doesn't stop me from trying. Now, let's get down to cases. You sure...”
“Let's get to cases, in the romance department you're wasting your time.”
“But it's my time, so let me worry. Think carefully, anything you haven't told me?”
“I have a feeling I'm being watched all the time. Also, think my apartment has been searched. I can't prove this, but small items don't seem to be in their proper places.”
“Tell this to the cops?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Told you,” she said too quickly, “I'm not sure about these things. Could be all my imagination.”
I didn't believe that, but let it go. She finished her sandwich, asked, “What's the next step in finding the murderers?”
“Murderer—one guy. I know who he is, what I don't know is the motive—yet.”
Her eyes turned animal—hard and bright. “You know? Who is he?”
“Tell you in time.”
“Thought we were going to be oh so honest with each other?”
“We have to be, remember that,” I told her gently. “Not telling you who he is because the less you know the safer you are. Don't forget, I'm two killings and a couple of pastings up on you. Tell me, your father leave you any money?
“I fail to see what business that.... Oh, you keep harping on money! Yes he had a few hundred in the bank, a Long Island plot he always wanted to build on—and never got up stick one—and a fifteen-hundred-dollar policy the bank broke its heart by giving all its employees.”
“You don't like the bank?”
“They sucked my father's life dry. Oh, I suppose it wasn't all their fault. Pop was too... conservative.”
“You work?”
“I work damn hard—I'm a tennis bum.” She almost smiled and it did wonders to her face, made me realize Laurie was only a scared kid, made me want to reach over and hug her. “I'm not on the big time, but I will be. But there aren't too many women players, so I get an invite to most of the tournaments—with expense money.”
“Tennis must mean a lot to you. I never...”
“I'm sick and tired of it!” she said in that odd, explosive way she had of blurting out things. “Day after day, the same dull grind. But I'm twenty-two and tennis is all I really know, so I keep at it.”
She told me about playing tennis with her father when she was a youngster, becoming a star in high school. When I asked why she'd never gone to college, she said, “Couldn't afford it. Anyway, Father had old-fashioned ideas about education and women.”
“Couldn't your tennis bring you a scholarship?”
“Did get one offer, from a California university, but that meant I'd have to be away from Father and that... was that.”
“Poppa ever talk about retiring soon?”
“Will you please stop insinuating my father was a thief!”
“Laurie, detective work means running down each and every minor clue. There has to be a wad of dough in this, and I have to find it. That's why...”
What about those two girls you said were... were killed?” she asked, not so neatly changing the subject.
One of them was in the papers yesterday, Anita Rogers, my secretary. The other—police haven't found her body yet, but I did, and that's why I have to get this solved, but on the double.”
“You found the body...? Aren't you afraid I'll tell the police?”
I looked her square in the eyes, said, “No,” and wondered if I'd gone completely looney, trusting her and knowing she was lying to me!
She flushed, her sun-tanned face turning dark. “Stop staring at me like a kid. What do we do now?”
“I don't know. See what breaks in the next couple hours.” She stood up. “I'm going home to get some sleep, then back to the court.”
I paid the check. As we got into my car I asked, “Still feel you're being watched?” I looked around, casually. The street was too busy to make a tail.
“Yes. I've felt it all the time, since the... killing.”
“Yet you live alone. Sometimes being brave is the same as being stupid.”
“What else can I do?” Laurie said, almost desperately. “No family, no friends.”
I had to stop myself from going into a routine about the one friend she had now. It would have sounded very corny. I drove her home, didn't spot anybody following us. Outside her house I gave her my card, said, “Anything comes up, call me. Give me your phone number, I'll check with you around six.”
Driving downtown, I kept snaking in and out of streets, but if I was being tailed, the guy was damn good. I parked as near Margrita's hotel as I could, finding a space only three blocks away. When I asked the hotel clerk if she was in, he answered in that indifferent, chilly voice hotel clerks must be born with, “I'll see. Who shall I say is calling?”
