Mr. Clay was being fairly helpful in building back-grounds, and Hackett drew him out hopefully. Frank Nestor had once worked as a salesclerk in Clay's sporting-goods shop on Hollywood Boulevard, and they had, Clay said, kept up. Clay only a few years older than Nestor, a friendly, pug-faced little man.
"He was doing real well the last few years, since he got to be a chiropractor. But from what he said here and there, I don't figure he was being just so ethical at it, if that's the word… Oh well, he said once you'd be surprised how you could rook the old folks, selling 'em regular courses of special vitamins and so on, at ten and twenty bucks the bottle. Like that."
That figured right in with what Hackett was beginning to build on Nestor.
"Mind you, I guess most chiropractors are honest, like most M.D. s. I go to one regularly," said Clay, "chiropractor, I mean, for my sacroiliac, and he's good, too. I asked him about it once, after I'd heard Frank say that, and he said it's so, there are a few of 'em just in it for the money-well, like some M.D. s, I suppose-and they rake it in by overcharging for vitamin pills, supposed to be something new and different. I could figure Frank doing that, and just thinking it was smart. And yet you couldn't help liking the guy. He had what they call charm-you know?"
"That kind isn't usually shy with the opposite sex," suggested Hackett.
"Sure as hell he wasn't," agreed Clay. "That I can tell you. I started out feeling sorry for that wife of his, but in spite of everything I couldn't keep it up. And my wife said the same. So, anybody knew them knew he'd married her for the money-her old man was a millionaire, everybody thought then. Turned out he'd lost most of it before he died. Frank was working for me when he married her, you know-six, seven years back. She should've known what kind Frank was, when she'd been married a month. He was making a good salary here, but he always had expensive tastes-and he was always ready for a little session of poker. He didn't go out of his way to be mean to her, just the opposite-he wanted everybody to like him so bad he was nice to everybody, her included. But she just asked for it. Acting like a doormat, you know. Never complaining when he lost the grocery money at cards, or like that. Never standing up for herself, or trying to fix herself up a little. I never could take to the woman somehow… "
It seemed that Nestor, Clay, and several others used to get together for poker a couple of times a month, and Nestor had talked, casually, about his girl friends, about his lucrative practice. "I don't mean he'd come right out with names and details-Frank wouldn't do that. On the women, I mean. But he'd say things like, he had a date with a hot number tomorrow night, or something like that. So I knew he was stepping out on his wife a lot."
"Did he ever mention a name to you at all?"
That was where Clay said again he wouldn't want to get anybody in trouble. "He did, once. About two weeks ago, last time I saw him, matter of fact. He had the tail end of a nice shiner-about three days old, you know-and I asked him about it. He laughed and said, oh, Ruthie's husband had caught up to him."
"Ruthie." There was a Ruth Elger, and an address, in Nestor's address book. "I see."
"I guess at that,” said Clay, "even if he wasn't just so level, at that job, he'd have been good at it. He'd always wanted to be a surgeon, he used to say, and he was good with his hands, any hand work. I understand now it's not like it used to be, this chiropractic thing, a six-week course anybody could take-it's like a regular college course, and they have to take all the pre-med classes. He may have turned quite a few unethical bucks, but he was really interested in it and no fool, you know. I don't know how much it's worth to you, Sergeant, because I couldn't say whether it was so, but he told me once his family had had a lot of money, he'd always had everything, and been going to go to medical school and so on, but after his father died his mother got hooked by some con man and lost it all. He said he'd made up his mind to get his however he could-he was kind of bitter about it."
"And that might figure too," said Hackett. "Could be. Now, you knew him pretty well, Mr. Clay. This could be what it looks like, the break-in after drugs or cash, and the impulsive assault. But not so many burglars carry guns. It could also be a private kill. And generally speaking, in a case of murder, the deceased has done something-or been something-to trigger it off. Could you make any guesses as to who might have wanted Nestor dead? Off the record-just between us."
"Hell," said Clay, "that's a thing to ask me, Sergeant? He looked down at his scarred old desk there in the back room of his store, the untidy pile of invoices, business letters. "I don't know about any-you know-specific person. Far as I know, everybody liked Frank just line. But I'll say this much. If it was like that, the private reason like you say, I'd make a guess that it was most likely over some woman. Some girl's husband or boy friend. He liked the girls-and they liked him."
"Yes. What about his wife? Do you think she-felt anything about him any more? Enough to-"
"His wife? Hell, I don't know," said Clay doubtfully. "That's-well, I don't know, I never could read that woman." That makes two of us, thought Hackett. He wanted to see Andrea Nestor again. "You think a woman might have-Lord, what a hell of a thing, old Frank getting murdered… "
"Well, we'll see what turns up," said Hackett. He thanked Clay and went out to his car. One of the new Traffic Maids, on her three-wheeled cycle, was righteously making out an overparking ticket for him. Without compunction Hackett pulled rank on her and got the ticket torn up. No millionaire indeed, with another one coming along he needed every dollar he earned.
What, he wondered again, had Nestor wanted with a sterilizer? Chiropractors weren't allowed to give shots or do anything they'd need surgical tools for, were they? Instruments that would have to be sterilized. There was just the glimmer of an idea in his mind about that, but resignedly he thought there'd be no way to prove it-now. That Corliss woman. He could kick himself for such stupid carelessness, leaving the place wide open… He wanted to see her again too. And he wanted another try at that desk clerk in the Third Street hotel, the man who'd been on the desk when the Slasher signed for a room. The man was hardly the world's greatest brain but he must have noticed more about the Slasher than he claimed to remember.
Hackett ruminated behind the wheel, uncertain where to go from here. There were a lot more places to look, on the Nestor thing, than there were on the Slasher. But that one was the one most urgent to catch up to. God, yes.
The prints in Nestor's office had been mostly his and Margaret Corliss'. It would be largely wasted effort, probably, to track down all his patients and get their prints to compare to the unknown ones in the office; probably X had worn gloves or wiped off anything he'd touched. If it had been the casual thief, why hadn't he taken Nestor's star-sapphire ring and jade tie clasp, along with the cash? Of course, it could have been juveniles after drugs; in the dark they wouldn't notice from the sign that Nestor had been a chiropractor and wouldn't have any drugs on the premises. But…
Margaret Corliss had said at first that she'd come to call and put off the patients because-how had she put it?-it would be awkward having them come in while the police were there. And then later on she'd said that there never were any patients on Wednesdays. Hackett got out his notebook, turned to the page where he'd written down the facts of that odd little encounter with Miss Corliss, and added that one.
That button. By the thread hanging from it, maybe already loose; so when Nestor saw the gun, made a grab for it, he got the button instead? Button from, probably, a man's jacket. Just an ordinary dark gray button.