grandfather back in the eighties, but I’d always been pretty sure he had another place somewhere, for he could disappear right here in town at times and nobody could find him. It wasn’t any of my business, however, and I’d never thought about it much except to wonder once or twice why he didn’t marry the girl, whoever she was. Maybe he didn’t believe in marriage.
I finished the drink and went into the bedroom to throw on some clothes. The car was still in the driveway, and I backed out and headed across town. Apartment 3 had a private entrance. I pressed the buzzer and the door clicked. There was a short hall at the top of the stairs, and the door to the living-room was on the left. It was a big room on the corner of the building, looking out into both streets, but the curtains were drawn now and the Lights were on, for it was dusk outside.
It was beautifully furnished, with a beige rug and blond furniture, a big console phonograph, and shelves full of record albums and books, but the two things that would hit you in the eye as you walked into it would be first the girl, and then the guns. She was on the sofa with her legs curled under her, and as I came in she uncoiled and stood up with the connected flow of movement of a cat turning on a rug, a small girl with a vital, somehow reckless face and short-cropped hair in tight rings close to her head like curling chips of copper. She was wearing a blue dressing gown that just touched the floor under her feet and was pulled chastely together at the base of a creamy throat with a large silver pin in the shape of an Oriental sword. I had seen her around town a number of times, driving a Lincoln convertible, but never had known who she was except that someone had said she was married to an Army engineer working on something in Alaska. The story had probably been started by Buford.
“Mr. Marshall?” she asked, smiling. “I’m Dinah.”
“How do you do?” I said.
She saw me looking around inquiringly. “Mr. Buford is out in the kitchen mixing a drink. He won’t let me do it; he says no woman should ever be trusted with a loaded gun or a cocktail shaker.”
I nodded, and looked around at the wall. She must have seen the wonder on my face, for she laughed.
“How do you like my gun collection?” I looked back at her and saw the amusement in the gray eyes. Somehow you got the idea that the very incongruity of it tickled her probably as much as it did Buford, this idea of a girl’s apartment—traditional in every other respect, secluded, anonymous, tastefully furnished—with one whole wall covered with guns. There were expensive shotguns, which he used during the bird season, rifles all the way from .22’s to large-caliber things I’d never seen before, and a beautiful collection of antique firearms probably going back to Revolutionary days.
“They’re nice,” I said. Any other time I would have gone over and looked at them more closely and probably would have paid more attention to her, this amazing flame-haired figurine who found amusement in sharing a love nest with an arsenal, but right now I had too many other things on my mind. Impatience was making me jumpy and I wished Buford would come on and tell me what he thought was so damned important and get it over with so I could go on with what I wanted to do, get over to the courthouse and find out what I could about Shevlin.
He came in then with three highballs on a tray. “Hello, Jack,” he said, quite calmly, and I knew that if he intended bawling me out any more about running off that way he wasn’t going to do it in front of the girl. He was always an odd one; he was dangerous enough to kill you if the necessity for it ever arose, but there wouldn’t be any breach of good manners.
We sat down and he got right to it. Lighting a cigar, he looked at me across the coffee table. “Don’t worry about Dianne,” he said, which meant we could talk freely in front of her.
It seemed to me she had said her name was Dinah, but I let it go. “What happened?” I asked.
“It’s your friend Abbie Bell. She’s in