Part 14 (1/2)

”He takes care of the boats and does odd jobs. Mary wouldn't. ”

”But she did,” Bettiger said.

”She went out with him quite a few times. She'd drive up there and meet him before you opened the place at the lake. He was crazy about her. She told me about it. She stopped going out with him because she said he had started to bore her. He was beginning to act jealous and possessive, and that was the one thing Mary never could stand.”

Kruslov said, as though speaking to himself, ”The body wasn't far off the main road between here and Smith Lake.

Jealous.” He turned and nodded at Hilver. Hilver left his post by the far wall and headed toward the door.

At the door Hilver stopped and said, ”The state boys?”

”No. This is ours. Take Watson along and pick him up yourself and bring him in. Any more, Miss Bettiger?”

”No more that I know of. I think I know them all. We.. always told each other everything. Gosh, it's going to seem kind of...” She dived into her purse for a handkerchief.

The more I thought about it, the better Yeagger fitted the role of murderer. He'd seen me with her up there at the lake. And I remembered a rather awkward little incident.

It had happened the first time I went there with her. We were looking for somebody, I forget who. We'd walked up to the horse barn. Mary was wearing slacks. When she went in ahead of me I told her that she'd missed one of her belt loops in the back. She had stopped at once and said, ”So fix it!”

She undid her belt and I pulled it back through the loops and threaded it through the one she had missed. Then I had reached my arms around her and I had just started fumbling with the belt buckle when Yeagger walked into the barn. He'd stopped quickly. Mary had said h.e.l.lo to him, moved out of my arms and buckled her own belt. Even at the time I realized that it must have looked d.a.m.n funny to Yeagger, because he had no way of knowing how we had gotten into that situation-my arms around her, a pile of straw handy, and her belt undone. I realized now that it must have driven him crazy, finding us like that.

Apparently she had stopped seeing him, and he was jealous.

It wasn't too hard to imagine him driving down into the city on Sat.u.r.day night and hunting for her. He could very easily have spotted her car at the club. He looked like a man with a lot of patience. He could have followed us. It could have been Nels Yeagger who put the car lights on us. He was born and raised in the woods; it would have been no trouble for him to park up the street and come back silently through the gra.s.s. Maybe just in time to hear me give her the key. The rest would not have been hard to arrange, and he had provocation.

It made me feel better about my part of it. I hadn't done anything. The body had been found. If Yeagger had done it, and I was growing more convinced every moment that he had, they would break him down and my part would be forgiven in the triumph of catching him.

After a few more questions which uncovered nothing, the meeting broke up. Myrna Pryor had already left the room, right after Kruslov gave the account of the phone call. I walked out into the grey afternoon with Nancy and Dodd.

”She was so very much alive,” Dodd murmured.

”And now she is so very much dead,” Nancy said too sharply. I looked at her. I did not like the look in her eyes.

She was not a nice woman at that moment.

They drove off. As I stopped on the way toward my car to light a cigarette, Paul France caught up with me. He wore a pale grey felt hat with the brim turned up all the way around. It was pushed back a little. He looked like a mild rabbit.

”You like Yeagger for it,” he said.

”What do you mean?”

”Her kid brother hired me, Sewell. I sat and watched people. Don't ever play poker with me. You came into that room and you held a straight open in the middle with all your money on the table. Then the call came. For you it was like a one card draw that filled that belly straight. You lost the lines in your face and your shoulders dropped a good two inches with relief.”

”You have quite an imagination.”

”I have none. I never believe anything I don't see.

That's maybe why I do good at this business.”

”Maybe I was afraid Kruslov was aiming at me, Mr. France.”