'Okay. What happened at this lunch with the Ketchels?'
'Nothing, really. We had something to eat in the patio of his cottage. I tried to make conversation with Mrs. Ketchel. She was a local girl, she said, but that was the only thing we had in common. She hated me.'
'Why?'
'Because Mr. Ketchel liked me. He wanted to do things for me, help me with my education and so on.'
Her voice was toneless.
'Did your father know about this?'
'Yes. It was the purpose of the lunch. Roy was very naive about exploiting people. He thought he could use a man like Mr. Ketchel without being used.'
'Use him for what?' I said.
'Roy owed him money. Roy was a nice man, but by that time he owed everybody money. I couldn't help him. It wouldn't have done any good to go along with Mr. Ketchel's plan. Mr. Ketchel is the kind of man who takes everything and gives nothing. I told Roy that.'
'Just what was the plan?'
'It was rather vague, but Mr. Ketchel offered to send me to school in Europe.'
'And your father went for this?'
'Not really. He just wanted me to butter up Mr. Ketchel a little bit. But Mr. Ketchel wanted everything. Men get that way when they're afraid they're dying.'
The girl surprised me. I reminded myself that she wasn't a girl, but a woman with a brief tragic marriage already behind her. And what sounded like a long tragic childhood. Her voice had changed perceptibly, almost as though she had skipped from youth to middle age, when she began to call her father 'Roy.'
'How often did you see Ketchel?'
'I talked to him just the once. He had noticed meat the club.'
'You say the lunch with him occurred shortly before your father died. Do you mean the same week?'
'The same day,' she said. 'It was the last day I ever saw Roy alive. Mother sent me to look for him that night.'
'Where?'
'Down at the beach, and at the club. Peter Jamieson was with me a part of the time. He went to the Ketchel's cottage I didn't want to - but they weren't there. At least they didn't answer.'
'Do you think Ketchel and your father quarreled over you?'
'I don't know. It's possible.'
She went on in the same flat voice: 'I wish I had been born without a nose, or only one eye.'
I didn't have to ask Ginny what she meant. I had known a number of girls for whom men insisted on doing things.
'Did Ketchel murder your father, Ginny?'
'I don't know. Mother thought so, at the time.'
Sylvester groaned. 'I don't see the point in raking it over.'
'The point is that it's connected with the present situation, doctor. You don't want to see the connection because you're part of the chain of cause and effect.'
'Do we have to go into that again?'
'Please.'
Ginny screwed up her face and rolled her head from side to side. 'Please don't argue across me. They always used to argue across me.'
We both said we were sorry. After a while she asked me in a soft voice: 'Do you think Mr. Ketchel killed my husband?'
'He's the leading suspect. I don't think he'd do it personally. He'd more likely use a hired gunman.'
'But why?'
'I can't go into all the circumstances. Seven years ago your husband left Montevista with Ketchel. Apparently Ketchel sent him to school in France.'
'As a substitute for me?'
'That hardly seems likely. But I'm sure Ketchel had his uses for your husband.'
She was offended. 'Francis wasn't like that at all.'
'I don't mean sex. I believe he used Francis in his business.'
'What business?'
'He's a big-time gambling operator. Didn't Francis ever mention Ketchel?'
'No. He never did.'
'Or Leo Spillman, which was Ketchel's real name?'
'No.'
'What did you and Francis talk about, Ginny?'
'Poetry and philosophy, mostly. I had so much to learn from Francis.'
'Never real things?'
She said in her anguished voice: 'Why do real things always have to be ugly and horrible?'
She was feeling the pain now, I thought, the cruel pain of coming home widowed after a three-day marriage.
It was time to leave the freeway. I could see Montevista in the distance: its trees were like a green forest on the horizon. The access road straightened out toward the sea.
My mind was on Francis Martel, or whoever he was. He had driven his Bentley down this road a couple of months ago, on the track of a seven-year dream. The energy that had conceived the dream, and forced it briefly into reality, had all run out now. Even the girl beside me was lax as a doll, as if a part of her had died with the dreamer. She didn't speak again until we reached her mother's house.
The front door was locked. Ginny turned from it with a rejected air. 'It's her bridge day. I should have remembered.'
She found the key in her bag, and opened the door. 'You don't mind bringing my suitcases in? I'm feeling a little weak.'
'You have reason to,' Sylvester said.
'Actually, I'm relieved that Mother isn't here. What could I say to her?'
Sylvester and I looked at each other. I got the suitcases out of the trunk of my car and carried them into the front hall. Ginny said from the sitting room: 'What happened to the phone?'
'There was trouble here last night.'
She leaned in the doorway. 'Trouble?'
Sylvester went to her and put his hands on her shoulders. 'I'm sorry I have to tell you this, Ginny. Your mother was shot last night.'
She slipped from his hands onto the floor. Her skin was gray and her eyes indigo, but she didn't faint. She sat with her back against the wall.
'Is Marietta dead'' 'I'm afraid she is, Ginny.'
I squatted beside her. 'Do you know who shot your mother?'
She shook her head so hard that her hair fell like a blonde screen across her face.
'Your mother was deeply upset last night. Was something said to her, by you or Martel?'
'We said goodbye.'
She gasped over the finality of the word. 'That was about all, except that she didn't want me to go. She said she'd get money some other way.'
'What did she mean?'
'That I had married Francis for his money, I suppose. She didn't understand.'
I said: 'She told me before she died that lover-boy shot her. Who would lover-boy be?'
'Francis, maybe. But he was with me all the time.'
Her head fell against the wall with a thud. 'I don't know what she could have meant.'
'Lay off her,' Sylvester said. 'I'm speaking as a friend and as a doctor.'
He was right. I felt like a tormenting devil squatting beside her. I got to my feet and helped Ginny to hers. 'She ought to have protection. Will you stay with her, doctor?'
