Page 32 of The Other Lady Vanishes

“Obviously,” Jake said. “And I can think of only one good reason why she would do that.”

“She’s probably the person who is responsible for Zolanda’s death.”

“If I were the detective investigating this death, I’d certainly consider Leggett my number one suspect,” Jake said. “However, it’s possible that she simply got scared when she found the body, and decided to run. Regardless, I think she took Zolanda’s secrets with her.”

“You didn’t find the diary you are after, did you?”

“I didn’t find it or anything else that looked like blackmail material.”

“Maybe Thelma Leggett murdered Zolanda for her stash of extortion secrets,” Adelaide said.

“At the moment Leggett is at the top of my personal list. But if I’m right about Zolanda collecting blackmail secrets, we’ve got a long list of mostly unidentified suspects. She was playing her psychic games with some of the most powerful people in Hollywood. The studios employ fixers whose job it is to get rid of extortionists like her.”

It was probably a measure of her paranoia that his words actually lifted her spirits, Adelaide thought. She was oddly relieved by his analysis. If Zolanda was in the blackmail business, a number of people would have had a motive to murder her. There was no reason to assume that the perfume bottle had contained drugs from the lab at the sanitarium.

“We’d better call the police,” she said.

Jake raised his brows at her enthusiasm for summoning the authorities, but he did not comment on it.

“Yes,” he said. “The longer we wait, the farther away Thelma Leggett will get.”

“What, exactly, are we going to tell the police?”

“The truth.” Jake crossed to an end table that held an elegant telephone. “Most of it. We’ll tell them that this morning you got a phone call from Thelma Leggett pleading for an emergency delivery of tea. When we got here, we found the body and, good citizens that we are, we immediately called the police.”

“We don’t mention the missing diary, I take it?”

“No,” Jake said. “If that diary ever became part of a police investigation, there would be no way to keep the contents out of the press.”

“What about us—you and me? The police will wonder why we’re both here at this hour of the morning.”

Jake tightened his jaw. “My apologies for the failure of chivalry, but I’m afraid we’ll have to tell them the truth about that, too.”

“You mean we tell them that we spent the night together. Yes, I understand.” Adelaide crossed her arms and shook her head, resigned to the inevitable. “They’ll assume the worst, of course.”

“The worst?”

She glared at him, flushing a little. “They’ll think we’re involved in an affair. Don’t worry, it’s not a problem for me. I told you, I’m not concerned with my reputation. This is Burning Cove, after all. People here are much more interested in which leading lady is sleeping with whichleading man at the Burning Cove Hotel. They won’t care about the private life of a tearoom waitress.”

“Maybe not in other circumstances, but as of this morning that tearoom waitress is one of the people who found the body of the psychic to the stars. Don’t kid yourself; that will show up in the afternoon edition of theBurning Cove Herald.”

“Things might be a little awkward for a while.” She brightened. “Probably good for business at Refresh, though. Curiosity is bound to bring a lot of people into the shop. Florence will be thrilled.”

“That’s the spirit; look at the marketing angle.” Jake’s eyes got colder. “A small reminder, if this case blows up into a full-scale murder investigation, you’re not the only one who will need an alibi.”

It took a beat before she got his meaning. When she did, she drew a very deep breath.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “I never thought of that. You could be viewed as a potential suspect. After all, you believe that Zolanda was an extortionist.”

“In other words, I have a very good motive for killing her.”

Adelaide unfolded her arms and spread her hands. “Looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

“I prefer to think of us as allies.”

“Right. Allies.”

“By the way,” Jake said. “I found this in the other room under the liquor cabinet. Would you mind putting it in your handbag?”