She swallowed with an apparent effort and said, “I’m not going to be a hypocrite and tell you this is any horrid shock, men. Garry wasn’t one of my favorite people.” She shook her head and gave them a wry, disarming grin. “While he was still running my boat, he seemed like a nice guy. And really attractive in a kind of outdoorsy way. When — a very dear and close friend of mine passed away, I was very alone. And Garry was very sweet and understanding.” She stood up with a lithe quickness, made a little shrug, and a mouth of distaste. “But he tried to keep hanging on. Male pride, I suppose. Some men won’t admit it when something is over. He got to be a damned tiresome bore. He couldn’t get a good job. He’d come by and drink and tell me his problems and get mean drunk. It was a relief when he finally got a decent boat to run and took off.”
As she turned away, Barney Scheff read Bert Kindler’s quick glance. They had been teamed for five years. All the people they worked on fell into some familiar category. Approach had to be adjusted to the individuals. Staying in any pattern was a sure way to come up empty oftener than you should. You developed a feeling, like an extra sense of smell. Like with that Raoul Kelly, they shared the decision to play it his way, but had one of them been dubious, they would not have gone along. The weirds were easy to smell out, as easy as the chronic losers. Amateurs could be suckered by traps so old you had to brush off the cobwebs before you used them. But the cute ones took you onto uneasy ground, especially when they were intelligent and confident. A clumsy truth and a plausible lie could sound almost alike. The frankness of her implication of an intimacy between her and Staniker could be either because the news he was dead had shaken her up, or because she was one of those women who got a little bit of jolly out of letting practically anybody know that if the stars were right it was possible to get a hack at all that merchandise, or because she sensed there was a chance it would be checked out later, and if they came up with a relationship she had not implied in any way, they would wonder why she hadn’t.
Kindler’s glance said, “My turn” and Scheff’s slight shrug said, “Have fun.”
“I guess losing that boat and those people would give him some new problems to tell you, Mrs. Harkinson.”
She spun toward him, head a-tilt, and said, “Do you ever get a funny kind of superstition about people? I mean somebody is all right, and then they sort of turn into a loser, and everything starts to go wrong for them. You get the sort of spooky feeling you don’t want them anywhere near you. As if it could rub off and they could turn you into a loser too.”
“I know what you mean,” Kindler said.
“He wanted to tell me his problems all right,” she said grimly. “He phoned me as soon as he rented that place last Friday. He was going to come right out. I told him I’d made it very damned clear back in April we were all through. He said he was going to come and see me anyway and if I tried to keep him from coming here, he’d — give me a thumping I’d remember a long time. Garry was a brutal man, Sergeant. And I couldn’t afford to let him know I was scared of him. But I was. I’ve been terrified he’d force his way in here. So — I can’t be sorry he’s dead. But — there’s something funny about it.”
“Like what?”
“I wouldn’t say he was the kind of human being who’d brood about losing that boat and those people. He’d worry about not being able to find a job. But on the phone he didn’t seem depressed at all. Just kind of arrogant. He told me he had a big check in advance for an exclusive story on the whole thing. I don’t know how to say this — just that if he had money in his pocket, he felt good. And he just wasn’t sensitive — the way I guess people are who commit suicide.”
“Well,” said Kindler, “to get back to the point here, we’d like for you to come on in and take a look, just for the record. A formality.” She stood hip-shot, elbow resting in her palm, chin against her thumb, looking broodingly at the floor. “I want to do the right thing. And you have been nice about this, both of you. Please understand. I know it’s only a formality, really, but it wouldn’t be just a formality to me. It would be a very personal thing. And it would be like — confirming that something still exists that died a long time ago.”
Kindler said, “Look, we’re asking you as an ex-employer. That’s all.”
“Then if that’s the relationship, I think you’d better get maybe the man he worked for at that little marina. I just don’t care to be — identified with the whole thing. I’m really sorry.”
“We can’t force you,” Kindler said. “Can I use the phone and find out what they want us to do?”
“Of course.”
Scheff had an idea he knew was at least as good and possibly better than Kindler’s. It could even be the same idea. So he said, “I’ll check in, Bert.”
He dialed Lobwohl’s outside line. After the first four seconds Lobwohl caught on that Scheff was talking for the benefit of someone who could hear his end of the conversation. Scheff reported the Harkinson woman’s refusal and started to ask for instructions and then said, “What? No kidding! You know, that’s a funny thing because that’s just what this Mrs. Harkinson was saying. She said he wasn’t the type. Yeah. Sure. Well, nobody touched his money there and it wasn’t hard to find, so you can forget that angle. She might have some ideas. What? Well, it’s on account of she knew him real well, right up to a little while before he went to the Bahamas. Yes, that’s what I mean. Yes, that’s what I’d say it was. We can ask her, but if she didn’t want to do the other, why should she do this? I see. Sure. Well, put it this way, she’s a smart lady and I don’t think we’d have to do it that way.”
He hung up and stood up and said, “Somebody tried to make it look like suicide. But the lab boys say he was killed. You were right, Mrs. Harkinson.”
“It’s — easy to understand. But it’s still dreadful.”
“I’m sorry to have to do this to you, Mrs. Harkinson, because I guess if you hadn’t been a little shook you wouldn’t have let us know Staniker and you had a relationship. But we do know it, and we can’t just forget you said it, and I was duty bound to report that.”
“I wish you hadn’t.”
“They say you should come in and they’ll take a statement.”
“But why?”
“When somebody is murdered and it isn’t robbery, then what we have to do is find out who would want to kill him and why, and the quickest way to get a line on that is to interrogate somebody who knew him real well, would know what his habits were and so on. What I should explain, it’s a little different than the identification thing. You can come along voluntarily, but if you say you won’t, then because you might have some information bearing on a known murder, we’d have to set it up to take you in anyway. You could refuse to answer questions once you’re there, but that would be up to you. What you can do if you want, you can phone your lawyer to meet you there, or go in with you.”
“Are you charging me with anything?”
“No m’am. Not if you come in voluntarily.”
She spread her arms wide, and with rueful grin said, “Why don’t I learn to keep my mouth shut? So you’ve convinced me. Voluntary cooperation. There isn’t a thing I can help you with as far as I know, but I’ll go in. And I certainly don’t need a lawyer. But there’s one errand I’d like to do on the way in. Some material I have to leave off with my dressmaker. Can we do that?”
“Sure can,” said Kindler.
“Excuse me a few minutes while I get it ready. Then we can go.” When she closed her bedroom door behind her, she hurried to the closet in her dressing room, and pulled out the twine-wrapped package of the clothing she had worn. One of her suits had been returned in a white cleaner bag. She wrapped the bundle neatly, tied it with twine, snipped the twine with her nail scissors.