The Good Old Stuff

Murder for Money (aka All That Blood Money Can Buy)

Long ago he had given up trying to estimate what he would find in any house merely by looking at the outside of it. The interior of each house had a special flavor. It was not so much the result of the degree of tidiness, or lack of it, but rather the result of the emotional climate that had permeated the house. Anger, bitterness, despair — all left their subtle stains on even the most immaculate fabrics.

Darrigan parked the rented car by the curb and, for a long moment, looked at the house, at the iron fence, at the cypress shade. He sensed dignity, restraint, quietness. Yet he knew that the interior could destroy these impressions. He was in the habit of telling himself that his record of successful investigations was the result of the application of unemotional logic — yet his logic was often the result of sensing, somehow, the final answer and then retracing the careful steps to arrive once more at that same answer.

After a time, as the September sun of west-coast Florida began to turn the rented sedan into an oven, Darrigan pushed open the door, patted his pocket to be sure his notebook was in place, and walked toward the front door of the white house. There were two cars in the driveway, both of them with local licenses, both of them Cadillacs. It was perceptibly cooler under the trees that lined the walk.

Beyond the screen door the hallway was dim. A heavy woman came in answer to his second ring, staring at him with frank curiosity.

“I’d like to speak to Mrs. Davisson, please. Here’s my card.”

The woman opened the screen just enough for the card to be passed through, saying, with Midwest nasality, “Well, she’s resting right now... Oh, you’re from the insurance?”

“Yes, I flew down from Hartford.”

“Please come in and wait and I’ll see if she’s awake, Mr. Darrigan. I’m just a neighbor. I’m Mrs. Hoke. The poor dear has been so terribly upset.”

“Yes, of course,” Darrigan murmured, stepping into the hall. Mrs. Hoke walked heavily away. Darrigan could hear the mumble of other voices, a faint, slightly incongruous laugh. From the hall he could see into a living room, two steps lower than the hall itself. It was furnished in cool colors, with Florida furniture of cane and pale fabrics.

Mrs. Hoke came back and said reassuringly, “She was awake, Mr. Darrigan. She said you should wait in the study and she’ll be out in a few minutes. The door is right back here. This is such a dreadful thing, not knowing what has happened to him. It’s hard on her, the poor dear thing.”

The study was not done in Florida fashion. Darrigan guessed that the furniture had been shipped down from the North. A walnut desk, a bit ornate, leather couch and chairs, two walls of books.

Mrs. Hoke stood in the doorway. “Now don’t you upset her, you hear?” she said with elephantine coyness.

“I’ll try not to.”

Mrs. Hoke went away. This was Davisson’s room, obviously. His books. A great number of technical works on the textile industry. Popularized texts for the layman in other fields. Astronomy, philosophy, physics. Quite a few biographies. Very little fiction. A man, then, with a serious turn of mind, dedicated to self-improvement, perhaps a bit humorless. And certainly very tidy.

Darrigan turned quickly as he heard the step in the hallway. She was a tall young woman, light on her feet. Her sunback dress was emerald green. Late twenties, he judged, or possibly very early thirties. Brown hair, sun-bleached on top. Quite a bit of tan. A fresh face, wide across the cheekbones, heavy-lipped, slightly Bergman in impact. The mouth faintly touched with strain.

“Mr. Darrigan?” He liked the voice. Low, controlled, poised.

“How do you do, Mrs. Davisson. Sorry to bother you like this.”

“That’s all right. I wasn’t able to sleep. Won’t you sit down, please?”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll sit at the desk, Mrs. Davisson. I’ll have to make some notes.”

She sat on the leather couch. He offered her a cigarette. “No, thank you, I’ve been smoking so much I have a sore throat. Mr. Darrigan, isn’t this a bit... previous for the insurance company to send someone down here? I mean, as far as we know, he isn’t—”

“We wouldn’t do this in the case of a normal policyholder, Mrs. Davisson, but your husband carries policies with us totaling over nine hundred thousand dollars.”

“Really! I knew Temple had quite a bit, but I didn’t know it was that much!”

He showed her his best smile and said, “It makes it awkward for me, Mrs. Davisson, for them to send me out like some sort of bird of prey. You have presented no claim to the company, and you are perfectly within your rights to tell me to be on my merry way.”

She answered his smile. “I wouldn’t want to do that, Mr. Darrigan. But I don’t quite understand why you’re here.”

“You could call me a sort of investigator. My actual title is Chief Adjuster for Guardsman Life and Casualty. I sincerely hope that we’ll find a reasonable explanation for your husband’s disappearance. He disappeared Thursday, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t come home Thursday night. I reported it to the police early Friday morning. And this is—”

“Tuesday.”

He opened his notebook, took his time looking over the pages. It was a device, to give him a chance to gauge the degree of tension. She sat quite still, her hands resting in her lap, unmoving.

He leaned back. “It may sound presumptuous, Mrs. Davisson, but I intend to see if I can find out what happened to your husband. I’ve had reasonable success in such cases in the past. I’ll cooperate with the local police officials, of course. I hope you won’t mind answering questions that may duplicate what the police have already asked you.”

“I won’t mind. The important thing is... to find out. This not knowing is...” Her voice caught a bit. She looked down at her hands.

“According to our records, Mrs. Davisson, his first wife, Anna Thorn Davisson, was principal beneficiary under his policies until her death in 1978. The death of the beneficiary was reported, but it was not necessary to change the policies at that time as the two children of his first marriage were secondary beneficiaries, sharing equally in the proceeds in case of death. In 1979, probably at the time of his marriage to you, we received instructions to make you the primary beneficiary under all policies, with the secondary beneficiaries, Temple C. Davisson, Junior, and Alicia Jean Davisson, unchanged. I have your name here as Dinah Pell Davisson. That is correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Could you tell me about your husband? What sort of man is he?”

She gave him a small smile. “What should I say? He is a very kind man. Perhaps slightly autocratic, but kind. He owned a small knitting mill in Utica, New York. He sold it, I believe, in 1972. It was incorporated and he owned the controlling stock interest, and there was some sort of merger with a larger firm, where he received payment in the stock in the larger firm in return for his interest. He sold out because his wife had to live in a warmer climate. She had a serious kidney condition. They came down here to Clearwater and bought this house. Temple was too active to retire. He studied real estate conditions here for a full year and then began to invest money in all sorts of property. He has done very well.”

“How did you meet him, Mrs. Davisson?”

“My husband was a sergeant in the Air Force. He was stationed at Drew Field. I followed him here. When he was sent overseas I had no special place to go, and we agreed I should wait for him here. The Davissons advertised for a companion for Mrs. Davisson. I applied and held the job from early 1974 until she died in 1978.”

“And your husband?”

“He was killed in a crash landing. When I received the wire, the Davissons were very kind and understanding. At that time my position in the household was more like a daughter receiving an allowance. My own parents died long ago. I have a married sister in Melbourne, Australia. We’ve never been close.”

“What did you do between the time Mrs. Davisson died and you married Temple Davisson?”

“I left here, of course. Mrs. Davisson had money of her own. She left me five thousand dollars and left the rest to Temple, Junior, and Alicia. Mr. Davisson found me a job in a real estate office in Clearwater. I rented a small apartment. One night Mr. Davisson came to see me at the apartment. He was quite shy. It took him a long time to get to the reason he had come. He told me that he tried to keep the house going, but the people he had hired were undependable. He also said that he was lonely. He asked me to marry him. I told him that I had affection for him, as for a father. He told me that he did not love me that way either, that Anna had been the only woman in his life. Well, Jack had been the only man in my life, and life was pretty empty. The Davissons had filled a place in my life. I missed this house. But he is sixty-one, and that makes almost exactly thirty years difference in ages. It seemed a bit grotesque. He told me to think it over and give him my answer when I ws ready. It occurred to me that his children would resent me, and it also occurred to me that I cared very little what people thought. Four days later I told him I would marry him.”

Darrigan realized that he was treading on most dangerous ground. “Has it been a good marriage?”

“Is that a question you’re supposed to ask?”

“It sounds impertinent. I know that. But in a disappearance of this sort I must consider suicide. Unhappiness can come from ill health, money difficulties, or emotional difficulties. I should try to rule them out.”

“I’ll take one of those cigarettes now, Mr. Darrigan,” she said. “I can use it.”

He lit it for her, went back to the desk chair. She frowned, exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“It has not been a completely happy marriage, Mr. Darrigan.”

“Can you explain that?”

“I’d rather not.” He pursed his lips, let the silence grow. At last she said, “I suppose I can consider an insurance man to be as ethical as a doctor or a lawyer?”

“Of course.”

“For several months it was a marriage in name only. I was content to have it go on being that way. But he is a vigorous man, and after a while I became aware that his attitude had changed and he had begun to... want me.” She flushed.

“But you had no feeling for him in that way,” he said, helping her.

“None. And we’d made no actual agreement, in so many words. But living here with him, I had no ethical basis for refusing him. After that, our marriage became different. He sensed, of course, that I was merely submitting. He began to... court me, I suppose you’d call it. Flowers and little things like that. He took off weight and began to dress much more youthfully. He tried to make himself younger, in his speech and in his habits. It was sort of pathetic, the way he tried.”

“Would you relate that to... his disappearance?”

For a moment her face was twisted in the agony of self-reproach. “I don’t know.”

“I appreciate your frankness. I’ll respect it, Mrs. Davisson. How did he act Thursday?”

“The same as always. We had a late breakfast. He had just sold some lots in the Lido section at Sarasota, and he was thinking of putting the money into a Gulf-front tract at Redington Beach. He asked me to go down there with him, but I had an eleven o’clock appointment with the hairdresser. His car was in the garage, so he took my convertible. He said he’d have lunch down that way and be back in the late afternoon. We were going to have some people in for cocktails. Well, the cocktail guests came and Temple didn’t show up. I didn’t worry. I thought he was delayed. We all went out to dinner and I left a note telling him that he could catch up with us at the Belmonte, on Clearwater Beach.

“After dinner the Deens brought me home. They live down on the next street. I began to get really worried at ten o’clock. I thought of heart attacks and all sorts of things like that. Of accidents and so on. I phoned Morton Plant Hospital and asked if they knew anything. I phoned the police here and at Redington and at St. Petersburg. I fell asleep in a chair at about four o’clock and woke up at seven. That was when I officially reported him missing.

“They found my car parked outside a hotel apartment on Redington Beach, called Aqua Azul. They checked and found out he’d gone into the Aqua Azul cocktail lounge at eight-thirty, alone. He had one dry martini and phoned here, but of course I had left by that time and the house was empty. He had another drink and then left. But apparently he didn’t get in the car and drive away. That’s what I don’t understand. And I keep thinking that the Aqua Azul is right on the Gulf.”

“Have his children come down?”

“Temple, Junior, wired that he is coming. He’s a lieutenant colonel of ordnance stationed at the Pentagon.”

“How old is he?”

“Thirty-six, and Alicia is thirty-three. Temple, Junior, is married, but Alicia isn’t. She’s with a Boston advertising agency, and when I tried to phone her I found out she’s on vacation, taking a motor trip in Canada. She may not even know about it.”

“When is the son arriving?”

“Late today, the wire said.”

“Were they at the wedding?”

“No. But I know them, of course. I met them before Mrs. Davisson died, many times. And only once since my marriage. There was quite a scene then. They think I’m some sort of dirty little opportunist. When they were down while Mrs. Davisson was alive, they had me firmly established in the servant category. I suppose they were right, but one never thinks of oneself as a servant. I’m afraid Colonel Davisson is going to be difficult.”

“Do you think your husband might have had business worries?”

“None. He told me a few months ago, quite proudly, that when he liquidated the knitting-company stock he received five hundred thousand dollars. In 1973 he started to buy land in this area. He said that the land he now owns could be sold off for an estimated million and a half dollars.”

“Did he maintain an office?”

“This is his office. Mr. Darrigan, you used the past tense then. I find it disturbing.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional.” Yet it had been. He had wanted to see how easily she would slip into the past tense, showing that in her mind she considered him dead.

“Do you know the terms of his current will?”

“He discussed it with me a year ago. It sets up trust funds, one for me and one for each of the children. He insisted that it be set up so that we share equally. And yet, if I get all that insurance, it isn’t going to seem very equal, is it? I’m sorry for snapping at you about using the past tense, Mr. Darrigan. I think he’s dead.”

“Why?”

“I know that amnesia is a very rare thing, genuine amnesia. And Temple had a very sound, stable mind. As I said before, he is kind. He wouldn’t go away and leave me to this kind of worry.”

“The newspaper picture was poor. Do you have a better one?”

“Quite a good one taken in July. Don’t get up. I can get it. It’s right in this desk drawer.”

She sat lithely on her heels and opened the bottom desk drawer. Her perfume had a pleasant tang. Where her hair was parted he could see the ivory cleanness of her scalp. An attractive woman, with a quality of personal warmth held in reserve, Darrigan decided that the sergeant had been a most fortunate man. And he wondered if Davisson was perceptive enough to measure the true extent of his failure. He remembered an old story of a man held captive at the bottom of a dark, smooth-sided well. Whenever the light was turned on, for a brief interval, he could see that the circular wall was of glass, with exotic fruits banked behind it.

“This one,” she said, taking out a 35-millimeter color transparency mounted in paperboard. She slipped it into a green plastic viewer and handed it to him. “You better take it over to the window. Natural light is best.”

Darrigan held the viewer up to his eye. A heavy bald man, tanned like a Tahitian, stood smiling into the camera. He stood on a beach in the sunlight, and he wore bathing trunks with a pattern of blue fish on a white background. There was a doggedness about his heavy jaw, a glint of shrewdness in his eyes. His position was faintly strained and Darrigan judged he was holding his belly in, arching his wide chest for the camera. He looked to be no fool.

“May I take this along?” Darrigan asked, turning to her.

“Not for keeps.” The childish expression was touching.

“Not for keeps,” he said, smiling, meaning his smile for the first time. “Thank you for your courtesy, Mrs. Davisson. I’ll be in touch with you. If you want me for any reason, I’m registered at a place called Bon Villa on the beach. The owner will take a message for me.”

Darrigan left police headquarters in Clearwater at three o’clock. They had been as cool as he had expected at first, but after he had clearly stated his intentions they had relaxed and informed him of progress to date. They were cooperating with the Pinellas County officials and with the police at Redington.

Temple Davisson had kept his appointment with the man who owned the plot of Gulf-front property that had interested him. The potential vendor was named Myron Drynfells, and Davisson had picked him up at eleven fifteen at the motel he owned at Madeira Beach. Drynfells reported that they had inspected the property but were unable to arrive at a figure acceptable to both of them. Davisson had driven him back to the Coral Tour Haven, depositing him there shortly after twelve thirty. Davisson had intimated that he was going farther down the line to take a look at some property near St. Petersburg Beach.

There was one unconfirmed report of a man answering Davisson’s description seen walking along the shoulder of the highway up near the Bath Club accompanied by a dark-haired girl, some time shortly before nine o’clock on Thursday night.

The police had no objection to Darrigan’s talking with Drynfells or making his own attempt to find the elusive dark-haired girl. They were reluctant to voice any theory that would account for the disappearance.

Following a map of the area, Darrigan had little difficulty in finding his way out South Fort Harrison Avenue to the turnoff to the Belleaire causeway. He drove through the village of Indian Rocks and down a straight road that paralleled the beach. The Aqua Azul was not hard to find. It was an ugly four-story building tinted pale chartreuse with corner balconies overlooking the Gulf. From the parking area one walked along a crushed-shell path to tile steps leading down into a pseudo-Mexican courtyard where shrubbery screened off the highway. The lobby door, of plate glass with a chrome push bar, opened off the other side of the patio. The fountain in the center of the patio was rimmed with small floodlights with blue-glass lenses. Darrigan guessed that the fountain would be fairly garish once the lights were turned on.

Beyond the glass door the lobby was frigidly air-conditioned. A brass sign on the blond desk announced that summer rates were in effect. The lobby walls were rough tan plaster. At the head of a short wide staircase was a mural of lumpy, coffee-colored, semi-naked women grinding corn and holding infants.

A black man was slowly sweeping the tile floor of the lobby. A girl behind the desk was carrying on a monosyllabic phone conversation. The place had a quietness, a hint of informality, that suggested it would be more pleasant now than during the height of the winter tourist season.

The bar lounge opened off the lobby. The west wall was entirely glass, facing the beach glare. A curtain had been drawn across the glass. It was sufficiently opaque to cut the glare, subdue the light in the room. Sand gritted underfoot as Darrigan walked to the bar. Three lean women in bathing suits sat at one table, complete with beach bags, tall drinks, and that special porcelainized facial expression of the middle forties trying, with monied success, to look like middle thirties.

Two heavy men in white suits hunched over a corner table, florid faces eight inches apart, muttering at each other. A young couple sat at the bar. They had a honeymoon flavor about them. Darrigan sat down at the end of the bar, around the corner, and decided on a rum collins. The bartender was brisk, young, dark, and he mixed a good drink.

When he brought the change, Darrigan said, “Say, have they found that guy who wandered away and left his car here the other night?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” the bartender said with no show of interest.

“Were you on duty the night he came in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Regular customer?”

The bartender didn’t answer.

Darrigan quickly leafed through a half dozen possible approaches. He selected one that seemed suited to the bartender’s look of quick intelligence and smiled ingratiatingly. “They ought to make all cops take a sort of internship behind a bar. That’s where you learn what makes people tick.”

The slight wariness faded. “That’s no joke.”

“Teddy!” one of the three lean women called. “Another round, please.”

“Coming right up, Mrs. Jerrold,” Teddy said.

Darrigan waited with monumental patience. He had planted a seed, and he wanted to see if it would take root. He stared down at his drink, watching Teddy out of the corner of his eye. After the drinks had been taken to the three women, Teddy drifted slowly back toward Darrigan. Darrigan waited for Teddy to say the first word.

“I think that Davisson will show up.”

Darrigan shrugged. “That’s hard to say.” It put the burden of proof on Teddy.

Teddy became confidential. “Like you said, sir, you see a lot when you’re behind a bar. You learn to size them up. Now, you take that Davisson. I don’t think he ever came in here before. I didn’t make any connection until they showed me the picture. Then I remembered him. In the off season, you get time to size people up. He came in alone. I’d say he’d had a couple already. Husky old guy. Looked like money. Looked smart, too. That kind, they like service. He came in about eight thirty. A local guy. I could tell. I don’t know how. You can always tell them from the tourists. One martini, he wants. Very dry. He gets it very dry. He asks me where he can phone. I told him about the phone in the lobby. He finished half his cocktail, then phoned. When he came back he looked satisfied about the phone call. A little more relaxed. You know what I mean. He sat right on that stool there, and one of the regulars, a Mrs. Kathy Marrick, is sitting alone at that table over there. That Davisson, he turns on the stool and starts giving Mrs. Marrick the eye. Not that you can blame him. She is something to look at. He orders another martini. I figure out the pitch then. That Davisson, he went and called his wife and then he was settling down to an evening of wolfing around. Some of those older guys, they give us more trouble than the college kids. And he had that look, you know what I mean.

“Well, from where he was sitting he couldn’t even see first base, not with Mrs. Marrick, and I saw him figure that out for himself. He finished his second drink in a hurry, and away he went. I sort of decided he was going to look around and see where the hunting was a little better.”

“And that makes you think he’ll turn up?”

“Sure. I think the old guy just lost himself a big weekend, and he’ll come crawling out of the woodwork with some crazy amnesia story or something.”

“Then how do you figure the car being left here?”

“I think he found somebody with a car of her own. They saw him walking up the line not long after he left here, and he was with a girl, wasn’t he? That makes sense to me.”

“Where would he have gone to find that other girl?”

“I think he came out of here, and it was just beginning to get dark, and he looked from the parking lot and saw the lights of the Tide Table up the road, and it was just as easy to walk as drive.”

Darrigan nodded. “That would make sense. Is it a nice place, that Tide Table?”

“A big bar and bathhouses and a dance floor and carhops to serve greasy hamburgers. It doesn’t do this section of the beach much good.”

“Was Davisson dressed right for that kind of a place?”

“I don’t know. He had on a white mesh shirt with short sleeves and tan slacks, I think. Maybe he had a coat in his car. He didn’t wear it in here. The rules here say men have to wear coats in the bar and dining room after November first.”

“That Mrs. Marrick wouldn’t have met him outside, would she?”

“Not her. No, sir. She rents one of our cabañas here.”

“Did she notice him?”

“I’d say she did. You can’t fool Kathy Marrick.”

Darrigan knew that Teddy could add nothing more. So Darrigan switched the conversation to other things. He made himself talk dully and at length so that when Teddy saw his chance, he eased away with almost obvious relief. Darrigan had learned to make himself boring, merely by relating complicated incidents which had no particular point. It served its purpose. He knew that Teddy was left with a mild contempt for Darrigan’s intellectual resources. Later, should anyone suggest to Teddy that Darrigan was a uniquely shrewd investigator, Teddy would hoot with laughter, completely forgetting that Darrigan, with a minimum of words, had extracted every bit of information Teddy had possessed.

Darrigan went out to the desk and asked if he might see Mrs. Marrick. The girl went to the small switchboard and plugged one of the house phones into Mrs. Marrick’s cabaña. After the phone rang five times a sleepy, soft-fibered voice answered.

He stated his name and his wish to speak with her. She agreed, sleepily. Following the desk girl’s instructions, Darrigan walked out the beach door of the lobby and down a shell walk to the last cabaña to the south. A woman in a two-piece white terry-cloth sun suit lay on an uptilted Barwa chair in the hot sun. Her hair was wheat and silver, sun-parched. Her figure was rich, and her tan was coppery. She had the hollowed cheeks of a Dietrich and a wide, flat mouth.

She opened lazy sea-green eyes when he spoke her name. She looked at him for a long moment and then said, “Mr. Darrigan, you cast an unpleasantly black shadow on the sand. Are you one of the new ones with my husband’s law firm? If so, the answer is still no, in spite of the fact that you’re quite pretty.”

“I never heard of you until ten minutes ago, Mrs. Marrick.”

“That’s refreshing, dear. Be a good boy and go in and build us some drinks. You’ll find whatever you want, and I need a fresh gin and tonic. This glass will do for me. And bring out a pack of cigarettes from the carton on the bedroom dressing table.”

She shut her eyes. Darrigan shrugged and went into the cabaña. It was clean but cluttered. He made himself a rum collins, took the two drinks out, handed her her drink and a pack of cigarettes. She shifted her weight forward and the chair tilted down.

“Now talk, dear,” she said.

“Last Friday night at about eight thirty you were alone in the bar and a bald-headed man with a deep tan sat at the bar. He was interested in you.”

“Mmm. The missing Mr. Davisson, eh? Let me see now. You can’t be a local policeman. They all either look like full-backs from the University of Florida or skippers of unsuccessful charter boats. Your complexion and clothes are definitely northern. That might make you FBI, but I don’t think so somehow. Insurance, Mr. Darrigan?”

He sat on a canvas chair and looked at her with new respect. “Insurance, Mrs. Marrick.”

“He’s dead, I think.”

“His wife thinks so too. Why do you?”

“I was alone. I’m a vain creature, and the older I get the more flattered I am by all little attentions. Your Mr. Davisson was a bit pathetic, my dear. He had a lost look. A... hollowness. Do you understand?”

“Not quite.”

“A man of that age will either be totally uninterested in casual females or he will have an enormous amount of assurance about him. Mr. Davisson had neither. He looked at me like a little boy staring into the candy shop. I was almost tempted to help the poor dear, but he looked dreadfully dull. I said to myself, Kathy, there is a man who suddenly has decided to be a bit of a rake and does not know just how to go about it.”

“Does that make him dead?”

“No, of course. It was something else. Looking into his eyes was like looking into the eyes of a photograph of someone who has recently died. It is a look of death. It cannot be described. It made me feel quite upset.”

“How would I write that up in a report?”

“You wouldn’t, my dear. You would go out and find out how he died. He was looking for adventure last Friday night. And I believe he found it.”

“With a girl with dark hair?”

“Perhaps.”

“It isn’t much of a starting place, is it?” Darrigan said ruefully.

She finished her drink and tilted her chair back. “I understand that the wife is young.”

“Comparatively speaking. Are you French?”

“I was once. You’re quick, aren’t you? I’m told there’s no accent.”

“No accent. A turn of phrase here and there. What if the wife is young?”

“Call it my French turn of mind. A lover of the wife could help your Mr. Davisson find... his adventure.”

“The wife was with a group all evening.”

“A very sensible precaution.”

He stood up. “Thank you for talking to me.”

“You see, you’re not as quick as I thought, Mr. Darrigan. I wanted you to keep questioning me in a clever way, and then I should tell you that Mr. Davisson kept watching the door during his two drinks, as though he were expecting that someone had followed him. He was watching, not with worry, but with... annoyance.”

Darrigan smiled. “I thought you had something else to tell. And it seemed the quickest way to get it out of you, to pretend to go.”

She stared at him and then laughed. It was a good laugh, full-throated, rich. “We could be friends, my dear,” she said, when she got her breath.

“So far I haven’t filled in enough of his day. I know what he did up until very early afternoon. Then there is a gap. He comes into the Aqua Azul bar at eight thirty. He has had a few drinks. I like the theory of someone following him, meeting him outside. That would account for his leaving his car at the lot.”

“What will you do now?”

“See if I can fill in the blanks in his day.”

“The blank before he arrived here, and the more important one afterward?”

“Yes.”

“I’m well known up and down the Gulf beaches, Mr. Darrigan. Being with me would be protective coloration.”

“And besides, you’re bored.”

“Utterly.”

He smiled at her. “Then you’d better get dressed, don’t you think?”

He waited outside while she changed. He knew that she would be useful for her knowledge of the area. Yet not sufficiently useful to warrant taking her along had she not been a mature, witty, perceptive woman.

She came out wearing sandals and a severely cut sand-colored linen sun dress, carrying a white purse. The end tendrils of the astonishing hair were damp-curled where they had protruded from her shower cap.

“Darrigan and Marrick,” she said. “Investigations to order. This might be fun.”

“And it might be dull.”

“But we shan’t be dull, Mr. Darrigan, shall we. What are you called?”

“Gil, usually.”

“Ah, Gil, if this were a properly conceived plot, I would be the one who lured your Mr. Davisson to his death. Now I accompany the investigator to allay suspicion.”

“No such luck, Kathy.”

“No such luck.” They walked along the shell path to the main building of the Aqua Azul. She led the way around the building toward a Cadillac convertible the shade of raspberry sherbet.

“More protective coloration?” Darrigan asked.

She smiled and handed him the keys from her purse. After he shut her door he went around and got behind the wheel. The sun was far enough gone to warrant having the top down. She took a dark bandanna from the glove compartment and tied it around her hair.

“Now how do you go about this, Gil?” she asked.

“I head south and show a picture of Davisson in every bar until we find the one he was in. He could have called his wife earlier. I think he was the sort to remember that a cocktail party was scheduled for that evening. Something kept him from phoning his wife.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to phone her until it was too late.”

“I’ll grant that. First I want to talk to a man named Drynfells. For this you better stay in the car.”

The Coral Tour Haven was a pink hotel with pink iron flamingoes stuck into the lawn and a profusion of whitewashed boulders marking the drive. Drynfells was a sour-looking man with a withered face, garish clothes, and a cheap Cuban cigar.

Darrigan had to follow Drynfells about as they talked. Drynfells ambled around, picking up scraps of cellophane, twigs, burned matches from his yard. He confirmed all that the Clearwater police had told Darrigan.

“You couldn’t decide on a price, Mr. Drynfells?”

“I want one hundred and forty-five thousand for that piece. He offered one thirty-six, then one thirty-eight, and finally one forty. He said that was his top offer. I came down two thousand and told him that one forty-three was as low as I’d go.”

“Did you quarrel?”

Drynfells gave him a sidelong glance. “We shouted a little. He was a shouter. Lot of men try to bull their way into a deal. He couldn’t bulldoze me. No, sir.”

They had walked around a corner of the motel. A pretty girl sat on a rubberized mattress at the side of a new wading pool. The ground was raw around the pool, freshly seeded, protected by stakes and string.

“What did you say your name was?” Drynfells asked.

“Darrigan.”

“This here is my wife, Mr. Darrigan. Beth, this man is an insurance fellow asking about that Davisson.”

Mrs. Drynfells was striking. She had a heavy strain of some Latin blood. Her dark eyes were liquid, expressive.

“He is the wan who is wanting to buy our beach, eh?”

“Yeah. That bald-headed man that the police were asking about,” Drynfells said.

Mrs. Drynfells seemed to lose all interest in the situation. She lay back and shut her eyes. She wore a lemon-yellow swimsuit.

Drynfells wandered away and swooped on a scrap of paper, balling it up in his hand with the other debris he had collected.

“You have a nice place here,” Darrigan said.

“Just got it open in time for last season. Did pretty good. We got a private beach over there across the highway. Reasonable rates, too.”

“I guess things are pretty dead in the off season.”

“Right now we only got one unit taken. Those folks came in yesterday. But it ought to pick up again soon.”

“How big is that piece of land you want one hundred and forty-five thousand for?”

“It’s one hundred and twenty feet of Gulf-front lot, six hundred feet deep, but it isn’t for sale any more.”

“Why not?”

“Changed my mind about it, Mr. Darrigan. Decided to hold onto it, maybe develop it a little. Nice property.”

Darrigan went out to the car. They drove south, stopping at the obvious places. They were unable to pick up the trail of Mr. Davisson. Darrigan bought Kathy Marrick dinner. He drove her back to the Aqua Azul. They took a short walk on the beach and he thanked her, promised to keep in touch with her, and drove the rented sedan back to Clearwater Beach.

It was after eleven and the porch of the Bon Villa was dark. He parked, and as he headed toward his room a familiar voice spoke hesitantly from one of the dark chairs.

“Mr. Darrigan?”

“Oh! Hello, Mrs. Davisson. You startled me. I didn’t see you there. Do you want to come in?”

“No, please. Sit down and tell me what you’ve learned.”

He pulled one of the aluminum chairs over close to hers and sat down. A faint sea breeze rattled the palm fronds. Her face was a pale oval, barely visible.

“I didn’t learn much, Mrs. Davisson. Not much at all.”

“Forgive me for coming here like this. Colonel Davisson arrived. It was as unpleasant as I’d expected. I had to get out of the house.”

“It makes a difficult emotional problem for both of you — when the children of the first marriage are older than the second wife.”

“I don’t really blame him too much, I suppose. It looks bad.”

“What did he accuse you of?”

“Driving his father into some crazy act. Maybe I did.”

“Don’t think that way.”

“I keep thinking that if we never find out what happened to Temple, his children will always blame me. I don’t especially want to be friends with them, but I do want their... respect, I guess you’d say.”

“Mrs. Davisson, do you have any male friends your own age?”

“How do you mean that?” she asked hotly.

“Is there any man you’ve been friendly enough with to cause talk?”

“N-no, I—”

“Who were you thinking of when you hesitated?”

“Brad Sharvis. He’s a bit over thirty, and quite nice. It was his real estate agency that Temple sent me to for a job. He has worked with Temple the last few years. He’s a bachelor. He has dinner with us quite often. We both like him.”

“Could there be talk?”

“There could be, but it would be without basis, Mr. Darrigan,” she said coldly.

“I don’t care how angry you get at me, Mrs. Davisson, so long as you tell me the truth.”

After a long silence she said, “I’m sorry. I believe that you want to help.”

“I do.”

She stood Up. “I feel better now. I think I’ll go home.”

“Can I take you home?”

“I have my car, thanks.”

He watched her go down the walk. Under the streetlight he saw her walking with a good long stride. He saw the headlights, saw her swing around the island in the center of Mandalay and head back for the causeway to Clearwater.

Darrigan went in, showered, and went to bed. He lay in the dark room and smoked a slow cigarette. Somewhere, hidden in the personality or in the habits of one Temple Davisson, was the reason for his death. Darrigan found that he was thinking in terms of death. He smiled in the darkness as he thought of Kathy Marrick. A most pleasant companion. So far in the investigation he had met four women. Of the four only Mrs. Hoke was unattractive.

He snubbed out the cigarette and composed himself for sleep. A case, like a score of other cases. He would leave his brief mark on the participants and go out of their lives. For a moment he felt the ache of self-imposed loneliness. The ache had been there since the day Doris had left him, long ago. He wondered sourly, on the verge of sleep, if it had made him a better investigator.

Brad Sharvis was a florid, freckled, overweight young man with carrot hair, blue eyes, and a salesman’s unthinking affability. The small real estate office was clean and bright. A girl was typing a lease agreement for an elderly couple.

Brad took Darrigan back into his small private office. A window air conditioner hummed, chilling the moist September air.

“What sort of man was he, Mr. Sharvis?”

“Was he? Or is he? Shrewd, Mr. Darrigan. Shrewd and honest. And something else. Tough-minded isn’t the expression I want.”

“Ruthless?”

“That’s it exactly. He started moving in on property down here soon after he arrived. You wouldn’t know the place if you saw it back then. The last ten years down here would take your breath away.”

“He knew what to buy, eh?”

“It took him a year to decide on policy. He had a very simple operating idea. He decided, after his year of looking around, that there was going to be a tremendous pressure for waterfront land. At that time small building lots on Clearwater Beach, on the Gulf front, were going for as little as seventy-five hundred dollars. I remember that the first thing he did was pick up eight lots at that figure. He sold them in 1980 for fifty thousand apiece.”

“Where did the ruthlessness come in, Mr. Sharvis?”

“You better call me Brad. That last name makes me feel too dignified.”

“Okay. I’m Gil.”

“I’ll tell you, Gil. Suppose he got his eye on a piece he wanted. He’d go after it. Phone calls, letters, personal visits. He’d hound a man who had no idea of selling until, in some cases, I think they sold out just to get Temple Davisson off their back. And he’d fight for an hour to get forty dollars off the price of a twenty-thousand-dollar piece.”

“Did he handle his deals through you?”

“No. He turned himself into a licensed agent and used this office for his deals. He pays toward the office expenses here, and I’ve been in with him on a few deals.”

“Is he stingy?”

“Not a bit. Pretty free with his money, but a tight man in a deal. You know, he’s told me a hundred times that everybody likes the look of nice fat batches of bills. He said that there’s nothing exactly like counting out fifteen thousand dollars in bills onto a man’s desk when the man wants to get seventeen thousand.”

Darrigan felt a shiver of excitement run up his back. It was always that way when he found a bit of key information.

“Where did he bank?”

“Bank of Clearwater.”

“Do you think he took money with him when he went after the Drynfells plot?”

Sharvis frowned. “I hardly think he’d take that much out there, but I’ll wager he took a sizable payment against it.”

“Twenty-five thousand?”

“Possibly. Probably more like fifty.”

“I could check that at the bank, I suppose.”

“I doubt it. He has a safe in his office at his house. A pretty good one, I think. He kept his cash there. He’d replenish the supply in Tampa, picking up a certified check from the Bank of Clearwater whenever he needed more than they could comfortably give him.”

“He was anxious to get the Drynfells land?”

“A very nice piece. And with a tentative purchaser all lined up for it. Temple would have unloaded it for one hundred and seventy thousand. He wanted to work fast so that there’d be no chance of his customer getting together with Drynfells. It only went on the market Wednesday, a week ago today.”

“Drynfells held it a long time?”

“Several years. He paid fifty thousand for it.”

“Would it violate any confidence to tell me who Davisson planned to sell it to?”

“I can’t give you the name because I don’t know it myself. It’s some man who sold a chain of movie houses in Kansas and wants to build a motel down here, that’s all I know.”

Darrigan walked out into the morning sunlight. The death of Temple Davisson was beginning to emerge from the mists. Sometime after he had left the Coral Tour Haven and before he appeared at the Aqua Azul, he had entangled himself with someone who wanted that cash. Wanted it badly. They had not taken their first opportunity. So they had sought a second choice, had made the most of it.

He parked in the center of town, had a cup of coffee. At such times he felt far away from his immediate environment. Life moved brightly around him and left him in a dark place where he sat and thought. Thought at such a time was not the application of logic but an endless stirring at the edge of the mind, a restless groping for the fleeting impression.

Davisson had been a man whose self-esteem had taken an inadvertent blow at the hands of his young wife. To mend his self-esteem, he had been casting a speculative eye at the random female. And he had been spending the day trying to engineer a deal that would mean a most pleasant profit.

Darrigan and Kathy Marrick had been unable to find the place where Davisson had taken a few drinks before stopping at the Aqua Azul. Darrigan paid for his coffee and went out to the car, spread the road map on the wheel, and studied it. Granted that Davisson was on his way home when he stopped at the Aqua Azul, it limited the area where he could have been. Had he been more than three miles south of the Aqua Azul, he would not logically have headed home on the road that would take him through Indian Rocks and along Belleaire Beach. He would have cut over to Route 19. With a pencil Darrigan made a circle. Temple Davisson had taken his drinks somewhere in that area.

He frowned. He detested leg work, that dullest stepsister of investigation. Sharing it with Mrs. Marrick made it a bit more pleasant, at least. It took him forty-five minutes to drive out to the Aqua Azul. Her raspberry convertible was under shelter in the long carport. He parked in the sun and went in, found her in the lobby chattering with the girl at the desk.

She smiled at him. “It can’t be Nero Wolfe. Not enough waistline.”

“Buy you a drink?”

“Clever boy. The bar isn’t open yet. Come down to the cabaña and make your own and listen to the record of a busy morning.”

They went into the cypress-paneled living room of the beach cabaña. She made the drinks.

“We failed to find out where he’d been by looking for him, my dear. So this morning I was up bright and early and went on a hunt for somebody who might have seen the car. A nice baby-blue convertible. They’re a dime a dozen around here, but it seemed sensible. Tan men with bald heads are a dime a dozen too. But the combination of tan bald head and baby-blue convertible is not so usual.”

“Any time you’d like a job, Kathy.”

“Flatterer! Now prepare yourself for the letdown. All I found out was something we already knew. That the baby-blue job was parked at that hideous Coral Tour Haven early in the afternoon.”

Darrigan sipped his drink. “Parked there?”

“That’s what the man said. He has a painful little store that sells things made out of shells, and sells shells to people who want to make things out of shells. Say that three times fast.”

“Why did you stop there?”

“Just to see if anybody could remember the car and man if they had seen them. He’s across the street from that Coral Tour thing.”

“I think I’d like to talk to him.”

“Let’s go, then. He’s a foolish little sweetheart with a tic.”

The man was small and nervous, and at unexpected intervals his entire face would twitch uncontrollably. “Like I told the lady, mister, I saw the car parked over to Drynfells’s. You don’t see many cars there. Myron doesn’t do so good this time of year.”

“And you saw the bald-headed man?”

“Sure. He went in with Drynfells, and then he came out after a while.”

“After how long?”

“How would I know? Was I timing him? Maybe twenty minutes.”

Darrigan showed him the picture. “This man?”

The little man squinted through the viewer. “Sure.”

“You got a good look at him?”

“Just the first time.”

“You mean when he went in?”

“No, I mean the first time he was there. The second time it was getting pretty late in the day, and the sun was gone.”

“Did he stay long the second time?”

“I don’t know. I closed up when he was still there.”

“Thanks a lot.”

The little man twitched and beamed. “A pleasure, certainly.”

They went back out to Darrigan’s car. When they got in Kathy said, “I feel a bit stupid, Gil.”

“Don’t think I suspected that. It came out by accident. One of those things. It happens sometimes. And I should have done some better guessing. I found out this morning that when Temple Davisson wanted a piece of property he didn’t give up easily. He went back and tried again.”

“And Mr. Drynfells didn’t mention it.”

“A matter which I find very interesting. I’m dropping you back at the Aqua Azul and then I’m going to tackle Drynfells.”

“Who found the little man who sells shells? You are not leaving me out.”

“It may turn out to be unpleasant, Kathy.”

“So be it. I want to see how much of that tough look of yours is a pose, Mr. Darrigan.”

“Let me handle it.”

“I shall be a mouse, entirely.”

He waited for two cars to go by and made a wide U-turn, then turned right into Drynfells’s drive. The couple was out in back. Mrs. Drynfells was basking on her rubberized mattress, her eyes closed. She did not appear to have moved since the previous day. Myron Drynfells was over near the hedge having a bitter argument with a man who obviously belonged with the battered pickup parked in front.

Drynfells was saying, “I just got damn good and tired of waiting for you to come around and finish the job.”

The man, a husky youngster in work clothes, flushed with anger, said, “Okay, okay. Just pay me off, then, if that’s the way you feel. Fourteen hours’ labor plus the bags and the pipe.”

Drynfells turned and saw Darrigan and Kathy. “Hello,” he said absently. “Be right back.” He walked into the back door of the end unit with the husky young man.

Mrs. Drynfells opened her eyes. She looked speculatively at Kathy. “Allo,” she said. Darrigan introduced the two women. He had done enough work on jewelry theft to know that the emerald in Mrs. Drynfells’s ring was genuine. About three carats, he judged. A beauty.

Drynfells came out across the lawn, scowling. He wore chartreuse slacks and a dark blue seersucker sport shirt with a chartreuse flower pattern.

“Want anything done right,” he said, “you got to do it yourself. What’s on your mind, Mr. Darrigan?”

“Just checking, Mr. Drynfells. I got the impression from the police that Mr. Davisson merely dropped you off here after you’d looked at the land. I didn’t know he’d come in with you.”

“He’s a persistent guy. I couldn’t shake him off, could I, honey?”

“Talking, talking,” Mrs. Drynfells said, with sunstruck sleepiness. “Too moch.”

“He came in and yakked at me, and then when he left he told me he could find better lots south of here. I told him to go right ahead.”

“How long did he stay?”

Drynfells shrugged. “Fifteen minutes, maybe.”

“Did he wave big bills at you?”

“Sure. Kid stuff. I had my price and he wouldn’t meet it. Waving money in my face wasn’t going to change my mind. No, sir.”

“And that’s the last you saw of him?” Darrigan asked casually.

“That’s right.”

“Then why was his car parked out in front of here at dusk on Friday?”

“In front of here?” Drynfells said, his eyes opening wide.

“In front of here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister. I wasn’t even here, then. I was in Clearwater on a business matter.”

Mrs. Drynfells sat up and put her hand over her mouth. “Ai, I forget! He did come back. Still talking, talking. I send him away, that talking wan.”

Drynfells stomped over to her and glared down at her. “Why did you forget that? Damn it, that might make us look bad.”

“I do not theenk.”

Drynfells turned to Darrigan with a shrug. “Rattle-headed, that’s what she is. Forget her head if it wasn’t fastened on.”

“I am sorree!”

“I think you better phone the police and tell them, Mr. Drynfells, just in case.”

“Think I should?”

“The man is still missing.”

Drynfells sighed. “Okay, I better do that.”

The Aqua Azul bar was open. Kathy and Darrigan took a corner table, ordered pre-lunch cocktails. “You’ve gone off somewhere, Gil.”

He smiled at her. “I am sorree!”

“What’s bothering you?”

“I don’t exactly know. Not yet. Excuse me. I want to make a call.”

He left her and phoned Hartford from the lobby. He got his assistant on the line. “Robby, I don’t know what source to use for this, but find me the names of any men who have sold chains of movie houses in Kansas during the past year.”

Robby whistled softly. “Let me see. There ought to be a trade publication that would have that dope. Phone you?”

“I’ll call back at five.”

“How does it look?”

“It begins to have the smell of murder.”

“By the beneficiary, we hope?”

“Nope. No such luck.”

“So we’ll get a statistic for the actuarial boys. Luck, Gil. I’ll rush that dope.”

“Thanks, Robby. ’Bye.”

He had sandwiches in the bar with Kathy and then gave her her instructions for the afternoon. “Any kind of gossip, rumor, anything at all you can pick up on the Drynfellses. Financial condition. Emotional condition. Do they throw pots? Where did he find the cutie?”

“Cute, like a derringer.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“Of course you do, Gil. No woman is going to fool you long, or twice.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.”

“I hope, wherever your lady fair might be, that she realizes by now what she missed.”

“You get too close for comfort sometimes, Kathy.”

“Just love to see people wince. All right. This afternoon I shall be the Jack Anderson of Madeira Beach and vicinity. When do I report?”

“When I meet you for cocktails. Sixish?”

On the way back to Clearwater Beach he looked in on Dinah Davisson. There were dark shadows under her eyes. Temple Davisson’s daughter had been reached. She was flying south. Mrs. Hoke had brought over a cake. Darrigan told her he had a hunch he’d have some real information by midnight. After he left he wondered why he had put himself out on a limb.

At 4:30 he grew impatient and phoned Robby. Robby read the wire that had already been sent.

Darrigan thanked him. It seemed like a hopeless task to try to locate Brock in the limited time before he would have to leave for Redington Beach. He phoned Dinah Davisson and told her to see what she could do about finding James Brock. He told her to try all the places he might stop, starting at the most expensive and working her way down the list.

He told her that once she had located Mr. Brock she should sit tight and wait for a phone call from him.

Kathy was waiting at her cabaña. “Do I report right now, sir?”

“Right now, Operative Seventy-three.”

“Classification one: financial. Pooie. That Coral Tour thing ran way over estimates. It staggers under a mortgage. And he got a loan on his beach property to help out. The dollie is no help in the financial department. She’s of the gimme breed. A Cuban. Miami. Possibly nightclub training. Drynfells’s first wife died several centuries ago. The local pitch is that he put that plot of land on the market to get the dough to cover some postdated checks that are floating around waiting to fall on him.”

“Nice work, Kathy.”

“I’m not through yet. Classification two: Emotional. Pooie again. His little item has him twisted around her pinkie. She throws pots. She raises merry hell. She has tantrums. He does the housekeeping chores. She has a glittering eye for a pair of shoulders, broad shoulders. Myron is very jealous of his lady.”

“Any more?”

“Local opinion is that if he sells his land and lasts until the winter season is upon him, he may come out all right, provided he doesn’t have to buy his little lady a brace of Mercedeses and minks to keep in good favor. He’s not liked too well around here. Not a sociable sort, I’d judge. And naturally the wife doesn’t mix too well with the standard-issue wives hereabouts.”

“You did very well, Kathy.”

“Now what do we do?”

“I buy you drinks. I buy you dinner. Reward for services rendered.”

“Then what?”

“Then we ponder.”

“We can ponder while we’re working over the taste buds, can’t we?”

“If you’d like to ponder.”

They went up to the bar. Martinis came. Kathy said, “I ponder out loud. Davisson’s offer was too low. But he waved his money about. They brooded over that money all day. He came back and waved it about some more. Mrs. Drynfells’s acquisitive instincts were aroused. She followed him, met him outside of here, clunked him on the head, pitched him in the Gulf, and went home and hid the money under the bed.”

“Nice, but I don’t like it.”

“Okay. You ponder.”

“Like this. Drynfells lied from the beginning. He sold the land to Temple Davisson. They went back. Drynfells took the bundle of cash, possibly a check for the balance. Those twenty minutes inside was when some sort of document was being executed. Davisson mentions where he’s going. In the afternoon Drynfells gets a better offer for the land. He stalls the buyer. He gets hold of Davisson and asks him to come back. Davisson does so. Drynfells wants to cancel the sale. Maybe he offers Davisson a bonus to tear up the document and take his money and check back. Davisson laughs at him. Drynfells asks for just a little bit of time. Davisson says he’ll give him a little time. He’ll be at the Aqua Azul for twenty minutes. From here he phones his wife. Can’t get her. Makes eyes at you. Leaves. Drynfells, steered by his wife’s instincts, has dropped her off and gone up the road a bit. She waits by Temple Davisson’s car. He comes out. He is susceptible, as Mrs. Drynfells has guessed, to a little night walk with a very pretty young lady. She walks him up the road to where Drynfells is waiting. They bash him, tumble him into the Drynfells car, remove document of sale, dispose of body. That leaves them with the wad of cash, plus the money from the sale to the new customer Drynfells stalled. The weak point was the possibility of Davisson’s car being seen at their place. That little scene we witnessed this morning had the flavor of being very well rehearsed.”

Kathy snapped her fingers, eyes glowing. “It fits! Every little bit of it fits. They couldn’t do it there, when he came back, because that would have left them with the car. He had to be seen someplace else. Here.”

“There’s one fat flaw, Kathy.”

“How could there be?”

“Just how do we go about proving it?”

She thought that over. Her face fell. “I see what you mean.”

“I don’t think that the dark-haired girl he was seen with could be identified as Mrs. Drynfells. Without evidence that the sale was consummated, we lack motive — except, of course, for the possible motive of murder for the money he carried.”

Kathy sat with her chin propped on the backs of her fingers, studying him. “I wouldn’t care to have you on my trail, Mr. Darrigan.”

“How so?”

“You’re very impressive, in your quiet little way, hiding behind that mask.”

“A mask, yet.”

“Of course. And behind it you sit, equipped with extra senses, catching the scent of murder, putting yourself neatly in the murderer’s shoes, with all your reasoning based on emotions, not logic.”

“I’m very logical. I plod. And I now plod out to the phone and see if logic has borne any fruit.”

He went to the lobby and phoned Dinah Davisson.

“I found him, Mr. Darrigan. He’s staying at the Kingfisher with his wife.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No. Just to the desk clerk.”

“Thanks. You’ll hear from me later, Mrs. Davisson.”

He phoned the Kingfisher and had Mr. Brock called from the dining room to the phone. “Mr. Brock, my name is Darrigan. Mr. Temple Davisson told me you were interested in a plot of Gulf-front land.”

“Has he been found?”

“No, he hasn’t. I’m wondering if you’re still in the market.”

“Sorry, I’m not. I think I’m going to get the piece I want.”

“At Redington Beach?”

Brock had a deep voice. “How did you know that?”

“Just a guess, Mr. Brock. Would you mind telling me who you’re buying it from?”

“A Mr. Drynfells. He isn’t an agent. It’s his land.”

“He contacted you last Friday, I suppose. In the afternoon?”

“You must have a crystal ball, Mr. Darrigan. Yes, he did. And he came in to see me late Friday night. We inspected the land Sunday. I suppose you even know what I’ll be paying for it.”

“Probably around one seventy-five.”

“That’s too close for comfort, Mr. Darrigan.”

“Sorry to take you away from your dinner for no good reason. Thanks for being so frank with me.”

“Quite all right.”

Gilbert Darrigan walked slowly back into the bar. Kathy studied him. “Now you’re even more impressive, Gil. Your eyes have gone cold.”

“I feel cold. Right down into my bones. I feel this way when I’ve guessed a bit too accurately.” She listened, eyes narrowed, as he told her the conversation.

“Mr. Drynfells had a busy Friday,” she said.

“Now we have the matter of proof.”

“How do you go about that? Psychological warfare, perhaps?”

“Not with that pair. They’re careful. They’re too selfish to have very much imagination. I believe we should consider the problem of the body.”

She sipped her drink, stared over his head at the far wall. “The dramatic place, of course, would be under the concrete of that new pool, with the dark greedy wife sunbathing beside it, sleepy-eyed and callous.”

He reached across the table and put his fingers hard around her wrist. “You are almost beyond price, Kathy. That is exactly where it is.”

She looked faintly ill. “No,” she said weakly. “I was only—”

“You thought you were inventing. But your subconscious mind knew, as mine did.”

It was not too difficult to arrange. The call had to come from Clearwater. They drove there in Kathy’s car, and Darrigan, lowering his voice, said to Drynfells over the phone, “I’ve got my lawyer here and I’d like you to come in right now, Mr. Drynfells. Bring your wife with you. We’ll make it business and pleasure both.”

“I don’t know as I—”

“I have to make some definite arrangement, Mr. Drynfells. If I can’t complete the deal with you, I’ll have to pick up a different plot.”

“But you took an option, Mr. Brock!”

“I can forfeit that, Mr. Drynfells. How soon can I expect you?”

After a long pause Drynfells said, “We’ll leave here in twenty minutes.”

On the way back out to Madeira Beach, Darrigan drove as fast as he dared. Kathy refused to be dropped off at the Aqua Azul. The Coral Tour Haven was dark, the “No Vacancy” sign lighted.

They walked out to the dark back yard, Kathy carrying the flash, Darrigan carrying the borrowed pickaxe. He found the valve to empty the shallow pool, turned it. He stood by Kathy. She giggled nervously as the water level dropped.

“We’d better not be wrong,” she said.

“We’re not wrong,” Darrigan murmured. The water took an infuriating time to drain out of the pool. He rolled up his pants legs, pulled off shoes and socks, stepped down in when there was a matter of inches left. The cement had set firmly. It took several minutes to break through to the soil underneath. Then, using the pick point as a lever, he broke a piece free. He got his hands on it and turned it over. The flashlight wavered. Only the soil underneath was visible. Again he inserted a curved side of the pick, leaned his weight against it, lifted it up slowly. The flashlight beam focused on the side of a muddy white shoe, a gray sock encasing a heavy ankle. The light went out and Kathy Marrick made a moaning sound, deep in her throat.

Darrigan lowered the broken slab back into position, quite gently. He climbed out of the pool.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I... think so.”

He rolled down his pants legs, pulled socks on over wet feet, shoved his feet into the shoes, laced them neatly and tightly.

“How perfectly dreadful,” Kathy said in a low tone.

“It always is. Natural death is enough to give us a sort of superstitious fear. But violent death always seems obscene. An assault against the dignity of every one of us. Now we do some phoning.”

They waited, afterwards, in the dark car parked across the road. When the Drynfellses returned home, two heavy men advanced on their car from either side, guns drawn, flashlights steady. There was no fuss. No struggle. Just the sound of heavy voices in the night, and a woman’s spiritless weeping.

At the Aqua Azul, Kathy put her hand in his. “I won’t see you again,” she said. It was statement, not question.

“I don’t believe so, Kathy.”

“Take care of yourself.” The words had a special intonation. She made her real meaning clear: Gil, don’t let too many of these things happen to you. Don’t go too far away from life and from warmth. Don’t go to that far place where you are conscious only of evil and the effects of evil.

“I’ll try to,” he said.

As he drove away from her, drove down the dark road that paralleled the beaches, he thought of her as another chance lost, as another milepost on a lonely road that ended at some unguessable destination. There was a shifting sourness in his mind, an unease that was familiar. He drove with his eyes steady, his face fashioned into its mask of tough unconcern. Each time, you bled a little. And each time the hard flutter of excitement ended in this sourness. Murder for money. It was seldom anything else. It was seldom particularly clever. It was invariably brutal.

Dinah Davisson’s house was brightly lighted. The other houses on the street were dark. He had asked that he be permitted to inform her.

She was in the long pastel living room, a man and a woman with her. She had been crying, but she was undefeated. She carried her head high. Something hardened and tautened within him when he saw the red stripes on her cheek, stripes that only fingers could have made, in anger.

“Mr. Darrigan, this is Miss Davisson and Colonel Davisson.”

They were tall people. Temple had his father’s hard jaw, shrewd eye. The woman was so much like him that it was almost ludicrous. Both of them were very cool, very formal, slightly patronizing.

“You are from Guardsman Life?” Colonel Davisson asked. “Bit unusual for you to be here, isn’t it?”

“Not entirely. I’d like to speak to you alone, Mrs. Davisson.”

“Anything you wish to say to her can be said in front of us,” Alicia Davisson said acidly.

“I’d prefer to speak to her alone,” Gil said, quite softly.

“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Darrigan,” the young widow said.

“The police have found your husband’s body,” he said bluntly, knowing that bluntness was more merciful than trying to cushion the blow with mealy half-truths.

Dinah closed her lovely eyes, kept them closed for long seconds. Her hand tightened on the arm of the chair and then relaxed. “How—”

“I knew a stupid marriage of this sort would end in some kind of disaster,” Alicia said.

The cruelty of that statement took Darrigan’s breath for a moment. Shock gave way to anger. The colonel walked to the dark windows, looked out into the night, hands locked behind him, head bowed.

Alicia rapped a cigarette briskly on her thumbnail, lighted it.

“Marriage had nothing to do with it,” Darrigan said. “He was murdered for the sake of profit. He was murdered by a thoroughly unpleasant little man with a greedy wife.”

“And our young friend here profits nicely,” Alicia said.

Dinah stared at her. “How on earth can you say a thing like that when you’ve just found out? You’re his daughter. It doesn’t seem—”

“Kindly spare us the violin music,” Alicia said.

“I don’t want any of the insurance money,” Dinah said. “I don’t want any part of it. You two can have it. All of it.”

The colonel wheeled slowly and stared at her. He wet his lips. “Do you mean that?”

Dinah lifted her chin. “I mean it.”

The colonel said ingratiatingly, “You’ll have the trust fund, of course, as it states in the will. That certainly will be enough to take care of you.”

“I don’t know as I want that, either.”

“We can discuss that later,” the colonel said soothingly. “This is a great shock to all of us. Darrigan, can you draw up some sort of document she can sign where she relinquishes her claim as principal beneficiary?” When he spoke to Darrigan, his voice had a Pentagon crispness.

Darrigan had seen this too many times before. Money had changed the faces of the children. A croupier would recognize that glitter in the eyes, that moistness of mouth. Darrigan looked at Dinah. Her face was proud, unchanged.

“I could, I suppose. But I won’t,” Darrigan said.

“Don’t be impudent. If you can’t, a lawyer can.”

Darrigan spoke very slowly, very distinctly. “Possibly you don’t understand, Colonel. The relationship between insurance company and policyholder is one of trust. A policyholder does not name his principal beneficiary through whim. We have accepted his money over a period of years. We intend to see that his wishes are carried out. The policy options state that his widow will have an excellent income during her lifetime. She does not receive a lump sum, except for a single payment of ten thousand. What she does with the income is her own business, once it is received. She can give it to you, if she wishes.”

“I couldn’t accept that sort of... charity,” the colonel said stiffly. “You heard her state her wishes, man! She wants to give up all claims against the policies.”

Darrigan allowed himself a smile. “She’s only trying to dissociate herself from you two scavengers. She has a certain amount of pride. She is mourning her husband. Maybe you can’t understand that.”

“Throw him out, Tem,” Alicia whispered.

The colonel had turned white. “I shall do exactly that,” he said.

Dinah stood up slowly, her face white. “Leave my house,” she said.

The colonel turned toward her. “What do—”

“Yes, the two of you. You and your sister. Leave my house at once.”

The tension lasted for long seconds. Dinah’s eyes didn’t waver. Alicia shattered the moment by standing up and saying, in tones of infinite disgust, “Come on, Tem. The only thing to do with that little bitch is start dragging her through the courts.”

They left silently, wrapped in dignity like stained cloaks.

Dinah came to Darrigan. She put her face against his chest, her brow hard against the angle of his jaw. The sobs were tiny spasms, tearing her, contorting her.

He cupped the back of her head in his hand, feeling a sense of wonder at the silk texture of her hair, at the tender outline of fragile bone underneath. Something more than forgotten welled up within him, stinging his eyes, husking his voice as he said, “They aren’t worth... this.”

“He... was worth... more than... this,” she gasped.

The torment was gone as suddenly as it had come. She stepped back, rubbing at streaming eyes with the backs of her hands, the way a child does.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She tried to smile. “You’re not a wailing wall.”

“Part of my official duties, sometimes.”

“Can they turn this into... nastiness?”

“They have no basis. He was of sound mind when he made the provisions. They’re getting enough. More than enough. Some people can never have enough.”

“I’d like to sign it over.”

“Your husband had good reasons for setting it up the way he did.”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you have anyone to help you?” he asked impulsively. He knew at once he had put too much of what he felt in his voice. He tried to cover by saying, “There’ll be a lot of arrangements. I mean, it could be considered part of my job.”

He detected the faintly startled look in her eyes. Awareness made them awkward. “Thank you very much, Mr. Darrigan. I think Brad will help.”

“Can you get that woman over to stay with you tonight?”

“I’ll be all right.”

He left her and went back to the beach to his room. In the morning he would make whatever official statements were considered necessary. He lay in the darkness and thought of Dinah, of the way she was a promise of warmth, of integrity.

And, being what he was, he began to look for subterfuge in her attitude, for some evidence that her reactions had been part of a clever act. He ended by despising himself for having gone so far that he could instinctively trust no one.

In the morning he phoned the home office. He talked with Palmer, a vice-president. He said, “Mr. Palmer, I’m sending through the necessary reports approving payment on the claim.”

“It’s a bloody big one,” Palmer said disconsolately.

“I know that, sir,” Darrigan said. “No way out of it.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll be checking in then by, say, the day after tomorrow?”

“That should be about right.”

Darrigan spent the rest of the day going through motions. He signed the lengthy statement for the police. The Drynfellses were claiming that in the scuffle for the paper, Davisson had fallen and hit his head on a bumper guard. In panic they had hidden the body. It was dubious as to whether premeditation could be proved.

He dictated his report for the company files to a public stenographer, sent it off airmail. He turned the car in, packed his bag. He sat on the edge of his bed for a long time, smoking cigarettes, looking at the far wall.

The thought of heading north gave him a monstrous sense of loss. He argued with himself. Fool, she’s just a young, well-heeled widow. All that sort of thing was canceled out when Doris left you. What difference does it make that she should remind you of what you had once thought Doris was?

He looked into the future and saw a long string of hotel rooms, one after the other, like a child’s blocks aligned on a dark carpet.

If she doesn’t laugh in your face, and if your daydream should turn out to be true, they’ll nudge each other and talk about how Gil Darrigan fell into a soft spot.

She’ll laugh in your face.

He phoned at quarter of five and caught Palmer. “I’d like to stay down here and do what I can for the beneficiary, Mr. Palmer. A couple of weeks, maybe.”

“Isn’t that a bit unusual?”

“I have a vacation overdue, if you’d rather I didn’t do it on company time.”

“Better make it vacation, then.”

“Anything you say. Will you put it through for me?”

“Certainly, Gil.”

At dusk she came down the hall, looked through the screen at him. She was wearing black.

He felt like a kid trying to make his first date. “I thought I could stay around a few days and... help out. I don’t want you to think I—”

She swung the door open. “Somehow I knew you wouldn’t leave,” she said.

He stepped into the house, with a strange feeling of trumpets and banners. She hadn’t laughed. And he knew in that moment that during the years ahead, the good years ahead of them, she would always know what was in his heart, even before he would know it. And one day, perhaps within the year, she would turn all that warmth suddenly toward him, and it would be like coming in out of a cold and rainy night.