soup that Lydia Mott said was her own improvement on the U.S. Senate’s recipe. Haynes drank beer with the meal—his first food since the lunch with Tinker Burns and Isabelle Gelinet nine and a half hours earlier.
Howard Mott drank a bloody mary as he finished off the last slice of a lemon meringue pie. Lydia Mott ate nothing and lingered only long enough to accept Haynes’s gracious and obviously sincere compliments on the soup and sandwich.
After she left, Mott swallowed the last bite of the pie, pushed his plate away and said, “You found Isabelle?”
“Tinker found her and showed her to me when I got there.”
“Could he have killed her?”
“Maybe, if he knows how to drown somebody in a bathtub without getting all wet. I suppose he could’ve done it naked, then put his clothes back on. Providing she really was drowned.”
“What do the cops think?”
“Nothing they’re willing to share with me.”
After Haynes finished his sandwich, Mott said, “If you’d like dessert, Lydia baked some cookies.”
“No, thanks.”
“Then let’s go upstairs.”
Insisting that Haynes take the deep armchair with the ottoman, Mott sat in an old oak swivel chair that matched his equally old rolltop desk whose pigeonholes and slots were stuffed with letters, handwritten reminders, business cards, newspaper clippings, invitations to past and future events and an impressive number of bills. Haynes suspected that Mott remembered where he could instantly locate each item.
“Who was Isabelle’s closest living relative?” Mott asked.
“Her mother. Madeleine Gelinet. She lives in Nice.”
“Then she’ll probably get Steady’s farm in Berryville—or the proceeds from its sale.”
“When?”
“After probate.”
“She could use the money now.”
“It’s possible, of course, that Isabelle made out a will.”
“Unmarried thirty-three-year-olds seldom make out wills,” Haynes said.
“True.”
“I was just wondering.”
“About what?”
“Whether it would be okay for me to go up to the farm and look around. Inside the house.”
Mott seemed to take the question under advisement for several seconds before he nodded gravely and said, “Steady’s will specifies that you’re to have your pick of his memorabilia—keepsakes, souvenirs, snapshots, family Bible and so forth, although I can’t recall his mentioning a Bible.”
“There isn’t one.”
Mott cocked his head to the left and gave Haynes an amused look. “I somehow get the feeling you’re really not much interested in Steady’s mementos.”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
“What you’re really hoping to find is a true copy of his memoirs tucked away someplace.”
“Or even in plain sight.”
“And I also suspect you think Isabelle’s death is an indication, if not evidence, that such a copy might actually exist.”
“That’s occurred to me.”
“Me, too,” Mott said, nodded again, this time more to himself than to Haynes, swiveled around to face the desk, studied the pigeonholes for a moment, reached into one of them and took out a key that was attached by wire to a cardboard tag.
He swiveled around to toss Haynes the key. “It unlocks the front door,” Mott said as he again turned back to his desk, picked up a ballpoint pen and began drawing something on a yellow legal pad. “I’ll draw you a map of how to find the place after you get to Berryville.”
Haynes looked at the tag that was wired to the key with a paper clip. Hand lettering on the tag read, “S. Haynes farm, front door.” He decided to give Howard Mott an A-plus for efficiency.
Mott rose, went over to Haynes and handed him the sheet of ruled yellow paper. “Berryville has two traffic lights,” he said. “When you get to the second one, turn south, go exactly one mile, turn west, go exactly another mile and you’re there.”
Haynes examined the map for a moment or two, looked up and said, “Maybe I’ll take along a guide.”
“You don’t like my map?”
“A guide could also be a witness.”
“To what?”
