Mrs. Mosby was drawing him a cup of coffee. “Sure, that’s all right. You’ve done fine. Got a lot more digging done than I thought you would.” She glanced at him anxiously as she put the coffee down in front of him on the counter, perhaps sensing his mood of disgust and boredom. “Tell you what, I’ll close up about seven, you and your wife can have the place to yourselves. There’s a cot stowed in the rafters, up above those shelves in the storeroom. It ain’t much, just a double cot and a pad. I’ll get you some bedding. What I thought, it’ll save you the price of a room.”

Karen was stacking dishes under the counter. “That’s nice of you, Ellie.” She hadn’t looked up. She’d been acting funny, in Eddie’s opinion, ever since the middle of the afternoon. Scared, more than ever. Dry-mouthed with fright, eyes big, hands quivering.

He noted a paper down the counter, pulled it toward him. It was an L.A. paper, and as soon as he saw the headlines he knew what was eating Karen.

RICH WIDOW SLAIN IN PASADENA

TEEN-AGER, WOMAN’S WARD, MISSING

Eddie glanced at Mrs. Mosby, saw she had turned away and wasn’t paying any attention, and began reading the news article avidly. The information was scant but bewildering. The last Eddie had seen of old Mrs. Havermann she’d been in the door of the closet, stiffening, cooling, showing signs of strangulation but otherwise not marked up. Here in the paper it stated she had been found in a blood-smeared room, evidence of a savage gunfight all around her, and the cause of death was undecided.

Eddie felt as if his head whirled. What was this?

He licked his lips and read on. Stolz had told the police he had arrived at the Havermann house at around eleven-thirty, answering a phone call from Mrs. Havermann to Las Vegas. Mrs. Havermann’s message, delivered to him at the hotel, had said that she was nervous over the possible presence of burglars. According to the paper, the police were quite curious as to why the elderly woman had appealed for protection to an ex-son-in-law as far away as Las Vegas, but Stolz stuck to his tale that Mrs. Havermann had lived almost alone and had grown eccentric. He had also informed the police of the disappearance of the young girl whom Mrs. Havermann had raised from the age of nine or ten. There then followed a good description of Karen.

There were photographs on an inner page: the Havermann house from outside, Stolz—coming out the front door with his hat up as if accidentally shielding his face—and a picture of Karen with braids at about the age of twelve. It still looked a lot like her, Eddie noted uneasily.