“Oh! My God!” He glowered at me. “Do I have to take you, too?”
“Not if I can locate Miss Millett.”
“She’s not here.” He leaned over, held his head in both hands. “She’s gone over to Iceville. To see Keith. She said you told her Dow’s dead!”
“Yair.” It didn’t seem reasonable for him to be so utterly despondent, now Marge was a widow. “What’d Miss Millett want here?”
“Two thousand fish. I don’t carry that kind of money around in my pants,” he said dourly. “By this time next week I’ll be lucky if I’ve got two bits! She’s ruined me!”
“Think she shot Lanerd?”
He stood up slowly. “I wasn’t thinking about it one way or the other. I was thinking how she’s mucked up the program. First place, she comes breezing in here with about as much chance of being unnoticed as a tuba player carrying two tubas. She asks for me; right off everybody begins the buzz-buzz about her being Miss Hands on Stack O’ Jack! Mystery — gone to hell in a handbasket! Boss — ditto, I guess!” He cursed with deep feeling. “And then she wants me to dig up dough enough for her to get to Brazil.”
“Messes things up, yair. Show must go on. All that—”
“How, for crysake, can it go on when there’s no Mystery Girl? Even if there was a mystery any longer, which there wouldn’t be!” He smoldered.
“She have anything to say about Lanerd?”