“Did your father normally carry considerable sums of money with him-say, over two hundred dollars?”
“Sometimes, for traveling expenses. I tried to get him to use traveler’s checks, but he found them too much bother.” She looked up and asked a question of her own. “Was that what he was killed for-a few dollars?” she asked. There was bitterness in her voice and her lips seemed to quiver as she spoke. Her eyes grew wet again.
“I very much doubt it, Miss Mantoli,” Tibbs answered her. “There are three other strong possibilities, at least, that will have to be investigated. But I don’t think it was that.”
Grace Endicott interrupted. “Mr. Tibbs, I appreciate what you are doing for us, but may I make a suggestion: perhaps we can answer most of your questions between us and spare Duena. The shock has been a terrible thing for her; I know you understand that.”
“Of course I do,” Tibbs acknowledged. “After Miss Mantoli has had a chance to recover somewhat, I can talk to her-if I need to.”
Grace Endicott held out her hand to the girl. “Come on in and lie down,” she invited.
The girl stood up, but shook her head. “I’d rather go outside for a little while,” she said. “I know it’s hot, but I want to go outside. Please.”
The older woman understood. “I’ll get you a hat,” she suggested, “something to protect your head from the sun. You’ll need that.” As the two women left the room, George Endicott said, “I don’t like her out there alone. We’re well isolated up here, but until this thing is cleared up, I don’t want to take any chances-none whatsoever. Eric, would you please …” Then he stopped.
Sam Wood felt something pulse through him that he had never experienced before. Quietly he got to his feet. “Let me go with her,” he volunteered. He was almost twice Kaufmann’s size and he was an officer of the law, in uniform or not. The responsibility was his.
“I’m perfectly capable-” Kaufmann began.
“You will probably be needed here,” George Endicott reminded him. Sam took this to mean his offer had been accepted. He nodded to Endicott and walked toward the front door. He knew there would be no danger outside in the bright light of day, and he almost regretted it. He would have preferred to have been in uniform so that his weapon would be conspicuously in sight to give the girl confidence. As it was, he was simply a good-size man in a business suit. Grace Endicott reappeared with Duena Mantoli. The girl had on a large-brimmed summer hat in which, despite her evident grief, she looked almost improperly attractive. Sam drew in his breath.
“I’ll escort Miss Mantoli,” he announced firmly.
“Thank you,” Grace Endicott replied. Sam held the door open so that the girl could walk outside.
Without speaking, Duena Mantoli led the way around the house and to the beginning of a little footpath on the opposite side from the entrance drive. It led down the hillside at a gentle angle for two or three hundred feet and ended at a littie roofed lookout platform which Sam had not known was there. It was set in an indentation in the hillside so that it was screened from above and both sides, with a bench seat built at its rear so that anyone who wished to could sit there unobserved and look out over the Great Smokies.
Duena seated herself quietly and pulled her skirt over to indicate that Sam was permitted to sit beside her. Sam sat down, folded his hands, and looked out at the miles of country before him. He knew why the girl had come here: because this place seemed to be perched on the edge of the infinite; it was impossible to look out over the marching mountains and not feel that beyond the horizon they went on forever.
They sat quietly together for some moments; then, without preamble, the girl asked a question. “You found my father’s body, didn’t you?”
“Are you sure you want to talk about it?” Sam asked.
“I want to know,” the girl answered him. “Did you find his body?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where was it?”
Sam hesitated before he answered. “In the middle of the highway.”
“Could he have been struck by a car?”
“No.” Sam paused, wondering how much more he should add. “He had been struck from behind with a blunt instrument. His stick was beside him-his cane, I mean. That might have been it.”
“Was it”-the girl hesitated and chose her words carefully-”instantaneous?” For the first time she turned her head and looked at him.
Sam nodded. “Not only that, but he had no knowledge, I’m sure, no pain.”
The girl gripped the edge of the bench with long, slender fingers and looked out once more at the mountain panorama before her. “He wasn’t a big man, or important,” she said half to the silent hills. “All his life he hoped and worked for the big break. This would have been it, his chance to be somebody in music. It’s a hard world and it’s almost impossible to get anywhere unless you somehow manage to belong to just the right group. Whoever killed my father killed all of his hopes and dreams-just before they were all to have come true.” She stopped speaking, but she continued to stare straight ahead. Sam looked at her carefully and was angry with himself for, at a time like this, deciding she was beautiful. He wanted desperately to offer her his protection, to let her cry on his ample shoulder if she wanted to, to hold her hand in a reassuring grip.
What he could not do physically, he tried to do with words. “Miss Mantoli, I want to tell you something that may help, just a little. All of us in the police department are going to do our best, no matter how hard we have to work, to find and punish the person responsible. That isn’t much comfort for you, but it might help a little.”
“You’re very kind, Mr. Wood,” she said, as though she was really thinking of something else. “Is Mr. Tibbs’s being here going to cause you any trouble?” she asked abruptly.
Sam wrinkled his brow for a moment. “Truthfully, that’s hard to answer. I honestly don’t know.”
“Because he’s a Negro.”
“Yes, because he’s black. You know how we feel about things like that down here.”
When the girl looked at him steadily and evenly, Sam felt a sudden emotion he could not analyze. “I know,” she said. “Some people don’t like Italians; they think we’re different, you know. Oh, they’ll make an exception for a Toscanini or a Sophia Loren, but the rest of us are supposed to be vegetable peddlers or else gangsters.” She pushed back her hair carelessly with one hand, looked away from him out over the mountains.
“Perhaps we ought to go back,” Sam suggested, acutely uncomfortable.
The girl rose to her feet. “I suppose so. Thank you for coming with me,” she said. “It helped.”
As they reached the door of the house, it opened and Eric Kaufmann appeared. He held it open for Virgil Tibbs, who followed him, and then made a particular point of carefully shaking hands. Even Sam realized it was formal patronizing. “Mr. Tibbs,” Kaufmann said in a voice loud enough for Sam and the girl to hear, “I don’t care what it costs or what you have to do. I’m not a rich man, but I’ll stop at nothing to see that the murder-that the person who did what he did to the maestro is captured and made to pay.” His voice broke. “To strike him down like that, a man like him! Not even to give him a chance. Please, do your very best!”
Sam wondered how much of the speech was sincere and how much was calculated to impress the girl. He must know her well, Sam thought, and perhaps … He did not let himself finish the thought. Unreasonably he wished that the girl had somehow risen out of the ground that day so that he might be the first to know her and to take care of her.
He decided he was losing his grip and it was time to toughen up.
Virgil Tibbs excused himself and they climbed into the car. Sam started the engine and turned down the road that led back to the city. When they were safely out of range of the house, he spoke. “Did you make any progress?”