people. Phonies, mostly. People who wanted to be seen with her and sponge off her. She got that income from the trust funds and...”
“How much income?” Kruslov asked.
Willy, without turning, said, “Sixty thousand a year. She didn’t throw it away. She had her own investment program. Got money sense from her father, I guess. She was getting a good return from her own investments and reinvesting that too.”
“Who gets it now?” Kruslov asked. I could understand why Stine and Sutton had brought him along. He could ask the ugly questions they couldn’t ask because of their personal relationship with the Pryors.
Willy turned and gave him a look of mild surprise. “I guess that what the government doesn’t get will stay in the family. We’ll get it. If I remember Rolph’s will correctly, it set up trust funds for Nadine, John and Mary. I guess Rolph considered each settlement ample, because in the case of the death of any of them — the children without issue — Myrna and I, or our children, were named as residual legatees.”
“Wouldn’t he have wanted to leave it all to his kids, to the survivor?” Kruslov asked.
Willy’s face hardened. “I have no idea what was in his mind, my good man. It may be that he remembered, at the time he made out his will, that he married Pryor money at a time when he needed it very badly to save the Olan interests. Perhaps he felt that it was proper, after providing for his wife and children adequately, to see that in case of common disaster or the death of any of them, the money would revert to the Pryor family. The Citizens Bank and Trust acts as executor. If you check with them you will find that the estate has not been entirely settled, even after sixteen years, due to the unfortunate illness of my sister. Furthermore, Captain, I can assure you that we do not need the money. I assume you can check that fact somehow.”
Kruslov refused to be backed down. I had to admire his stolid dignity. “Thanks for the information, Mr. Pryor. I will have to have a list of the men Miss Olan has been going out with.”
“I can tell you that,” Miss Bettiger said. “At least I can tell you who she’s gone out with since she got back from Spain in February.”
“How long was she in Spain?”
“Six months,” Willy said. “I disapproved of her going on a trip like that alone. She was restless. I couldn’t stop her.”
Bettiger frowned into the fire. “Let’s see. Bill Mulligan. Don Rhoades. Mr. Sewell.” She looked apprehensively at Willy. “There’s one other, but...”
“But what?” Kruslov asked, moving closer to her.
“I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
“I’ll have to know that name, Miss Bettson.”
She looked at Kruslov with exasperation, but didn’t correct him. “All right, but there goes a good job. Nels Yeagger.”
Willy’s brown face turned the color of a brick. “That’s a damn lie!”
“It’s not a damn lie!” Miss Bettiger shrilled. “And don’t try to call me a liar, Willy Pryor.”
“Who is this guy?” Kruslov demanded.
“He works at our place at Smith Lake,” Willy said. “He takes care of the boats and does odd jobs. Mary wouldn’t...”
“But she did,” Bettiger said. “She went out with him quite a few times. She’d drive up there and meet him before you opened the place at the lake. He was crazy about her. She told me about it. She stopped going out with him because she said he had started to bore her. He was beginning to act jealous and possessive, and that was the one thing Mary never could stand.”
Kruslov said, as though speaking to himself, “The body wasn’t far off the main road between here and Smith Lake. Jealous.” He turned and nodded at Hilver. Hilver left his post by the far wall and headed toward the door.
At the door Hilver stopped and said, “The state boys?”
“No. This is ours. Take Watson along and pick him up yourself and bring him in. Any more, Miss Bettiger?”
“No more that I know of. I think I know them all. We... always told each other everything. Gosh, it’s going to seem kind of...” She dived into her purse for a handkerchief.
The more I thought about it, the better Yeagger fitted the role of murderer. He’d seen me with her up there at the lake. And I remembered a rather awkward little incident. It had happened the first time I went there with her. We were looking for somebody, I forget who. We’d walked up to the horse barn. Mary was wearing slacks. When she went in ahead of me I told her that she’d missed one of her belt loops in the back. She had stopped at once and said, “So fix it!”