“But not well,” McCorkle added.
“She was locked in a hall closet under the stairs, bound and gagged.”
“She hurt?” Padillo asked.
“No.”
“Who’d she say did it?”
“Two guys with grocery sacks over their heads. She said they were already in the house when she got there.”
McCorkle asked, “Why was she there?”
“Because of Steady’s horse. She claimed she was worried nobody was looking after it.”
“Why do I get the impression you don’t believe her?” Padillo said.
“Because after she left I called Howard Mott. He told me Letty’d called him right after Steady died to remind him of the horse. Mott told her not to worry, that he’d take care of it, and he did.”
“Where’s the horse now?” McCorkle said.
“Dead.”
“How?”
“Shot. Either by Letty or the guys with sacks over their heads.”
“Why would she shoot him?”
“Why would they?”
Padillo said, “Then what?”
“I reported the dead horse to the sheriff, who seemed to be a member of Steady’s fan club. Then Erika and I searched the house, looking for a true manuscript.”
“You told her what you were looking for?” McCorkle asked.
“Why not?”
McCorkle frowned first, then shrugged and said, “Go on.”
“Erika discovered a new version of the manuscript in Steady’s computer. This new version reads just like the one I left in your safe except for one thing. Instead of three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages, this one has line after line and page after page filled with just one word: endit—spelled e-n-d-i-t. I think of it as the long version of the false manuscript. The woman with the Sauer got the short version.” He smiled slightly at McCorkle. “It would be awfully neat if she were Letty Melon in disguise.”
“It wasn’t Letty,” McCorkle said.
“Tell me about her—whoever she was.”
“I didn’t see her hair,” McCorkle said, “because she wore a red knit cap pulled down almost to her eyebrows. I didn’t see her hands because she wore red knit gloves. I didn’t see her feet because she wore rubber boots. I can’t tell you much about her build because she wore a man’s old London Fog raincoat, probably with a zip-out liner. I know it was old because the waterproofing was gone—maybe dry-cleaned away. That leaves her face. She wore yellow-tinted glasses and her eyes were a blue that could’ve come from contacts. She had a regular nose, mouth, chin and no makeup. She had two voices. One was her flibbertigibbet voice. Her other voice was the convincer— uninflected, exact, experienced. It and the Sauer made me do exactly what she said I should do.”
“No scars, moles or tattoos?” Haynes said.
“No, but she did have nice skin,” McCorkle said. “Very few lines and no wrinkles—although she could’ve rubbed her face with Preparation H just before she came through the door. That can tighten things up for an hour or two.”
“She had two walks,” Padillo said. “One was shy and one was bold. She used the shy walk when she came in —a pigeon-toed shuffle, almost clumsy. On the way out: long strides, graceful, even athletic.”
“How old was she?” Haynes asked.
“More than thirty,” McCorkle said. “Less than fifty.”
Haynes finished his drink and turned away from McCorkle to put it down on a side table. Still turned away, he asked, “How’d she know the manuscript was in your safe?”
McCorkle winked at Padillo and said, “That’s been bothering me. It’s been bothering me so much that when I woke up this morning the first thing I asked myself was: Who knew I’d put the thing in my safe?”
“I knew,” Haynes said. “You knew.” He indicated Padillo with a nod. “And so did he.”
“Did Mott know?” Padillo asked.
“He knew I had the manuscript. He didn’t know it was in your safe.”
“Remember when I got out of the cab Friday afternoon and mistook you for Steady?” McCorkle said. “You were headed for Howard Mott’s office empty-handed.”
Haynes nodded.
“The next time I saw you was at the bar—just you, me, Tinker Burns and Karl. And by then you were carrying that folded-over grocery bag.”
Haynes again nodded.
“But when you left with Erika, you weren’t carrying anything. A fairly observant person might’ve noticed this
