"RICHARD_M_ELLIS_-_THE_DARK_WELL" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellis Richard M)

"Oh, for the kitchen door was probably locked, bolted on the inside."

"Matter of fact, it wasn't locked at all."

I said bitterly, "Haven't we got enough to worry about?"

"Mebbe," said the sheriff. "But it is interestin'."

He pulled in at the curb in front of Agatha Baker's home. It was a large, red-brick house that Miss Baker split up into three or four luxury apartments, keeping the ground floor for herself.

She let us in. She looked a bit angry as she gestured us to chairs in the tastefully decorated front room.

"Actually, this is Mary Denman's idea," she said. "I wasn't going to say anything and I can't imagine that it matters but I let it slip to Mary, while I was driving her home a few minutes ago. She insisted that I tell you."

Carson raised tufted eyebrows. "Anythin' that'll help."

"All right." Miss Baker stood there, twisting her long pale fingers together. "When Blanche called me yesterday afternoon, she was rather excited, and worried. It seems that the woman Lloyd wanted to marry was driving down from the city. Her name is Reynolds, I believe, and she was due to get here about eight. Blanche was going to meet her at the Seven Oaks Motel."

I sat forward on my chair. "You didn't think this was worth mentioning to us?"

"Frankly, I didn't think it was any of your business. Or anyone else's, now. It couldn't have any connection to what what happened to Blanche. Could it?"

The sheriff grunted. "Go ahead, Miss Baker."

"That's all. I gathered that Lloyd didn't know the woman was coming. The main purpose for the visit was so that she and Blanche could get acquainted." Agatha Baker smiled slightly. "I imagine it was a rather strained meeting, the way Blanche felt. But of course I don't know that Blanche actually saw the woman. I didn't hear from her again."

I said, "You and Mrs. Ames were pretty close, weren't you?"

Her face tightened with emotion. She said slowly, "Blanche was a good friend, Mr. Gates. For a lot of years."

"Yes. Outside of the recent to-do about her brother's proposed marriage, was she worried about anything? Anything at all, personal, business?"

"No, of course not." Miss Baker frowned huffily at me. "Blanche was the dearest, kindest person I've ever known. She didn't have an enemy in the world, if that's what you're asking."

I shrugged. Carson took up the questioning, and I looked around the room. Through an archway I could see a dining room, and I did a double take. Seated at the head of the polished oak table in the dining room, facing me, was a huge toy panda bear. Its bright black glass eyes gleamed merrily.

Now, Carson was pushing to his feet. Agatha Baker had told us all she could, or would. Moments later, as the sheriff and I went down the walk to the car, I glanced back.

In the doorway, looking after us, she stood straight, tall and prim, her dark hair glinting in the sun. She was something of an enigma in Monroe, because of both her unladylike astuteness in making money, and because she had never married, though I had an idea she'd had plenty of offers. Even now, well on the wrong side of forty, she was an attractive woman and she kept a toy panda bear.

Well, to each his own, or her own.

"Wonder why Mrs. Ames lied to Mary Denman," said Carson, as we drove away.

"What? Oh. If she'd told Mary Denman where she was going last night, every old hen in town would've known about it ten minutes later," I said. "Probably would've been a regular traffic jam at the motel, everyone wanting to see what happened when Blanche and this gal from the city met."

Carson snorted. "I'm kind of curious about that, myself."

The motel was just beyond the last straggle of houses and gas stations on the east edge of town. It was, by Monroe standards, fairly new and well constructed, with two rows of neat frame cabins facing each other across a courtyard. Spaced along the courtyard were the oak trees that gave the place its name.