Page 33 of The Other Lady Vanishes

He held out the perfume bottle stopper.

The crystal stopper glittered darkly in the palm of his hand. Adelaide got a little light-headed. Jake obviously thought that the stopper was important. That did not bode well.

Reluctantly she crossed the short distance between them, reached out, and plucked the stopper from his palm.

“Can I assume we’re not going to tell the police about this, either?” she asked as she dropped it into her handbag.

His smile was razor sharp. “No, we are not going to tell the police about that perfume bottle stopper.”

She swallowed hard. “Why not?”

“I doubt if the cops would think it was important, but it might get dumped into an evidence file where we won’t be able to get at it.”

“Why would we want to get hold of it again?”

“A couple of reasons. The first is that it’s the one thing that looked out of place in the living room.”

“Most women have bottles of perfume,” Adelaide pointed out.

“But most women keep their perfume on their dressing tables, not in their living rooms.”

She could not argue with that logic. “What’s the second reason for taking it with us?”

“That stopper looks like it belongs to a very expensive bottle of perfume,” Jake said. “If we find the missing portion, we might find the killer.”

“You really think Zolanda was murdered, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

He picked up the elegant telephone and dialed the operator.

Chapter 18

“The police are going to conclude that Zolanda jumped to her death, aren’t they?” Adelaide said.

Jake looked at her. She sounded almost hopeful—enthusiastic, even—about the possibility that the cops would call the psychic’s death a suicide. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he was certain that she had undergone a few changes of mood from the time they had discovered the body until that moment in the kitchen when he had given her the top of the perfume bottle.

At the moment she was standing next to him in the gardens at the edge of the patio. They were watching a handful of uniformed officers and a detective named Brandon from the Burning Cove Police Department. A doctor named Skipton, who evidently served as the local medical examiner when one was needed, had taken charge of the body.

“I’m not so sure,” he said. “Detective Brandon doesn’t like the fact that Thelma Leggett has disappeared. Got a hunch he’ll look for her, but if she left town, which seems likely, there’s not much he can do. There’s no point mentioning my theory that Zolanda was a blackmailerand that Leggett is now in possession of the extortion material, because I have absolutely no proof.”

“If the police do find Leggett, they’ll probably find the diary.”

“Which means I have to find her first.”

Adelaide regarded him with a thoughtful expression. “You’re planning to look for Thelma Leggett yourself.”

“I don’t have much choice.”

She nodded, accepting the statement. It occurred to him that a lot of women—hell, a lot of people, male and female—would have been more than a little uneasy with the idea of pursuing a private inquiry. But Adelaide didn’t seem to have any difficulty with the plan.

Detective Brandon turned away from the body and walked toward them. Brandon was a solid-looking man with the face of a world-weary cop who did his best to do his job. His tie was badly knotted and his jacket was unfastened, revealing his holstered gun. He came to a halt, pushed his hat back on his head, and glanced up at the roof, squinting a little.

“Hard to believe she’d jump just to make her prediction come true,” he said.

“Yes,” Jake said. “That is hard to believe. “

Brandon switched his attention to Adelaide. “I find it interesting that the missing assistant called you this morning.”