“He could have paid outright for the cars, the house, and the furniture, assuming that liquid assets of thirty percent had been his practice. His loans were for short periods; he always paid them more quickly than he had to, and he made certain to get the interest refunds to which he was entitled. On the Cadillac it came to less than twenty dollars. He waited in the office while they cleared it for him. They didn’t like it, but it was obvious he earned their respect. I asked them how he handled his cash, if they had noticed; they told me what you told me yesterday: he folded it in half and put it in his right hip pocket, without a clip. They were used to seeing him carrying several hundred dollars that way, and sometimes a thousand or more. If he was carrying five thousand that Saturday morning as that neighbor reported, that was unusual. Why did he carry so much cash anyway? Why was he carrying so much on that particular day? You can see how much we need the report from Mike. With the information in the insurance folder, maybe we can piece it all together. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“There’s something else. He always carried his cash in his right hip pocket. When they brought the things down from the roof, his money was in his wallet. Maybe there was more in his pocket and it was stolen by the police, but I don’t think so. If he had carried five thousand in his pocket, he wouldn’t have hesitated to carry nine hundred the same way. No, I think he transferred his money from his pocket to his wallet. It seems like something a man would do before he commits suicide—it goes with the wallet and the keys on the roof. But he might have done it for an entirely different reason. The important thing is, it’s indicative of something unusual. He prepared for something.”

“Let’s not speculate,” she said.

“That’s the idea.” He told her of the interview with Enid Alma, which had been fruitless. The woman seemed to be a case of arrested development with a disturbingly strict and primitive personal code. She had said that MacIver had learned to respect her feelings about “swear words.” Leland had asked her what she considered offensive. “Hell” and “damn”? Yes. She had not been willing to say them. These were things which Norma had heard about, vaguely. Her husband had had a wide vocabulary and she was a little surprised now that he had endured someone that straitlaced and stupid.

Leland said, “Apparently he needed someone in the office to pick up the phone and type the letters. There wasn’t that much work for her. A year ago he told her not to come in before ten-thirty.”