I told him how MacGraw and Hartsell had called on me. He listened, sunk down in his chair, his eyes as anonymous as a pair of headlights. He neither laughed nor cried when I described how they had beaten me up. It hadn’t happened to him, so why should he care? But when I told him how Maureen had appeared on the scene, his brows came down in a frown, and he allowed himself the luxury of tapping on the edge of his desk with his fingernails.
That was probably the nearest he would ever get to a show of excitement.
‘“She took me to a house on the cliff road, east of San Diego Highway. She said it was hers: a nice place if you like places that cost a lot of money and are smart enough to house movie stars in. Did you know she had it?”
He shook his head.
“We sat around and talked,” I went on. “She wanted to know why I was interested in her, and I showed her her sister’s letter. For some reason or other she seemed scared. She wasn’t acting: she was genuinely frightened. I asked her if she was being blackmailed at that time, and she said she wasn’t, and that Janet was probably trying to make trouble for her. She said Janet hated her. Did she?”
Willet was playing with a paper-knife now; his face was set, and there was a worried look in his eyes.
“I understand they didn’t get on: nothing more than that. You know how it is with stepsisters.”
I said I knew how it was with stepsisters.
Time went by for a few minutes. The only sound in the room was the busy tick of Willet’s desk clock.
“Go on,” he said curtly. “What else did she say?”