Blood Hunt

10

Susan Pegans stared at the detectives with eyes flashing in outrage. “No! Absolutely not! I didn’t go anywhere with Gary. He’s a very happily married man.”

Garreth caught a note of regret as she said it. He bet she would have gone with Mossman in a moment, given an invitation.

“Alex Long and I had dinner in Chinatown with a couple of Iowa contractors and their wives. Ask Alex.”

They would, but for the moment, Garreth continued to press her. “Have you seen him spending an unusual amount of time with any single person here?”

“He spent time with everyone. Gary doesn’t — ” She broke off, eyes filling with tears. She wiped at them with the handkerchief Garreth handed her. “Gary didn’t play at conventions, not ever. He worked. Why do you think he was sales manager?”

“But you knew where he was going Monday night. Verneau said he told all three of you,” Harry said.

“Yes, so we would know who had been contacted and not duplicate efforts.”

“Yet you didn’t think it strange when he said nothing to you about Tuesday night?”

She shrugged, sighing. “I wondered, yes, but…I thought he’d tell us Wednesday. I — ” She broke off again, shaking her head.

“Pity unrequited love,” Harry murmured as they left her. “Well, do we take her at her word or start questioning some of the other ladies? You’ll have noticed how many really beautiful ones there are here.”

“Maybe we ought to think about guys, too,” Garreth said. “That would be a better reason for keeping it quiet.”

“You talk to beautiful young men, then; I’ll stick to the ladies. Just find someone who went out with him.”

Garreth found no one. He worked his way across the exhibition hall talking to personnel manning the booths and convention members visiting the booths. As far as he could determine, Mossman had said to hell with the convention on Tuesday. Checking with Harry later, he found his partner having no better luck.

“Maybe you ought to start on the cab companies,” Harry said. “I’ll keep working here.”

“Let me bounce one more idea off you. You mentioned that he may have met someone Monday evening. So let’s talk to the people he was with Monday.”

“Good idea. Verneau gave me their names.” Harry scribbled two names on a notebook page and handed it to him. “You take this pair; I’ll see the others.”

Garreth made it easy on himself. He rounded up both men and talked to them at the same time, hoping one might stimulate memory in the other. “Where did you go?” he asked them.

Misters Upton and Suarez grinned at each other. “North Beach. That’s some entertainment up there.”

He gave them a neutral smile. “It has a little of something for everyone. Do you remember the names of the clubs you visited?”

“Why do you want to know about Monday?” Suarez asked. “Wasn’t Gary Mossman robbed and killed Tuesday night? That’s what’s going around.”

“We need to know about people he met Monday. Please, try to think. I need the club names.”

They looked at each other and shrugged. “We just walked around, stopping anywhere that looked interesting,” Upton said. “We’d get a drink, watch a girl or two dance, and go on. I don’t remember any of the names.”

Neither did Suarez.

“Did you talk to anyone?”

They blinked. “What do you mean?”

Garreth gave them a man-to-man smirk. “You were five guys out on the town alone. Didn’t you meet any girls?”

The contractors grinned. “Well, sure. We kind of collected four along the way.”

Or were collected by the girls. “Did Mossman pay special attention to any of them? Did he ask one of them back to the hotel?”

“No. He didn’t pair up with any of them.”

“Do you remember the girls’ names? I also need to know if he met anyone outside your group.”

Upton hesitated before replying, with a show of straining his memory, “I think Mandy was one of them. I don’t remember her last name.”

Mandy being the one who came back to the hotel with him, no doubt.

“Lana was another,” Suarez said. “Mossman didn’t talk to anyone except us and them.”

“Describe the girls please.” Though what were their chances of finding them by first name, probably not even real ones, and description? Probably zip.

“Except the singer,” Upton said.

Garreth looked up from his notebook. “Singer?”

The contractor nodded. “We were in this club — I don’t remember that one’s name either — and Mossman couldn’t do anything except stare at this singer. Not that I blamed him. She was something special, and boy could she sing. She kept giving him the eye, too. I remember he hung back as we left, and when I looked around, he was talking to her. Just for a minute, though.”

“What did the singer look like?”

Suarez grinned. “A real babe! Tall, and I mean really tall, man. She had these boots with spike heels that made her legs look like they went up to her shoulders. Nice set of jugs, too.”

Something like electric shock trailed up Garreth’s spine, raising every hair on his body. He stared at Suarez, hardly breathing. “Do you think she was five-ten?”

“Who could tell with those boots? She looked taller than me in them, and I’m six feet.”

“What color was her hair?”

“Red. Not that Las Vegas red but darker, like mahogany.”