“The sheriff is here, Mr Templar. You will please come this way?”
It could have been suspected, from his appearance, that Sheriff Newt Haskins had spent all his life in black alpaca. One must admit that his first article of apparel was probably three-cornered, but he wore the tropical-weight black as if he had never changed his clothes since he got any. He sat with his well-worn but carefully shined black shoes on Esteban’s polished maple desk and welcomed Simon with a mere flick of his keen gray eyes, and Patricia Holm with the rather sad faint smile of a man long past the age when the sight of such beauty would inspire any kind of activity—
“Can’t say I’m exactly pleased to see you again, Saint, said Haskins. “How do, Miss Holm.” The amenities fulfilled, he turned to Esteban. “Well?”
Esteban shrugged.
“I tell you on the phone. You have seen the body?
“Yep, I saw it. And I’m sure curious” — he looked at the Saint — “Mr Templar.”
“So am I, Sheriff,” Simon said easily, “but possibly not about the same thing.”
“You admit you came here lookin’ for the dead woman, son?”
“Now, daddy,” the Saint remonstrated. “You know I’d be looking for a live woman.”
“Hum,” Newt Haskins said. “Reckon so. But the law’s found plenty o’ dead people around right after you been in the neighborhood. So when I see you here right next to a death that’s just happened, I kinda naturally start wonderin’ how much you know about it.”