I said, “Thanks for the offer, Mrs. Purcell, but I’ve made other plans for the evening.”
“Alicia,” she said. “You’re sure you couldn’t break them?”
“Positive. My fiancée wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, I see. Perhaps another time, then.”
“If it becomes necessary. I do have a few questions I could ask you now, though, since you’re eager to help.”
There was a pause. I imagined her gritting her teeth, holding herself in check—a nice little fantasy image, true or not. But she had left herself wide open for this and there wasn’t any way for her to refuse me without making herself look bad.
When she came to the same conclusion she said, “Go right ahead.”
“Do you know a man named Danny Martinez?”
“Who?”
“Danny Martinez. A former deliveryman for Cabrillo Market.”
“Hardly. Lina takes care of deliveries. Why are you asking me about a deliveryman?”
“He was at your house the night of the party. He made a delivery at about the time your husband disappeared.”
“Yes?”
“He’s the man who contacted Leonard two weeks ago. The man who claimed your husband was murdered.”
“I see. Have you talked to him, then?”
“Not yet. He disappeared a couple of weeks ago.”
“Disappeared?”
“Packed up his belongings and left the area—probably for Mexico. The authorities are looking for him now.”
“You’ve told the police about him?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t have?”
“No, of course not. Have you uncovered any other proof Kenneth was murdered?”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“I still find the idea incredible. If it’s true, I can’t imagine who could have done it.”
“I’m working on that, too.”
“Do you suspect someone?”
“No one specifically. Not just yet.”
“Do you think the same person murdered Leonard?”
“That’s the way it looks.”
“Will you let me know if you find out anything else? I’m very concerned about this, naturally.”
“Naturally. You’ll be one of the first to know.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Good night.”
“Good night, Mrs. Purcell.”
I put the handset down, thinking, Brrr! Hot stuff, hell; underneath that sexy exterior she’s a chilly piece of goods. Going to bed with her would be like going to bed with a block of ice. You’d wake up in the morning with some of your parts frozen solid.
I took off my suit and put on my old chenille bathrobe, the one Kerry hated and was always threatening to throw out—grounds for break-up of our relationship if she did. A Bud Light and a 1937 issue of Strange Detective Mysteries helped me unwind. Paul Ernst’s “Madame Murder—and the Corpse Brigade” made me hungry, for some reason; at least my stomach was growling when I finished it. There was some chicken left over from last night. Most of it, in fact, since Kerry had refused to eat more than one wing, saying, “I hate burnt chicken.” Well, it wasn’t burnt, not too badly anyhow. All you had to do was scrape off the black crap here and there and the rest of it went down just fine. I gobbled four pieces and some cold zucchini-with-parmesan, opened another beer, and returned to the living room and Strange Detective Mysteries.
The damn telephone rang again just as I was entering the bang-up finale of “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake” by Norbert Davis.
Grumbling, I put the magazine down and went to answer it. And this time it wasn’t anybody I wanted to talk to—the last person I wanted to talk to, as a matter of fact. It was the Reverend Raymond P. Dunston, and the first thing he said was, “I would like to speak to my wife. Please put her on the line.”
I swallowed the first two words that came to me and held my tongue and my temper for a good ten seconds. When I felt I could speak in a rational and reasonable tone I said, “In the first place, Dunston, you don’t have a wife; you have an ex-wife. And in the second place, she isn’t here.”
“I called her apartment,” he said. “She isn’t there. She isn’t working late at her office, either.”
“She’s gone out to dinner with a friend.”
“What friend?”
“A lady friend.”
“What is the friend’s name?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Is she coming there afterward?”
She wasn’t, but I said, “Well? What if she is?”
“ ‘Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?’ ” he said. “ ‘Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? So he that goeth in to his neighbor’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.’ Proverbs, six: twenty-seven through twenty-nine.”