“The two Nimes bodies, what’s left of them, are gathered up, boxed and buried. Steady writes letters to their respective parents, lamenting the young folks’ death and praising them for having done the Lord’s work. Meanwhile, Hamilton Keyes instructs Undean to run an exhaustive check on the Nimeses’ background. Undean does and discovers they weren’t secret agents for another foreign power after all, but merely a couple of left-leaning, run-of-the-mill do-gooders. Undean doesn’t make a written report of his findings, but does make separate verbal ones to Keyes and Steady.
“Keyes decides the best thing to do is arrange for their pet general to receive a special commendation and forget the whole thing — except for the beautiful Muriel Lamphier, whom he consoles, woos and, once they’re both back in the States, weds. And that’s the terrible secret of Mrs. Hamilton Keyes, née Lamphier.” Erika paused, then asked, “Does that sound like some of your late daddy’s handiwork?”
“Exactly,” Haynes said.
“Okay,” she said, “now we — what do they call it in Hollyweird? — we cut to—”
“Dissolve would be better,” Haynes said.
“Okay, we dissolve to Washington some fifteen years later — make it almost sixteen. Steadfast Haynes is spreading word around town that he’s just finished his searing memoirs. The word reaches Mrs. Hamilton Keyes. She contacts her lawyer, a distinguished former U.S. senator from the great state of Alabama, and instructs him to buy up the memoirs and hang the cost. But before negotiations can begin, Steady dies. The lawyer quickly contacts the son and heir’s new lawyer, Mr. Howard Mott, and makes an offer of one hundred thousand dollars for the memoirs, sight unseen. But the son and heir, that’s you, demurs and asks for half a million bucks. All this money talk happened the same day Steady was buried at Arlington.
“Well, that same afternoon, Mrs. Hamilton Keyes — or so Gilbert Undean suspects — goes calling on Mlle Isabelle Gelinet and demands to know where the manuscript is.” Erika paused and frowned. “Why would Muriel do that?”
“Maybe she panicked,” Haynes said.
Erika shook her head and said, “Anyway, Isabelle refuses to divulge — another Undean word — where the manuscript is and Muriel — you want me to go into all that? There’s a whole lot of gruesome detail.”
“No need,” Haynes said.
“Undean suggests that regardless of whether or not Isabelle revealed where the manuscript was, Muriel couldn’t let her live because Isabelle knew her festering Laotian secret. That festering phrase is mine, not Undean’s. So Isabelle dies and you and Tinker Burns discover her body. As soon as Hamilton Keyes learns of Isabelle’s death, he summons Undean and instructs him to offer up to fifty thousand for the memoirs. Undean then goes into a lot of self-justification about how, earlier that same day, he had urged Keyes to buy the memoirs from you and how Keyes pooh-poohed the idea. Anyway, Undean finds you and offers the fifty thousand and you turn it down. Undean then reports to Keyes about how you’d also turned down the one hundred thousand from the senator and are now asking five hundred thousand because you think you can make a film out of Steady’s life. Undean then counsels Keyes to walk away from the deal. And that’s the end of the Undean memo.”
“You did very well,” Haynes said.
“I have a good memory.”
“What was left out?” Haynes asked. “By Undean?”
“Well, he couldn’t tell how Muriel killed him.”
“Well, no,” Haynes said. “But what else?”
“There’s almost no mention of Tinker Burns and none of Horace Purchase.”
“Undean wouldn’t have known about Purchase and must’ve assumed that Tinker found Isabelle’s body by accident.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“What’s your overall impression?”
“It all seems to be aimed at giving Muriel Keyes sufficient motive. If she can’t buy or destroy the memoirs, she can at least do away with the remaining witnesses to the Laotian mess. With Steady gone, the only witnesses left are Undean, her husband and — since she wrote the memoirs — Isabelle.”
“Why do you think Tinker was killed?”
“I guess he was trying to blackmail her with the Undean memo.”
“A logical guess.”
“Why did you ask me to make that... that recitation?” she asked. “Your real reason?”
“The memo’s too smooth — too logical. Too neat. I wanted to see how it would sound if it came out disjointed.”
Erika’s eyes went wide. “You bastard! You know who killed them all — Isabelle and Undean and Tinker Burns.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You know something. I can tell.”
“The only thing I know for a fact is that Gilbert Undean didn’t write that memo.”
Forty-five
McCorkle shifted his position again, trying to accommodate his long legs to Padillo’s 280 SL. After failing to cross them for the third time, he said, “You ever think of buying something a little more sedate and comfortable — maybe a Volvo station wagon?”
Padillo ignored the question and said, “He should’ve left by now.”
“It’s only a little after nine and the meeting’s not till ten.”
“Keyes isn’t one to arrive last at any meeting,” Padillo said. “Especially this one.”
They were parked on California Street two houses east of the Georgian one that belonged to Hamilton and Muriel Keyes. They assumed that when Keyes left he would probably head west — away from them — then south. Otherwise, he would have to cope with California Street when it suddenly turned one-way.
“He’s in there, sipping his second cup of coffee out of a gold-rimmed Haviland cup,” McCorkle said. “And we’re trapped in this clapped-out roadster with a slit top that lets in wind with a chill factor of fifteen degrees. And what have we got to drink? Cold Roy Rogers coffee in plastic cups.”
“Howard Johnson coffee,” Padillo said.
“I haven’t had a cup of Ho-Jo coffee in twenty years and, by my troth, it hasn’t improved any.”
“I’d almost forgotten,” Padillo said.
“What?”
“What a sunbeam you are in the morning.”
“Mind if I smoke?”
“Open the window.”
“It’s thirty-three degrees.”
“And life is a series of hard choices.”
“I’ll chew instead,” McCorkle said and produced a packet of Nicorette gum.
“Here he comes.”
“So he does,” McCorkle said, putting away the Nicorette.
The automatic overhead door of the Keyeses’ three-car garage was nearly all the way up. A moment later a dark blue Buick sedan, with Keyes at the wheel, backed out onto the turnaround slab. Keyes then drove down the driveway and turned west, away from Padillo’s coupe.
“Which car does she drive?” McCorkle asked as the garage door came back down.
“The Mercedes sedan.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it.”
“When — the night you forgot to tell me who she was?”
“I didn’t forget,” Padillo said, started the engine and drove less than seventy-five yards before turning into the Keyes driveway. He stopped his car a foot away from the overhead door, blocking it nicely. He and McCorkle got out, walked to the front door and pushed a bell that rang some chimes. A moment later the door was opened by the Salvadoran maid.
Padillo snapped out a sentence in rapid Spanish that was much too fast for McCorkle. The only words he got were “la Señora” and “los Señores Padillo y McCorkle.” But the maid understood perfectly, especially the imperious tone, which caused her to duck her head, open the door wider and invite them inside to wait while she informed la Señora.