Read A Game for the Living for Free Online

someone left her.
    â€œThe señorita’s keys,” Sauzas said suddenly. “See if you can find them, Enrique,” he said to the detective who was standing in the hall doorway.
    The detective went back to the bedroom, and Sauzas walked after him.
    Theodore looked into the painted clay bowl on the bookshelf where Lelia often dropped her keys. The bowl was quite empty.
    The keys were not to be found. The detectives looked even in the kitchen for them. The keys were not in any handbag, not in the pocket of any coat, not in any drawer. Theodore and Ramón were asked where she was in the habit of putting them, and both said in the clay bowl on the bookshelf.
    â€œShe was not very orderly,” Theodore said, “but we should be able to find them if they are here.” He was wondering why Ramón would have taken them. Or if somebody else could have taken them, someone who now had access to the apartment.
    â€œWhy did you take her keys, Ramón?” Sauzas asked abruptly.
    â€œI did not take them.”
    â€œWhat did you do with them?”
    Ramón stared back at him and lighted one of his little Carmencitas.
    Sauzas walked up and down the room thoughtfully. “They may still be here—or they may not.” He shrugged. “This would seem to eliminate the drainpipe as a means of exit. The murderer could have locked the door from the outside when he left. We shall have to look over your apartment, Ramón, but that can wait for a little while. Now—” He paused to light a fresh cigarette and looked at Ramón as he inhaled the smoke. “Would you say Señor Schiebelhut is a good friend of yours, Ramón?”
    This, Ramón refused to answer.
    â€œHow long have you known Señor Schiebelhut?”
    â€œThree years,” Theodore supplied.
    â€œAnd how long had you known Lelia?”
    â€œNearly four years,” Theodore said when Ramón did not answer.
    â€œAha!” said Sauzas. “So Ramón found her first.”
    â€œYes,” Theodore said. “But we soon all became friends.”
    â€œHow nice. No disagreements even though you were both her lovers?” Sauzas asked.
    â€œNo,” Theodore said.
    â€œIs that true, Ramón?”
    â€œYou know it is true, Ramón,” Theodore said.
    â€œLet him do the answering, Señor Schiebelhut.”
    Ramón seemed suddenly to relax. The policemen released him guardedly.
    â€œWhere did you meet her, Ramón?”
    â€œI met her at the Cathedral,” Ramón said.
    The policemen and the detectives suddenly laughed.
    â€œAt the Cathedral. You spoke to her? Why?”
    Ramón sat down in the chair and covered his face. “I spoke to her,” he mumbled into his hands.
    â€œAnd you became her lover at once?”
    â€œYes,” Ramón said, though Theodore knew this was not so. They had known each other for months before Ramón became her lover.
    â€œDid you give her money, Ramón? Money when you slept with her?”
    â€œNo,” Ramón said sullenly through his hands.
    â€œDid you give her money, Señor Schiebelhut?” Sauzas asked.
    â€œI gave her many presents. I did not give her money.”
    â€œAnd how did you meet her?”
    â€œI met her—by accident. One Sunday in Chapultepec Park.” The scene flashed before his eyes, Lelia sitting on the stone bench sketching under the huge ahuehuete trees and glancing up at him as he strolled by, glancing up with the same preoccupied smile she might have given a charro on horseback, a peasant in sandals, a stray dog. Theodore had said: “It’s a beautiful day for sketching.” Such a common place beginning, but sentimentally he remembered it.
    â€œAnd then?” Sauzas prompted.
    â€œThen I got to know her,” Theodore replied.
    More smiles and smirks.
    Someone was knocking on the door.
    â€œDid you ask her to marry you, Señor