“I have other evidence. From the best of sources. Never mind that, though. The thing is, I can’t get any lead on her. I don’t know who she is, or even how to start looking for her.”
“Well, you won’t learn from me. Who asked you to look?”
“No one, I’m just practicing.”
“Go practice somewhere else. Damn it, Percy, I’m busy.”
“Her first name was Myrna. That much I know.”
“You know more than I. If there was another woman, I never saw her or heard of her. Benny must have been pretty cute about it.”
“What sort of fellow was he?”
“Solid citizen. Something of a do-gooder. Bit of a prude, as a matter of fact, which helps to account for my skepticism. I can’t quite imagine Benny among the primroses.”
“Oh, can it. Hasn’t anyone ever told you about the deacon and the soprano?”
“Tell me at dinner. Before you leave, however, here’s something else that makes me scoff. Benny had been taking very good care of himself for the past year or so. Bum heart. Hospitalized after an attack. Strict diet, early to bed—the routine. Benny’s hide was important to him. Gymnastics with a blond just doesn’t fit.”
“You never saw this blond. I did. The earlier to bed, the better.”
“Blonds are deceptive. Anyone can tell you that redheads are superior. Get lost, Percy. Go wait in the bar.”
I thought it would be worth a lobster, so I went and waited, and it was.
* * * *
Who was Myrna? What was she? A blackmailer, presumably. A spook, apparently.
Whoever and whatever she was, where in the devil had she gone, and where was she now? So far as I could discover, she had simply disappeared like a puff of smoke. No one knew her full name, no one knew her address, no one could remember her in association with Benedict Coon, and no one except me and a bartender could remember her at all. It was frustrating, it was uncanny, and moreover, it was incredible. A woman like that was a woman to remember. The bartender had said so, and I say so.
I was like a kid with a riddle in his head. I couldn’t get it out, and I couldn’t solve it. I worked at it when I didn’t have something else to do, and I took it to bed with me at night, and I got nowhere from nothing.
Was it possible that Benedict Coon had killed her and disposed of her body, later killing himself in despair and fear and hopelessness? I was lying in bed when I had the thought, and it brought me straight up in the darkness. Then, jeering at myself silently, I lay down again. There is no suicide on record, so far as I know, who has shot himself in the back of the head and disposed of the gun afterward.
Perhaps the police had the answers. Perhaps, with all their facilities, they had gone somewhere while I was going nowhere. For the sake of my mental health, I decided to find out. The next day I went to police headquarters and found Brady Baldwin at a desk in a cubbyhole that may have covered a few more square feet than my reception room. If he was not exactly happy to see me, he was at least amiable.
“Sit down, Percy,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Myrna,” I said.
“Mine, too.”
“You mean you haven’t got any leads yet?”
“Not a one.” He rubbed his naked skull and looked at me with an expression that was slightly sour. “As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to suspect that in your mind is the only place she ever was. How many martinis had you drunk, Percy?”
“I hadn’t drunk any. I had a couple of beers. Brady, I saw her. She was there. She met Benedict Coon, and she left with him.”
“All right, Percy, all right.” He spread his hands and raised his brows. “But where is she now?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“You sure you’ve checked all possibilities?”
“All stations. Air, train, bus. Hotels, motels, apartment houses. The county boys have run all over the area trying to find someone who saw her walking, gave her a lift, anything at all. We can’t go everywhere and check everything and ask everyone, but there’s more. Shall I go on?”
“Sorry, Brady. I’m just frustrated. How far out was the car when it was found?”
“Not far; just far enough to put it in county jurisdiction. The state troopers are giving an assist out there. Benedict Coon, like I told you, was behind the wheel. Slumped against the door. His head had fallen forward. He hadn’t bled much, a little seepage into his hair around the wound, that’s all. This has been in the papers, Percy.”
“I know. I just want it from you. When was he killed?”
“It must have been pretty soon after you lost them. The coroner says sometime between two and five. You know how those guys are. Try to box them into an hour, say, and they’re slippery as a meteorologist. Thanks to you, we know that it was well after three. Probably past four.”
“The paper said he was found by a real-estate agent.”
“True. He happens to own the land beyond that dead-end road. He plans to push the road on through and finance an addition. He and a contractor had gone out to look the situation over.”
“I can’t quite locate the place. Where will the road come out when it’s finished?”
“It won’t actually come out anywhere. It’ll dead-end again, against the rear of the Cedarvale Country Club golf course. The addition’s projected for the upper brackets. As a matter of fact, Benedict Coon was a member of that club. Mrs. Coon was there the afternoon he was killed. She’d gone out to play golf with Martin Farmer, a family connection, and they stayed on for drinks and dinner in the bar. It was a clear day,
