`Did Dick Leandro know where it was?'
`I never showed him. He never came to my room.'
`Did your mother - did Elaine Hillman know where it was?'
`I guess so. She's always- she was always coming into my room, and checking on my things.'
`That's true,' Mrs. Perez said.
I acknowledged her comment with a look which discouraged further comment.
`I understand on a certain Sunday morning she came into your room once too often. You threatened to shoot her with your father's gun.'
Mrs. Perez made her explosive noise. Tom bit hard on the tip of his right thumb. His look was slanting, over my head and to one side, as if there was someone behind me.
`Is that the story they're telling?' he said.
Mrs. Perez burst out: `It isn't true. I heard her yelling up there. She came downstairs and got the gun out of the library desk and went upstairs with it.'
`Why didn't you stop her?'
`I was afraid,' she said. `Anyway, Mr. Hillman was coming - I heard his car - and I went outside and told him there was trouble upstairs. What else could I do, with Perez away in Mexico?'
`It doesn't matter,' Tom said. `Nothing happened. I took the gun away from her.'
`Did she try to shoot you?'
`She said she would if I didn't take back what I said.'
`And what did you say?'
`That I'd rather live in an auto court with my real mother than in this house with her. She blew her top and ran downstairs and got the gun.'
`Why didn't you tell your father about this?'
`He isn't my father.'
I didn't argue. It took more than genes to establish fatherhood. `Why didn't you tell him, Tom?'
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. `What was the use? He wouldn't have believed me. Anyway, I was mad at her, for lying to me about who I was. I did take the gun and point it at her head.'
`And want to kill her?'
He nodded. His head seemed very heavy on his neck. Mrs. Perez invented a sudden errand and bustled past him, pressing his shoulder with her hand as she went. As if to signalize this gesture, an electric bell rang over the pantry door.
`That's the front door,' she said to nobody in particular.
I got there in a dead heat with Ralph Hillman. He let Dick Leandro in. The week's accelerated aging process was working in Leandro now. Only his dark hair seemed lively. His face was drawn and slightly yellowish. He gave me a lackluster glance, and appealed to Hillman: `Could I talk to you alone, Skipper? It's important.'
He was almost chattering.
Elaine spoke from the doorway of the sitting room: `It can't be so important that you'd forget your manners. Come in and be sociable, Dick. I've been alone all evening, or so it seems.'
`We'll join you later,' Hillman said.
`It's very late already.'
Her voice was edgy.
Leandro's dim brown glance moved back and forth between them like a spectator's at a tennis game on which he had bet everything he owned.
`If you're not nice to me,' she said lightly, `I won't be nice to you, Dick.'
`I do-don't care about that.'
There was strained defiance in his voice.
`You will.'
Stiff-backed, she retreated into the sitting room.
I said to Leandro: `We won't waste any more time. Did you do some driving for Mrs. Hillman last night?'
He turned away from me and almost leaned on Hillman, speaking in a hushed rapid voice. `I've got to talk to you alone. Something's come up that you don't know about.'
`We'll go into the library,' Hillman said.
`If you do, I go along,' I said. `But we might as well talk here. I don't want to get too far from Mrs. Hillman.'
The young man turned and looked at me in a different way, both lost and relieved. He knew I knew.
Hillman also knew, I thought. His proposal to Susanna tended to prove it; his confession that Tom was his natural son had provided me with evidence of motive. He leaned now on the wall beside the door, heavy and
