How Like an Angel

by Margaret Millar

  “People don’t go suddenly and completely out of their minds. There are always previous signs of disturbance. Did your husband show any such signs?”

  “No.”

  “No fits of moodiness, temper tantrums, prolonged bouts of drinking, changes in such habits as sleeping, eating, dressing?”

  “None,” she said. “Perhaps he was quieter than he used to be, more thoughtful.”

  “By thoughtful, do you mean considerate or pensive?”

  “Pensive. Once I jokingly accused him of having a day­-dream and he said it wasn’t a daydream, it was a daymare. I remember it because it was such a funny word, one I’d never heard before. Have you?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said. “It’s something you don’t wake up from.”

  SEVEN

  The Haywood Realty Company occupied an air-conditioned office on the ground floor of a small hotel. Its walls were cov­ered with maps of the city and county, an aerial photograph of Chicote, an engraving of Washington crossing the Dela­ware and another of Lincoln in his youth.

  A sallow-faced young man in shirt sleeves identified him­self as Earl Perkins. Although there were a number of desks with nameplates on them, Perkins was the only occupant of the office, and Quinn wondered whether business was so bad the others hadn’t bothered to appear, or whether it was so good they were all out, like Willie King, showing property.

  “When do you expect Mrs. King to be back?” Quinn said.

  “Any time. And I mean just that, any time. People get away with murder in a place like this. There are no rules. Are you a business man, Mr.—?”

  “Quinn. I’m in business, yes.”

  “Then you know that a business can’t operate properly without hard and fast rules strictly adhered to by its em­ployees. Without rules, what have we? Chaos.”

  Quinn glanced around the almost empty office. “Nice quiet kind of chaos.”

  “Chaos doesn’t always show on the surface,” Perkins said sourly. “For instance, my lunch hour is from twelve to one. It is now almost one, and I haven’t eaten yet. A trivial example to you, perhaps, but not to me. I could have shown that prop­erty and been back here by eleven o’clock, because I don’t fool around and then try to make up for it by buttering up the boss.”

  “How long has Mrs. King worked for Mr. Haywood?”

  “I don’t know. I was just hired last January.”

  “Is there a Mr. King?”

  “Not in evidence,” Perkins said with satisfaction. “She’s a divorcée.”

  “Have you lived in Chicote very long?”

  “All my life except for the two years I spent at San Jose State College. Can you beat that, two whole years of college and I end up—well. Well, it’s about time.”

  The door opened with a blast of hot, dry air and Willie King came in, wearing a white sleeveless dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat. Because of the hat she didn’t notice Quinn at first.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Earl.”

  “Well, I should think so,” Perkins said. “My ulcer—”

  “The place is as good as sold. I had to lie a little about the climate, though.” She put her handbag on one of the desks, removed her hat, and saw Quinn. Except for a brief tightening of the mouth, her face didn’t change expression. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we had a client. Can I help you, sir?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Quinn said.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute. You’d better go and have your lunch now, Earl. And remember, no pepper, no ketchup.”

  “It’s not pepper that’s eating away my insides,” Perkins said. “It’s lack of rules.”

  “All right, you go and think up some good rules. Make a list.”

  “I already made a list.”

  “Make another one.”

  “By God, I will,” Perkins said and slammed the door after him.

  “He’s only a boy,” Willie King said in a maternal tone. “Much too young to have ulcers. I don’t suppose you have ulcers, Mr. Quinn?”

  “I might acquire a few if I try to swallow some of the stories you tell, Mrs. King. With or without pepper and ketchup. Did you enjoy your trip to L.A.?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “You decided Chicote was couth enough for you after all?”

  “What I said about Chicote still goes. It’s a hole.”

  “Then crawl out of it.”

  “I might fall in a worse one,” she said with a shrug of her bare shoulders. “Besides I have ties here. Connections.”

  “Such as Mr. Haywood.”

  “Mr. Haywood, naturally. He’s my boss.”

  “Off the job as well as on?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said blandly. “Unless you could be referring to last night?”

  “I could be, yes.”

  “As a matter of fact, that was entirely my own idea. I heard you talking to Mr. Ronda in his office when I went in with our ads for the next issue of the Beacon. You were discussing the O’Gorman case. Naturally my curiosity was aroused. To the people of Chicote the word O’Gorman is what the word earthquake is to San Franciscans. Everybody’s got a story about it, or a theory. Everybody knew O’Gorman or claimed to have known him. So”—she paused and took a deep breath— “so I got this idea, that maybe you were working on the case and that you might have found a new lead, and that you and I—”

  “You and I what?”

  “We could solve the case together. Make a scoop. Become famous.”

  “That was your idea, eh? Dreams of glory?”

  “Oh, it sounds kind of silly when I say it in cold blood like this, but that’s the honest truth about why I picked you up and tried to pump you last night.”

  “And who,” Quinn said, “was your friend?”

  “What friend?”

  “The man who searched my room.”

  “I know nothing about that,” she said, frowning. “Maybe you’re just making it up to confuse me.”

  “Where was George Haywood last night?”

  “In bed with a cold, I guess. He’s been away from the office all week, he has bronchitis. .. .Good heavens, you don’t think for a minute that Mr. Haywood—”

  “Yes, I think for a minute that Mr. Haywood got into my motel room while you were putting on your little act at El Bocado.”

  “Why, that’s terrible,” Willie King said vehemently. “That’s just a terrible thing to think, it really is. Mr. Haywood is one of the most respected and well-liked businessmen in the whole community. He’s a wonderful person.”

  “Chicote seems to have more wonderful people in it than heaven. But one of them got into my room by tricking an old man out of the key and I still think it was Haywood and that you helped him.”

  “That’s libel. Or is it slander? I get them mixed up.”

  “You get a lot of things mixed up, Mrs. King. Now why don’t you try telling the truth for a change? What’s George Haywood’s interest in me? What did he want from my room, and, more important, what did he get?”

  “You’d realize how ridiculous all this is if you met Mr. Haywood.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Why?” Her face had turned almost as white as her dress.

  “So I can ask him why he used you as a decoy to—”

  “No. Please. You can’t do that. He doesn’t know anything about my picking you up in that awful place. He’d be mad if he found out about it, he might even fire me.”

  “Come off it, Mrs. King.”

  “No, I mean it. He’s a stickler for conventions, especially since that business about his sister, Alberta. Because she did something wrong, he feels he’s got to avoid the slightest hint of nonconformity or even bad taste. And that goes for his employees, too. Do you
want to get me fired?” “No.”

  “Then please don’t tell him about last night. He’d never understand that I was just sort of playing a game—you know, Willie King, girl detective. Mr. Haywood isn’t the type for games, he’s too sober-minded. Promise you won’t tell on me?”

  “I might,” Quinn said, “in return for a few favors.”

  Willie King studied him thoughtfully for a minute. “If you mean the kind I think you mean—”

  “You read me wrong, Mrs. King. I only want to ask you a few questions.”

  “Ask ahead.”

  “Do you know Haywood’s mother?”

  “Do I not,” Willie King said grimly. “What about her?”

  “She had two daughters, didn’t she?”

  “Not to hear her tell it. George—Mr. Haywood isn’t even allowed to mention their names, especially Alberta’s.”

  “What happened to the other one?”

  “Ruth? She ran away and got married to a man her mother didn’t approve of, a fisherman from San Felice named Aguila. That was the end of her as far as the old girl was concerned.”

  “Where is Mrs. Aguila now?”

  “In San Felice, I guess. Why?”

  “Just checking.”

  “But why are you checking the Haywood family?” she said sharply. “Why aren’t you talking to the people who knew O’Gorman?”

  “Mr. Haywood knew him.”

  “Only very briefly, and in the line of business.”

  “So did Alberta Haywood.”

  “She may have met him, but I’m not even sure of that.”

  “George Haywood,” Quinn said, “was very fond of his sis­ter, is that right?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “So fond, in fact, that after her embezzlement was dis­covered George himself had to answer a lot of questions from the police?”

  It was only a guess on Quinn’s part, and he was surprised by the vehemence of her reaction. “They were more than questions, I can tell you. They were downright accusations with question marks. Where was the money? How much of it had Alberta lent or given to George? How could George have lived in the same house with her and not have guessed that she was up to something? Didn’t he see the racing forms she brought home every day?”

  “Well, didn’t he?”

  “No. She didn’t take them home. Not a single copy was found in her room or anywhere else in the house.”

  “A careful lady, Alberta. Or else someone took the trouble to clean up after her. Did you know her, Mrs. King?”

  “Not very well. Nobody did. I mean, she was one of those background people you see every day but you don’t think of as a person until something happens.”

  “‘You don’t think of as a person until something happens,’“ Quinn repeated. “Perhaps that was her main motive, getting some attention.”

  “You’re wrong,” Willie King said with a brisk shake of her head, “She suffered horribly, incredibly. I went to the trial. It was terrible, it was like watching an animal that’s been badly injured and can’t tell you where it hurts so you can help.”

  “Yet George Haywood turned his back on her?”

  “He had to. Oh, it must seem inhuman to you. You weren’t there. I was. The old lady threw a fit every hour on the hour to prevent George from having anything to do with Alberta.”

  “Why all the vindictiveness on Mrs. Haywood’s part?”

  “It’s in her nature, for one thing. For another, Alberta was always a disappointment to her mother. She was shy and plain, she didn’t have boyfriends, she didn’t get married and pro­duce children, she wasn’t even interesting to live with. Years and years of disappointment to a woman like Mrs. Haywood—well, I got the impression she used the embezzlement as an excuse to do what she’d always wanted to do to Alberta, kick her out and have done with her, forget her.” Willie King looked down at her hands, slim and pale, bare of rings. “Then there was George, of course, the apple of her eye. When his first wife died I think Mrs. Haywood would have danced in the streets if it hadn’t been for the neighbors. It meant George belonged entirely to her again, head, heart and gall bladder. That woman is a monster. But don’t let me go on about that, I could talk for weeks.”

  She didn’t have to talk for weeks to make one point clear: the old lady and Willie King were fighting for the same man.

  The telephone rang and Mrs. King answered it in a crisp, professional voice: “Haywood Realty Company. Yes . . . I’m sorry, the house across from Roosevelt Park didn’t meet FHA specifications. We’re going to work on another loan for you . . . Yes, as soon as possible.” She put down the phone and made a little grimace in Quinn’s direction. “Well, it’s back to work for me. I hate to break this up, I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Mr. Quinn.”

  “Maybe you’d like to talk some more, say this evening?”

  “I really couldn’t.”

  “Why not? Taking a bus to L. A.?”

  “Taking my kid sister to a movie.”

  “I’m sorry,” Quinn said, rising. “Perhaps next time I come to town?”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “There’s nothing to keep me here since you have a date with your kid sister.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “When do you want me to come back?”

  Willie gave him a long, direct stare. “Stop kidding around. I know when a man’s serious about wanting a date with me and when he’s not. You’re not. And I’m not.”

  “Then why are you interested in when I’m coming back?”

  “I was merely being polite.”

  “Thanks,” Quinn said. “And thanks for the information.”

  “You’re welcome. Good-bye.”

  Quinn walked down the street to his car, drove a block west, made a U-turn and parked in the parking lot of a super­market. From there he had a view of the Haywood Realty Company and the clock on top of the city hall.

  At 1:30 Earl Perkins returned from lunch, looking as if it hadn’t agreed with him. Two minutes later Willie King came out wearing the wide-brimmed straw hat and clutching her handbag. She looked flustered but determined as she climbed into her car and headed south.

  Quinn followed her at a distance. Judging from the direct route she took to her destination, Quinn surmised that either she considered herself secure or she was in too much of a hurry to care.

  She pulled into the driveway of an old frame house bearing a Haywood Realty “For Sale” sign on a porch pillar, unlocked the front door and went inside. For a minute Quinn thought he’d been mistaken about her after all—she was apparently doing just what she said she was going to do, get back to work. The house faced Roosevelt Park and was without doubt the one she had referred to on the telephone.

  He was on the point of leaving when a green Pontiac station wagon stopped in front of the house and a man got out. In spite of the heat he wore a dark gray suit and a matching fedora. He was tall and thin and he walked with slow deliber­ation as if he’d been told not to hurry. Halfway up the porch steps he was seized by a fit of coughing. He leaned on the railing, holding one hand to his mouth and the other against his chest. When he had finished coughing he let himself into the house, using a key from a large key ring he pulled from his pocket.

  Neat, safe and simple, Quinn thought. When George and Willie want to get together without the old lady or anyone else knowing about it, they meet by prearrangement in one of Haywood Realty’s vacant houses. Maybe a different house each time. And Willie’s impassioned plea for me not to go to George and get her fired was just an attempt to prevent me from seeing him and asking questions. Well, it was a good per­formance, I almost fell for it. In fact, I almost fell for Willie.

  Quinn stared at the old frame house as if he were expecting one of the blinds to snap up a
nd reveal some secrets. Nothing happened. It was a dead end and he knew it. Even if he waited and accosted George Haywood, he couldn’t force any in­formation out of him, he had no authority to ask him ques­tions, and no proof that Haywood had been the man who had searched his motel room.

  He turned on the ignition and pulled the car away from the curb. It was nearly two o’clock, checking-out time at the motel. By sticking to the mountain roads and by-passing San Felice, he figured he could reach the Tower by five.

  Willie heard George’s key in the lock and the front door open and close again. She wanted to run out into the hall and fling herself into his arms. Instead she waited, motionless, in the darkened living room, wondering whether the time would ever come when she would be able to act the way she felt in George’s presence. Lately he seemed to discourage her en­thusiasm as if he had too many serious problems on his mind to endure any extra demands on him.

  “I’m in here, George.” The empty room amplified her voice like an echo chamber. It sounded too hearty. She must remem­ber to speak low.

  George came in from the hall. He had taken off his hat and was holding it across his chest as if he were hearing the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” She felt a giggle tickling her throat and swallowed hard to suppress it.

  “You were followed,” he said.

  “No. I swear I didn’t see—”

  “Quinn’s car is parked across the street.”

  She raised a corner of one of the shades and looked out.

  “I don’t see any car.”

  “It was there. I told you to be careful.”

  “I tried.” The giggle in her throat had been replaced by a lump she couldn’t do anything about except pretend it wasn’t there. “Are you feeling better today, George?”

  He shook his head impatiently as if there was no time to be bothered by such trivialities. “Quinn’s on to something. He called the office and then the house. Mother brushed him off as I asked her to.”

  At the mere mention of Mrs. Haywood, Willie’s body be­gan to stiffen. “I could have done the same thing.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost his confidence.”