The Anonymous Client

stand?”
    “No, no,” she said, quickly. “I don’t want to go on the stand.”
    “I know,” Steve said. “And I realize this is going to be a hardship for you, but we have to take it from the beginning.”
    “The beginning?”
    “Yeah,” Taylor said. “You come to town and looked up Bradshaw?”
    She looked at him. “Blake,” she said. “Donald Blake.”
    “Sorry,” Taylor said. “Yes. Donald Blake.”
    She smiled sadly. “Yeah. That was the whole problem. Bradshaw. I looked for Donald Blake, and he was David C. Bradshaw. The man never learned, you know. Some men are like that. They just never learn.”
    “Go on,” Steve said.
    She fixed him with a hard eye. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t come with him. He came out here, I came and found him. But that doesn’t make any difference. I lived with him for eight years as his wife. Whether he left me or not, that still makes me his common-law wife, and I’m entitled to what he had.”
    “No one’s trying to prove you’re not,” Taylor said.
    She fixed him with that look again. “That’s not the way Dirkson was talking.”
    “Of course not,” Steve said. “You can’t expect him to hand over the money to the first person who comes and asks for it. You have a claim, and it would appear to be a legitimate claim. But it has to be checked out, and the final determination isn’t up to us. You just have to be patient.”
    She exhaled heavily. “Yeah. Patient.”
    “So let’s get on with it. You came out here and you looked up Donald Blake. How long ago was that?”
    “About two weeks ago.”
    “And what happened?”
    “The usual. He was glad to see me, but he wasn’t glad to see me. At least, he wasn’t glad to see me right then. The timing was bad, that’s the way he put it.” She shook her head. “The big jerk. I was all set to move in with him, but he wouldn’t have it. Said he was on to something. My being around would mess it up.”
    “Did he tell you what it was?”
    “No, he never did. Secretive, that was him, you know? Always concocting the wild schemes, never letting me in on them.
    “Unless they paid off, of course. If they paid off, he’d strut around like a rooster, crowing about how smart he was. But not this time. I mean, I come all the way out from Chicago, and it’s ‘Hi, hello, good to see you, now get out of here.’ He fixed me up with this room.” She looked around. Shrugged. “Great, huh?”
    “This conversation you’re talking about,” Taylor said. “When you looked him up—that was in his apartment, right?”
    She looked at him. “Of course it was in his apartment. Where else would it be? Not that we were there long. He got me out of there fast. Stashed me here.”
    “He come to see you?” Steve asked.
    “Oh, sure. Whenever he had the time. Big, busy man. Once or twice a week, if I was lucky.”
    “But you never went back there?”
    “No. Not with this big, heavy scheme he was setting up.”
    “You didn’t know it was blackmail?” Steve said.
    Now she gave him the cold stare. “Blackmail? Who said anything about blackmail? That D.A. can have any damn theories he wants, but nobody’s proven any blackmail. No charge has even been brought. As far as I’m concerned, that money was Donald Blake’s, and now that money is rightfully mine.”
    “I understand your contention,” Steve said. “Personally, I’m not challenging it. I’m just trying to discuss what happened. Now, as I understand it, after that first time, when you looked Donald Blake up, you’ve never been back to his apartment?”
    “That’s right. But I tell you, that’s got nothing to do with whether or not I was his common-law wife, and—”
    “I’m sure it doesn’t,” Steve said. “And I’m not trying to contest your claim. Now, those times Donald Blake called on you—did he ever say anything about what he was doing?”
    She shook her head. “No. I told you. Not a word.”
    “Never mentioned Marilyn Harding?”
    “No.”
    “Or Douglas Kemper?”
    “No.”
    “Or the Harding family at all?”
    “No.”
    Steve frowned. “O.K. Let’s get to the day of the murder. If the defense should put you on the stand and try to make a case for the fact that you killed Donald Blake, what would happen then?”
    “They’d have a hard time,” she said. “At five o’clock that afternoon, I had an appointment with my hairdresser.”
    “Where?”
    She jerked her thumb. “Here. Right down the