“For the family.”
“Is there reward money?”
“There should be, when the girl is found. I think I can guarantee it.”
Girston’s manner changed. With protestations of good will, he ushered me down the hallway to his office under the stairs. It contained an old safe, a roll-top desk, a broken-backed swivel chair. He switched on a green-shaded desk lamp, and urged me to sit down in the chair. I preferred to lean in the doorway where I could watch the entrance to the building.
“Getting back to the day she left here,” I said, “how did she leave? By taxi?”
“Car.”
“Green Volkswagen?”
“Naw, an old Buick, I think it was. She drove away with – with a guy.”
“Guy you know?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He pawed among some papers on his desk, found a paperclip, straightened it out carefully. His face was green in the lamplight, like ancient bronze. I felt like an archaeologist digging among the ruins of the recent past.
“How much reward money, would you say?”
“I can’t say, Mr. Girston. It ought to be substantial, if you give substantial help.”
“Okay,” he said. “I know him. We do – we did a little business from time to time. He was in the real-estate business – guy by the name of Merriman. I saw on TV where he got himself killed.”
“The girl dove away with Ben Merriman in November?”
“That’s correct.”
“Were they friends?”
“I guess you’d say so. He was the one that brought her here in the first place.”
“When was that?”
“Some time around the early part of November. He said she was Mrs. Smith’s daughter, said it was okay with her mother to let her use the apartment. It sounded all right to me.” Which meant that it hadn’t. “He was the one rented it to Mrs. Smith in the first place, and her lease wasn’t due to run out till the end of the year.”
“How long did the girl stay in the apartment?”
“A week, maybe a little longer. She was as still as a mouse up there. I don’t think she ever went out.”
“Did Merriman see her in the course of the week?”
“Just about every day he was in and out.”
“Were they having an affair?”
“I couldn’t answer that, mister.” His mouth moved like a chewing camel’s. He said out of the side of it, with sour primness: “We’re not responsible for what the tenants do in the privacy of their own dwellings.”
“Do you think they were having an affair? That information may be valuable.”
“Maybe they were. He spent some awful late nights up there with her. He used to bring in groceries, too. And then they went off together, that signifies.”
“Went off to see her mother in Sacramento, you said.”
“That’s what they said.”
“Which of them said it – the girl or Merriman?”
“Merriman, I think it was. Yeah, it was him said it.”
“Did either of them say what she was going to do after that?”
“Not to me, they didn’t.”
“Did she seem to be looking forward to seeing her mother?”
“I doubt she was looking forward to anything much. She acted like a pretty sad little girl.”
“What about her mother? You knew her mother, of course?”
“Sure. She was a tenant here for six or eight months, off and on. Mrs. Smith is a different kettle of fish from her daughter.”
“In what way?”
“She’s a lively customer. These artists and people like that can be pretty wild sometimes.”
“She’s an artist?”
“So she said. She rented the apartment to have a quiet place where she could paint. I never saw her doing any painting, though. In fact I never saw much of her at all. Ben Merriman handled the whole deal. Sometimes a month would go by and I wouldn’t see her. She only stayed here off and on, and she came and went very quietly.”
“All by herself?”
“She came and went by herself.”
“No visitors?”
“I guess she had visitors. I don’t keep watch on their goings and comings, but I know what you’re getting at. You want to know if she was using the apartment to be with a man.” His prim mouth dirtied the phrase.
“Was she?”
“I wouldn’t say yes. I wouldn’t say no.”
“Did you ever see a man with her?”
“Not so’s I could swear to it. There’s people in and out of here at all hours of the day and night. It isn’t part of my job to spy on the tenants.”
“Could the man have been Ben Merriman?”
“Could have been at that.” He looked into a shadowed corner. His gaze swung around to me. “What happened to Ben, mister? It said on TV that he was clubbed to death.”
Before I could answer him, the front door opened. It wasn’t Stanley. It was a young woman in a dark hat and business suit. She closed the door, leaning wearily on the doorknob for a moment, then saw me and went upstairs. Her quick steps climbed the slanting ceiling of Girston’s office.
“Who did it to Ben Merriman?” he said.
“I was going to ask you the same question. You knew him better than I did.”
“You couldn’t say we were friends. We never visited in each other’s homes. I never thought much of his habits.”
“Such as?”
“Gambling and drinking and running around with women. I don’t throw my money away on things like that, and I try and keep away from people who do. I knew Ben in line of business, is all.”
“What kind of a businessman was he?”
“Ben was a sharpie – a little too sharp for his own good. He had his little tricks, a lot of them do. Couple-three years ago, when there was an apartment shortage, he had a little habit of squeezing cash bonuses out of prospective tenants. Then he had another little habit of using apartments as a roosting place for house prospects. He’d lease an apartment to them, then undertake to break the lease if they’d buy a house from him.”
“Did he do that with Mrs. Smith?”
“No. She didn’t break her lease. She just let it run out at the end of the year.”
“I understand she left her furniture.”
“Yep, just left it sitting there. Merriman said she didn’t want it back. It didn’t fit in with his plans for her new house.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“Round about the beginning of December. He called up and told me Mrs. Smith couldn’t be bothered moving her furniture, I could rent the apartment furnished if I wanted. I didn’t know until then that she wasn’t planning to renew her lease.”
“Did you see Mrs. Smith after her daughter left here?”
“I don’t think so. But she might of used the apartment without me knowing. It was here for her to use, all paid up until the end of the year.”
I was puzzled. Apparently Mrs. Wycherly had moved into the Champion Hotel at a time when she had a perfectly good apartment in the San Mateo area, as well as the house being sold in Atherton.
“Why did she leave here? Do you know, Mr. Girston?”
“You mean Mrs. Smith? The mother?”
“Yes. Was there any trouble before she left?”
“Now that you mention it, she did have a little trouble with the fellow next door. But that was way last spring.”
“What month?”
He wrinkled his forehead and smoothed it with his fingers. “March, I think. March or April. It’s one of the few times I ever talked to her, to do more than pass the time of day. She came storming down here, claiming that Mr. Quillan was spying on her. Older women get that idea sometimes, ’specially when they’re man-crazy. She wanted me to evict him. I told her I couldn’t do that. Told her Mr. Quillan had no more interest in her than the flies on the wall. Luckily she got over the idea.”