“If you’re trying to say—”
“I’m not trying to say anything, I’m saying it!”
“But this is ridiculous.”
“Save your opinions. You’ll have a chance to air ’em — plenty of chance — before this thing’s cleared up.” He strode across the thick carpet, stopping once before Bina. “Want to come home?”
Bina answered, feeling she was talking to a stranger in a horrible dream, “No, Lefty.”
At the door, he muttered a last, harsh epithet before he slammed out. “Lobster thermador!”
Bina’s fears melted during the crazy-quilt evening. Wonderous luxury of steaming bath and exquisite food. Fussed over by a solicitous Toto and a gay and gentle Jerry. Then suddenly choking on the lobster because it conjured up a vision of one of Clarissa’s formal dinners.
Sharing the phone with Jerry to answer Marge Norris’ welcoming call, which was followed by other calls from friends Marge had alerted. Exulting with him that Marge, one of Clarissa’s close friends, had chosen to use her influence to ease them back into her — and Jerry’s — crowd.
And then, between the glowing plans and warm chit-chat, stretches of frightened hopelessness. What lay beneath Lefty’s grim warning? Did he expect Jerry would be actually indicted for Clarissa’s murder? And that she herself would be accused—
Finally, in the privacy of their room, Jerry’s smiling caress. “Thanks for staying with me.”
She slid out of her robe, tucked the top of her pajamas into the pants, and did backflips. Try and cry doing backflips. Then she rolled back onto her shoulders, stretched slim legs toward the ceiling and did a fast bicycle routine.
“You haven’t asked me,” she said thickly, still standing on her head, “if I dropped those two pieces of jade.”
Jerry was laying out his clothes for morning, placing the socks neatly beside the tie. “Are you kidding?” he said indulgently.
She stared at him, then lowered her feet to the floor and sat up to stare at him right side up. All evening she had felt he was covering up anxiety for her sake, but this was an awfully good job.
He grinned at her a little ruefully as he helped her up “Didn’t you see through Lefty’s trick?”
“Trick?”
“I expected something of the sort. But nothing quite so — brutal. You may have noticed, sweet, he doesn’t like me. And the way I see it, it’s not just a natural antipathy. It’s more like a... well, an occupational allergy.
“A rich man can’t endure a pauper son-in-law. A Professor abhors getting stuck with a ditch-digging relative. To Lefty’s cops-eye-view, that piece of jade, that bump on the head, are unsolved clues, making Clarissa’s death a possible murder. And me — since she was having me checked — a likely suspect.”
“A murder suspect,” Bina said, thoughtfully. “And a police officer couldn’t stand drawing a murder suspect for a son-in-law. That may be it. I’ve never seen dad so wrought up. But I still don’t see what trick—”
“The second piece of jade, of course! He found it so conveniently — where it would do us the most harm. You notice he didn’t turn it into the Chief.”
“But Wednesday—”
“He won’t turn it in Wednesday either. Because there is no piece of jade. He wants you to lie awake worrying tonight. And tomorrow he’ll make a bargain with you. If you’ll agree to come home he won’t turn the ‘evidence’ in.”
Bina considered this in silence for a moment, her lips tight. “I’ve never known dad to deal under the table — or bargain—”
“You’ve never known him to lose a daughter to a murder suspect either. You’ll see. When he becomes convinced we won’t scare, he’ll calm down.”
His confidence was reassuring. Deliberately, Bina took refuge in it, drifting off into a half-sweet, half-troubled sleep. Sounds diminished and fell away, but she could still hear faint, arguing voices.
III
Unfortunately, in the hard light of early morning, the picture looked different. Jerry had left early for his office, and Lefty seemed to frown at her across her breakfast tray. Lefty’s curt voice rang in her ears. “A man can’t be half-crooked. A man is either crooked or straight.”
Lefty had made a direct statement, a direct charge, with every appearance of sincerity. Could her father lie to her, even to get her back? Even the remote possibility that he had lied was very hard to accept.
She dressed quickly. A plaid skirt, a white, turtle-neck sweater. Rolled her shining coil of dark hair into its accustomed small circle at the nape of her slender neck.
Toto snapped off the sweeper as she passed him on her way to the back door. “I breeng your car — Missa Crevellin?”
“Don’t spoil me, Toto. I couldn’t stand it when you go back to Marge.”
She went down to the car stalls where her small convertible looked presumptuous among the line of Cadillacs and foreign models. As she backed it carefully around in the handkerchief space and crept out the drive, she avoided looking into the yawning abyss of excavation at her left.
She found herself wondering if Toto felt jolted the way she did each time he called her “Missa Crevellin.” It had been so terribly recently that he had called Clarissa that. Bina wished he could go back to calling her Mees Ryan. But of course he couldn’t.
Lefty was in his usual third booth at Frascati’s when Bina slid in opposite him. He looked up, not too surprised, and plainly relieved.
“I kinda hoped you’d remember my lunch hour,” he said, patting her hand.
Bina lowered her eyes. Honeymoons were wonderful things. Marriages were wonderful when it was a marriage like hers. But not if it lost her Lefty! Somehow, she had to go back, and make up for all the weeks she had deceived him. Earn her way back into being his daughter again.
Lefty made it easy by coming right to the point with his usual, blunt ease. “Sure, honey, I know you didn’t see this guy on the quiet because you wanted to. I expect you thought he was cruelly broken up, and you had to help him over a rough spot. You’ve always been like that. And pretty soon he couldn’t do without you. So you married him.”
Bina nodded, blinking back quick tears. “I hoped you’d call the hotel. I left the number in my note.”
“I had it propped by the phone,” Lefty admitted. “I probably would have weakened if I hadn’t kept getting mad so often. And finally I found that piece of jade between the flagstones.”
Bina took a sip of coffee to fortify herself, then let him have it. “Jerry says you didn’t find any jade. That you’re holding it over us so I’ll agree to a divorce.”
Lefty’s eyes narrowed. “Not turn it in, eh? That’s a neat deduction. Fits him to a T. You want to know how I got that boy stacked? You don’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. He figures things, just naturally, so they’ll come out one hundred percent right for Jerry Crevellin.”
“Please... you just don’t know Jerry.”
A waitress brought Lefty more coffee. He took the opportunity to dig into his inside pocket for an envelope with his name penciled across it. When the girl had gone, he tossed it across to Bina.
She opened it. Its contents was hardly a shock. Somehow, she had known it would be something like this. A report from the police laboratory, signed by the chief technician, whose signature she knew well. It said that the piece of jade, which Detective Ryan had turned in Saturday, had been tested thoroughly and was definitely, by rock structure analysis, identical with the supplementary piece in the Crevellin file. It would be turned over to the Chief when he returned on Wednesday.