The Betrayers

Chapter Eleven

THE UNEXPECTEDNESS OF it kind of took my breath away. Since my divorce several years ago, I've been strictly a non-family man. I'm not used to having relatives walk up and introduce themselves in the middle of a job, especially relatives by a marriage that was never performed. To cover up, I reached for the white purse on the table.

"Do you mind?"

Isobel had started to protest, but she laughed instead. "No, of course not. Go right ahead. Is this what they call a frisk?"

I said, "No, a frisk is lots more fun. My God, the junk you women carry in those suitcases!"

Actually, the purse was reasonably uncluttered and quite innocent of surprises. There was nothing in it you wouldn't expect to find in the purse of any modern woman who used cigarettes and cosmetics, or if there was, it was well enough camouflaged that I could afford to let myself be fooled by it. The small, lady-type wallet held a California driver's license and various other cards issued to (Mrs.) Isobel Caroline Marner, 1286 Seaview Drive, San Francisco. I remembered that the letter from the lawyers had also originated in San Francisco.

"My passport is in my suitcase, at the hotel," she said. "I'll show it to you when we get back, if you like."

"Why a passport to come to Hawaii, a state of the U.S.A.?" I asked suspiciously.

She took back her purse, smiling. "I told you. We went to France to investigate Winnie's death; naturally I had a passport. And I didn't know where you might lead me from here so I brought it along." She hesitated. "Now you might let me look in your wallet, just to make us even."

I said, "It wouldn't do you any good. You know my name. Your lawyers seem to've tracked down as much address as I've got. What else do you want, a card saying Secret Agent?"

She laughed. "I guess I'm being naпve. But I only have your word for it."

"That's right."

"You could be just about anybody," she persisted. "Anybody with a gun."

"That's right."

"You're not being much help, Matt."

"That's right," I said. "Let's order some lunch. I'm hungry."

After we'd given our orders and the waitress had departed, Isobel stubbed out her cigarette and looked at me. "May I ask just one question?"

"Go ahead."

"Assuming you're telling the truth, and you are an undercover operative of some kind for the U.S. Government, was Winnie one, too?"

I said, "I can't answer that. If she was, it would come under the heading of classified information, wouldn't it?"

"You've told me what you are. If you're telling the truth. Isn't that classified, too?"

"You kind of tricked it out of me, catching me with a gun out," I said. "I had to give you a reasonable explanation, to avoid damaging publicity. We're allowed to use the truth judiciously in such cases; we're not one of the outfits that make a holy fetish of security, thank God. But that doesn't mean I can lay the whole operation open to you, just to satisfy your girlish curiosity."

"It's a little more than girlish curiosity." Isobel's voice was sharp. "I mean, if she was an agent, too, and you were working together, and she got killed in the line of duty, then maybe-"

"Maybe what?"

"Maybe you weren't really married. Maybe you were just pretending to be. Maybe it was just, what do you call it in your work, a cover? And in that case-"

She was a smart woman. I grinned at her across the table. "In that case, you and your Kenneth would be home free, wouldn't you? No marriage, no inheritance for me. Shucks, and I was just starting to feel so rich, too!"

Isobel didn't smile. "Unfortunately for us, it isn't quite that simple. Whether or not you were married to her, there's still the will; she was legally entitled to leave her money to any man she chose, husband or no…"

This was all taking us pretty far from what had brought me to Hawaii, but of course I couldn't say so. To act uninterested would have been suspicious. It would have indicated that I had more important things on my mind than half a million dollars.

"Wait a minute!" I said. "What will are we talking about now? From a letter I got and from what you've told me, I gather that the old man, Philip Grant Marner or whatever his name was, willed his estate to his kids Kenneth and Winifred. Is that right?"

"Yes, of course. And Winnie left her share to you, in a document mailed from France about a week before she died. Didn't you know?"

I thought of a small girl with silver-blonde hair who'd never talked much about herself. My voice sounded odd and far away when I spoke: "No, I didn't know. I didn't even know the kid had money. She never told me."

"Of course you'd say that."

I looked up, and drew a long breath, and managed a grin. "Sure. I'm a born liar. You can't trust a word I say."

Isobel said grimly, "And you can get that sentimental look off your face. Maybe Winnie was fond of you and maybe she wasn't-I wouldn't know about that-but she didn't pass her inheritance on to you because of your sex appeal. She did it to spite me and to protect the older brother she idolized."

"Protect him?" I said. "By keeping him from getting her share of the dough if she died? That's protection?"

"Yes. Because she knew he was almost broke, and she thought I would leave him if he could no longer support me properly. And in her opinion, my leaving Kenneth would be the biggest break of his life. She hated me, and she had the theory, I'm sure, that without me to drag him down, he'd manage to make a man of himself somehow." Isobel shrugged. "Well, that was one girl's opinion. We always did disagree about what was good for Kenneth, Winnie and I. I managed to win that battle; that's why she went away and took a government job." Isobel smiled. "She never let us know what kind of job it was, except that it involved a lot of traveling. But I can guess, can't I? Just as I can guess that you weren't really married."

There was a little break while the waitress served our lunches; then I said, "If there's a will, what difference does our matrimonial status make?"

"Wills can be broken, darling. What did they call this fish?"

"Mahimahi. Something local," I said. "Is it any good?"

"Fabulous. Look, they've got almonds in the sauce! And if we did decide to try to break Winnie's last will and testament, charging duress or incompetence or something, we'd probably have a better chance if you'd been just casual lovers rather than man and wife." She regarded me coolly across the table. "And, of course, if you're not what you claim to be, and if you did murder Winnie after all… Well, as I said, that's what I was hoping to prove when I came out here."

"And now?" I asked.

She smiled slowly. "Now I'll have to use another approach, darling. Because, to be perfectly honest, after meeting you and talking with you, I don't really think you killed her. And I don't really think her will can be broken. So there's only one thing left for me to do, isn't there? All I can do is throw myself on your mercy, my dear brother-in-law, and hope that somehow I can make you feel generous toward me. Well, toward Kenneth and me."

There was a little silence. "Half a million is a lot of generosity," I said at last, watching her closely. It didn't seem like real money we were discussing, the kind you could pay bills with or use in the Coke machine.

"Oh, I don't expect you to renounce it all," she said calmly. "But you're obviously not a man who thinks too much about money; it doesn't mean a great deal to you. Apparently you've got a good salary and your tastes aren't too expensive. You could be generous and pass up, say, half the legacy and never notice it. And it would mean a great deal… a very great deal to us. To me." She looked down and found a cigarette and did her nervous fast-draw trick with the lighter once more. Without looking up, she said, "You said something about about finding a use for me, Matt."

"In bed or out," I agreed. "I did say something like that, didn't I?"

She blew smoke toward the nearest palm tree. "In bed is easy," she said, quite unruffled. "If that's all you want, let's get back to the hotel. For a quarter of a million, darling, I'd sleep with the devil himself."

"Thanks," I said. "There's nothing like making a man feel wanted for himself alone, I always say. What else would you do for approximately two hundred and fifty grand?"

"Just about anything," she said steadily. "Just name it and tell me how. I don't have much experience with your kind of melodrama, but I'm bright and willing to learn." She was silent briefly, and went on, "I know I'm revealing myself as a dreadfully mercenary person, but don't rub my nose in it any harder than you have to, Matt. I do have a certain amount of pride."

"Sorry," I said, and meant it. "As a matter of fact, I think I can find a use for you outside the obvious one.

How much risk are you willing to run for a quarter of a million?"

She said any amount. They always say that, the ones who've never been shot at in their lives.