“Agnes had a habit of poetic expression, Mr. Kelly, and she was unflinchingly aware of the fate that stalked her. I will not have you speak in this manner.”She stared at him curiously.“What don’t you understand?”
“Come off it, Dean. It was Mundi, wasn’t it? He had her killed or drove her to her death somehow. What was going on in that family? I’ve taken this all the way to the end, but it won’t go any farther. I just need to know. Who killed her and why?”
Ruth Warfel continued to stare at him,hard,as if she were scrutinizing a strange life-form. He could see the hostility drain from her, replaced by something more neutral. But also more dismissive. “Mr. Kelly, I never wanted this meeting. When I spoke with Gloria, she told me how you became involved with her father, what happened to you, and how you subsequently, ah, corrected the situation. She told me honestly what she thought of you and urged me to speak with you. To request that you return those letters. That’s the reason, the only reason, for this meeting. You have consistently, completely, and willfully misconstrued every bit of intelligence regarding her mother that has come your way. You’ve now lied to me, and it’s clear that if you truly believe your overimaginative hypothesis, you must be lying to yourself, because the facts do not support it.”
Kelly started to reply, but she cut him off. “Agnes Day Mundi died of congenital heart failure,Mr.Kelly.She led a brave,uncompromising life,and she was deeply mourned by her husband,her daughter, and by me. I want you to return those letters immediately. And then I expect to have heard the last of you. Now get out of this office.”
She seemed to mean business. Kelly picked up his hat and departed.
By the time he got back to his office, the true import of his interview was beginning to sink in. Since his return from the dead he’d been sorting through his ransacked belongings, slowly putting everything back in order. He resumed this activity, in a meditative way, as he pictured Ruth Warfel and what a surprisingly tough customer she’d turned out to be.
He decided that she’d probably been telling the truth about Agnes Day Mundi. He could see, now, that he might’ve misinterpreted a few things about Agnes’s past and her relationship with Mundi. All the stuff about death stalking was hard to interpret. But he had to admit that if she’d thought her husband had been trying to kill her, she’d have written something to her old friend along the lines of, “My husband is trying to kill me.” Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d ever been wrong.
He found Mundi’s case file in the ungainly stack waiting to be restored to the metal cabinets.There, amid Jarkey’s photographs, was a white envelope. It had a familiar look, and he opened it expectantly. Inside were eight $100 bills. He remembered Mundi handing it to him, but he was sure it had contained $1,000. Now there was a puzzler. Kelly flipped through the 8 x 10 glossies of Gloria and Gallagher, mulling it over. Then he had an image of Harry Jarkey reaching up to receive two C-notes all those months ago, making some crack about hearing the money talking. He smiled contentedly. Another mystery solved.
Then the phone rang.
It was Julius Roth.
He had an interesting proposition.
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