Payoff for the Banker Read Online Free Page A

not screamed. When he had finished, Pam North’s forehead was wrinkled. She looked at Mary Hunter and waited.
    â€œI don’t know,” Mary said. “I seem to remember screaming, but maybe I merely screamed in—in my mind, sort of. If the old man was where he would have heard me, and says I didn’t, then I didn’t. Maybe I’m not the screaming type. I didn’t scream when I—when I heard about Rick.”
    â€œNobody knows, Bill,” Pam North pointed out, looking at him. “Although if I came in and saw—what she saw—I’d scream. Wouldn’t I, Jerry?”
    â€œFor the record,” Jerry said, “you didn’t. When it was in the bathtub. You just kind of made sounds—it was a kind of incredulous moan. But of course, it wasn’t our bathtub.” *
    â€œDidn’t I?” Pam said. “I thought—. You see how it could have been, Bill. And where’s the gun?”
    Bill Weigand said he didn’t know. He added that there had been time enough to do something with a gun.
    â€œSuch,” Pam said, “as what? What do you do with a gun? Mary hasn’t got a gun. Or have you?”
    â€œYes,” Mary said. “In my trunk. Under things. It was Rick’s and when he left he—left it with me.”
    â€œIs it?” Pam asked, of Bill Weigand.
    It was the first he had heard of it, Bill told her. They were in at the beginning.
    â€œI could—” Mary began, but Bill shook his head. He nodded to Mullins and Mullins held out his hand. Mary Hunter found her keys and gave them to Mullins and pointed at a key and at the trunk. It was a steamer trunk and Mullins unpacked it methodically, thinking that women certainly needed a lot of underwear. He got to the bottom and looked at Bill and said, “No.”
    â€œWell,” Weigand said, “there we are. No. Well, Mrs. Hunter?”
    The slender girl with the short blond hair merely looked blank. She did not, so far as Bill Weigand could tell, look frightened.
    â€œThen I don’t know,” she said. “I thought it was. I never used it.” She paused. “For anything,” she said. “Not since Rick—taught me to use it. I must have put it in something I stored.”
    â€œAnyway,” Pam said, “she didn’t have it today.”
    â€œWhy?” said Jerry.
    â€œWhere?” said Pam. “I mean—where? In with the groceries? In a holster? Where?”
    Jerry looked at the girl in the close-fitting blue dress. He saw what Pam meant. He looked at Bill Weigand. Bill shook his head.
    â€œObviously,” he said, “if we decided she didn’t find the body as she says, then we don’t need to believe anything she says. It may have been—oh, in the icebox with the soda and she may have gone out ostensibly to mix a drink and come back with it. And she may—hell, she may have thrown it out the window.”
    He broke off and looked at Mary Hunter who merely looked back, with an expression which was half shrug.
    â€œDrop that, for the moment,” Bill said. “We can only guess until we look. The boys will look.”
    They could, he said, take up something else. She had rented the apartment on Sunday, day before yesterday. She had moved in—when? Yesterday afternoon? Very well, she had moved in yesterday afternoon, and everything was ordinary and routine. Right?
    â€œYes,” the girl said.
    â€œWho did you rent the apartment from?” Weigand asked. “An agent?”
    The girl shook her head.
    â€œA man I knew,” she said. “A man I used to know in—in an office.”
    She hesitated and they all noticed it.
    â€œWhat office?” Bill Weigand said.
    Mary Hunter wanted to know what difference it made.
    â€œI don’t know,” Bill told her. “Apparently it makes a difference. To you.” He stopped a moment and looked at her.
    â€œListen, Mrs.