I sat suddenly upright in the chair. The thing that had been bothering me all the time was just beyond my reach. I looked back at the story: “...Butler’s car, abandoned on a local street near the beach...” That was it.

That second clipping she had shown me, the one carrying the story about the car, had given the name of the street. It hadn’t sunk in at the time, but it had been bothering my subconscious ever since. I grabbed another bundle of the papers and began flipping hurriedly through them. June 14, June 13, June 11—it should be in this one. I shot my glance up column and down, across the front page. Here it was.

“The late-model automobile of the missing man was discovered early today abandoned near the beach in the 200 block of Duval Boulevard.”

I wondered why I had let it slide off the first time I’d read it. It was given right in Winlock’s ad, the thing that had taken me out there in the first place. The address of that apartment house was 220 Duval Boulevard.

I was beginning to have an idea why she was so sure Butler was dead.

Chapter Three

She came down and let me in when I rang the buzzer. Neither of us said anything until we were back up in the living room. She sat down in the same place she’d been before, across the coffee table, and smiled at me, the eyes cool and a little amused.

“I wondered if you’d be back,” she said. “And how soon.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She lit a cigarette and looked thoughtfully at the smoke. “Let’s put it this way: If you didn’t have sense enough to see it, you wouldn’t be smart enough to be of any help. This is no child’s game, you know. And it could be dangerous as hell.”

“There’s one thing I’m still not too sure of,” I said. “And that’s why you’re so certain she’s the one that killed him and left his car in front of your apartment. Wasn’t there anybody else who could have known he was going to run off with you?”

“It’s not likely. And nobody but that vindictive bitch would have gone to that much trouble and risk of exposure just for the pleasure of letting me know. I mean, leaving the car right out front here. She would do that.”

“How about telling me the whole thing?” I said.

“Suppose you tell me something first,” she said coolly. “Do you want in this, or don’t you?”

“What do you think? I came back, didn’t I?”

“Not worried about breaking the law?”

“Let’s put it this way: Whoever’s got that money is outside the law himself, or herself. So he or she can’t yell cop. And as far as conscience is concerned, you can buy a lot of sleeping pills with sixty thousand dollars.”

She raised her eyebrows.