When I caught it again it had stopped on the gravel roadside and Quillan was stepping out over the door. It was too late for me to stop or retreat, but he didn’t seem to notice me as I passed. He was trotting up a flagstone walk to a brown frame cottage half-hidden by trees and shrubs. Below its rustic mailbox, a reflector sign spelled out in three-inch letters: MERRIMAN.
I parked around the next curve and transferred my contact mike from the dash compartment to my jacket pocket. I walked back towards the brown cottage. The late afternoon light fell green and tempered through the overarching branches of the oaks. It was one of those untouched stretches of land which you find here and there on the Peninsula, enclaves of a centuries-old past, when everything was oak forest.
The trees stood thick around Merriman’s yard, and I made it unobserved to the side of his cottage. Keeping close to the wall and ducking my head below window-level, I worked my way around to the back and across an imitation flagstone patio shadowed by a jungle of undipped laurels.
The sliding glass door which let into the house was closed and partly obscured by matchstick bamboo drapes. I could hear voices through it, a man’s and a woman’s. I lay down full length on the flagstones with my head resting on the doorsill, and pressed my mike to the corner of the glass.
Quillan’s voice was rapid and raw: “I need some bread, but fast.”
“You want it buttered, maybe with jam on it?” Sally Merriman said.
“It’s no joke.”
“It’s a joke when you come to me for money. I haven’t got a red cent. He borrowed on the furniture, even, right up to the hilt. I’ll have to bury him on the installment plan. I was counting on you to help me with the down-payment.”
“That’s a laugh. What did Ben ever do for me?”
“He did plenty, and you know it. He let you in on a big deal, set you up in business. I happen to know he was paying your rent last year, I saw the check-stubs. But you never had any gratitude. What do you want now, with him laying dead at the morgue? The gold out of his teeth?”
“Gratitude!” His angry snicker exploded like static in the mike. “Big-hearted brother-in-law Ben never gave me a damn thing in his life. You think he put me in that apartment because he couldn’t resist my baby-blue eyes? Or let me in on the Mandeville deal? I made that deal for Ben.”
“Yes, God. I happen to know you were just a front, a dummy.”
“You’re the dummy,” he yelled, and went on ranting at her in a high and ugly yammer: “I read you like a book, doll. You want what money will buy, but you don’t want to know where it comes from. You let me and Ben sweat out your dirty money for you. But when you get your hooks on it, suddenly it’s clean like fallen snow. And all yours. But you’re not going to cut me out. I need travel money, and I’m getting it from you. You’re sitting here on a bundle of loot, and don’t think I don’t know it.”
“If I had a bundle, you think I’d stay in a dump like this?”
“You’ve stayed in worse. Let’s see your bag, bag.”
“Don’t you call me that, Stanley Quillan.”
“Let’s see your purse, sweet little lovie-doll sister of mine.”
She must have thrown it at him. I heard the slap of leather in his hands, then the click as he opened the catch.
“It’s empty.” His voice was empty. “Where’s the loot?”
“I never had any of it. You got your share and you know where the rest of it went. Reno and Vegas and the goddam stock market. He went in at the top of the market and came out at the bottom, through the drain.”
“Don’t give me that pitch, that was way last summer. I’m talking about here and now.”
“What do you think I’m talking about? There hasn’t been anything since the Mandeville deal and that went with the wind. We’ve been on our uppers ever since, paying back what he borrowed to swing it in the first place. Big deal Ben.” Her voice was harsh and sardonic, with woodwinds of hysteria shrilling through it. “We were going to be rich, move up to Atherton, join the Circus Club. Some circus. We were always going to be rich. And now he’s dead.”
“It’s a deeply touching story. It’d touch me deeply, only I don’t believe it.”
“Believe what you like, it’s the truth. I haven’t suffered enough, with Ben laying dead, cops hammering questions at me.” She began to sob, gasping out words between her sobs: “My own brother has to turn against me.”
“Buck up, sis, I’m for you. Ben was no great loss, and he left you well-fixed.”
“He left me stony broke.”
“Change the disc, kiddo, and kid me not.” Quillan’s footsteps vibrated through the floor.
“Keep away from me,” she said.
“When I get my share. I need it. You’re not the only one they’ve been questioning. I need it worse than you, and I’m going to have it.”
“There isn’t any money in the house. You can look if you want.”
“Where is it then?”
“Where’s what?” she said in bitter mocking idiocy.
“The loot. The wad. When Ben came back from Sac he was loaded for bear.”
“You mean the Wycherly commission? That’s gone. Most of it went to the agent who sold the place, it was on multiple listing. The rest went to the finance company. They were going to take the car. Anyway, you had no claim on that commission.”
“I’m not talking about the commission. I’m talking about all of it – the whole cash value of the house. Ben went to Sac to get it, and he got it. Naturally he didn’t tell me that, but I have a little bird that keeps me informed.”
“It must be a coocoo-bird, then. It doesn’t make sense. Why would Mrs. Wycherly give him all that money?”
“You can’t be as dumb as you let on. Nobody could.”
“Lay off me,” she said on a rising note. “And don’t stand over me. You remind me of the old man.”
“You remind me of the old lady. But we won’t argue, sis. I’m in a jam. I swear I have a right to part of that loot. You wouldn’t turn your little brother down.”
“If it’s so important, you can sell the store, or your car.”
“The car’s shot, I couldn’t get my equity. The store hasn’t even been paying the lease. Anyhow, I can’t wait around to sell it. I need out. Today.”
“Did you do something wrong again?” There was family history in the question. “What did you do, Stanley?”
“Ben really kept you in the dark, eh? Maybe he was smart. We’ll leave it like that, so if somebody asks you you won’t know.”
“Are the cops after you?”
“They will be. A private dick jumped me in the store this aft. He won’t be the last of them.”
“Is it about Ben?” she said in a thin voice.
“Partly. What happened to Ben is one reason I need out.” He made a snicking sound between his teeth. “It could happen to me. Song title.”
A chair scraped the floor. Her breath came out as she rose. “Did you kill him, Stanley?”
“That’s kookie talk.” But he sounded almost flattered.
“I mean it, Stanley. Did you kill him?”
“If I killed him I wouldn’t be here. I’d be on my way to Australia. Travelling first-class.”
“On what? I thought you were stony.”
“On the wad he was carrying. Somebody got it.”
“You don’t have to look at me like that. I didn’t know about it.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
She repeated the childish phrase: “Cross my heart, and hope to die. The cops said he had four bucks in his wallet.”