Plot It Yourself

I’m all for Wolfe’s rule not to discuss business at meals, but that time it couldn’t be helped because she had to be back at her office by two-thirty for an appointment. So after we had taken a sip of our cocktails I said I supposed she knew a good deal about all of the NAAD members. No, she said, not all of them. Many of them lived in other parts of the country, and of those in the metropolitan area some were active in NAAD affairs and some weren’t. How well did she know Alice Porter? Fairly well; she had always come to craft meetings until recently, and in 1954, when Best and Green had decided to publish her book, The Moth That Ate Peanuts, she had visited the NAAD office several times for advice on the contract.

Time out to get started on our ham timbales.

What I was after, I said, was a document that we had reason to believe Alice Porter had left in somebody’s care. Did members deposit important documents with the NAAD for safe-keeping? No, the association had no facilities for that kind of service. Did she have any idea with whom or where Alice Porter might leave something very important-for instance, an envelope to be opened if and when she died?

She had started a loaded fork to her mouth but stopped it. “I see,” she said. “That might be pretty smart, if- What’s in the envelope?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know there is one. Detectives spend most of their time looking for things that don’t exist. Mr Wolfe thought it was possible she had left it with you.”

“She didn’t. If we started doing things like that for members we’d have to have a vault. But I might have some ideas. Let’s see… Alice Porter.” She opened her mouth for the forkload.

She had six ideas:

Alice Porter’s safe-deposit box. If she had one.

Mr Arnold Green of Best and Green, who had published her book. He was one of the few publishers who liked to do favours for authors, even one whose book had been a flop.

Her father and mother, who lived somewhere on the West Coast, Miss Ballard thought in Oregon.

Her agent, if she still had one. Lyle Bascomb had taken her on after her book had been published, but he might have dropped her by now.

The woman who ran Collander House on West 82nd Street, the hive-home for girls and women who couldn’t afford anything fancy, where Alice Porter had lived for several years. Her name was Garvin, Mrs Something Garvin. One of the girls in the NAAD office was living there now. She was the kind of woman anybody would trust with anything.