“The natives would get restless if they heard you say that.”
“It’s true, though. It’s one of the things I love about the city.”
“All right,” Dodd said. “So it was a small coincidence. I wasn’t tailing the girl, she just appeared.”
“Mr. Dodd, you’re going to help me? You’re really going to help me?”
“Not you. The kids.” He wanted to, but didn’t, tell her why. When he was a junior in high school, his father had been arrested on a drunk charge. It wasn’t much, but it made the newspapers. He’d left school and never gone back. “Your job now, Mrs. Brandon, is to be discreet. If the police question you, answer them. But don’t volunteer any information.”
“What if they find Rupert and he tells them the truth, that I was the one who saw him at Lassister’s with the girl?”
“Rupert,” Dodd said, “will have a lot of other talking to do before he gets around to that.”
17.
When Miss Burton turned the corner it seemed to her that someone on the street was staging a huge outdoor pageant with all the neighbors serving as members of the cast and crew. It was impossible to tell what kind of pageant it could be, the characters and costumes were so varied and numerous: small boys on bicycles; women in housedresses, bathrobes, pajamas; men carrying cameras, babies, brief cases; groups of girls twittering and chirping like birds, and grim-lipped old ladies watching in silence from the back of the stage, as if the scene they were witnessing was old, remembered stuff to them.
Both sides of the street were lined with cars, some with engines still running and the headlights on and people peering out from the open windows. Miss Burton stopped and leaned against a lamppost, feeling suddenly dizzy and breathless. What are they trying to see? she thought. What do they expect to see? What are they waiting for?
The wind clawed her hair and pinched her lips blue and tore at her yellow coat, but she was unaware of any physical suffering. People pressed past her, shouting to each other above the wind. A large white dog paused to stare at her as if she was usurping his own private lamppost.
A woman wearing a battered muskrat coat over striped pajamas called the dog away. “He won’t hurt you, he’s gentle as a lamb.”
“I’m not — afraid,” Miss Burton said.
“You looked like you were.”
“No.”
“You can’t see much from here, but if you go any closer you might get involved. Believe me, it doesn’t pay to get involved.”
“What happened?”
“Murder is what happened. In the Kelloggs’ house. I’ve always known there was something funny about those people. Oh, they seemed nice enough, on the surface... Where are you going? Hey, wait a minute, you dropped your scarf!”
But Miss Burton was already on her way, running through the crowd, weaving in and out like a little quarterback pursued by giants.
Dodd was parking his car around the corner when he spotted her, recognizing her first by her yellow coat. She didn’t see him, she would have passed by without knowing he was there if he hadn’t called out to her: “Miss Burton!”
She turned to look at him, briefly and blindly, then she resumed her running. He started after her, without any plan or intention, like a dog chasing a moving object simply because it was moving. He hadn’t gone fifty yards when he began to puff and a sharp pain stabbed his side. He would never have caught up with her if she hadn’t stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk and fallen to her knees.
He helped her up. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“It’s a funny time to be practicing up for the four-minute mile.”
“Go away. Just go away.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Please leave me alone. Please.”
“A lot of people are suddenly saying please to me,” Dodd said dryly. “I guess it takes trouble to make people talk polite.”
“I’m not in trouble.”
“Any friend of Kellogg’s is in trouble. Have you heard from him?”
“No.”
“He didn’t call to say good-bye?”
“No.”
“And you wouldn’t tell me if he had, would you?”
“No.”
“You can get away with saying no to me, but the police aren’t going to like it. They’re probably at your apartment right now, waiting for you. And from now on that’s the way it will be. You’ll be watched, followed, every place you go. If they can get to your mail before you do, they will. Your apartment will be bugged and your phone tapped.”
“I have no information.”
“You’re loaded with information, Miss Burton. And they’ll get it all. They’ll take you apart like a watch, your insides will be laid out on a table. No watch ever works the same once it’s been taken apart like that, unless it’s done by an expert. The police aren’t expert, they can be pretty damned clumsy.”
As if to emphasize his point, a police car with its siren open turned the corner on two wheels. A few drivers pulled over to the curb, the rest proceeded as if they’d heard and seen nothing.
“Why,” she said painfully, “why are you being so cruel?”
“Maybe, someday, you’ll realize it’s kindness, not cruelty, to warn you what to expect when the police start asking questions.”
“I can’t give out information I don’t have.”
“And you won’t give out what you do have?”
“I told you...”
“Miss Burton, what are you doing in this neighborhood?”
At first she shook her head as if she didn’t intend to answer. Then she said, slowly and carefully, “Mr. Kellogg left the office at noon. He wasn’t feeling well. I decided to drop by his house and see if there was anything I could do to help.”
“That’s what you intend to tell the police?”
“Yes.”
“They’ll think you’re a most solicitous and devoted secretary.”
“I am.”
“In fact, they might think you’re more than a secretary.”
“I can’t help the dirt in other people’s minds. Including yours.”
“My mind doesn’t have any dirt in it, where you’re concerned.”
“No?”
“No,” he said firmly. “I believe you’re exactly what you claim to be, a devoted secretary, with very little talent or taste for lying. Miss Burton, why were you running away when I stopped you?”
“I heard that there’d been a — a murder.”
“Who told you?”
“A woman, a stranger. She said a murder had been committed in the Kellogg house.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. I didn’t wait to hear any more. I didn’t want to get involved so I left.”
“Without asking any questions?”
“Yes.”
“Weren’t you even curious about who was murdered?”
She turned away, silent and obstinate.
“Miss Burton, your employer was living alone, or presumably alone, in that house. Wouldn’t it have been natural for you to assume that he was the one who was killed? Wouldn’t it also have been natural for you to stay long enough to find out?”
Her lips moved but she didn’t speak. He wondered if she was praying. He hoped so; she was going to need all the help she could get.
“Miss Burton, did you have a good reason to believe that the victim was not Rupert Kellogg?”
“No!”
“I suggest that he called you to tell you he was leaving town because something had happened. Perhaps you didn’t believe him and that’s why you came out here tonight, to check up on him. Or perhaps he didn’t tell you exactly what had happened and you wanted to find out for yourself. Which was it?”