Double

“It might,” McCone said. “But I don’t think there’ll be a note. And if there is, it’ll probably be a fake. Dammit, Wolf, I think she was pushed.”

“By who? For what reason?”

“I don’t know — yet. But something was bothering her, and I could see it getting worse in just the short time I’ve been here.”

“You mean she seemed despondent?”

“No. Very preoccupied about something. Upset. Worried, somehow.”

I remembered seeing her leave the hotel last night; that was how she’d impressed me, too. I asked, “Do you know a friend — a former friend — of hers named Rich?”

“Rich who?”

“I didn’t get his last name. He might have been a boyfriend once, although he seemed younger than her by several years. Handsome guy, wavy brown hair, gray-blue eyes with a peculiar look to them.”

“I’ve never met anyone like that,” McCone said. “And Elaine never mentioned him. How do you know about this Rich?”

I told her about the little altercation here in the bar yesterday. McCone’s eyes narrowed; her mouth and jaw took on a determined set.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” she said. “Grabbing her arm, hurting her... and she told you he’d done it before?”

“Bothered her in public before, yes. She didn’t say if he was in the habit of putting his hands on her. She didn’t seem to think he was dangerous.”

“What did you think?”

“Well... maybe. I didn’t like those eyes of his.”

“Did Elaine say he was an old boyfriend or what?”

“No. I asked her if he was and she denied it, but I got the impression she might not be telling the truth. And he said something to some customers on the way out, something about a little spat between lovers.”

McCone did some more nibbling at her bourbon. “Did you tell Knowles all of this?”

“Sure.”

“What did he say?”

“That he’d look into it.”

“Well, so will I. Just in case he doesn’t look very hard.”

“Sharon...”

“Elaine was my friend,” she said. “I’m just not going to sit by and let the sheriffs department treat her death as an accident or a suicide.”

“If it was anything else, they’ll find it out. Don’t go messing around in it, stirring things up.”

That made her angry. She said, “I hate it when people start lecturing me. I’m not a little girl, Wolf. I’m a grown woman and I know what I’m doing.”

“I just don’t want you to get into trouble.”

“What makes you think I’m going to get into trouble?”

“Well, you’ve done it before, for personal reasons.”

“And you haven’t, I suppose?”

I didn’t say anything. She had me and she knew it. And I had been about to lecture her, like a father trying in his stumbling and bumbling way to explain the facts of life to his daughter. Why did I have to turn paternal with McCone every time I dealt with her? The last thing in the world I needed was a daughter who packed a .38, and the last thing in the world she needed was an old curmudgeon like me for a papa.

She finished her drink. When she put the glass down, her anger was gone and the look she gave me was softer. “I’d better be going,” she said.

“Going where?”

“My business, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

She reached over and patted my arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be all right. This is just something I have to do. You know how that is, if anybody does.”

“Too damned well,” I said. “Sharon, if you need me for anything...”

“Thank, Wolf. I’ll remember.”

When she was gone, I felt kind of low and empty. In a corner of my mind I could still see Elaine Picard falling, that terrible, futile clawing at the air; still sense her screams like after-echoes just beyond the range of hearing. I debated having another beer, decided against it, and got up to leave.

A bunch of people came in just then, among them Charley Valdene — minus his trench coat and slouch hat, as if the sudden entry of death had put an end to his role-playing. He saw me and detoured in my direction. Watching him approach, I remembered what he’d said to me last night at dinner, jokingly at the time but words that might have been a kind of prophecy: Maybe there’ll be a murder at this convention.

Valdene was subdued. He said, “It’s a hell of a thing — an awful thing. You saw it happen, huh? That must have been a shock.”

“It was,” I said. “Be glad you weren’t there.”

He seemed to want to talk about it, but I didn’t; I put him off until later. “Sure,” he said, “sure, I understand,” and I left him and went out onto the terrace, down onto the white sand beach.

I walked a ways, with the sun hammering down on my head and neck. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just drifting — or so I thought until I noticed the thatched roofs of the bungalows half hidden among the tropical vegetation. And then I found myself thinking again of the little boy, Timmy, who’d said his mother made him afraid; and of the brunette woman with the suspicious frown and the odd reaction to strangers talking to her son. And not long after that, I was back in the gardens and on my way to Bungalow 6.