way did you come from, the Sound side?”
“The other way.”
“You didn’t see anyone near here or any car?” He watched her shake her head, seeing the color coming back into her cheeks and aware from her frown that she was trying to think. “So you came in and found her just like that. You didn’t touch her. Was there anything else—”
He stopped as a peculiar look came into her eyes. “Maybe I just imagined it,” she said slowly. “But I was standing there looking down at Frieda and not knowing what had happened or why and I thought I heard something.”
He waited, some new tension intermingling with his thoughts. “Like what?” he said.
“Like—well, it might have been a door closing. . . . Please, Rick, I’m not even sure I heard it. I could have imagined it; I could have imagined almost anything the way I felt.”
“But you thought it was a door. Then what?”
“It sounded as if it came from somewhere out back and I started to look. I don’t know what made me. If I had stopped to think, if I’d had any sense, I would have screamed and run out the front door.”
Rick swore under his breath, not knowing whether all this was imagination or not but understanding that she had done a very foolish thing. In spite of himself his mind raced on to conjure up the frightening picture of what might have happened, and the question he asked had but one answer.
“You didn’t see anything? Or hear anything more?”
“I went down the hall to the back door. I didn’t dare look into the bedrooms. By then I was too busy telling myself it must have been my imagination. I was standing there by the hall doorway when I heard the front doorknob rattle and I didn’t stop to think it might be you. I didn’t know who it was. I just ran back into the bedroom.”
Rick understood this much, for he too had jumped to conclusions about the body on the floor when he found the convertible gone and his sedan standing in its place. Now, aware that this was not the time for speculation, he took the glass from Nancy and asked if she wanted more brandy before he put the bottle away.
“No. . . . What’re you going to do?”
“Call the police.”
“Yes, I guess you have to.” She stood up and took the bottle and glasses from him. “I can put that away. I’ll rinse the glasses.”
When he had been connected with the state police barracks he said what he had to say and then, as he put the telephone down, he realized that there was another call he had to make.
Frederick J. Brainard knew his daughter was coming here at nine. In the course of investigation the police would notify him. They would get his opinion of Rick Sheridan, would hear of a relationship that had been unfailingly unpleasant, would know why he wanted a divorce. Better then to tell him the shocking news by telephone and let him come tonight.
He had to look up the number and when he had his connection he had to identify himself before Brainard could be summoned. Even then Rick could feel the hostility in the blunt voice.
There is no easy way to break such news, no kind words to lessen the shock. Rick did as best he could, speaking hesitantly, using the words that came to him and hearing the spoken questions and reactions that were first unbelieving, then suspicious, and finally crushed.
“But strangled,” Brainard said when he could accept the fact that his daughter was dead. “How could this happen? Who did it?”
“I don’t know,” Rick said. “It happened while I was out of the house. When I came back I found her on the floor. I’ve already called the police.” He paused and the silence came to be broken by a single word that had a savage inflection.
“No!”
“What?”
“It didn’t just happen. No one would just walk into a house and do a thing like that. A man would have to have a reason and you had a reason, a good one. I know why she went there. She expected you’d fight with her—”
“Mr. Brainard!”
“I’ll make no accusation until I have the facts, but I’m warning you now that I’ll find out who did this if it takes every dollar I have. Remember that, Rick. If you happen to be the one, God help you!”
Rick heard the receiver crash down at the other end of the wire. He put the telephone gently in its cradle and wiped the perspiration from his brow. When he turned he found Nancy watching him with anxious eyes. She asked whom he was talking to and he told her. He did not add that Brainard already thought that he, Rick, had killed Brainard’s daughter.
A state police cruiser was first on the scene, its occupant a burly, uniformed officer who listened briefly, looked long enough to make sure Frieda was dead, and then asked for the telephone. Another car came presently with two more uniformed men and after that Rick began to lose track of the others who came in civilian clothes.
He and Nancy were allowed to wait in the studio while the medical examiner performed his duties and the technical men went through their practiced routine. The captain of the western division came to question them briefly, but in the end the duties of investigation fell upon two men: a lieutenant from the Special Service branch of the state police, and the county detective representing the state’s attorney’s office.
The lieutenant’s name was Legett, a tall, spare man of forty or so with a rectangular face and alert dark eyes. He wore beige tropical slacks and a lightweight sport jacket and no hat, so that there was only the quiet persistence of his manner and prying gaze to suggest to the uninitiated that he might be an officer of the law specializing in homicide. County Detective Manning was a rotund man of indeterminate age, who wore a gray business suit and metal-rimmed glasses. When they were ready for more detailed information they came into the studio, which was an extension of the living room.
“You were the one who found her, Miss Heath?” they said.
“Yes.”
“We’d like to get your story,” Legett said and nodded toward the open doorway. “We can use another room.”
Nancy stood up. Her face was composed now and as she straightened her shoulders and pulled down the jacket of her suit she glanced at Rick. He gave her a nod of encouragement and the best smile he could; then watched proudly as she marched from the room with her chin up.
When he had a cigarette going he looked slowly about the paneled room. He considered the two illustrations he had done for True-Fruit, which stood propped against the wall on the old trestle table, wondering if he would be able to deliver them to Ted Banks in the morning. Both were boy-girl jobs, one showing the edge of a tennis court and the other at dockside with the boy and girl in bathing suits looking down at a sailboat which had been moored there.
One of the advantages of having an agent nowadays was the equipment and studio room such agents provided. Ted Banks and his partner had a whole floor in a mid-town building, and in addition to the private cubbies for each artist who wanted one, there was a well-equipped photographic studio. With model prices the way they were, most artists posed their people the way they wanted them and got their photographs in an hour or so, using the prints to work from later on. In Rick’s case he did most of his roughs at the studio and his finished
