Lively Game of Death by Marvin Kaye Page A

seconds. Then she nodded her head. “All right, assuming Goetz had the gun out, our second hypothesis—”
    I interrupted to ask why she had opted in favor of the second possibility, but she gestured impatiently, and I turned it off again.
    “Our second hypothesis, then, is that Goetz had the gun out for—what? Self-protection? Probably. Then we have to guess that he’d been threatened earlier, maybe even the same day. Anyway, he must have expected some kind of trouble to take place last night, or ...”
    She paused. Then a startled look crossed her face. She looked up at me again. “Do you notice,” she asked, “anything wrong? Right now?”
    I’ve heard of understatements, but that was the first time I’d ever been asked an underquestion. “Anything wrong?” I snapped. “Where do you want me to start, for chrissake? With Goetz with a bullet in his middle in the other room? Or the fact that we’re breaking the law by not notifying the law ... ? Or am I supposed to pick holes in your reasoning when I can’t follow it worth a damn?”
    For once, Hilary treated me like some kind of vaguely human species. “Look, you’ll just have to be patient with me,” she explained. “This is just more than I ever expected, getting two cases in one day. Or maybe it’s one, we’ll see. But, anyway, here I am on the spot with the chance to clear up a crime and—well ...” She shrugged, her candor—never a rich lode—petering out. “Damn it, I’m no good at apologies. Just let me muddle through this in my own way, all right?”
    It wasn’t all right, of course, but she managed some kind of a smile which enticed me into agreeing, at least for the time being. Then—because she hated asking for permission to do anything—Hilary snapped back to her old self.
    “All right,” she stated crisply, “since you’re too slow to notice, I’ll tell you what’s wrong—we’re alone. Why is the showroom empty?”
    “Because, in case you forgot, Goetz is dead.”
    “And what about his salesman?”
    That was what had been bothering me subliminally for the past several minutes! Where was Harry Whelan, the crack entertainer-cum-demonstrator who had once worked for Trim-Tram and was now a salesman for Goetz Sales? According to Scott Miranda, he’d talked with Whelan on the telephone only the night before, when he’d pumped him on particulars of the Goetz racer knock-off.
    “You’d better scout around,” Hilary advised me, “and see whether you can find him somewhere in the building.”
    “I’d better scout around? What are you going to be doing?”
    Hilary counted to herself for a few seconds. “In case it slipped your little mind, you are the employee and I give the orders. It’s none of your damn business, but I’m going to wait here for Scott. And make some charts, as long as I’m waiting. I want to clear up the spy problem fast, so I can—”
    “What makes you think the two situations are different?” I interrupted. “Tom Lasker—”
    “I already admitted that possibility. Since I have no hard-and-fast proof of when Goetz was shot, I can’t totally ignore the possibility that Lasker rushed over here and squelched him, to protect himself from being identified as the Trim-Tram spy.”
    “Then you think he is the spy.”
    “Very likely. But I want to work out all the details before I accuse him in front of Scott.”
    I walked slowly out of the room, thinking it over. At the door, I stopped before closing it behind me. “What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.
    “Nothing elaborate,” Hilary instructed. “Just step across the hall and check with the neighboring firms. See whether they know anything about visitors to Goetz Sales. Ask if they know where Whelan is. Anything you think they can tell us that may be important.”
    “Wait a minute,” I objected. “How the hell am I going to get into other showrooms when I’m wearing an exhibitor’s badge?”
    “You’ll figure something,” she