John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“Sorry, Mr. Hardahee. I didn’t mean to—”

“Perfectly all right. You couldn’t have known how it was handled until I told you.”

“I told her younger daughter about getting a letter from her. I had lunch there today, with the Pikes and Miss Pearson. I assumed from Helena’s letter that she was staying there before she went into the hospital this last time.”

“That is correct.”

“Can I establish a confidential relationship too? I guess I could as a client, but I don’t know what kind of law you work with, Mr. Hardahee.”

“Both the other senior partners are specialists. I’m the utility man. Play almost any position.”

“Do you represent Tom Pike directly or indirectly in any way? Or either of the daughters?”

“No one in the firm represents them in any way.”

“Very quick and very definite.”

He shrugged. “I try to be a good and careful attorney, Mr. McGee. When I got a note from Walter Albany in New York saying Mrs. Trescott might contact me, once I established who she was, and her condition, it struck me that because Tom Pike has many contracts in the legal profession here it might develop into some sort of an inheritance problem. So I checked our shop to make certain we wouldn’t be in any conflict of interests if the transaction led eventually into a dogfight.”

“And you based that guess on her having gone through New York to find a local attorney instead of asking her son-in-law?”

He ignored the question. “A client has to have a legal problem. What’s yours?”

“I’m in One-O-nine at the Wahini Lodge. When I returned this afternoon, after being at the Pike home, I discovered by accident that somebody had gone through the stuff in my room. Forty dollars in cash was untouched. No sign of forcible entry. Nothing missing.”

“And thus nothing you can report?”

“That’s right.”

“What is the legal problem?”

“In her letter Helena Trescott asked me to see what I could do to keep Maureen — Mrs. Tom Pike — from killing herself. It was a confidential request. We’re old friends. She has confidence in me. So did her first husband, Mick Pearson. A dying woman can ask for a damfool favor, I guess. So I came up and checked. I had a logical reason for getting in touch. Imaginary but logical. So I looked the scene over and Mrs. Pike is in a pretty spooky condition, but there isn’t anything I could do that isn’t being done. I had to make sure, because Helena did ask me. So I was at the point of deciding I should check out and leave town when I found out somebody had gone through the room.”

“Looking for the letter? Because they knew there had been a letter, and it made somebody uneasy not to know what was in it?”

“That was one of the things that occurred to me.”

“As if somebody might be concerned about an inheritance situation?”

“I didn’t think about that.”

“Walter Albany said her resources were ‘substantial.’ ”

“Meaning how much?”

“Hmmm. To interpret the trust attorney lingo, taking into account the area where Walter practices, I would say that adequate would mean up to a quarter million, comfortable from there up to a million, and substantial could mean anything from there on up to... let’s say five or six million. Beyond that I think Walter would say ‘impressive.’ So you thought it over and you came to see me because you want to know how many people knew there was such a letter. Me and my secretary and the deceased. And you, and whoever you may have told.”

“And a nurse?”

“Possibly. I wouldn’t know.”

“I told Miss Pearson, the sister, yesterday when she came over to the motel to have a drink with me. She had no idea her mother and I had stayed in touch the past five years. I had to account for being fairly up to date. But I said nothing about what Helena asked me to do.”

“You brought the letter with you? It was in the room?”

“No.”

“If somebody were looking for it, would they look elsewhere? At your home in Fort Lauderdale?”

“They might, but they wouldn’t find it.”

“Would you know someone had looked for it?”

“Definitely.”

He looked at his watch. It was after five. He frowned. “What kind of work do you do, Mr. McGee?”

“Salvage consultant.”

“So what you want to find out from me is whether you should trust your initial judgment of Mr. and Mrs. Pike and Miss Pearson or whether the incident at your hotel room is sufficient cause for you to look more closely?”

“Mr. Hardahee, it is a pleasure to deal with someone who does not have to have detailed drawings and specifications.”

He stood up. “If you can manage it conveniently, you might join me for a drink at the Haze Lake Club at seven fifteen. If I’m not in the men’s bar, tell Simon, the bartender, that you are my guest. I have a date to play doubles in... just twenty minutes.”

When I walked in, I saw that D. Wintin Hardahee had finished. He was at the bar with a group of other players, standing with a tall drink in hand in such a way that he could keep an eye on the door. When I appeared, he excused himself and came over to meet me and took me over to a far corner by a window that looked out at the eighteenth green. In the fading light the last foursomes were finishing.

Hardahee was in white shorts and a white knit shirt, with a sweat-damp towel hung around his neck. I was correct about his fit look. His legs were brown, solid, muscular, and fuzzed with sun-bleached hair. The waiter came over and Hardahee said the planter’s punch was exceptional, so I ordered one without sugar and he asked for a refill.

“Win your match?”

“The secret of winning in doubles is to carefully select and train your partner. That blond boy over there is mine. He is constructed of rawhide, steel wire, and apparently has concealed oxygen tanks. He’s keeping my name fresh and new on the old trophies and making all the other players hate me.”

“Everybody hates a winner.”

“Mr. McGee, since talking to you, I have been synthesizing all the bits and pieces of information I have concerning Tom Pike. Here is my subjective summary. He is energetic, with considerable fiscal imagination, a great drive. He has personal charm with magnetism. A lot of people are rabidly and warmly loyal to him, people who from time to time have been on his team, or connected with his team in one way or another, and who have made out very well and had some fun doing it. They think he can do no wrong. He has the traits and talents of the born entrepreneur, meaning he is elusive, fast-moving, and very hard-nosed, as well as being something of a born salesman. So there are people who have necessarily been in the way of the deals he has assembled from time to time and they have been bruised and are eager to claim they were tricked, and quite obviously they hate him. I know of no successful legal action brought against him. As you said, everybody hates a winner. It is a mistake to confuse shrewdness, misdirection, and opportunism with illegality. I can think of no one who knows Tom who is indifferent to him. He polarizes emotions. My guess would be this. If he knew you had a letter his mother-in-law wrote before her death and if he thought there was any information in it of any use to him, he would have come to you and sooner or later you would have found yourself telling or showing him the part or parts he wanted to know about.”

“How would he manage that?”

“By studying you to find out what you want and then offering it to you in such a way you would feel grateful toward him. Money or excitement or advance knowledge or whatever happens to be your choice of private vices. If he had to have something, I think he would go after it his own way first.”