Murder Has Its Points by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page A

voice—surprise that she had missed the obvious. (Mullins can do this better, Bill thought.) “Not Mr. Self more than anybody else. We’re trying to see everybody who was at this—” he hesitated—“press party, I guess they call it. See if anybody can tell us anything to help.” He smiled at the pretty girl, and thought some warmth came back under her very white skin. “Just one of dozens, I am,” Bill said. “Were you at this party yourself, miss?”
    Muscles around eyes had relaxed. Fine. Taking candy from a baby. All right—fine.
    â€œI?” she said. “Good heavens no. I was minding the store. That’s what Mr. Self pays me for.”
    â€œSure,” Bill said. “Can’t leave any avenue unexplored, as the regulations say.” (Mr. Self, now. Jim a moment ago. Baby trying to get her candy back.) “You expect Mr. Self soon?”
    â€œOh yes,” she said. “It shouldn’t be—” And stopped abruptly. “He did,” she said, “say something about going to an auction. I’d forgotten that. If he did—heaven knows.”
    Bill Weigand sighed—a tired cop, doing the dull things he was told to do.
    â€œHe was at this party, though?” Bill said. “Somehow I got the idea it was for—oh, book reviewers. People like that.” Not owners of unimportant bookshops, his tone implied. (He hoped.)
    â€œOh,” she said, “Mr. Self is a critic too. Quite an important one where—where it’s important.” How does one explain these things to a dumb policeman? her tone asked. “And he’s starting a magazine. A magazine of—” She looked at Bill, and shook her pretty head. Looking for a word within my scope, Bill thought. “Comment,” the girl said. “Literary comment. About books that really matter. Not just—”
    She made a graceful gesture toward the bright-jacketed books on the long table. Her gesture seemed to dismiss them—Cozzens and Marquand and all.
    â€œOf course,” she said, “we have to handle—well, everything here. Best sellers and everything.” It was a little, Bill thought, as if she were saying that cockroaches get in everywhere. “Some of our customers want things like that,” she said.
    Animated enough, now. Trotting along gayly, now, on the hobbyhorse of enthusiasm.
    â€œMost of them,” she said, “are—well, different.”
    â€œWriters, I suppose,” Bill said, trying to remember how Mullins would say it, and speak accordingly. “People like this—what’s his name? Williams?”
    â€œIf you mean Tennessee Williams,” she said. “I don’t think—he lives in Key West, you know.”
    â€œThinking of somebody else,” Bill said. “Doesn’t matter. I’d better be getting—” He started to turn. He said, “Wait a minute. Willings. That’s the one I was thinking of. Writers like that. Or, for that matter, Anthony Payne.”
    â€œNot Will—” she said, and stopped, and the little muscles about her large, and for that matter very beautiful, dark eyes once more tightened.
    â€œBut,” Bill Weigand said, “Payne. Often, miss—? I think you’d better tell me your name.”
    She hesitated for a moment. She said, “Why?” He merely waited. When she spoke, her voice was flat again.
    â€œRhodes,” she said. “Jo-An Rhodes.”
    â€œMiss Rhodes,” Bill said, “you saw Mr. Payne away from the shop, didn’t you? Went to dinner with him? Things like—”
    â€œYou haven’t any—”
    â€œYes,” Bill said. “To ask. Because we have to find out everything about Mr. Payne we can find out—who he knew, who he saw. Yes, even who he took to dinner. If you’ve some reason not to answer—”
    She was shaking her head, by then. She said,