“He doesn’t know! I drove him to the airport this morning, and he boarded the eight o’clock shuttle to Minneapolis. There’s a merchandising show there, and he won’t be back until tomorrow night. I’ll phone him, of course. Wait till he hears! He has always had a jealous-husband theory, you know.” She stifled a slight giggle. “At least we know it wasn’t Mr. Woodinghurst. He died twenty years ago.”
Qwilleran said, “Just because it happened here, it doesn’t follow that the perpetrator was a local.”
“You’re so right, Qwill! I’d prefer to think it’s an outside job.”
“What effect will it have on his customers?”
“Those who wanted to buy tomorrow will be disappointed, of course, but I’m concerned about the Old Guard who were expecting to sell to him today. Some of them really need the money. They’re old-timers who thought they were financially set for life. Then along came inflation and dishonest relatives and bad investment advice. It’s sad. They should be notified, in case they don’t hear it on the radio, but his niece has the schedule. The poor girl must be terribly upset.”
Qwilleran next went to Lois’s Luncheonette for the mid-morning coffee klatsch, where caffeine addicts and assorted loafers met to exchange opinions and rumors about current events. Everyone had a connection to the grapevine – a son-in-law or neighbor or fellow worker who knew the inside story. Lois, whose son was captain of the inn’s desk clerks, had a direct line to the facts.
“They called him a Chicago businessman on the air,” she announced while bustling around with the coffee server, “but everybody knows he was a jeweler with a million dollars’ worth of stuff in his luggage.”
“They didn’t say nothin’ about his girl! Where’s his girl?”
“Prob’ly took off with the killer and the loot.”
“Coulda been kidnapped. He was her uncle.”
Lois said, “Yeah… well… Lenny says she was no niece.”
“Her and the killer were in cahoots, if you ask me. Somebody from Chicago.”
“‘Tain’t fair! Strangers come up here and get themselves knocked off, and it makes us look bad.”
“Why’d it happen just when we got a nice new hotel and some good publicity? Makes me madder’n a wet hen!”
“Eleven o’clock! Turn on the news!”
Lois switched on the radio that occupied a shelf above the cash register, and her customers heard one additional scrap of news:
“The State Bureau of Investigation has been called in to assist local police in the investigation of a homicide. A Chicago businessman…”
Qwilleran paid for his coffee and went home, taking time to walk through the inn’s parking lot. Delacamp’s Mercedes rental car was still there.
When Qwilleran turned the key in the backdoor lock, he heard the welcoming chorus indoors and realized once more how much he appreciated his housemates. He had lived alone for most of his adult life – before adopting Koko and Yum Yum. They were companionable, handsome, entertaining – and admirably independent. Sometimes exasperatingly so.
One of the pleasures they shared was reading aloud. He had a good voice, having trained to be an actor before switching to journalism. When he read aloud from the vintage books that filled his shelves, he dramatized the prose in a way that excited his listeners. Currently they were reading the play-script of Night Must Fall: the smarmy lines of the houseboy, the petulant fussiness of Mrs. Bramson, and the country dialects of the kitchen help.
They had reached Scene Four. Yum Yum was curled contentedly on Qwilleran’s lap: Koko perched on the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder as if following the printed words, purring in his ear or tickling his neck with twitching whiskers. Mrs. Bramson was worrying about her jewel box. Danny was being overly attentive…. Suddenly he picked up a cushion and smothered his rich employer.
“YOW!” came a piercing howl in Qwilleran’s ear.
“Please!” the man protested, putting a hand to his ear. “Don’t do that!” But then he felt a sensation on his upper lip, and he tamped his moustache. It was always the source of his hunches. Now he knew – or thought he knew – more about the murder than the investigators had revealed.
The Friday edition of the Moose County Something would have the latest – at two o’clock. At one-thirty Qwilleran had an appointment with Maggie Sprenkle.
The Sprenkle Building, across Main Street from the Mackintosh Inn, was a stone structure like all the others downtown, and its history dated back to the days when merchants always lived “over the store.” Now the storefronts on the ground floor had been updated into offices for an insurance agency and a realty firm. At one side a door led up to Maggie’s palace on the second and third floors.
Qwilleran rang the bell, waited for the buzzer to unlock the door, and found himself in a steep, narrow stairwell. It seemed narrower and steeper because of the thick stair carpet in a pattern of roses and the velvety rosepink walls hung with dozens of old engravings.
