place. Harry’s wife. And he was delayed at the office. If I had a wife like that, I wouldn’t be delayed. Maybe I wouldn’t even go to the office at all.
“Here you are.”
“Thanks.” Yes, thanks for the drink, and thanks for letting your fingers accidentally (was it accidentally?) touch mine. I sat down on the sofa. She took a chair, and through the window the sun set fire to her hair.
“So you’re Mark Clayburn. Harry’s told me quite a lot about you.”
“Is that so? Well, he never told me anything about you. Not that I blame him.”
She laughed. “Harry never mixes business with his domestic affairs.”
“Then I’m sorry I butted in like this. Because I’m here on a sort of a business matter.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Harry told me.” She leaned forward. I offered her a cigarette. “No, thanks. I’m afraid I don’t smoke, either. But you go ahead.” I lit my cigarette and she continued. “The poor guy’s so worried he doesn’t know what to do. And I can understand how he feels. All that money tied up, and just on account of a no-good heel like Ryan.” She shook her head. “Even when he’s dead he makes trouble for Harry.”
“Trouble? Harry never told me he had any dealings with Ryan before.”
“He wouldn’t. Harry isn’t the type to talk about it. But he used to be Ryan’s agent. When he came out here, from New York.”
“When was that?”
“About seven years ago. I was working in Harry’s office then. He’d just gotten started in the business and didn’t handle any big names. When he saw Ryan he thought the guy had possibilities, and he knocked himself out trying to get a break for him.
“Ryan must have hung around for a couple of months before he got his first assignment. Harry even staked him until the opening came along and he got his first billing.”
“What kind of a guy was Ryan in those days?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Nice kid. You know the type. Fresh out of dramatic school, a few bits in New York, some radio work. Thought he was all ready to set the world on fire out here. But Harry wised him up. Made him take riding lessons, fencing, dancing. Taught him how to handle a gun. Harry was the one who groomed him for westerns. Said he’d have a better chance there than in juvenile stuff for the Bs.”
“What did you think?”
“Well...” She shrugged again. “I didn’t like the setup. Harry and I weren’t married yet; we were waiting until he got himself set with the agency, had the business going good. And here he was shelling out dough to keep Ryan eating, to pay for his lessons. Of course, Harry expected he’d get it all back, and then some, if Ryan clicked. But I didn’t feel so sure about it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Call it a hunch. I told Harry he couldn’t trust him, asked him to stop subsidizing Ryan. We almost had a quarrel over it, once.”
I finished my drink. “You say you had a hunch about Ryan. Why? What kind of hunch?”
Daisy giggled. “How can you explain a hunch? You’ve heard of feminine intuition, haven’t you?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never believed in it,” I told her. I leaned forward. “Could it have had anything to do with women? Was Ryan a chaser in those days?”
Daisy giggled again. “I never saw him go for a girl under twelve, and I never saw him get interested in a woman over fifty. But anything in between—oh, brother!”
I smiled at her. “Then I take it he also made a pass at you?”
She wasn’t giggling now. Two vertical lines formed in her forehead above her eyebrows. “He tried. But Harry put a stop to that. That’s when they had their big fight. Ryan walked out. Walked out cold, just like that. We never saw him again. About two months later we heard he got a role in one of Kolmar’s horse operas. And he was on his way.”
“You haven’t seen him since?”
“No. And Harry never got his money back. Oh, it was only a few hundred, and it doesn’t matter. But the louse never came near us after he made good. He hooked up with another agency. And last year he cut Harry dead at the Academy Award banquet.”
She stood up. “Fix you an encore?” she asked.
“Wait a minute.” I stood up, too. “Does Harry hate Ryan? Or did he hate him when he was alive?”
“He didn’t like him, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s not what I mean. There’s a difference between not liking a guy and hating him.” I was close enough to her to smell her perfume. “If I were Harry and I took this kid on, staked him, trained him for a career, and then had him walk out on me, I’d dislike him. And if he never paid me back, gave me the freeze after he became successful, I might hate him a little.” The lines in her forehead, between her eyebrows, came back now. I stared at them as I continued. “But if I was Harry and I found out that Ryan was making a pass at you, I’d hate him a lot. I might even hate him enough to—”
She raised her head and now I was staring straight into her eyes. “You’re crazy,” she said. “Harry didn’t kill Ryan. He wouldn’t wait almost seven years. Besides, Ryan never got to first base with me. And what kind of sense would that make, putting you on the case, if he did?”
“No sense at all,” I answered. “But you can’t be too careful.”
“How right you are,” Daisy murmured. “And if you’d only thought of that, you might have bothered to check up on what Harry was doing the night of the murder. He was in the Mark Hopkins at San Francisco, at a conference with some of the people from Twentieth Century. And there are a dozen witnesses to testify he never left the hotel all night.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
“You really
“All right,” I said. “Sorry I got so nosey. I’ll take that drink, now.”
She crossed the room, then halted.
“Harry’s home!”
I heard the door slam, listened for the footsteps. Bannock stood in the doorway. Daisy ran over and put her arms around him. He stood there. She said, “Darling, we’ve missed you.” He stood there. She kissed him. He stood there.
Daisy stepped back. “Honey, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he said. “But just before I left the office, I got a phone call. Somebody whose voice I never heard before. He told me that if I didn’t lay off the Ryan case, he’d kill me.”
The maid announced dinner. She served roast duck with wild rice, and it looked good enough to eat. None of us ate very much, though. We just sat there and stared at the table like one big happy family. Sat there and talked about the phone calls—the one Harry got and the one I got.
For the third time Bannock said, “But
“Think,” I suggested. “All you have to do is remember everyone you talked to about this business. Who overheard you mention you were coming to see me? Who knew you were interested in finding out about the murder?”
“I am thinking.” Bannock sighed. “There’s the three of us. Your friend Al Thompson, in Homicide.”
“You can check him off,” I told Bannock. “He’s not the type.”
“But he asked you to quit the case.”
“Of course he did. Only he didn’t know I was after anything more than a story. The question is, who does?”
“Sarah.” Daisy gestured toward the kitchen. “She heard us talking this morning, before Harry went to the office.”
