“I think Nola Jean Ryder set fire to that shop and killed the Graysons. I’ve always thought that.”
“Okay,” I said in a semidoubting voice. “Make me believe it.”
“I probably can’t, unless you’re willing to give me some veteran’s points for intuition.”
“I’ll play with you up to a point. But you’ve got to have something concrete, you can’t just pull this intuition act out of thin air.”
“I’ve got three things and that’s all, you can take it or leave it. First, I talked to the fire investigator who worked the Grayson fire. This man is extremely competent, and he’s convinced it was arson. He’s got my slant on life, if you know what I mean…we talk the same language, he gets the same vibes I do. You don’t meet many people like that, and when you do, you listen to what they say. And he knows that fire was set, it just killed him not to be able to prove it. In a thirty-year career you get maybe half a dozen like that, so strong yet elusive. It sticks in your craw and you remember every bloody detail till the day you die. That’s my first point.
“Here’s the second. Nola Jean Ryder was very much in evidence at the Grayson place all through the last year of their lives and was never seen again afterward. She was there the day of the fire. Archie Moon saw her arguing with Grayson. Her relationship with Grayson was volatile, very stormy: he couldn’t seem to live with or without her, and toward the end it got so bad it affected his work. One man I talked to saw Ryder in the North Bend pub that afternoon, drinking with some guys. She went off with one of them and was gone a couple of hours. Then she was seen walking back to Grayson’s in the early evening, in a light rain. That’s the last time anybody ever saw or to my knowledge heard of Nola Jean Ryder. A few hours later the Graysons died and she dropped off the edge of the earth.
“Last point. Nobody who knew her doubts that she was capable of doing it. She had a temper that went off like a firecracker and burned at a full rage for hours. Even today it makes people uneasy to talk about her. Archie Moon told me some stuff, then he clammed up and called it ancient history and said he didn’t want to talk anymore. Rigby wouldn’t talk at all. Crystal at least was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, for a while anyway. Nobody could understand the hold she had on Grayson: it was as if, after a lifetime filled with women, he had met the one who brought him to his knees.”
“This is Darryl Grayson we’re talking about now.”
“Absolutely. Richard’s the one who first met her, but it was Darryl Grayson who wound up with her. I guess things like that can’t be explained, how a woman can get under the skin of even a strong man and make him do just about anything.”
“And vice versa.”
“Yes. There isn’t much that separates us when you get down to what counts.”
I sat thinking about what she’d told me, then it was my turn to talk. I told her about Amy Harper and she listened like a bug-eyed kid, trying to imagine that treasure hidden all those years in the Harper woman’s attic. “I never understood why she was so hostile when I tried to interview her. Now I know. She considered Grayson her own personal territory. She was going to write her own book.”
Then I told her about Otto Murdock. I watched the sense of wonder drain out of her face, replaced by horror and dread.
“Did you call the police?”
“Sure. I seem to spend a lot of my time doing that.”
“Where’d you call them from?”
“Phone booth not far from Murdock’s.”
“Did you talk to Quintana?”
“He didn’t seem to be there. Supercops in this neck of the woods have a different work ethic than I used to have.”
“Did you tell the dispatcher this was part of Quintana’s case?”
“I had to. I’ve told you how important that is, for the main guy to know that stuff right out of the gate.”
She took a deep breath. “Sounds to me like you did everything but give them your name.”
“I did that too. I wanted to make sure it got to him right away. That part of it doesn’t matter anymore, he’d know it was me anyway. They’ve got me on tape twice now and I’ve never been much of a ventriloquist. They’ll also have the paper I left.”
“What paper?”
“Last Friday when I went to Murdock’s with Eleanor, I took some pricey books out of his store. I left an offer taped to the canvas bag.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them wide. “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. You left him a note and signed your name to it. Then you went back there tonight and the note was still there but he was dead, and you left the note there for the police to find. Is that about it?”
“It’s a bookseller’s code, Trish—thou shalt not steal thy colleague’s books. I owed the man three thousand dollars. Now I owe it to his estate, wherever that goes. Maybe he was one of those nuts who left everything to his pet cat, but that doesn’t change my obligation to him. If I walked out with that note, I’d be stealing his books, in the eyes of the law and in my eyes too.”
She looked at Grayson’s notebook but did not touch it. “What about this?”
“I didn’t steal that, Murdock did. When I’m finished with it, it goes back to Amy Harper.”
She gave me a long, sad look.
