Free The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald Page A

money.
    So I was standing near the door of the big Continental when the guard held it open for the widow. She started to duck into the car and then stopped and faced me. I saw the green tilted glint through the veil.
    "You heard?" she asked in a rusty voice.
    She was too tough to play games with. "Yes, I heard."
    "Come out to the penthouse, please."
    "Right away?"
    She looked at a diamond watch. "Noon?"
    "Fine."
    Away she went, small against the back-seat upholstery.

Seven
    THE YOUNG security types in the small foyer of Tower Alpha at Dias del Sol wore black armbands, and I guessed it was one of the services that went with a duplex penthouse. Or, I suppose, it could have been an expression of a genuine grief. Billy was a likable man, easy to work for and generous.
    Millis opened the door as soon as I pressed the bell. She had changed to baggy white cotton slacks and an orange cotton shirt with long full sleeves. She had tied her hair back with a piece of orange yarn. She was barefoot.
    She murmured a greeting, bolted the door and led the way back through the long living room with the wide glass expanse overlooking the sea, a room done in quiet blues and grays. I followed her down a short broad corridor into a small room which was evidently her dressing room.
    There was a dressing table with a tapestried bench and a mirror encircled by frosted bulbs. There was a French desk in dark wood with a maroon leather desk set. There was a love seat and two chairs, two walls of sliding doors which evidently concealed her wardrobe and an arched entrance into a much larger room with a queensize pedestal bed.
    She gestured vaguely toward the love seat. I lowered myself into it carefully. It looked fragile. There were no windows. The room was shadowed. The only light was that which shone through the arched entrance from the bedroom.
    She turned the desk chair around and sat, hunching her shoulders and squeezing her eyes shut in a strange grimace.
    "This isn't easy for me," she said.
    "I'm sorry about Billy."
    "He was fond of you. And I resented that, because I didn't want anybody to have any part of him, any part of his attention."
    "I didn't know you cared. That much."
    Her wistful smile was upside down. "Neither did I. I didn't at first. I thought I was going to marry Billy because I was looking for a safe haven. I thought I was going to marry him because it would mean an end to scuffling. But in the end I married him because I loved him. He made me feel loved. Nobody else ever did that. Wanted and loved."
    "He was very proud of you."
    She frowned. "So I had to keep living up to what he thought I was. Can that make you a better person, McGee?"
    "Could happen. If you get into the habit."
    "I guess. Maybe. Anyway I've been awake since Frank Payne phoned me at five and told me somebody had killed Billy. I've been awake and thinking. There's a pattern to this. It's a very ugly pattern. Plus too many guesses."
    "I'm not following you."
    "I don't expect you to. Not without knowing more. So I have to tell you more. I don't like telling this to anybody. Did you ever hear of Enelio Fortez?"
    It took a deep dip into memory. "Is he the one… about eight years ago… they found pieces of him all over Greater Miami?"
    "Pieces of Nelly as reminders to the others to be careful. They planted the pieces near drug distribution centers. I'd been his live-in chum for three years when they killed him. Nelly got too greedy. It happens to people. He thought he could get away with it, but he couldn't. He just wasn't bright enough. I moved in with him just before I turned twenty. A big fun life. Lots of money, clothes, champagne, flights to Vegas and the islands. A very nice apartment. I heard later that some of them wanted to waste me too, just in case I'd been part of it. But a man named Arturo Jornalero said he would vouch for me. And I moved in with Art. Not full-time, like Nelly. Art has a wife and kids. But he's more important than Nelly could ever have