Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) Read Free Page B

been a troubled girl the past few years."
    "Lots of people are troubled."
    "You're mocking me."
    "No, I'm not," Paine said.
    Rebecca Meyer stopped for a moment. She looked like she was going to cry. "I found her. She'd locked the bathroom door. She'd taken a bottle of sleeping pills and run a hot bath. She was dead when they got her to the hospital."
    Paine thought of Dolores Grumbach drinking in front of him, telling him she was going to take a bath, just before he left her.
    "Did she leave a note for you, or anyone else?"
    "Just that note for you, laid neatly on top of the signed contract for your agency." She pulled a creased set of papers from the pocket of her windbreaker and handed it to Paine.
    "Mr. Paine," the note read, "there is something for you at the Mallard Hotel. Enclosed are the signed contracts you requested. Give one copy to my sister Rebecca. The check attached will cover any initial expenses my father's money does not; I am sure my sister will give you whatever else you need." It was signed in neat script, "Dolores Grumbach."
    There was a check for five hundred dollars clipped to the contracts. Paine looked up at Rebecca Meyer. She was regarding him curiously, her eyes searching his face.
    "This is all there was?" Paine asked.
    "Yes. Will you tell me what my sister left for you at the Mallard Hotel?"
    Paine handed the three new photographs to Rebecca Meyer. She turned through them slowly, more carefully than she had when looking over the first set of black-and-whites.
    "Have you ever seen any of them before?"
    "Yes." She pointed to one photo of a man with short sideburns and a pin-striped suit. "This is Les Paterna," she said. "He worked with my father for a while, about ten years ago."
    "Can you tell me anything about him? Was he close to the family?"
    "He was at the house occasionally."
    Paine put the photographs away. "Do you know where I might be able to reach him?"
    "He's in the Westchester phone book. His company is called Bravura Enterprises."
    They had reached the end of the path. It opened onto a vast glide of lawn. To the right, at the bottom of a hill, a flat tennis court was bounded by green fencing; behind that were a swimming pool and a skeet shooting range. To the left the lawn kept going, rising and falling steadily downward, till the Hudson River, a sparkling blue hedge of water, cut the world in two.
    They moved gradually down to the right, stopping by the green chain link surrounding the tennis court. There was a bench, the kind you order from a store in Vermont, with strong pine planking laid across a green wrought-iron frame. Rebecca Meyer sat down. On the tennis court someone had left a towel and a pair of sunglasses. A racket had been tossed carelessly aside to land on the white foul line.
    "I didn't tell the police about you or the note," Rebecca Meyer said.
    "That will help."
    "It's not any of their business."
    Paine found himself drawn to look into her eyes, which were studying him again. There was something about her that he couldn't put his finger on. Something that disturbed and attracted him.
    "I find it easy to talk to you," Rebecca Meyer said. The slightest of smiles touched her lips as she put her hand on his. "Would you mind telling me why?"
    Paine drew his hand politely away from hers and put it on his lap.
    After a moment, he asked her, "How close were you to your sister?"
    "I loved Dolores very much. But I can't say we were very close. She was moody and cynical. When she was in school she spent most of her time by herself. She read a lot. My mother doted on her as much as on any of us, but all I can remember Dolores asking Mother for were books. My sister Gloria and I watched television and played tennis, Dolores read books."
    They looked at the chain link fence.
    "Is your sister Gloria here?" Paine asked.
    "She was down from Boston for my father's funeral yesterday and then went home to her family. She'll be back tonight."
    "Was she very close to Dolores?"
    "Gloria is