“And was she?”
“I’m inclined to think so,” Drumm said hesitantly.
“And he killed her to keep her quiet?”
“Maybe he’s got a cast-iron alibi,” Drumm reminded quietly. “Anyway, I think he really wanted to kick in with a pile of dough if she was his daughter.”
MacGruder looked from Drumm to Elwyn. “You two come along. I always had a hankering to see a movie star in the flesh.”
With MacGruder driving, Drumm timed the short trip from the cottage on Linden, where MacGruder’s men were still working over Georgia Donnelly, to Alex Donnelly’s place on Kimberly. Eleven minutes had elapsed when they pulled in the gravel drive. Drumm put his cumbersome, pre-war, ninety-nine cent watch to his ear. It was still clanging faithfully, and with a shrug, he replaced it in his pocket.
Alex Donnelly stood stiffly when he opened the door at MacGruder‘s heavy knock. Without preamble, MacGruder said, “I’m the law. We want to talk to you about a killing.”
Drumm was prepared to catch the actor as he crumpled in a faint, but Donnelly said, his thick, and tightly-quiet, “Georgia...”
“Yes,” Rick Elwyn croaked, “easy, Alex.”
“Come in,” Donnelly said.
Ober Illman was in the study. His briefcase lay on the desk. He had spread papers out. Drumm caught a glimpse of a marriage license, a birth certificate, an aged report card from a school in Texas.
Donnelly said to Illman, his face like chalk mottled with red blood close to the surface, “Georgia is dead.”
Illman came to life slowly, like a volcano gathering its strength. Teeth set, he lunged at Donnelly. “That’s where you were! While I waited for you, yon were out killing her!”
MacGruder cuffed him on the side of the head, dragged the lawyer hack. Drumm said, “What’s he talking about?”
Donnelly had reared hack against the desk; he relaxed slowly as Illman pulled from MacGruder’s grasp and straightened his coat; the lawyer stood glaring.
Donnelly said after a moment, “I kept him waiting for thirty minutes when he first got here. You told me to detain him, Drumm, and I wasn’t sure I could detain him long enough. So I just stayed in the back of the house and let him wait for awhile.”
MacGruder turned to Drumm. “Why did you tell Donnelly to keep Illman here?”
Drumm shrugged and pinched a cigarette in two. “I wanted to look through Illman’s things in the cottage. That’s why I was there when I found Ceorgia.”
MacGruder said nothing, but Drumm read unpleasant things in his eyes. The rawboned cop turned back to Donnelly. “You,” he said, “have the strongest motive. The girl was going to wreck your career, wasn’t she? Or take you for a merry ride financially.”
“I... I wouldn’t kill my own daughter,” the actor said hoarsely.
“Maybe she wasn’t your daughter. Anyway, more gruesome things have happened. Did you have money to pay her?”
It wasn’t nice to watch Donnelly in that moment. Drumm thought. Like looking at a trapped animal. Alex Donnelly said, “I’ve got a new contract coming up. Rick and the studio heads are going to complete it the first of the month.” His face was like ashes as he realized the net being spun about him. “You’ll find the story out anyway — so here it is, straight. It’s true, I am broke right now. I lost fifty grand on a wild oil-drilling venture that looked like a sure thing. But I could have paid the girl.”
“On the installment plan, eh?” MacGruder said. He added grimly: “She hated you; she didn’t want to wait; so you killed her.” His broad hand gathered Donnelly’s tie, shirt, and coat lapels. “Spill it! Didn’t you?”
Donnelly shook his head, his Adam’s apple shuttling visibly in his neck. MacGruder slammed him hack against the desk. “Sit down and stay seated, Drumm, get any other members of the household. I’m going to close this case in a hurry.”
Alex said weakly, “Viola is upstairs. Bedroom at the head of the stairway. She just went up, as you knocked on the front door.”
Drumm sighed and ambled from the room.
He heard her moving beyond the door of the bedroom. The carpet had deadened his footfalls all the way up the stairs. He opened the door silently. She was standing across the room, the dying sun making a blinding sheen of her yellow hair. She was standing perfectly still, every muscle and nerve taut. She was holding a gun in her hands, a gun with a silencer, the gun. Drumm guessed, that had killed Georgia Donnelly.
He moved surprisingly fast, wringing the gun from her fingers. She uttered a gasping scream of sudden pain and fright. Drumm said, “I was afraid you’d point this thing at me if I let you know in advance I was here. Let’s go downstairs and see the cop.”
Her fingers dug into his arm. “You don’t think...”
“Lady, I believe my own eyes.”
She was suddenly standing weakly against him, sobbing. “I wanted to! I hated her. We’ve had it tough, Alex and I. Alex borrowed fifty thousand from Rick for a sure fire oil deal, lost it together with what money we had saved. And then she came along, his daughter, taking what money we’d have in the future. She... she wanted half a million dollars, Drumm! It would have taken years to pay...”
“We still have to go downstairs,” Drumm said obstinately.
She raised her head. “And you... you’ll show the cop the gun? I don’t know where it came from!” she said fiercely. “I opened the drawer and there it was. I heard the cop tell Alex as you came in the hall that Georgia had been killed, and when I found the gun just now...” Tears drowned her voice for a moment. “Will... will you show the cop the gun?”
Drumm said wearily, “I guess maybe I’ll have to.”
The study was a frozen tableau as they entered. Hector Drumm could feel their eyes. He released Viola’s arm and she sank dazedly into a chair. He handed the gun to MacGruder.
“The murder weapon?” MacGruder said, his shaggy brows uplifted.
Drumm said, “Ballistics will show it. Solve your own problems.”
MacGruder smiled thinly. “For my money, this gun killed Georgia Donnelly. Where’d you find it?”
Drumm was saved from speaking by Viola, who said quietly, “In my room. In my hand. I found it in my drawer. He came in as I was staring at it.”
“Well!” MacGruder said. “And where were you an hour and ten minutes ago?”
The room was heavy with silence. MacGruder laughed softly, “Chances are you didn’t walk it or take a bus. You either caught a cab or look your own car. If you caught a cab to that cottage on Linden Avenue, I’ll grill every driver in town — that’s one advantage of being a small town cop. Or I could feel the radiator of your own car.”
“You needn’t,” she said dully. She had been shrinking in the chair, until now she looked beaten and helpless. “The radiator is warm,” she said. “An hour and ten minutes ago I was in the car. I did drive to the house on Linden. I parked in the next block parallel to Linden and cut across a vacant lot. But when I got in the house, Georgia Donnelly was dead. I... I stood and looked a moment, then hurried out the back and came here. I guess I missed... missed the killer by inches.”
“Bah!” MacGruder said. “It looks to me like you’re guilty. You killed the girl to keep her out of her father’s life, to keep her from taking the money you’d married him for.”