The hotel looked different in daylight. Less red. More money.
Somebody had polished the brass around the entrance. The police tape was still there.
Pembroke went straight through the lobby. I followed him to the elevator.
“Any trouble upstairs?” he asked the detective standing beside it.
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“The locksmith here?”
“On his way up.”
We got in.
Neither of us said much during the ride.
* * *
There was one uniform outside the penthouse. A young fellow with a narrow face and a collar that looked too tight.
Pembroke stopped in front of him.
“Anybody been inside?”
“Not since you called, Sergeant.”
“Anybody tried?”
“One fellow. Said he worked for Musgrove.”
I looked at Pembroke.
“What fellow?”
“Didn’t get his name.”
“What did he want?”
“Private papers. Said Mr. Musgrove kept them up here and somebody from the office needed them.”
“You let him in?”
“No, sir. Told him nobody went in without your say-so.”
“What’d he do?”
“Asked where he could find you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were coming over.”
“And?”
“He said he’d wait downstairs.”
Pembroke looked back towards the elevator.
“How long ago?”
“Twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour.”
“What’d he look like?” I asked.
The officer glanced at Pembroke.
“Answer him.”
“Dark hair. Cut short. About his height.”
He nodded at me.
“Hat?”
“Yes.”
“That narrows it down,” I said.
Pembroke opened the penthouse door.
* * *
Musgrove was gone. The blood wasn’t.
Without the body, the room looked bigger. The open drawers and overturned cushions were still where we’d left them.
The painting was leaning against the wall now. Some country place with a pond. Behind it was a square steel door.
The locksmith had his bag open on the floor.
Pembroke showed him his badge and they spoke for a minute. I stood by the window.
From up there, I could see the alley behind the hotel. A delivery truck was backed up near the kitchens. A man in a white apron stood beside it smoking.
Clark and Evelyn had come out somewhere down there.
She’d gone looking for help.
He’d come back.
Or somebody had.
Pembroke joined me.
“You think that was him?”
“I’d like to find out.”
“So would I.”
“Your man tell him a locksmith was coming?”
Pembroke turned.
The uniform was just inside the doorway.
“No, sir. Just that you’d be here.”
“Go down to the lobby. See if he’s still waiting. Take somebody with you.”
The officer left.
We waited by the window while the locksmith worked.
After a while, he sat back.
“Sergeant.”
Pembroke went over.
The door opened.
* * *
There was cash on the upper shelf. Bundles of it. A watch in a little box. Two stacks of envelopes tied with string.
Below those were folders.
Pembroke had a detective bring over a clear table. He took things out a little at a time while the detective wrote them down.
I stayed where I could see.
Property papers. Insurance. A handful of letters that didn’t look like they’d been written by Musgrove’s wife.
Then Pembroke stopped.
“What?”
He turned the folder towards me.
CLARK LECLAIRE.
Typed on a label.
I looked at the safe.
Evelyn hadn’t invented the name.
Pembroke opened the folder on the table.
The first thing inside was an old identification card. Clark LeClaire. A photograph of a younger man with his hair combed back.
I got my first look at Evelyn’s husband.
Ordinary enough face. I’d passed a dozen like it on the way over.
Pembroke laid another paper beside it.
Different name.
MARTIN HALE.
Same man.
His hair was shorter in that photograph. His face a little leaner.
I thought of Evelyn smiling when she told me how he’d changed.
Pembroke studied the two pictures.
“Well,” he said.
There were payment slips underneath. Musgrove’s office at the top. Martin Hale on the line below.
Several of them. Different dates.
Pembroke sorted through them.
“These go back more than a year.”
“What for?”
“Doesn’t say.”
I looked at the amounts.
Whatever Musgrove had been doing to keep Clark away from his wife, he’d been paying him while he did it.
That didn’t tell me enough. A man could be paid and still be trapped.
But it was something Evelyn hadn’t mentioned.
Under the payment slips was a letter. Handwritten. Addressed to Musgrove.
I saw Price’s name halfway down.
“Hold on.”
Pembroke laid it flat so we could both read it.
Clark had gone to Price’s rooms because he thought Price was seeing his wife. They’d fought. Price was dead. Clark wanted Musgrove to help him disappear.
Near the bottom, he’d written:
She must never know what happened. Let her think I’m dead.
“The date,” I said.
Pembroke took the folded sheet from his pocket.
I put my finger beside the date on the letter. Four days before the fire. The day after Price was found.
“He asked for it,” I said.
“For what?”
“The funeral. The whole thing. She thinks something happened to him and Musgrove kept him from coming home.”
I read the last line again.
“He’d already decided she was going to bury him.”
Pembroke looked from the letter to the two identification cards.
“We’ll have to check the handwriting.”
“She’ll know it.”
I thought of Evelyn holding that cold cup. The two funerals she’d been trying to tell apart.
There was another photograph at the back of the folder.
Musgrove at a dinner table. A few men around him. Clark stood behind his chair with one hand resting on it.
Somebody had written on the back.
Christmas dinner. Last December.
Pembroke looked at it, then at me.
“Busy fellow for a dead man.”
“Yea.”
He put it beside the identification papers.
The uniform came back.
“He’s not downstairs, Sergeant.”
“Come here.”
Pembroke held up the photograph from the dinner.
“Recognize anybody?”
The officer leaned closer.
He pointed to Clark.
“That’s him.”
“Who?”
“The fellow who wanted the papers.”
Nobody said anything for a moment.
The locksmith closed his bag.
Pembroke turned to the detective taking notes.
“Get downstairs. Ask the desk about Martin Hale. Where he lives, where he works, anybody who knows him. Call it in.”
The detective left.
I looked at the open safe.
Clark had taken the key, but he hadn’t been able to use it. Now the papers he’d come for were spread across a table with a policeman standing over them.
“You think that’s what Musgrove was going to show her?” I asked.
Pembroke looked at the letter.
“Could be.”
“Then Clark had two reasons to go through his coat.”
“A gun or a piece of paper,” Pembroke said. “We still need to know which.”
He put the letter with the photographs.
“You’ve got somebody to bring me.”
* * *
Before I called Lisa, I stopped at the desk and asked for Musgrove’s assistant again.
The receptionist rang his office and handed me the telephone.
“Flint. Was Martin Hale here before you called Miss LeClaire yesterday?”
“He was in Mr. Musgrove’s office.”
“What was the meeting about?”
“I wasn’t at the meeting.”
“Close enough to hear?”
He took a moment.
“Mr. Musgrove had me bring in the address of Freelow’s. He wanted Hale to speak to the owner about money he owed.”
“What did Hale say?”
“That he wasn’t going near her club.”
“Her club?”
“Those were his words.”
I watched the elevator doors.
“And Musgrove?”
“Told me to get Miss LeClaire on the telephone. Hale asked him not to. Mr. Musgrove said perhaps she’d like to hear how he’d been earning his living.”
“Then you called her.”
“That was what he told me to do.”
“Tell Sergeant Pembroke what you just told me. He’s upstairs.”
I gave the telephone back.
Musgrove hadn’t needed Clark to go near the club. He could bring Evelyn to him.
* * *
I used a telephone off the lobby.
Lisa answered on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“It’s Jerry.”
“About time.”
“How is she?”
“She’s alright.”
“Still there?”
“Where else would she be?”
“I need to bring her to the station.”
Lisa went quiet.
“Does she know that?”
“Not yet.”
“Jerry.”
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
“You’d better.”
I watched the hotel manager come out of his office with the detective beside him. He was doing a lot of talking with his hands.
“Lisa. Has anybody called for her?”
A pause.
“Why?”
“Has anybody called?”
“Not here.”
“What do you mean, not here?”
“She rang the club this morning. Asked if anybody had left a message.”
“What club?”
“Freelow’s. Where she sings.”
I tightened my hand around the receiver.
“And?”
“Jerry, she wants to tell you herself.”
“Put her on.”
I heard Lisa call her name. A chair moved.
Then Evelyn was there.
“Jerry?”
“I’m coming over.”
“Come alone.”
“What happened?”
She took a breath.
“Clark left a message.”
“What did it say?”
“He wants to see me.”
“Where?”
“Promise me something first.”
I looked across the lobby. Pembroke had stepped out of the elevator.
“What?”
“Don’t bring the police.”