68 ' - The Green Ripper taken ill on Saturday. They are the only two, we can assume, who saw Titus face to face. Toomey and Kline came here Saturday to find out if Gretel told you about him. From what you told me of the questioning, they would have gotten the information from anyone less wary than you."
"What the hell are you trying to say?"
"I told you the reconstruction is so melodramatic * offends me. If you had told them all about Brother Titus, as related by GreteL right now you might be in the hospital, fading fast."
I thought it over. I could not make it seem real. "Okay, why the charade? If what is going on is so important, why not just wait until dark, thump my skull, and let me go out on the tide?"
'`They do not want to create curiosity. A man falls off his bike and dies. One of the young women who work for him falls ill and dies. The authorities can accept that as routine. But what if the womants best friend should then die accidentally, or be taken ill in the same way?"
"The authorities would assume the friend caught it from her, whatever it was."
"But that would create a big flap. Gretel's illness and death were reported, you said, to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta."
"By Dr. Tower."
"Having it turn out to be contagious would make headlines."
"Mental games are your specialty, Meyer. But it does not amuse me one goddamn bit to have you making lot of assumptions based on Gretel being murdered, poisoned somehow. For God's sake, you saw her that one time there! She was sick. She was terribly, terribly ill. Know what her last words were? Em burning up. I feel terrible, Trav. Terrible.' Great last words to remember. Comforting. readmit, she could have mentioned Titus to those people out there at Bonnie Brae. She could have asked about him. She could have asked the other partner, or Slater. And she could have told them about the fellow just the way she told us."
"The way she told us, remember, was to start by saying she thought there was something funny going on out there. And she would not be likely to bring that up with the people she was working for. Or with. And one good way to prove I am totally wrong is to find out if Broffski and Hater have been questioned, just as you were. I don't think that pair came here from out of town to talk to you alone."
I looked at him. 'If I thought for one moment that somebody had... poisoned her..."
"I am not sitting here, Travis, trying to dream up a cheap plot line for a grade Z movie. You asked me to try to make sense out of it. I can malce melodramatic sense out of it, if I make the assumption that both Gretel and Ladwigg were killed. If they weren't, the sense of it all eludes me."
'~You're serious['
The Green Ripper
"Enough to want to try to prove it out one way or the other."
"Where would you start?"
"By finding out if Broffski and Slaterwere questioned too."
So once again I drove out to Bonnie Brae. I could not have guessed how difficult it would be. Memories of her were of a painful clarity, a vividness in the back of the mind.
Slater, the manager, was out for lunch Stanley Broffski was in his office. What did we wish to speak to him about? the woman asked. I said it involved some negotiations with Herman Ladwigg. She trotted off and soon reappeared, beckoning us in.
Broffski sat behind a big white desk covered with piles of correspondence and blueprints. He was plump to the point of bursting out of his sport shirt. He had black hair combed across his forehead and a Groucho mustache. He had an air of jolly impatience, amused exasperation.
He waved us into chairs, saying, "Honest to Christ, I wish to hell Herm had the habit of writing things down. Nothing against him, you understand. Nobody ever had a better partner. But he earned around too much in his head alla time! It's driving me up the wall trying to find out who did what to who."
'I suppose," Meyer said, 'Lou divided up all the responsibilities you have here."
'I've got the fat farm and the tennis club, and we'll have a riding stable going pretty soon. They're working on the stalls down there now." He swiveled his chair half around and pointed through the wide window to an old barn a hundred yards away. Two pickup trucks and a van were parked there, near a pile of fresh lumber. Off to the left a clutch of fatties trotted heavily down a long gentle slope. They were mostly women in their middle years, with a few men and a few adolescents, boys and girls. Despite the age differences, the fat at that distance looked the same, bouncing and flapping under the sweaty shorts and shirts. A lean woman was gal- loping along beside them, clapping her hands, running back and forth.
"We work the tract-house part together," he said. I mean, we did. Herm handled the land sales. He was a wizard at that. We're all going to miss him Of course, we both worked with the manager, Morse Slater. Morse keeps evening running smooth If he wasn't around at this time, Pd be whipped. We lost a hell of a good girl right after we lost Herm. Some kind of legionnaire flu, they say. She wasn't here long, but Morse says she was the greatest. Everything from doing the billing to teaching tennis. Hell, it's a sound operation here. Everything will turn out roses. We've got a nice community coming along. We're keeping a lot of
The Green Ripper open space, and nothing tacky gets built. What was it you had going with Herm,gentlemen? Was it something to do with the commercial area?"
"Actually," Meyer said, "we're trying to find out who it was who flew in almost three weeks ago, maybe November twenty-eighth or -ninth, to talk to Mr. Ladwigg, and flew out the next morning."
"In a little blue airplane," Broffski said. His voice was no longer amiable, his face no longer jolly. "I am getting damn sick and tired of that tucking blue airplane. I am going to close that strip. Who needs it?"
He bounded up and went around us to his office door. "Morse! Get in here a minute."
Morse Slater came in, recognized me at once, and came over to me. I stood up, and he shook my hand and said, 'Tm terribly sorry I had to miss the service, Mr. McGee. I thought until the last minute I would make it, but something came up."
I said, "Sure. Understood. Meyer, this is Morse Slater. I told you about him."
As they shook hands Broffski said, "What's going on? What service?"
"Gretel Howard," I told him.
There was a sudden look of comprehension. "McGee! Right. I heard about you from her. What has all this got to do with the tucking blue airplane?"
Meyer said politely, "Has someone else been interested in it?"
'~e had the FAA out here. You tell them what it was about, Morse."