She looked away, smiling wistfully. “I don’t know whether I like it or not.”

“Would you like me to say that if I had known you then, it would have been different?”

“Yes and no. I don’t know. I am digging myself into a hole. Are we going to be friends?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Come downstairs. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“No, that’s all right.” It was after ten-thirty. He would want to call Karen but it would confuse her and she would worry about what was happening. He could not call, which would make him a liar.

“I’m hungry,” Norma said. “Watch me eat. Just keep me company.”

He was wide awake now; if he stayed up here he would have to worry about his sense of perspective, if not his ability to reason. “All right. You step outside while I pull on a pair of pants. If you had told me in Manitou that I would be staying here, I would have brought a robe.”

She got up, laughing.

“I guess I should feel a little stupid,” he said.

“It’s not that. Before I was married the men I knew took every chance to exhibit themselves. They tried to be subtle, but the effect was always the same. I was supposed to be wowed.”

He was sitting up. As a kid he had done the same thing with Karen. “What about your husband?”

“Him, too, in the beginning.”

“Outside,” he said.

She made a little bow before she closed the door. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

He drew on his cigarette. She had laughed at herself, and she had been all but convincing in the covering-up. Roberts was right about her but she was more right about him. Roberts thought she was stupid. Leland was still enjoying the idea when he started down the stairs.

Chapter Seventeen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Driving into Manitou, Florence had little to tell him. Mike had called from the apartment to report that he was still working and, he thought, making some progress. A memorandum would have to be drafted; there were too many details for a verbal communication. He had instructed Florence to tell Leland that he could understand now how MacIver had been able to add a double column of figures as they had been read to him.

The Manitou Credit Bureau had not had a file on Mrs. MacIver. Florence had called the banks in Canby and then the savings and loan associations—only one of the latter was carrying an account in Mrs. MacIver’s name.

“Manitou has a file on her husband,” she told Leland. “They were supposed to call me from the warehouse yesterday afternoon, but they didn’t, so I called them again this morning, and they told me to send someone over at two o’clock this afternoon.”