Death Through the Looking Glass by Richard; Forrest Page B

cheap to buy anything else. Let me see, there’s about a hundred thousand of that, and then the law firm will pay me something for his partnership. There’re the houses, mortgaged, but with something left over. Oh, I’ve made my calculations; say, a quarter of a million all told. Enough so that I don’t have to take to the streets.”
    â€œWhere were you the …” Lyon was momentarily perplexed. He didn’t know whether it was the day or night of the murder. “The time of the murder?”
    â€œFlying lessons.”
    â€œDay or night?”
    â€œNight. Ground school. You know, learning about radios, flight plans, all that.”
    â€œAnd during that day?”
    â€œRight here—home.”
    â€œWhere were the ground-school lessons given?”
    â€œAt the airport where Tom kept the plane.”
    â€œWith a net worth of a quarter of a million, at least Tom didn’t have any financial worries,” Bea said.
    â€œHa! A façade,” Karen Giles said. “Tom drew forty-two thousand dollars a year from the firm. Do a little arithmetic. This house costs eight hundred a month to carry, not including the maid, club dues and his airplane. We skirted on the verge of financial insolvency.”
    â€œAll that money …”
    â€œWhat money? Term insurance he couldn’t borrow on, his interest in the firm, property he couldn’t sell; we were more and more in debt every year. Then recently he’s been taking out notes with every bank in town. God only knows why, or how much the interest payments ran each month. He was always scheming, saying that he had a financial killing around the corner. Some big deal in the wind, but I never saw any of it.”
    â€œFamily money?” Lyon asked.
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding! Old man Giles was a custodian at the Breeland High School, and Tom’s mother was a bank teller. They’re both dead now, and Tom had to pay the funeral expenses.”
    â€œTom and I went to Greenfield Prep together, and then to Yale.”
    â€œSure. An only child who his family sacrificed for and who got good scholarships. I never said Tom wasn’t bright. Fooled you, didn’t he? Fooled me, too, when we married.”
    â€œHow’s that?” Lyon asked.
    â€œWe met in Washington when Tom was appointed to some sort of committee. One of those prestigious things with hardly any salary. I bought the ‘old family’ bit, too. At first he talked about the possibility of becoming a presidential aide or counsel, and then after Watergate, when those jobs weren’t so desirable, he wanted to return to Hartford with the proper wife: the Washington socialite with the proper voice, walk and looks—with vague references to my father the senator. That was all to clinch the partnership with the firm.”
    â€œWho was your father?”
    â€œFrank McMann. He was a senator, all right—sold hot dogs at the ball park for the Washington Senators. I was as phony as Tom—airline stewardess, a little drama school, and part-time cocktail waitress. I’m a reproduction, Wentworths, just like the house and Tom’s life. If you can’t have the real thing, manufacture it. That’s the compromising legal mind for you. And I was the compromise for the woman he didn’t get.”
    â€œAbout the divorce?”
    â€œScrew you,” she said sweetly, with a return of affectation.
    â€œYou know,” Lyon said to Bea when they were back in the car and driving away from the house on the green, “I would have liked the poor bastard better if I had known who he really was.”
    â€œYou knew him as he really was.”
    â€œI suppose.”
    â€œWell, you’ve got a number-one suspect in Mrs. Thomas Giles. Motive: the divorce and money. She flies, and her alibi is probably weak. Also, there’s more to that whole divorce bit. And did you notice another