“One last question,” said Wilkes. “Has anything out of the ordinary happened here the last few days?”
“Everything that happens here is out of the ordinary.”
“That’s not what I mean and I think you know it, Mrs. Truance.”
“Something out of the ordinary happened to me before I came here.” Tash hadn’t meant to volunteer information, but the words popped out of her mouth as if they had an independent life of their own. “My pocket was picked.”
“Oh?” Captain Wilkes collected himself like a pointer dog on point. “Did you report this?”
“Yes, at the precinct station house near my home. They showed me mug shots, and I identified one of the pickpockets, a man with a cast in one eye. It made his face look lopsided, like a gibbous moon. The other was just a boy. They didn’t have photos of him.”
“What did you lose?”
“Thirty-nine dollars and a wallet containing a blank check and an identity card.”
She knew she ought to add: and a letter Mrs. Playfair asked me to mail, but she didn’t. The role of tattletale was too distasteful.
“Did they tell you the names of these characters?”
“The man was a Barloventan known as Halcon and the boy was one of his chicks or polluelitos known as Freaky.”
“Oh!” Hilary was distressed.
“I see you know what a chicken hawk is,” said Wilkes.
“But I don’t,” said Tash.
“A chicken hawk is a man who traffics in young boy prostitutes, the younger the better. He has his heterosexual counterpart, of course, and both are under the protection of the Family, our cozy, domestic name for organized crime in this state.
Silently, Lieutenant Pulaski materialized at his captain’s elbow, but it was Tash he addressed.
“Is this yours, ma’am?” A coin lay in the palm of his hand, a bright new copper penny. “I found it on the floor in your office.”
“I don’t think it’s mine,” said Tash. “But I suppose I could have dropped it there this morning without noticing.”
“There’s nothing much more to report, sir,” Pulaski told Wilkes. “Mr. de Miranda says both he and the Governor will be here as soon as the Governor finishes making his speech, probably around ten o’clock.”
“It’s nearly ten now. Anything else?”
“No unauthorized person tried to get past any of the sentries today. There is no evidence that any circuits in the alarm system have been tampered with, and no signs of housebreaking at any door or window.”
“What about the men searching the house?”
“They’ve found nothing so far, sir. No sign of any intruder.”
Tash and Hilary looked at one another. It was Hilary who found voice: “If you’re suggesting that someone here in the household strangled a pet of Mrs. Playfair’s, I just don’t believe that’s possible.”
“Perhaps not,” said Wilkes. “But isn’t it possible that someone in the household might have let in someone else who did the strangling? A mechanical security system is only as strong as its weakest human link.”
They all heard the crunch of the gravel under wheels in the driveway.
The usher who opened the door stood aside to let Jeremy and Carlos enter. They looked festive, debonair, and old-fashioned in the contrasting blacks and whites of full evening dress.
Whatever Carlos had said, Jeremy assumed something was wrong with Vivian. His eyes went to Hilary. “Is she ill?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Hilary. “But we have something to tell you before you see her.”
“What is it?”
“Her canary is dead.”
“Her canary!” Jeremy laughed with relief. “Poor, old Blondel! I thought he had at least another five years to go, but—”
“Jerry, you don’t understand. Blondel didn’t just die. He was killed. Strangled and left on Tash Perkins’ typewriter.”
“Governor,” said Wilkes. “Somebody got in from outside. At least, we think that must be it, but the alarm system didn’t go off, and none of the sentries saw anybody.”
“Does Mrs. Playfair know?”
“Not yet.”
Jeremy turned to Carlos. “Will you take over here for a few minutes? Vivian must be told, and I want to break it to her myself.”
He ran lightly up the wide curving staircase.
Carlos became all Spanish now. The distress of his friend Jeremy made him furious, but the fury was frigidly controlled.
“Captain Wilkes.”
“Sir.”
“How do you account for this?”
“I cannot account for it yet, sir.”
“Will you kindly have the goodness to start at the beginning and tell me everything that has happened so I can report it to the Governor in detail as soon as possible?”
“Carlos, don’t you think we might all sit down?” said Hilary plaintively.
Carlos moved a chair out from the wall for Hilary, and Tash quickly perched on another, but Carlos himself remained standing and Wilkes felt obliged to follow suit.
He was nearly at the end of his story when there were footsteps on the stair.
Tash looked up.
The Governor was coming down alone. His quick movements, slight figure, and tousled hair contributed to an illusion of boyishness until you saw his eyes.
He stopped on the bottom step. His glance fled from Wilkes to Hilary to Tash and came to rest on Carlos.
His voice was husky.
“She isn’t there. I can’t find her anywhere. No one has seen her since luncheon.”
7
IN THE NEXT half hour Captain Wilkes and his men established that Vivian was not in the house or on the grounds, and that her small, open car was not in the garage.
She had not vanished through a black hole into a counter-universe of antimatter. She had gone away in a car driven by an engine fueled with gas.
The only uncanny thing was the stubborn fact that none of the sentries guarding roads in and out of Leafy Way had seen her leave.
Leafy Way had been laid out long before any need for tight security. There was no wall, no electrified fences, just hedges. Anyone could get in or out of the grounds on foot, but how could anyone get out by car when there was a sentry box by each carriage gate?
Wilkes wanted to know if he should assume she had left of her own free will.
Jeremy looked at Carlos helplessly. “What do you
