“Yes, I work for Mrs. Dyer Monday’s, Wednesdays, and Fridays... Hey, wait a minute, you’re the private detective that called yesterday evening, aren’t you. I heard Mrs. Dyer talking to you on the phone, and she was not pleased. I shouldn’t be talking to you.” She moved to go back inside.
“Just a second,” I said, and grabbed her bare arm. “I just have a few questions to ask and I don’t think they’ll be that painful to answer.” I pulled another ten dollars from my pocket.
She thought about the money for a second. “Okay,” she said. “What is it you want to know?”
“When did you leave Mrs. Dyer’s house last night?”
“I left after cleaning the mess from dinner. Mrs. Dyer always has me clean up after dinner.”
“Did Mrs. Dyer have any visitors yesterday?”
“No... no visitors.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes I’m sure. I answer the door myself when she has visitors.”
“Have you ever seen a tall, red-faced man at the house?”
Someone moved in the dark room behind her. “No,” she said. “I’ve never seen a short, blue-faced one either. Can I have my money now? I’ve got things to do.”
I handed her the money just as a bumping noise sounded in the room. She glanced quickly behind her, pivoted, and went through the door. She locked it after her. There was nothing else to do but go back to my car and pull down the block to wait. At the least, I could tail anyone who left.
The flask from my glove box was half empty by the time her scream rang out. I hesitated only an instant before running up the street like an idiot. The house door was still locked, but the lock was cheap and it didn’t last long. I pushed through to the front room and nearly tripped over her where she lay face down by the door. She looked as healthy as I’d left her — until I turned her over. The face I saw then was not the face I remembered. Her forehead was caved in like a squashed melon, thick blood and gray mash oozing from the wound. I moved to feel her pulse, doubting she had one.
I should have been smarter. I should have realized the someone I saw moving in the dark room before would still be around after he crushed her skull. I should have known. A vague figure on the edge of my vision moved toward me. It swung, brought down something hard between my shoulder blades. A painful buzzing like a swarm of bees shot up my neck and nestled in my brain. I never quite lost consciousness, but I might as well have. Darkness and the floor beneath me were all I knew.
The next minutes were long ones. I heard a lot of noises, but I couldn’t distinguish any of them until I heard the sirens. The sirens were what forced me to move. Someone, probably the person who’d hit me, had called the police. I pried myself from the floor, finding Evita Salaiz’s legs under me. Nearby was my candidate for the weapon that had clubbed us both: a rolling pin. It was sticky with flour and gelled blood. The front door seemed like a dumb move, so I fumbled to my feet and made for the back door. I passed through the kitchen on my way and noticed a mound of dough waiting to be rolled out. It never was.
The back door opened to an alley that ran behind the houses on my side of the block. I crept along as stealthily as my new injury would allow until I came to a gap in the alley close to my car. I walked over casually and drove. I drove past the screeching police cars stopping in front of Evita Salaiz’s house and kept on driving straight to the Weckler Building. I was tired of getting beat up, and I was tired of falling over dead bodies wherever I went. I decided it was time to see Robert Grey again and really put the heat on for some useful answers.
I stuck my head through the office door and caught sight of his secretary. She was still at the desk typing, as if she had spent the whole night there. Today she was wearing a pastel summer dress.
I said, “Hi, angel, remember me?”
“Sure,” she said. “How could I forget a handsome hunk like you? But, ouch, what happened to your cheek?”
I stepped inside. “One of my playmates from last night got a little rough. I’ll survive.”
“You always would. But I’d hate to meet any of your playmates.”
“I don’t see why. Any friend of mine is a friend of yours.”
She flipped her hair back casually and gave me a big smile. “I already have enough friends, thank you.”
“You always would. Do you think I could get in to see your employer?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Some minutes later, I found myself in Robert Grey’s private office, sitting in the same chair as yesterday. Grey hadn’t lost any weight in twenty-four hours, but he had changed clothes. He wore a beige suit.
“What can I do for you today, Mr. Hammond?” he asked coolly. “Have you come to exchange insults again?”
“No, but I’m still surprised you agreed to see me.”
“I wouldn’t have, but it seems it is the only way to motivate the insurance company to pay Pamela’s claim.”
I got mean. “You needn’t worry about that anymore. Mrs. Dyer is dead.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“No, it’s quite true,” I said with false calm. “She was strangled to death by someone with large hands — large hands like yours maybe.”
Grey looked down at his hands on the desk and then jerked them into his lap. His face reddened. “What is this, young man? Some kind of macabre joke?”
“Yeah, I’m joking. I’m also joking when I tell you Dyer’s maid got her face smashed by a rolling pin. It’s all something I made up. And don’t call me young, because I’m not.”
Grey narrowed his eyes to slits and gave me what he thought was a serious-looking stare. “Look, Hammond,” he said, “I’m tired of playing this idiotic game with you. You’ve come into my office twice in two days, and each time you have accused me of some crime. Yesterday it was insurance fraud; today it is murder. I don’t like being treated in this manner, especially by seedy private investigators. Why don’t you leave before I am forced to throw you out?”
I leaned over the desk and laughed in his face. “All right, Grey, I’ll leave if you don’t like it. But I hope you learn how to deal with things you don’t like soon. Because when I figure out this case — and believe me, I will — you are gonna like it a lot less.”
Grey clamped his jaw shut and the muscles on the side of his fleshy face twitched. I got up out of the chair and went through the door into the outer office. It had been a short meeting. The secretary wasn’t in her office, so I walked straight out the next door and down the hall to the elevators. The hand I pressed the elevator button with was shaking.
I waited a time for a car to stop on the floor, and then all three showed up at once. I got into the closest one with an old guy dressed in a suit fifteen years out of style. During the ride to the lobby, he generously revealed his secret for making a million dollars. I thanked him in a tongue-in-cheek way and walked out of the building to my car. I learned three months later that he was Mr. Weckler — the owner of the Weckler Building and a guy worth about four million — but by that time I had forgotten the secret.
I drove back to my old office building and went in. In the lobby, I bought an early edition of the afternoon paper from one of the machines and carried it back to my office. When I got good and settled behind my desk with some whiskey, I went through the paper looking for articles on Mrs. Dyer’s death. I scanned the front section and saw nothing. But in one of the back sections I located a small article telling how the police had found the body of an unidentified woman in a city park. They gave a short description of the deceased and asked for the public’s cooperation in identifying her. I hoped they wouldn’t get it.