A Match Made for Murder Iona Whishaw (pride and prejudice read .TXT) 📖

know ahead of time. It would have made for an awful awkwardness. I think what I’m saying is that I do want to know before you go haring off on rescue missions, should this become a fixture of our marriage, and I want you to trust me to handle the outcomes.”

“I do love you,” she said, leaning in to kiss him gently. “Shall we go riding this afternoon? I’d love to see the city from up high again. It’s convincing me that we might even get a couple of horses when we get home. What do you think?”

“Well, yes to the ride this afternoon, certainly. I just have to show Miss Ruiz this photo. And you too for that matter. Does this look like the man we saw Meg Holden talking to on the street? I didn’t get a good enough look at his face. I think I was concentrating more on his grabbing her arm like that.”

Lane took the photo he’d pulled out of the manila envelope. “We were almost half a block away by the time I tumbled to the realization it was Meg Holden. Certainly the shape of the head looks right, but I don’t think I could swear to it in court. But Chela saw him very close up, so she’ll know for sure. Who is he?”

“He’s a bit of a local gangster, and if Mrs. Holden is very chummy with him, I suspect that means something.”

Galloway sat on the patio of his home, nursing his fourth scotch and waiting for Fernanda to cook his dinner. She’d looked disapprovingly at him when he’d ordered her to just bring the bottle and set it down on the table beside him, but then, she looked disapprovingly at him all the time. He should dismiss her. He looked at his watch. It was nearly eight and starting to get cold. She’d serve dinner and then go home. He could feel a wave of anxiety about being alone and pushed it aside. The Griffin situation had seemed in the bag. What was the meaning of Darling’s so-called information? It would, he was absolutely sure, come to nothing.

Galloway turned to the problem of his wife. He’d made up the name “Dahlia” when he was talking to Darling, but there must be a Dahlia of sorts somewhere who knew where she was—or was even hiding her. He started again to run through the people they knew at the club when Fernanda called.

“Señor jefe. It is on the table.”

Galloway got up, surprised at how light-headed he felt. He said nothing to the maid but shook his hand at her in a shooing motion when she asked if there was anything else. He listened until he heard the back door close, and only when he was sure she had left, did he turn to his dinner.

Priscilla would be back. He even felt half convinced that he’d been right when he told Darling that she was just waiting till she looked more like her old self. She couldn’t survive a second on her own, he knew that. She had no money for starters, and there wasn’t a single woman at the club who would risk her husband’s career by sheltering the wife of the assistant chief of police.

He was the assistant chief of police, dammit. He’d use good old police procedures to track her down. If it did turn out to be one of the women at the club, well, he’d see what ought to be done about that.

Chapter Twenty

Terrell had been right. Ames was not the least bit happy about the information he’d brought from the dress shops. Both sales ladies had remembered the woman who’d made the purchases in particular because of the curly blond hair. The second shopkeeper had made a point of how yellow it was.

“Tina Van Eyck,” Ames said miserably after a very long moment.

Terrell, however, had been quite convinced of her candour after his interview by the lake. “We don’t know that, though, do we? There must be scores of pretty blondes in their late twenties in town.”

“Probably none who had a relationship with him when they were teenagers. He was never planning to take Ada Finch anywhere. He was going off with Tina. She’s lied to us right from the start.”

Terrell was silent and then spoke. “I’m not sure you can call being raped a relationship. Anyway, why would he tell Ada Finch he was going to take her away somewhere if he’d been planning to run off with Miss Van Eyck?”

Ames winced. “I suppose. But we’ve only got Tina’s word for what he did to her when she was sixteen. There’s no trace of her supposed report to the police. There’s nothing for it; we’re going to have to go out there. Maybe even bring her back for questioning. We’re going to have to learn a good deal more about that whole business.” No fear or favour, he thought, feeling completely unsettled.

“If we’re going out anyway,” Terrell said, “let’s stop at the cottage and find out from Mrs. Watts if Ada’s clothes were among the things she took from his locker.” He was not at all convinced by the Tina Van Eyck theory and hoped that circumstances would support him.

The weather made Sunday morning as moody as the previous day. Heavy black clouds seemed to cap the valley, locking out the light. The lake was a menacing dark green, the wind causing the ferry to rock on the crossing. Ames looked balefully out at the trees on the other side of the road that were bending in the gale, throwing off the last of their dying leaves.

There was little but the most necessary traffic on the road, which instead of the usual dust now cast up a fine rain of mud from the tyres of the vehicles ahead of them. The road up the hill to the Watts cottage was a series of wet craters, and Ames winced with every jostle and