I was still studying this monstrosity, with some of the same awe a little boy feels at the sight of his first potato bug, when the footsteps sounded in the hall. The woman who came in was in her early thirties, dressed in a black suede skirt and jacket, a white frilly blouse, and knee-high black boots. I could understand why some men would find her seductive. She was tall and leggy and on the regal side. Coal-black hair, eyes like black olives, pale skin, lipstick the color of blood. Sexy as hell, all right, if you liked your women looking as though they’d just crawled out of a coffin after a hard night of biting necks. She didn’t do much of anything for me, which was a good thing for several reasons. One of them being that I never did like having my neck bitten.
She came forward with her hand extended and a smile on her bright crimson mouth. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said as we clasped hands. Hers was soft, almost silky, and tipped by blunt nails stained the same crimson color as her mouth; the pressure of her fingers was somehow intimate, sensual. “I was attending to some personal business.”
“Quite all right, Mrs. Purcell.”
“I’m afraid I was a bit snappish on the phone last night and I’d like to apologize.”
“Apology accepted.” Evidently she had decided to be civil and cooperative—a point in her favor.
“It’s just that everything has been such a strain the past six months. My husband’s accident, the period of readjustment, and now the terrible thing that happened to Leonard … I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Would you like some coffee? Tea?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
“Shall we sit down, then?”
We sat on the weird-looking furniture. She got what looked to be a couch; I got a chair that appeared to have been made out of a bunch of twisted-up coat hangers and had a funny off-color orange cushion that seemed to massage my rear end as I lowered into it, as if it were something sentient and perverted bent on playing grab-ass. I almost came up out of the thing in reaction. As it was I managed to curb my imagination and stay put—but I sat gingerly, with no squirming around. I did not want to give the chair any ideas.
Mrs. Purcell crossed one leg over the other. They were nice legs, and she was letting me see plenty of them under the short hem of the skirt. I wondered if the free show was deliberate—if she just naturally came on to every man she encountered—or if she just didn’t give a damn.
She said, “I suppose it’s that call Tom Washburn received?”
“Ma’am?”
“The reason he believes Kenneth was murdered. The call he took that was meant for Leonard.”
“How did you know about the call?”
“The police told me when they were here—the San Francisco police, last week. He was a crank, of course. The caller.”
“Was he? Why are you so sure?”
“If he did know something … sinister about Kenneth’s death—and I don’t believe that for a minute—why would he have waited six months to contact Leonard?”
That was the sticking point, all right. But I said, “He might have had his reasons.”
“What reasons, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Purcell.”
“Well,” she said, and waved a hand as if to wave away the entire issue. She probed in the slash pocket of her skirt, drawing the hem even higher on her thighs, and came out with a package of cigarettes and a platinum-and-gold lighter. I watched her light up and blow smoke off to one side. Marlene Dietrich, I thought. She didn’t smoke a cigarette; she made love to it.
I waited, not saying anything, to see what she would do with the conversation. Pretty soon she said, “Last night you mentioned some details you wanted to clear up. What are they?”
“They have to do with the night your husband died.”
“Yes?”
“According to the newspaper accounts, he disappeared at around nine-thirty—”
“Approximately, yes. That was the last any of us saw him.”
“Who saw him then?”
“Lina. He went out through the kitchen.”
I said, “Who would Lina be?”
“My housekeeper. She let you in.”
“Did your husband go out alone or with someone?”
“Alone.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Not long before that. In his hobby room.”
“May I ask what you talked about?”
“His drinking,” she said. “He’d had several Scotches and he was rather drunk. He had a tendency to make a spectacle of himself when he drank too much, so I—”