mother's death are revealed. An attractive widow with so much money in her possession. But-'
'I see,' said Roy. 'The money.'
'More than a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, Mr. Dillon. Hidden in the trunk of her car. I'm very much afraid-' delicately. 'I'm afraid she hadn't paid taxes on it. She'd been falsifying her returns for years.'
Roy gave him a wry look. 'The body was discovered this morning; about eight o'clock, right? You seem to have been a very busy little man.'
Chadwick agreed simply that he had been. 'Our office here hasn't had time to make a thorough investigation, but the evidence is indisputable. Your mother couldn't have saved that much out of hen reported income. She was a tax evader.'
'How terrible! Too bad you can't put her in jail.'
'Please!' Chadwick winced. 'I know how you feel, but-'
'I'm sorry,' Roy said quietly. 'That wasn't very fair. Just what do you want me to do, Mr. Chadwick?'
'Well… I'm required to ask if you intend to lay claim to the money. If you care to say, that is. Possibly you'd rather consult a lawyer before you decide.'
'No,' Roy said. 'I won't lay any claim to the money. I don't need it, and I don't want it.'
'Thank you. Thank you, very much. Now, I wonder if you can give me any information as to the source of your mother's income. It seems obvious, you know, that there must have been tax evasions on the part of others, and-'
Roy shook his head. 'I imagine you know as much about my mother's associates as I do, Mr. Chadwick. Probably,' he added, with a tiredly crooked grin, 'you know a hell of a lot more.'
Chadwick nodded gravely, and stood up. Hesitating, hat in hand, he glanced around the room. And there was approval in his eyes, and a quiet concern.
Lilly's money had had to be impounded, he murmured; her car, everything she owned. But Roy mustn't think that the government was heartless in these matters. Any sum necessary for her burial would be released.
'You'll want to see to the arrangements personally, I imagine. But if there's anything I can do to help…' He took a business card from his wallet and laid it on the table. 'If you can tell me when you might care to leave for Tucson, if you are going, that is, I'll notify the local authorities and-'
'I'd like togo now.Just as soon as I can get a plane.'
'Let me help you,' Chadwick said.
He picked up the phone, and called the airport. He spoke briskly, reciting a government code number. He glanced at Roy. 'Get you out in an hour, Mr. Dillon. Or if that's too soon-'
'I'll make it. I'll be there,' Roy said, and he began flinging on his clothes.
Chadwick accompanied him to his car, shook hands with him warmly as Roy opened the door.
'Good luck to you, Mr. Dillon. Iwish we could have met under happier circumstances.'
'You've been fine,' Roy told him. 'And I'm glad we met, regardless.'
He had never seen the traffic worse than it was that day. It took all his concentration to get through it, and he was glad for the respite from thinking about Lilly. He got to the airport with ten minutes to spare. Picking up his ticket, he hurried toward the gate to his plane. And then, moved by a sudden hunch, he swerved into a telephone booth.
A minute or two later he emerged from it. Grimfaced, a cold rage in his heart, he went onto his plane.
It was a propeller job since his trip was a relatively short one, a mere five hundred and eighty miles. As it circled the field and winged south, a stewardess began serving the pre-luncheon drinks. Roy took a double bourbon. Sipping it, he settled back in his seat and gazed out the window. But the drink was tasteless and he gazed at nothing.
Lilly. Poor Lilly…
She hadn't killed herself. She'd been murdered.
For Moira Langtry was also gone from her apartment. Moira also had checked out yesterday morning, leaving no forwarding address.
There was one thing about playing the angles. If you played them long enough, you knew the other guy's as well as you knew your own. Most of the time it was like you were looking out the same window. Given a certain set of circumstances, you knew just about what he would do or what he had done.
So, without actually knowing what had happened, just how and why Lilly had been brought to her death, Roy knew enough. He could make a guess which came astonishingly close to the truth.
Moira had a contact in Baltimore. Moira knew that Lilly would be carrying heavy-that, like any successful operator, she would have accumulated a great deal of money which would never be very far from her. As to just how far, just where it might be hidden, Moira didn't know. She might look forever without finding it. Thus Lilly had had to be put on the run; for, running, she would take the loot with her, necessarily narrowing its possible whereabouts to her immediate vicinity.
How to make her run? No problem there. For a fearful shadow lies constantly over the residents of Uneasy Street. It casts itself through the ostensibly friendly handshake, or the gorgeously wrapped package. It beams out from the baby's carriage, the barber's chair, the beauty parlor. Every neighbor is suspect, every outsider, everyone period; even one's own husband or wife or sweetheart. There is no ease on Uneasy Street. The longer one's tenancy, the more untenable it becomes.
You didn't need to frighten Lilly. Only to frighten her a little more. And if you had a contact at her home base, someone to give her a 'friendly warning' by telephone…
Roy finished his drink.
He ate the lunch which the stewardess served him.
She took the tray away and he smoked a cigarette, and the plane dropped lower over the desert and came into the Tucson glide pattern.
A police car was waiting for him at the airport. It carried him swiftly into the city, and a police captain took him into a private office and gave him such facts as he could.
'… checked into the motor court around ten last night, Mr. Dillon. It's that big place with the two swimming pools; you passed it on the way into town. The night clerk says she seemed pretty jumpy, but I don't know that you can put much stock in that. People always remember that other people acted or looked or talked funny after something's happened to 'em. Anyway, your mother left a seven-thirty call, and when she didn't answer her phone one of the maids finally got around to looking in on her…'
Lilly was dead. She was lying in bed in her nightclothes. The gun was on the floor at the side of the bed. Judging by her appearance-
There was no disarray in the room, no sign of a struggle, no suicide note. 'That's about all we know, Mr. Dillon,' the captain concluded, and he added with casual pointedness, 'Unless you can tell us something.'
Roy said that he couldn't and that was true. He could only say what he suspected, and such guilty suspicions would only damage him while proving nothing at all against Moira. It might make a little trouble for her, cause her to be picked up and questioned, but it would accomplish no more than that.
'I don't know what I could tell you,' he said. 'I've got an idea that she traveled with a pretty fast crowd, but I'm sure you're already aware of that.'
'Yes.'
'Do you think it might not have been suicide? That someone killed her?'
'No,' the captain frowned, hesitantly. 'I can't say that I think that. Not exactly. There's nothing to indicate murder. It does seem strange that she'd come all the way from Los Angeles to kill herself and that she'd get into her nightclothes before doing it, but, well, suicides do strange things. I'd say that she was badly frightened,
