“But you don’t know if she asked anyone that question?”
“She never brought it up again.”
“While you were… conducting this unofficial investigation of Sherman’s death, were you telling Janice about it, about things like the file the Boughmer woman wouldn’t produce?”
“I guess I was telling her more than I usually would. Hell, I was trying to cover for the time I was spending with Penny. But Janice was turning ice cold, and fast. She wasn’t buying it. I kept trying, but she wasn’t buying it. She found out, I guess.”
“Somebody told her about it practically as soon as it began.”
“No kidding! Some real pal.”
“Do you think she’s found some other man?”
“I keep trying not to think about that. What’s it to you?”
“Let’s say it isn’t just a case of big-nose, Holton.”
“I get home and that damned Meg is either over at the house with her kids, or the kids are over at Meg’s house. No note from Janice. No message, nothing. So she comes home and I say where have you been, and she says out. Looks so damned smug. But I keep telling myself that when she comes home, she doesn’t have that look. You know? Something about the mouth and the hair and the way they walk. A woman who’s been laid looks laid. Their eyes are different too. If she’s got somebody, he’s not playing his cards right. If she likes him and she’s sore at me, and I know she’s known about Penny, all he’d have to do would be lay one hand on her to get her going, and she’d take over from there. A lousy way to talk about the wife, I guess. But I know her. And she’s no wife now. Not anymore. Never again, not for me.”
“Does she think Sherman was murdered?”
“She was fond of him. She’s sure of it. Not from anything I dug up or any chain of logic I explained. She operates on instinct. She says he couldn’t have and to her that’s it.”
“So she wanted to have you find out who did it?”
“Not because she was hot to have somebody punished, but more because it would clear his name.”
“What do you know about the trouble Tom Pike got into at Kinder, Noyes, and Strauss?”
“What? You jump around pretty fast. All I know is the shop talk I heard about it. He was a very hot floor man. He had people swearing by him. He went in there and built up one hell of a personal following. High fliers, discretionary accounts, a lot of trading in and out, accounts fully margined. And he’s a very persuasive guy. He made a lot of money for a lot of people in this town, in a very short time. But there was one old boy who came down to retire, and he had a portfolio of blue chips. He had Telephone and General Motors and Union Carbide. He signed an agreement to have Tom Pike handle his holdings on a discretionary basis. As I understand it, Tom cashed in all the old boy’s blues and started swinging with the proceeds. Fairchild Camera, Texas Instrument, Tele-dyne, Litton. At the end of three months the total value of the old boy’s holdings was down by about twelve thousand. And Tom had made about forty trades, and the total commissions came to eight grand. The old boy blew the whistle on Tom, claiming that the agreement was that Tom would commit only twenty percent of his holdings in high-risk investments, that Tom had ignored the understanding and put the whole amount in high fliers, and had churned the account to build up his commissions. He had his lawyer send the complaint directly to the president of the firm in New York. They sent down a couple of lawyers and a senior partner to investigate. Brokerage houses are very sensitive about that kind of thing. Big conference, as I understand it. Complete audit of all trades. Tom Pike claimed that the man had told him that he was after maximum capital gains in high-risk issues and that he had other resources and could afford the risk. The man denied it. It looked as if Tom was in serious trouble. But one of the female employees was able to back up Tom’s story. She said the man had phoned her to get verification of the status of his account and his buying power, and that when he had been twenty-five thousand ahead of the game, he had told her over the phone that getting out of the tired old blue chips and letting Mr. Pike handle his account was the smartest move he had ever made. The old man denied ever saying that.”