“Rupert’s word.”
“No one else saw her?”
“No one, to my knowledge.”
Dodd consulted his notes. “Let’s see, she came back from Mexico City, allegedly, on Sunday, September the fourteenth, and left again that same night without calling anyone to say good-bye and without being seen by anyone we know of except Rupert. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Have you any idea why?”
“Why she didn’t call me and wasn’t seen? Certainly I have an idea. She never came home. Perhaps she never even left Mexico City.”
“Let’s be frank, Mr. Brandon. Do you believe your sister is dead?”
Gill looked down at the smiling pictures on Dodd’s desk. Me, dead? Don’t be absurd, Gilly. I’m in New York. I’m having a ball. He said, through tight lips, “Yes. I believe he killed her.”
“And his motive?”
“Money.”
Dodd sighed, very faintly. If it wasn’t money, it was love. Perhaps they both boiled down to the same thing, security.
“He has her power of attorney,” Gill said. “He doesn’t even have to wait for proof of death so he can inherit her money.”
“Did your sister make a will?”
“Yes. Rupert inherits half her estate.”
“Who gets the other half?”
“I do.”
Dodd said nothing but his black, bushy eyebrows moved up and down his forehead. Very interesting, Mr. Brandon. I know — and you don’t know I know — that you’ve been living beyond your income for some time now, taking bites out of your capital to feed some pretty undernourished investments. “It would, then, if your sister is dead, be to your advantage to prove it as quickly as possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“As long as Mrs. Kellogg is simply missing, the power of attorney she gave her husband is in force. He has full control over her property, and how much will be left for you or anyone else to inherit depends entirely on his discretion. Let’s assume your sister is dead. From your point of view — that is, keeping her property intact and at full value — it would be an advantage to get proof of death immediately. From his point of view, the longer the delay, the better it will be for him.”
“I don’t like to — to think of these things.”
You’ve already thought of them, old boy; don’t kid me. “Come now, Mr. Brandon, it’s just a little game we’re playing. Your sister, by the way, must have trusted Rupert completely or she would never have given him a power of attorney.”
“Perhaps. But he might have applied some form of pressure to get it.”
“You said he has a small but successful business of his own?”
“Yes.”
“And he lives modestly?”
“There’s no guarantee he intends to continue living modestly,” Gill said. “That calm exterior of his might be hiding some pretty fancy and wild ideas.”
“Do you believe his dismissal of Gerda Lundquist was, as he claimed, a matter of economic necessity?”
“Not unless he’s been having some unusual expenses.”
“Such as gambling debts?”
“Such as another woman.”
“That’s pure speculation on your part, is it, Mr. Brandon? Or impure, as the case may be.”
“You may call it speculation. I call it simple arithmetic. Two and two add up to Miss Burton, his secretary.” Gill ground out his cigarette in an overflowing ash tray advertising Luigi’s Pizza House on Mason Street. “I have two secretaries, but I assure you that neither of them has a key to my back door, neither of them looks after my dog, neither of them drops in after church to clean up my house.”
“It will be easy enough to check up on Miss Burton.”
“Do it subtly. If she suspects anything she’ll tell Rupert immediately and he’ll find out I hired you. He mustn’t know a thing about any of this. Surprise must be the basis of our tactics.”
“My tactics, if you don’t mind, Mr. Brandon.”
“All right, yours. So long as he’s caught. And punished.”
Dodd leaned back in his swivel chair, interlacing his fingers. It seemed clear to him now that Brandon wanted Rupert punished more than he wanted his sister found. He shivered slightly. It was three o’clock on a sunny afternoon. It felt like midnight in the dead of winter.
He got up and shut the window, and almost immediately opened it again. He didn’t like the sensation of being in a closed room with Gill Brandon. “Tell me, have you talked to your brother-in-law since the morning he gave you the letter?”
“No.”
“You haven’t communicated any of your suspicions to him?”
“No.”
“It might clear the air if you did.”
“I’m not giving him any advantage by tipping my hand.”
“Are you sure you have a hand?”
“I’m sure. Nobody lies the way he’s lied unless he has something to hide.”
“All right,” Dodd said. “Let’s leave Rupert out of this for a minute. Where, to your knowledge, was your sister last seen?”
“At the hospital where she was taken after Wilma’s death sent her into shock. The American-British-Corday, I believe it’s called.”
“And what was the name of the hotel she and her friend were staying at?”
“It was their intention to stay at the Windsor. Whether they did or not, I’m not sure. Mrs. Wyatt was very changeable, and if some little thing didn’t suit her she would have gone someplace else. Wherever they stayed, you can bet that it was Mrs. Wyatt’s decision. My sister has never learned to stick up for her rights.”
Dodd wrote: Windsor Hotel? Sept. 3. A.B.C. Hospital, Sept. 7. Then he gathered up the pictures of Amy, put them back in the manila folder and marked it A. Kellogg. “I’m going to send a couple of these down to a friend of mine in Mexico City.”
“Why?”
“He might be willing, for a fee, to do some investigating. That’s where the trouble seems to have started. Let’s get an objective report, since you’re reluctant to believe anything your brother-in-law says.”
“Who is this friend?”
“A retired cop from L.A. called Fowler. He’s good. And expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“I can’t give you an exact figure.”
Gill took an unmarked envelope out of his pocket and put it on Dodd’s desk. “There’s five hundred in cash. Is that sufficient for the time being?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On how much bribe money my friend’s going to need.”
“Bribe money? Whom does he have to bribe?”
“In Mexico,” Dodd said dryly, “practically everyone.”
10.
Thursday was Pat Burton’s dancing night at the Kent Academy. She didn’t bother going home after work. She took her dancing equipment to the office with her — a pair of transparent plastic shoes with three-inch heels and a bottle of strongly scented cologne because the Academy always had a rancid smell like an unventilated school gymnasium. The cologne was, therefore, an asset if not a necessity; the Cinderella shoes were not. They impeded Miss Burton’s progress. After eleven months of lessons (Learn to Dance the First Night) she was still having considerable trouble with the mamba, and her tango included numerous extracurricular totters which were the despair of the instructor. “Miss Burton, save your wiggles for the cha-cha-cha. Keep your balance.” “I can do it perfectly well at home in my bare feet.” “Since when do we teach the tango so people can do it at home in their bare feet?”
It didn’t matter very much anyway because no one invited Miss Burton out mambaing or tangoing. Her infrequent dates preferred less sophisticated or less strenuous entertainment. She continued going to the weekly class, however. It represented to her, as well as to the majority of the others, a social rather than an instructive evening.