John D MacDonald – Travis McGee 10 The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper

“She was a fine woman. Shame to go that way,” he said. He seemed to be slightly wary and curious. “Is there any way I can help you, Mr. McGee?”

“I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. If any of them are out of line, just say so.”

“I’ll tell you what I can. But perhaps you should understand that I was not Mrs. Trescott’s personal attorney. Her affairs are handled in New York, legal, tax and estate, and so on. Apparently she telephoned or wrote her people in New York and asked them to recommend someone here to handle a confidential matter for her. A classmate of mine is one of the partners in the firm she had been dealing with up there, so when they gave her my name, she phoned me and I went to see her in the hospital. Perhaps they’ll call on me to handle some of the estate details at this end, but I have no way of knowing.”

“Then, you didn’t tell anyone about the letter and the check?”

“I told you that she wanted it handled as a confidential matter. She wrote a check on her New York account and I deposited it in our escrow account. When it cleared, I had a cashier’s check made out to you, as she requested. She gave me a sealed letter to go with it. If you were not the recipient, I would disclaim knowledge of any such transaction.”

“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. Trescot 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 Trescot 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 dam-fool 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?”

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