"And the smaller?"
"Ten percent," Remo said. "Probably his fee for posting the bail."
"And the words?"
Remo read them, then said, "He got his instructions from a man's voice over the phone. This guy didn't know who went for the bail."
"Perhaps he did," Chiun said, "and he was not supposed to."
"And that's why he was killed?"
"A possibility."
"A good one," Remo admitted grudgingly. "You may out-Holmes Holmes yet, Chiun."
"I do not know this Holmes you refer to, but that is no matter. It is a reasonable assumption that this man discovered who had supplied the bail, and either that information or what he tried to do with it got him killed."
"Blackmail?"
"A possibility."
"Then whoever killed the kid killed him as well," Remo said, quickly adding, "I'm not assuming, mind you."
"No, simply stating another possibility," Chiun said.
"Right," Remo said. "I guess we might as well take a look around… see if we can find anything helpful."
Remo started going through the dead man's desk while Chiun simply strolled about the room, looking at nothing but seeing everything.
Remo finally found something useful in the top drawer of a file cabinet, the only drawer that wasn't empty.
"This guy wasn't exactly overburdened with cases," he said, pulling out the case files. Sifting through them, he came up with one on Billy Martin.
"A file," he said.
"Containing what?"
He opened it and found some newspaper clippings and one sheet of paper. On the paper was what appeared to be the kid's home address.
"This must be the scene of the crime," Remo said, holding the paper up.
"The child's address," Chiun said. Every time he called the Martin kid a "child," Remo actually winced.
"Yeah, the kid's address," he said, dropping the folder on the desk. "I guess we'd better try there next."
He closed the folder and then replaced it in the drawer.
"After we leave, I'll find a pay phone…." Remo started to say, but then he had second thoughts.
"Yes?" Chiun asked, giving him an arched eyebrow.
"If we call the cops, they'll be looking for us because Palmer knows we came here. We'll have to avoid that as long as possible."
"We will go directly to the child's house," Chiun said. "Perhaps there we can find something that will help me avenge his untimely death and prevent the deaths of other children."
Remo didn't quite agree with Chiun's reasoning, but at least they agreed on what their next move should be.
CHAPTER FOUR
Using a map supplied by the rental agency, Remo finally located the neighborhood where the kid's house was. Remo was surprised because he was expecting a slum. What he found was a better-than-middle-class section of town and a nice, neat, expensive house with an equally expensive car in the driveway.
"Not what I expected," he said, stopping the car behind the expensive model.
"Do not expect anything, and you will never be disappointed," Chiun said.
"Right," Remo said. "Let's take a look."
As they started up the walk of the house, a neighbor came out of the house next door and stared at them. The neighbor was a small man with a hangdog look on his face, who looked to be in his mid-fifties. Remo just knew that there was an overbearing, money-grubbing wife in the house somewhere.
"Hello," Remo said.
"Hello. If you're looking for the people who live in that house, you're not going to find them."
At least we don't have to try and get him to talk, Remo thought.
"Oh? Why is that?"
"They're dead."
"Dead? How did that happen?"
"Don't you read the papers?"
"We're from out of town," Remo said.
The man looked past Remo at Chiun and then confided, "I would have guessed that about him."
"You're very observant."
"That's what everyone tells me."
"You probably know more about what happened here than I could have found out by reading the papers anyway."
"You're right."
"So what happened?"