Deep Without Pity | Page 9

He sounded like I'd just woken him up.
"Where were you when your father was killed?"
"With a bible study group."
"Can you prove it?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Nothing," I said. "Never mind. " I sighed, a little, and began to understand what Marion King had been talking about. If his quotations didn't get me, his self-righteousness would. I decided to give him written reports from that point on. I said goodbye and drove out to Cameron Road.
The house was mass produced, built to last three years and now in its fourth. I parked at the curb, and a herd of little kids rattled past me on plastic tricycles with huge front wheels. I noticed that the lawn had lost its battle with Johnson grass.
Jenny Shaw answered the front door with a wary smile. "I'm Daniel Sloane," I said. "I'm a private investigator." In all the years I'd been doing it, I'd yet to find a positive name for it. When I introduced myself I had to be ready to face hostility and distrust. The private detective had lost all his glamour, was back to being the dirty little peeper at the window. Sometimes I felt that way about myself
"Come in," she said, and held the door open. She was cast out of the same mold as her sister, with the same rich brown hair and the same large but attractive features. Her hair was cut shorter, though, and fell in a more relaxed way. Her eyes were brighter, less strained. She was perhaps five years younger, but looked more like ten. She was one of the more attractive women I'd seen in a while, and washed Charlene Desmond from my memory like a long drink of water.
"Could I get you a cup of coffee?" she asked. "Or something stronger?"
"Coffee would be fine. Please." .
I sat on the edge of a chair and looked at the prints on the walls. Her taste ran to symbolists and expressionists. She came back with two cups of coffee and handed me one. "There's cream and sugar on the table," she said, pointing.
"Black is fine."
She sat on the sofa and examined me. "You're working for my sister?"
"Your nephew, actually," I said, "but it comes to the same thing."
"How can I help you?"
"I'm not sure. I seem to be losing ground faster than I'm gaining. All I know at this point is that someone set Jason King up for that scandal. Maybe the secretary, maybe someone behind her. It might even be a reverse blackmail scheme, where they would have dropped the charges if King paid them. Whoever set it up probably killed him, or is at least involved in the murder somehow. But I don't have any clue as to who it is. I think your sister does, but she won't tell me."
There was a long silence. I could tell she was thinking something over, and I didn't want to give her an opportunity to let it go. At last she said, "Can I trust you?"
I shrugged. "That's a pretty vague term. If you mean will I lie, cheat and steal to protect a client, no. If you mean do I have a conscience, yes, but I put caution and common sense above it."
"That's a fair answer," she said. "You see there's...something I didn't tell the police. I may have been wrong, but then again they never asked the right questions, either. They seemed to have their minds made up, and I saw no need to bring something up that might look, well; compromising for my sister."
"The police have a little trouble thinking along more than one track at once," I agreed, thinking with regret of Winslow.
"The day of the murder--that is, the afternoon before it--Marion got a call here. I answered it and it was a man's voice, a soft, gentle voice. He asked for her by her first name, so I didn't think it was a reporter or anything. It even sounded sort of familiar somehow. Anyway, I let her talk to him. I went in the next room, and I only heard bits and pieces of her side of the conversation. "
"Can you remember anything, anything at all?"
"Well, at first she sounded really shocked, stunned, to hear the voice. She sounded as if she didn't believe it. Then she got very quiet. I had to come back in the room for something and I heard the tail end of it. She said something like 'all right, eight o'clock at Jason's' or something like that. I know she was making a date to meet him there. Does that make sense to you?"
"It makes a lot of sense. Whoever that was could be our blackmailer. Did he happen to say where he got your number?"
"No, but it would have to be from Chico or Jason, wouldn't it?"
I agreed that