Then I sat bolt upright, the ice pack tumbling to the floor, as something else occurred to me. If Ryan and Angus MacDonald had been more than friends, if he had been the person that Elizabeth MacDonald was going to cite as the co-respondent in the divorce case, then there was a powerful motive for stopping Paddy Riley from presenting evidence. J.P. MacDonald, the puritanical patriarch, might forgive his son a dalliance with a young woman, but he would never forgive what he perceived to be a terrible sin. He could easily have cut Angus off without a penny.
I took this further: all three of them then had a motive. Angus, to prevent his disinheritance; old J.P. to prevent the shame and scandal from tarnishing the family name; and Ryan himself, who had just stated to me that a scandal like this could ruin his new play.
I went to my purse and got out the little black book. There was no mention of Angus, nor, it seemed, of J.P. But there was that cryptic message about RO and LC at O'Connor's. I had no idea who LC might be, or how he was concerned with the case, but I now had a clear line of inquiry ahead of me. I must take every opportunity to probe into the movements of Ryan O'Hare and to uncover what might have happened that night at O'Connor's saloon.
And so I attempted to turn myself into a social butterfly. I urged Sid and Gus to come with me to O'Connor's every evening. How could I hope to become a writer, I said, if I didn't have a chance to observe life? My upbringing in Ireland had been so sheltered that I knew nothing about human relationships at all. They were amused and, like all good parents, indulged me. So we became regulars at the saloon. Sid and Gus chatted with friends while I sat listening in to conversations, observing people around me. Ryan didn't show up for four infuriating days in a row. I hoped he'd complete his play quickly and come back into society. If not, I wasn't sure how I was going to get in touch with him. I could hardly go to call on him in his hotel room—that would be too forward, even for Greenwich Village.
In the meantime, I made it my business to chat to his friends. This was not easy, given the noise level at O'Connor's most evenings and the fact that people were always coming and going. Every time I asked about Ryan, the reaction was the same—”Oh, well, you know, Ryan is Ryan. One of a kind.”
Ryan was fun, Ryan was unreliable and Ryan thought of nobody but himself. Nobody suggested that Ryan might be dangerous.
Then, one night, Lennie came in, beaming broadly. “Drinks all around,” he called to the bartender. “I've just sold a damned great painting. I'm fifty bucks richer!
Everyone clustered around him, congratulating, slapping him on the back and making sure they were included in the free drinks. Only Sid and Gus didn't rise from their table. “Fifty dollars for a genuine Lennie Coleman! Cheap at the price,” Sid said, with sweet sarcasm, “What did you do, Lennie, put a gun to the poor soul's head and force him to buy it?”
“It wasn't a he, it was a she, if you want to know. Her husband is making a fortune in steamships and she wants to set herself up as a patroness of the arts.”
This produced an instant reaction, with ten other starving artists wanting to know her name and address. Myself, I sat lost in thought. I had just heard his surname for the first time. It had never crossed my mind before that this regular at O'Connor's was an L.C.
Luck was in my corner that night. Lennie, tired of having to buy drinks for an ever-increasing circle of admirers, came to sit with Sid, Gus and me.
“Gee, but it's tiring being famous,” he said. “I don't know how Ryan handles it.”
“He laps it up,” Gus said. “Loves every second of it. Haven't you ever noticed—if he's not the center of attention, he sulks?”
Lennie chuckled. “I hope to God this play he's working on is good. You know how he hates failure. He's unbearable when things go wrong.”
“He's working hard, which is a good sign,” Sid said. “Earlier in the summer he was making flippant remarks about getting the cast to ad-lib the last act and create thenown ending.”
“So what are you going to do with the fifty dollars, Lennie?” I asked.
“Live a little longer, I hope,” he said, laughing. “Buy more paints. Pay the rent on my studio for a couple more months. Paint another damned painting to sell.” He seemed to notice me for the first time. “How would you like to be painted, Molly?”
“Me?” I was thrown off-guard.
“Sure.” Lennie was smiling at me. “I've got a yen to do more life studies. You'd make a perfect model with all that red hair.”
I realized this was my opportunity, the chance to chat, one-on-one, with Lennie Coleman in his studio. If I couldn't unearth any useful facts during long painting sessions, then I wasn't much of an investigator.