“Never mind, June,” Eads said. “The sooner Mr. Selby finishes his little third degree, the sooner he’ll go away.”
“Aside from being an all-around nice guy,” I said, “did Yeager have any real enemies?”
“Just how real?” Eads asked with a grunt.
“Real enough to want him dead.”
He stared at me a long moment, his moon face as devoid of expression as a pink balloon. Then he let his breath out very softly and nodded. “So that’s what happened,” he said, as if to himself. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
June Courtney sat very still. Her lips moved as if she were about to say something; then she caught herself, raised her glass, and drank steadily until it was empty.
“Why didn’t you say he was dead to begin with?” Eads asked. “How come you talked as if he were still alive?”
“That’s the way I wanted to handle it,” I said. “What about those enemies?”
He shrugged. “Yeager was an easy guy to hate, all right. But kill him? Maybe somebody did hate the buy that much, I don’t know.”
I looked at the girl. “How about you, Miss Courtney?”
She shook her head, and then sat looking down into her empty glass, revolving it slowly with the tips of her fingers.
The smile at the corners of Eads’ eyes had finally reached his mouth. “God bless all happy endings,” he said. “Drink up, June. We’ve lost our number one headache.”
“My glass is empty,” June said, her face brightening a little. “See?”
“Here,” Eads said. He reached for her glass, poured a little of his own drink into it, and handed it back to her. “Happy days!”
“Happy days,” June said. They touched glasses, smiled at each other, and drank.
“Well, now,” Eads said. “Things are looking up again.”
“I didn’t realize I’d brought such good news,” I said.
“Well, you did,” Eads said. “Everybody will be better off now — including Larry Yeager.”
“Yes,” June said, pressing up close against Eads. “It’s the best thing that could have happened.”
Eads laughed. “Why be hypocritical?” he said. “Have a drink, Selby. Join the celebration.”
“Thanks just the same,” I said as I slid out of the booth and turned in the direction of the street door. “Some other time.”
“Sorry you can’t stay,” Eads said. “See you on opening night, right?”
“Of course,” I said.
I walked out to the Plymouth, got inside, and sat there mulling things over for a while.
Since I was already in the neighborhood, I decided I might just as well have a talk with Larry Yeager’s ex-wife.
I took out my notebook and found the entry I’d made about her at Yeager’s apartment, but it didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t remembered. Her first name was Reba, and after divorcing Yeager she had married a man named Arnold Daniels and was now divorced from him too.
IV
The woman who answered my knock on the door of apartment 4D had the kind of beauty that makes you look a second time to make sure your eyes weren’t kidding you the first time. She was about thirty, with gray-green eyes beneath incredibly long lashes, shoulder-length auburn hair with gold highlights in it, and the body of a girl of eighteen.
There wasn’t any question about the body. She was wearing a white shorts-and-halter getup which, had she worn it on the street, would have gotten her arrested.
“Mrs. Daniels?” I asked.
She nodded. “What is it, please?”
“Detective Selby,” I said, showing her my shield. “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. May I come in?”
“Yes, of course.” She held the door for me as I entered, then closed it and leaned back against it. “What’s happened?”
“All right if we sit down?”
She crossed to a white leather sofa, and sat down at one end of it. I sat down in one of the matching leather chairs and got out my book.
I’d noticed an almost inaudible whining sound when I came in, but I’d thought it had come from the street. Now I realized it was in the room itself.
“What’s that?” I asked. “It sounds like some kind of motor.”
“It is,” she said, smiling a little. “Don’t you recognize a Mercedes when you hear one?”
“Not every time,” I said.
“It’s on a record,” she said, gesturing toward a console at the far end of the room. “I turned it down before I answered the door.”
“I see,” I said. “And you sit around listening to the sound of car engines on records?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “We all do. We sports car buffs. I have an Austin-Healey myself.” She gestured again, this time toward a glass cabinet filled with loving cups and plaques and silver platters. “Those are some of the things I’ve won. Not in races, though. Rallies and gymkhanas. Concours d’Elégance. That sort of thing.” She drew one bare leg up beneath her and leaned back against the cushion. “Just what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Larry Yeager,” I said.
“Larry?” She smiled at me questioningly. “In heaven’s name, why?”
“You were married to him once, weren’t you?”
“Why, yes. But that was ages ago. I haven’t even talked to the man in — why, it must be all of ten or twelve years.”
“I see.”
“Has something happened to him?”
“He’s been killed,” I said. “Murdered.”
She drew her breath in sharply. “Larry? Murdered? Oh, how dreadful!”
“Most murders are,” I said.
“Do you know who did it?”
“No.”
She looked down at the floor, shaking her head, her eyes withdrawn and remote. “Larry dead,” she said softly. “Somehow it just doesn’t seem possible. He was always so... so alive.”
“You said you hadn’t talked to him in ten or twelve years,” I said. “Does that mean you hadn’t even seen him in all that time?”
“I’d seen him, yes. But never to talk to. I saw him on the street a few times, but he didn’t see me.” She paused. “We were together only a few months, you know. We got married just before the war in Korea broke out. Larry was recalled to active duty right away. By the time he came out, we both knew we’d made a mistake. We got a divorce.”
“I understand he had no living relatives.”
“That’s right. He had no one at all.”
“I wonder if you’d mind doing the police a favor, then. In cases like this, we’re supposed to have a next-of-kin identification. Which means we’ve got a problem.”
“I understand,” she said. “I’ll be glad to make the identification for you. Would you want me to do it now?”
“Not right this minute,” I said. “First, I’d like to find out a little about Larry.”
She sighed. “It’s all so strange,” she said. “It’s almost as if I hadn’t ever been married to him at all. Almost as if I’d never even known him. I... I just don’t feel anything.” She smiled faintly. “I suppose that sounds pretty terrible, doesn’t it? But it’s true. I simply don’t feel anything at all.”
“Basically, what kind of person was he?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Well, if you had to say he was one thing more than any other, it would be that he was completely self-centered. He was the most completely selfish person I’ve ever known.”
“Can you think of any habits or ways of his that might have led to trouble?”
She ran the tip of a small pink tongue across her upper lip very slowly, and then shook her head.
“No,” she said.
I put my notebook away. “I appreciate your help, Mrs. Daniels,” I said. “Now, if you’d be good enough to make that trip to Bellevue, we—”