Buyer beware

22

Twenty minutes after leaving the King Saint Louis Motel, I entered Alison's room at the Ramada Inn.

She was on the phone, her lips compressed in exasperation. When she spoke, it was with the brittle self-control of someone who'd rather be screaming. "I will," she said, "you can count on it."

When she hung up the phone, she sighed. "My editor," she explained. "He thinks I'm on another assignment and I have to stall him."

The police must have been thorough with her. She wasn't her usual composed self. Some of the shrewd confidence was gone from her eyes, and a stray wisp of auburn hair hung over the center of her forehead.

"How did it happen?" I asked her.

Alison brushed back the strand of hair and paced off some of her nervousness. "After you left to follow Bender I went into Osborne's office to talk to him. He was sitting with his head resting on his desk, his eyes open, as if he were looking toward the door…" Her face was pale wax.

"Only he was dead," I finished for her.

Alison nodded, swallowed. The strain was pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"How?" I asked her.

"He was… stabbed, in the chest."

An iciness dropped through me as I remembered the gold letter-opener in Bender's attache case.

"Did the police find the weapon?"

"No, the killer took it with him."

"Bender… " I said.

Alison gave me an intent look. "It had to be him, but the police don't know who or where he is."

I could imagine Osborne's mistake. He knew we were onto Bender and reasoned that he was in no danger, so he must have pushed too hard, maybe lost his temper, underestimating the ruthlessness and deadliness of Bender and whatever he represented.

"Did you tell the police I was following Bender?"

"Not right away," Alison said, "but I had to eventually. I told them what I knew."

I walked to the window with my fists in my pockets. If I told the police where to find Bender, they'd pick him up and, with that, end my hopes of tracing Joan Clark. I was certain that she was somehow connected with Gratuity Insurance.

"Suppose that Bender realized I was following him, and that he lost me," I said.

"But he didn't."

"From this point on we pretend that I told you he did."

Alison gave me a nice eyebrow arch. "But you can't withhold evidence in a murder case."

I didn't tell her she was too late with that advice or that Carlon was paying me fifty thousand dollars to follow his advice.

"We're too close not to," I told her. "I searched Bender's motel room while he was out. He's going to be on flight five sixty-two tomorrow at noon, bound for Chicago, which is where he came from."

Alison appeared dubious. She touched the flame of her lighter to one of her long cigarettes and glared at me through the smoke. "Nudger, what have you got in mind?"

"I intend to take an earlier flight to Chicago. I'll be at O'Hare when Bender's plane touches down, and I'll follow him from the airport."

"To where?"

"That's what I'll be following him to find out."

I watched Alison take another desperate drag on her cigarette, glad I hadn't confided in her completely. She seemed to relax, letting the smoke filter thickly from her mouth and nostrils.

"What if Bender changes his flight plan?" she asked.

"The Benders of the world don't change their carefully laid-out plans unless they have to. You can bet that killing Osborne was in Bender's mind as an alternative before he walked into that office. And now he knows that if he ever does come under suspicion, it would be best if he left a record of having behaved normally after leaving Heath Industries. Remember, he doesn't know he was followed."

Alison stared at her cigarette and seemed to weigh the logic of what I'd told her. "I'll go to Chicago with you," she said.

"It might only implicate you further."

"I'm not implicated at all yet."

The message was communicated clearly. If I didn't let her accompany me, what was there left for her to do but cover herself by telling the police what she knew?"

"You are asking me to break the law," Alison said. "And remember, I'm the one who steered you onto Bender. We agreed to help each other with an exchange of information, so don't expect me to back away from this story now."

"I don't want you complicating things. I don't want anyone else to get hurt."

"And I want my story."

I knew I had no choice, really. If Alison called the police, I'd never be able to leave St. Louis, and I'd be in hot water a mile over my head.

"All right, but there's a condition," I told her, pretending to have a few bargaining chips. "I'll be in charge in Chicago, without any interference from you for the sake of a good story."

"If it will help your ego," she said.

I told her to make the reservations.