Man on a leash - By Charles Williams Page 0,13

you know we wouldn’t have searched it. “I wish I could offer you a drink or something.”

“You know, I could use a beer. He always kept some Tuborg in the refrigerator.”

“I’ll see.” He went out into the kitchen. There were several bottles of beer. He listened intently for the sound of the latches, but her continued chatter would have covered it if there were any. Somehow he’d have to get a peek into that straw handbag. He found some glasses and a bottle opener and poured the beer. He went back, and on the opposite side of the case from her there was just a fraction of an inch of brown silk showing where she hadn’t got all the robe back in. He handed her the glass and sat down.

“Thank you, Eric.” She smiled. “As I was saying, he was the most fascinating man I ever met—”

“You’d better run it through a laundromat before you wear it again,” he said.

“What?” Just for a second the confusion showed. “I don’t understand— Wear what?”

“The doily. It’s been shut up in a suitcase for two weeks with a box of cigars. It’ll smell like the end of a four-day poker game.”

“Well!” The outrage was just about to become airborne when it collapsed in a gurgle of amusement that gave way to laughter. “Oh, crap! So you had found it.” She lifted the hairpiece from her handbag, sniffed it, made a face, and dropped it back.

“It was a stupid thing to try, anyway,” he said. “Brubaker’s bound to have seen it when he searched the house, and he’ll know you were the only one who had a chance to get it back.”

She shrugged, took a pack of filter cigarettes from the handbag, and lighted one. “Brubaker could already make a damned good guess whose it is, but he’s not about to.”

“Why not?”

“He’d have to be ready to prove it, for one thing, unless he likes the odor of singed tail feathers. Also, he’d have to be damned sure it had anything to do with what happened to your father. Which it didn’t.”

“That remains to be seen. But he could sure as hell sweat some answers out of you about what the old man was doing in San Francisco and why he needed that money.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t in San Francisco with him.”

“Sure. You just loaned him the rug. He was going to audition for a job at Finocchio’s—”

“Oh, I was with him, all right, but it was in Las Vegas.”

“What? I mean—when?”

“Before he went to San Francisco. We drove down on the Fourth—”

“Hold it. You say you drove? Which car?”

“His.”

“How far is it?”

“Four hundred and five miles. We checked it.”

“Excuse me a minute.” He strode out to the garage and opened the door of the Mercedes to check the figures again: 13,937 less 13,073 was—864. Twice 405 was 810. That left only 54 miles unaccounted for.

“What is it?” She had come out and was standing in the kitchen doorway.

He indicated the service sticker. “He couldn’t have driven the car to San Francisco. Or even to Reno to take a plane.” He repeated the figures. “So how did he get there?”

“Maybe somebody else drove him to the airport.”

“You’d think whoever it was would have said so by this time. Anyway, Brubaker checked the airlines; he had no reservation any time in that period.”

She frowned. “Well, we’d better tell him. I didn’t know about this mileage bit.”

“I’ll do it. Maybe he won’t lean on me for the name.”

“Oh, hell, that’s all right. I mean, if it’s important to the investigation. I’m not married, now. Or running for the school board.”

“Was the car this dusty when you got back?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was dark. But I don’t see why it would have been; we certainly didn’t drive on any country roads, going or coming, and it wasn’t dusty like that when we got there.”

He nodded. Then a good part of that 54 miles had been on a dirt road. They went back to the living room, and he retrieved his beer. “How long did you stay in Las Vegas?” he asked.

“That night and the next day. I think we started back around eleven P.M. Anyway, he let me off at my place just a few minutes before five A.M.” She sighed. “Forty hours with about two hours’ sleep. God, I’m glad I didn’t have to try to keep up with him when he was twenty-eight—”

“Wait a minute,” Romstead interrupted. “That’d have