Monkey on a Chain Read Online Free Page A

time for some questions. “How much do you know about your father’s business?” I asked.
    “The dealership? Everything. I was his secretary. At least part-time, summers and on weekends.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “There isn’t much to tell. He had a Jaguar dealership, but we bought and sold other cars, too. Mercedes and BMWs and the ones we took in trade. We never kept the American or Japanese models, though. They went to the auction. Dad didn’t like them.”
    “Was it a good business? Profitable?”
    She nodded. “I suppose we turned between four and five hundred cars a year, counting the trade-ins. We did all right.”
    “Did you keep the books?”
    “I saw them, of course. Mrs. Walters actually kept them. I only worked part-time, and we needed someone permanent for the books.”
    “But you had full access to them?”
    She nodded.
    “How was the business going? At the end, I mean.”
    “There wasn’t any change. You’re asking if he was in financial trouble, aren’t you? Well, he wasn’t! We netted about two hundred thousand a year, before taxes. We owned the land, too, so there wasn’t any rent to pay. We were doing very well.”
    “Was all of the income from sales?”
    “Yes. All of it.”
    “And there was only the one set of books? He didn’t keep anything off the books?”
    She looked at me scornfully. “Of course not. I thought you were his friend!”
    “I’m trying to find a reason for someone to kill him, April,” I said. “Money’s the oldest reason there is. Or one of the oldest.”
    “There was nothing like that. Everything was aboveboard. Very simple. ‘Buy cars, sell cars,’ he used to say.”
    “You’re sure? Would you know if anything funny was going on?”
    “I was studying business,” she said indignantly. “Of course I would have known!” She lowered her eyes. “I…I was hoping that…”
    “You wanted to take over the business,” I finished for her. She nodded.
    “Did you know his lawyer?”
    “Mr. Pearson. I know him.”
    “When did Toker see him last?”
    “A month or so before…before…”
    “Okay.” I let it slide. “What about the correspondence? Did he ever type his own letters?”
    “No. I did all that.”
    “Visitors, then. Did he make any calls that he was secretive about? That he didn’t want you to know about?”
    She cleared her throat. “No. Not to…No.” She wasn’t meeting my eyes.
    “Tell me, damn it.”
    She blushed. “Just to women,” she said.
    “Talk about the women, then,” I said.
    She hesitated. “There weren’t many…girlfriends.…”
    “Women from the office? He was rich. Didn’t any of them ever make a play for him?”
    “Never. Well, maybe some tried, but he wasn’t interested. He said…”
    “What?”
    She blushed again. “He said you don’t shit where you eat.”
    I let that settle for a minute, then asked, “What about other women? Outsiders?”
    “Well…maybe Mrs. Stillwell. Our neighbor. She and I were pretty good friends when I was fourteen or fifteen. She used to ask me about him. And one day she invited us for dinner. It was really nice. She’d worked hard on it. She had candles and everything. After dinner, they sent me home. I was watching a movie when he came in a couple hours later. He was kind of drunk and went right to bed. And she never asked us back again.”
    I stared at her. “You never found out what happened?”
    She shook her head.
    “God damn it, April, he wasn’t gay! There must have been women!”
    “There were. Always different women. I hardly ever saw them, though. He would just go out for the night, after I was old enough to stay alone. He never introduced me to any of them. When I was little, I thought he was ashamed of me. But then I realized it was just that they didn’t matter.”
    I finally saw what she was trying to say. “They were prostitutes?”
    She nodded and glanced up at my face. “I think so.”
    “No one else? Only prostitutes?”
    “Yes. And