“About eight thirty. She was carrying a scarf, and one end was dragging on the ground. That’s what decided me. She doesn’t do that kind of thing, no matter how many drinks she’s had. She jumped in her car and took off like a drag-racer. By the time I got organized it was hopeless to try to catch her. I decided to wait and see if I could-” His grip on his knees tightened. “Did she have an accident? You can at least tell me that.”
“We don’t know where she is. Do you think this funny behavior has anything to do with the medal Attorney General Crowther is getting tomorrow?”
“Those letters!” London cried. “They don’t honestly mean anything, Shayne. It’s a game she’s been playing.”
“Did she ever say anything to you about Supreme Court Justice Jenkinson?”
“Who? What’s he have to do with this? The answer is no, but if you’d tell me what’s going on, maybe I could help. I’ve been seeing her fairly often.”
“Does she own a gun?”
“A gun,” London breathed. “Jesus. I doubt it like hell. You don’t believe she’s thinking about-?”
Shayne snapped on the overhead light and asked to see London’s identification. He was thirty-one, an office- furniture salesman. Making up his mind abruptly, Shayne told him about the anonymous tipster who had warned him that an attempt was to be made on Crowther’s life, and that the potential killer was a woman. Then he described the tableau in the airport ladies’ room.
“There’s more, but those are the two main items. Somebody’s putting up a smoke screen. We don’t know what the real move is going to be, or where. Whatever it is, it has to be serious. Three different people have pointed guns at me since four o’clock this afternoon, and I’ve been slugged from behind with an ax-handle, for no particular reason, because I don’t know much more about what’s going on than you do. I hope Camilla’s not planning to play any games with Crowther tomorrow. A battalion of airborne infantry’s coming down from Bragg. Every cop in town is going to be on duty with a loaded weapon.”
“Oh God,” London said unhappily. “I’d better tell you everything that happened yesterday and today. Can you give me a cigarette?”
Shayne shook one out of his pack.
“As soon as I got in yesterday I called her office. She wouldn’t talk to me. I’d already decided I couldn’t afford to be too touchy, so I waited downstairs. She really looked like a ghost when she came out-very tired and sick and jumpy. We had a fight in the lobby about whether I had any right, etc. She used some strong language. She was trying to make me mad, and she succeeded. But she overdid it. She wouldn’t be yelling like that in a crowded office-building lobby unless something was wrong. I followed her over to one of the hotels on the Beach.”
“The St. Albans?”
“That’s right, where Crowther is getting his medal tomorrow. I don’t know what else she did, but she picked up a man in one of the bars and took him home. At that point I decided the hell with it, not for the first time. I didn’t wait to find out how long he stayed, which was just as well. I saw him leaving this morning.”
“She didn’t take her birth-control pill yesterday,” Shayne remarked.
London had been tightening up noticeably during his account of Camilla’s evening, and now he flared. “Damn you, Shayne, you don’t care what you do, do you?”
“The medicine cabinet is always one of the first places I look. Did she know you were following her?”
“I suppose. I wasn’t trying to keep out of sight.”
“Then maybe the reason she picked somebody up was so she wouldn’t have to argue with you any more.”
“Maybe. But it wouldn’t be the first time she slept with somebody she just met. I wish she wouldn’t do it, but it’s a symptom of something else, and when she gets over that, whatever it is-” He broke off. “And of course the truth is that it’s driving me out of my skull! The guy was such a slob!”
“The slobbier the better, if the object was to get you to leave her alone. We need a recent photograph. Do you have any?”
“A couple. I took some Polaroid shots a few weeks ago, and one of them made her look just the way she used to.”
“I want one of the way she looks now. Has she ever attempted suicide?”
“Several times. Once she came pretty close. I know she thinks about it whenever she gets depressed. The last few days just before she menstruates are the bad ones. I try to keep track, so I’ll be available. When she feels really low she calls me and sometimes we stay on the phone all night. But one time last year I had to go out of town and I couldn’t reach her before I left. I kept getting a busy signal when I called. I caught an earlier flight back and got her to the hospital. Just in time, they told me.”
“What medical treatment has she been getting?”
“Various doctors. Different pills. Sometimes she’ll be almost normal for a few weeks at a time, and then all of a sudden-”
“Did she show you any of the letters she wrote Crowther?”
“No, but I heard enough about them. Did she actually mail them?”
“Apparently.”
“Part of the time I thought she was joking. She claimed she was shortening Crowther’s life by keeping him in a continual state of terror, which I tried to tell her was absurd.”
“Where is she in the menstrual cycle now, do you know?”
“That’s just it-she’s due.” He added grimly, “Unless she’s pregnant.”
Shayne stubbed out his cigarette. “OK, Paul, I want you to listen to a theory. If you collected everybody who has a reason for killing Crowther, you could fill the Orange Bowl. What if somebody else found out about these letters, and also knew she’d been thinking about killing herself? What if he offered to arrange an assassination? She wouldn’t have to know who he was. He could do it by phone. One way to get her the gun would be to put it in a suitcase and check it on a flight into International Airport, and send her the claims check.”
“You mean the phone rang and she picked it up and a voice said, Do you want to-”
“Something like that,” Shayne said. “‘You’ve been threatening to murder this man. God knows he deserves it. Put up or shut up.”
“I’m asking your opinion. You know her. I don’t. You say these letters were partly a joke. Now here comes a genuine offer-someone who’s willing to work out all the details and tell her exactly what to do. It coincides with one of her low points, when she’s thinking about suicide anyway. This would be a much more interesting way to kill herself than swallowing pills, and she’d take Crowther with her.”
London was staring at him. “Do you know anything you haven’t told me?”
“I’m speculating. Would that kind of proposition appeal to her?”
“It might, but she wouldn’t do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure! You see I know her. We used to make love in high school. We stopped for a few years, and then we started again after her husband was condemned to death, and we’ve been doing it ever since. That doesn’t make me any kind of an expert on what she’s really like.”
Shayne didn’t comment.
After a moment London went on reluctantly, “But if that call came in at just the right moment, if he didn’t make any mistakes, she might decide-oh, that if she didn’t agree, it would mean admitting that she hadn’t ever been serious about anything, just fooling around. One thing would happen, then another, and before she knew it she’d be committed. But she wouldn’t go through with it! At the last minute-”
He thought about it, and then said helplessly, “No, I just don’t know.”
CHAPTER 10
Will Gentry, in his office in police headquarters on NW 11th Street, opened a can of ginger ale and laid out a game of solitaire. At this stage in the evening, there was nothing to do but conserve energy, and wait for something to happen.
