“I believe she did.”
“Then she also had to know that if he died, and she was still married to him, she’d be responsible for his corporate debts if Northern Development went under. That’s the law, isn’t it?”
“Why yes, it is.”
“And the company is likely to go under?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said. Meaning yes, it was likely. “But I don’t see…”
I let him not see; I didn’t say anything. I was thinking: Well, there goes her motive for killing him. She got her fifty percent whether he was alive or dead-fifty percent of not much-and that was all she got. And if he was alive, she’d be better off: just wait for the divorce to go through and she could go her merry way without worrying about his business debts.
There went any profit motive for killing Randall, too, because he also hadn’t left her anything in his will. Helen O’Daniel may have been attractive and desirable and hell on wheels in the sack, but she wasn’t fooling any of the men in her life. Not where it counted, anyway.
Still, there was her probable affair with Randall and her probable presence at his house the night he died. And there was Paul Robideaux, too. She may not have murdered her husband or her lover, but it seemed a good bet she knew something about all that was going on.
So from Fulbright’s office I drove up to Sky Vista Road on the chance she might finally have come home. She had, but she was on her way out again: when I came in sight of the upper reaches of the O’Daniel house she was walking across from the stairs to where her yellow Porsche sat on the covered platform deck.
I veered onto the wrong side of the road and pulled up alongside her and stuck my head out of the window. “Hello, Mrs. O’Daniel. I’d like to-”
“You!” she said, and gave me a withering look and kept on going onto the deck.
Well, hell, I thought. I put the transmission in reverse and backed up until I had the car angled across behind the Porsche, blocking it in. When I got out she was standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring.
“What’s the big idea?” she said. “Get out of my way!”
“Not until we talk.”
“I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”
“Why not? You finally get in touch with Paul Robideaux?”
She had, because she said immediately, “So Paul and I have been seeing each other, so what? That’s our business, nobody else’s.”
“Not unless it has some bearing on your husband’s death.”
“Well, it hasn’t. Paul didn’t have anything to do with it and neither did I. It was an accident.”
“Was it?” I said.
“Yes, damn you. Why are you trying to make something more out of it?”
“Because I think he was murdered,” I said flatly. “Where were you Saturday night, Mrs. O’Daniel?”
“I wasn’t at Shasta Lake, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Where, then? With Robideaux?”
“… Yes, if you must know.”
“He told me you weren’t. He said he was home alone.”
“You’re lying,” she said. “He never told you that. He was with me, you understand?”
“Is that what you told Lieutenant Telford?”
“It’s the truth. Of course it’s what I told him.”
So she and Robideaux had finally got together and cooked up a story for mutual protection. That was how it figured; if they had been together on Saturday night, Robideaux would have been quick to tell me so. But the lie didn’t have to mean anything; innocent people do that kind of thing too.
I said, “How come you didn’t call Robideaux as soon as you heard about your husband’s death? I took him by surprise when I saw him yesterday, and that was hours after the lieutenant notified you.”
Hesitation. Then she said, “I… was upset, I wasn’t thinking very clearly. And there were arrangements to make, the funeral… ”
“Where were you last night? I tried calling you three or four times-”
Her anger flared up again. “That’s none of your goddamn business. I’ve had enough of this. Poor Frank getting killed, prowlers, and now you again; I’ve had enough!”
“Prowlers?” I said.
“Yes, prowlers. My house was broken into last night while I was out. ”
“Was anything stolen?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t find anything missing. Whoever it was ransacked Frank’s den and then he must have got scared off.”
“He didn’t touch anything else?”
“ No. ”
“How did he get in?”
“Through the back door, he broke the glass, what difference does it make? I’m not going to answer any more of your questions. I don’t have to talk to you, you’re nothing but a damned private snoop. Either you move your car or I’ll call the police.”
“Look, Mrs. O’Daniel-”
“You’re harassing me,” she said. “Move your fucking car or I’ll not only call the police, I’ll tell them you manhandled me. See if I won’t.”
I was not going to get anything more out of the bereaved widow-except trouble. I got in and moved the car. She revved up the Porsche’s engine until the walls of the platform deck seemed to vibrate, backed out off the deck in a controlled skid, and shot past me burning rubber. I thought for a second she was going to miss the first turn down the road, but Porsches are built for cornering as well as speed; she zipped right around it and roared out of sight.
I pulled out in her wake, driving slow, speculating. A prowler-now what did that mean? Maybe it meant nothing; maybe it was totally unrelated to Frank O‘Daniel’s death or to anything else in my investigation. But then why had only O’Daniel’s den been ransacked? I didn’t buy the theory that the prowler had been scared off; she hadn’t come home and surprised him or she’d have said so, and there wasn’t any dog or burglar alarm or neighbor close by.
All right, then: somebody had been after something specific that belonged to O’Daniel. But what? And who? And why?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I drove downtown again and went through the crowded and shady mall to Penny’s for Beauty. The only person in the waiting room was the blond receptionist, Miss Adley. La Belson must have told her I wasn’t a city cop; she was not intimidated today. She wasn’t even polite. “Miss Penny isn’t in and I don’t know when she’ll be back,” she said, and her eyes said: Drop dead, asshole.
So I grinned at her and perched on one corner of her desk and said, “How about if I go back through that arch and tell your customers who I am and that Miss Penny is mixed up in a couple of ugly murders? Can you imagine the gossip? Can you imagine what Miss Penny would say?”
We looked at each other for about ten seconds. Then the blonde made an exasperated hissing sound between her teeth and threw words at me like spittle. “She’s at a restaurant down the way. Rive Gauche. Having her lunch.”
“Maybe I’ll have lunch too,” I said, and got off her desk. “Have a nice day, now.”
Miss Adley didn’t have anything more to say. Her eyes repeated their earlier message.
Rive Gauche was a small, chic restaurant, very French, with colored prints of Montmartre and other Parisian scenes on the walls and waitresses who spoke with Gallic accents that may or may not have been genuine. It wasn’t very crowded, and I saw Penny Belson as soon as I came in: corner table, alone, a dish of steamed mussels and a small carafe of white wine in front of her.
