“His brother’s wasn’t.”
“I know nothing about that.”
“Did you have any contact with Leonard after Kenneth’s death?”
“Certainly not. I told you, I know nothing about his murder.” She drew herself up even straighter and pointed the gold head of her cane at me as if it were a weapon. “Now are you quite finished with your questions?”
I wasn’t, but asking any more wouldn’t get me anything: the set of her jaw and the look in her eyes made it plain that she’d said all she was going to say. If she knew anything else it would take an official inquiry to get her to admit it.
I said, “That’s all for now, Mrs. Prine. You can go.”
“How generous of you.” She got slowly to her feet, using the cane as a fulcrum; I didn’t much feel like being a gentleman, not where she was concerned, so I made no effort to help her. When we were both standing she said, “Do you intend to tell anyone about what we have just discussed?”
“If you mean the police or the newspapers, no. Not unless it has a direct bearing on either Kenneth’s death or Leonard’s.”
“If you do I will deny having spoken to you. I will deny having purchased the Hainelin box and I will see to it that Eldon Summerhayes denies having sold it to me. I will also speak to my attorneys about suing you for harassment and defamation of character.”
“You’re a nice lady, you know that?” I said. “I wish I had a granny like you.”
Her tight little mouth worked; if we had been somewhere other than the lobby of the Fairmont, somewhere alone, she might have spit in my eye. As it was, she settled for a contemptuous sneer and then turned abruptly and thumped off across the lobby.
Back in the car, I looked up the Moss Beach number in my notebook and called it on the mobile phone. Alicia Purcell was in; she answered herself. Her voice was cool, but she didn’t sound unhappy to hear from me again-not yet.
“Have you found out anything new?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes. I’ve just had a long talk with Margaret Prine. I know all about the Hainelin snuff box.”
“… What do you know?”
“I know it didn’t go over the cliff with your husband,” I said. “I know you sold it to Eldon Summerhayes for fifty thousand dollars four months ago, and that he in turn sold it to Mrs. Prine. What I want to know is why you lied about having it.”
There was a lengthy pause. When she spoke again the coolness in her voice had frozen into solid ice. “I resent you meddling in my private affairs.”
“Meddling is one of the things I get paid for,” I said. “Answer my question, Mrs. Purcell.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you’ll answer it for the police.”
“I’ve done nothing illegal. The box was mine to sell as my husband’s legal heir.”
“Not until his will clears probate.”
“All right, yes, I admit that. But I needed cash after his death; he left me cash-poor.”
“So you needed the fifty thousand for living expenses.”
“Among other things, yes.”
“What other things?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Suppose you let me be the judge of that.”
“Oh, all right. There were things I wanted-clothing, jewelry.”
“Wouldn’t your husband let you buy them when he was alive?”
“If you must know, no, he wouldn’t.”
“But you told me the other day you never wanted for anything the entire time you were married.”
“… I wasn’t being completely candid with you then.”
“And you are being candid with me now.”
“Yes.”
“How did you get the Hainelin box?”
“Kenneth gave it to me.”
“When?”
“Before he left the house. When we talked in his hobby room.”
“Why did he give it to you?”
“I asked him to. He’d been drinking so heavily… I was afraid he’d lose it.”
“He just handed it over?”
“Yes.”
“No argument or anything?”
“No.”
“Did you argue about anything else at that time?”
“We did not. Why do you ask that?”
“Your housekeeper said he was upset when he left the house. Any idea what he was upset about?”
“None whatsoever.”
“What did you do with the box after he gave it to you?”
“Put it with the other pieces in his collection.”
“Left it there after his death?”
“Until the next day, yes. Then I removed it.”
“Hid it, you mean.”
“Hid it. Yes. Are you satisfied now?”
“For the time being.”
“I suppose that means I’ll be hearing from you again.”
“I thought you wanted to hear from me,” I said. “I thought you were very concerned about things I’ve been finding out.”
She hung up on me again.
On the way down California Street I called Kerry’s number; I was starved-all I’d had to eat today had been some toast for breakfast-and I thought maybe she wanted to go out for an early dinner. But her line was busy. So I drove on home, and tried her again from there. Still busy. Talking to one of her women friends, maybe. Or her mother, Cybil, who was a former pulp writer and lived in Pasadena with Kerry’s father, Ivan the Terrible, also an ex-pulp writer, and who would cheerfully talk your ear off if you gave her half a chance.
I rummaged around in the refrigerator. There wasn’t anything in there I wanted to eat except an apple, and it turned out to be mushy and I threw it away after one bite. I opened the cupboard and found a can of ravioli and opened it and ate the little buggers cold, right out of the can. Kerry would have been horrified, but I’ve been eating cold ravioli for years; it’s the only way to eat the canned variety, which isn’t really ravioli at all. The kind native Italians make by hand and serve hot, that’s ravioli. The cold canned stuff is a whole different taste treat.
At five o’clock I tried Kerry again and finally got through to her. She’d been talking to Cybil, as it turned out- filling her in on our visit to the Church of the Holy Mission and the number she’d done on the Right Reverend Daybreak. She said dinner sounded fine, but she’d just had a sandwich and wouldn’t be hungry again for a while. We settled on seven-thirty and a fish restaurant we both liked out on Geary Boulevard.
I sat down in the living room with a can of beer. So now where was I, after the session with Margaret Prine and the telephone conversation with Alicia Purcell? I now knew for sure that Mrs. Purcell had hidden her possession of the Hainelin box from the authorities, that she’d sold it to Eldon Summerhayes, and that Margaret Prine now had it. So? Did the box have any direct bearing on Kenneth Purcell’s death? It didn’t look that way, unless Alicia was lying about her reasons for secreting the box, or holding something back. But why would she lie? What would she hold back? I had no good answer in either case. And that put me right back where I’d been two days ago, smack up against a dead end. The only concrete lead I’d turned up with all my running around and maneuvering, it seemed, was Danny Martinez. He was the key to the whole case. Without him, there was no way to make sense out of it, to put it all together.
