Cautiously, he stepped out into the open. Ernestine was waiting for him, her great bulk hunched behind the wheel and her eyes appraising him with strict distrust.
“I brought food,” she said, nodding to the back seat. “You’d better eat before we start talking business.”
Eagerly, he wolfed a sandwich and drank a can of beer. When he was through, she studied him intently and asked: “All right, why’d you kill that woman?”
“I told you, it wasn’t me.”
“Then what were you doing there?”
He got up, thrust his hands into his pockets and began pacing. “Giving her background for a prison novel.”
Someone, he went on, had told her about him. She’d come to the landscaping firm one day and offered to criticize his stories if he’d tell her about life in prison. It had seemed like a big break, having a famous writer criticize his work, but after a while it dawned on him that she was just using him. She spent hardly any time reading his stories, but most of her time getting him to describe what it was like being a convict.
“But she was attractive, wasn’t she?”
“I suppose so. What are you getting at?”
“The state’s case may be built on the theory that you made advances, and she resisted.”
The notion shocked Ben. “A woman that age? But I wouldn’t—”
“Nobody knows,” Ernestine said coldly, “what you would or wouldn’t. Tell me what happened when you saw her yesterday morning.”
“Well, as usual, she started asking questions, but she had something else on her mind. She didn’t even hear my answers. Finally she told me to leave.”
“Any boats or swimmers nearby?”
“No. A storm was coming. It’s why I got the day off.”
“Could anyone have been hiding inside the house while you were there? Someone who came out later and killed her?”
“In that little place? I don’t see how, not without her knowing. And if she was hiding someone, why’d she let me hang around so long? She could have told me to go right off.”
“A good point,” Ernestine replied, “and all the more reason you should have turned yourself in as soon as you heard about the murder. The longer you stay in hiding, the worse it looks for you.”
“I know,” Ben admitted. “And I promise, I’ll let you turn me in. But not now and not here. I’ve heard stories about what goes on in this jail. The mayor and the police chief are real rough on anyone they think gives the town a bad name. If it comes to that, I’ll surrender someplace else and be brought here under guard, with you and the newspaper guys watching everything that happens.”
“What do you mean, If it comes to that’?” she demanded.
“I think I know who killed her.”
Ernestine’s brows arched in surprise.
“Well, not his name or what he looks like,” Ben went on hastily, “but she was seeing a man on a regular basis. He left signs. For instance, he smoked a pipe. Sometimes I’d smell stale smoke or see ashes. If she had a lover it was none of my business, so I didn’t say anything. And once I saw a man’s black raincoat, with a red-plaid lining, hanging in a closet. It had rained the day before, and I guess he forgot the coat.”
Ben searched his memory further.
“And there was something else. When I was walking to see her one day, a guy in a little purple sports car barreled out of her driveway in a big hurry, like he was real sore. That day, she didn’t even talk to me. They must have just had a big argument. So this guy smokes a pipe, has a raincoat with a red lining and drives—”
“What guy?” Angrily, Ernestine pounded a fist on the dashboard. “Ben, so far you haven’t shown me how there could be any other guy. For your information, Dr. Von Wythe, one of the state’s most highly regarded pathologists, said Maxine Treadway died between nine-thirty and eleven. A road crew was in front of her place all that time. Except for you, nobody could have gotten on or off the property.”
“I don’t care what anyone says,” Ben responded stubbornly. “Somehow, the guy did get into the cottage without being seen. I don’t know how he managed it, but if we knew who he was, maybe we could figure it out.” He paused. “Anyhow, before I give up, I want to try to learn his name, so the police will have something to work on.”
“How’ll you do that?”
“By reading Maxine’s journals. She told me she’d kept journals of all the important things that ever happened to her — names, dates, places, everything, even the personal stuff. She said she didn’t have time to make entries every day, but she brought them up to date every month or so. One day, she planned to edit them down into an autobiography.”
“Where are these journals?”
“In her studio at State College, where she was writer-in-residence. I was there once. It’s on a quiet side street and I think I could break in easily.”
“You,” Ernestine wondered incredulously, “are now asking me to help you commit a burglary?”
“Oh, no, no,” he assured her, “I’ll do that alone. I’ve already made you take too many chances, and you’d be in an awful jam if we were picked up together. We’ll wait here until dark. Then I’ll take you to town, let you off and drive to the campus. It’s only about sixty miles. I should be there in an hour. If the police pick you up, just say you tried to talk me into surrendering and I stole your car. If they catch me, that’s what I’ll say too.”
“Uh-huh. But why not just tell the police about the journals and let them learn the man’s name?”
“They might not believe me. Even if they did, by the time they got around to looking, someone else might have them. Her ex-husband, maybe. There must be a lot about him in those journals he wouldn’t want anyone to know. Or maybe even the guy who really killed her.”
“It’s true,” Ernestine mused, “that Mayfield is here. According to the last newscast, he and his party arrived on a chartered jet and went to some fancy motel, the Ajax. But suppose you don’t find her journals? Or this man’s name isn’t in them?”
“No matter what I find, at ten o’clock I’ll phone the all-night drugstore, say its an emergency and ask the clerk to page ‘Mrs. Robinson.’ That’ll be you. We’ll arrange for me to pick you up and then work out the details of the surrender. If I don’t call, it means the police got me.”
Ernestine thought it over. Then she shook her head. “No,” she announced emphatically. “I won’t have anything to do with it. There are absolutely, positively, no conceivable circumstances under which you could talk me into going along with such a crazy scheme...” but several hours later, she stood moodily alongside a road at the resort town’s outskirts and watched the taillights of her rented car receding into the dusk.
Wearily, she began hiking toward town until, a mile or so to her right, she observed a giant electric sign jutting into the sky: AJAX MOTOR INN.
That’s where Warren Mayfield was staying. If anyone could shed some insight into Maxine Treadway’s character, either confirming or denying the possibility of Ben’s story being true, it would be Maxine’s ex-husband...
A. A. Ajax, President Ajax Motor Inns Corp.
Wilmington, Del.
Dear Mr. Ajax:
As manager of your North Woods motor inn, I wanted to report on tonight’s riot while the details are still fresh in my mind.
Warren Mayfield’s party came down to the lounge at about six o’clock. There were about two dozen people with him, friends and retainers from California. To shield them from curiosity seekers, I put them in a small banquet room, gave them their own bar and bartender and sent in some hors d’oeuvres. This seemed advisable since the main lounge was occupied mostly by a sportsmen’s group, a somewhat rowdy crowd.