Chance

CHAPTER 26

On the phone Susan's voice had the same quality of promise that it had in person.

"I talked to a policeman from Las Vegas on the phone. He wanted to know if you were with me the night before I left."

"Yeah. They found Shirley Ventura dead with one of my business cards near her."

"My God! I told them the truth on the assumption that had you wished otherwise, you'd have gotten to me first."

"Honesty is the best policy," I said.

"Usually," Susan said.

"When are you coming home?"

"Why is it," I said, "that the simplest question, about the most ordinary subject, when you ask it comes freighted with the hint of God knows what excitement?"

"Perhaps it has to do with the auditor, more than the utterer."

"Utterer?"

"I have a Ph.D.," Susan said.

"Of course you do," I said.

"You think I'm projecting?"

"Yes. All I said was, "When are you coming home?" "And the possibilities I hear implied are me not you."

"Certainly. When are you coming home?"

"Well, as of yesterday I'm on my own. Julius paid me off."

"So now you have no client."

"True."

"But…?"

"Well, Julius blames Anthony for Shirley's death and plans to kill him. And Marty Anaheim's in town, and may want to kill Anthony. Might want to kill Bibi too."

"Bibi?"

"Anaheim's wife; she's here with Anthony."

"Oh my."

"Yeah. And there's something else going on, in the background, that I don't quite get."

"Do you think Anthony killed his wife?"

"Killing was pretty brutal. Raped and strangled by hand, left naked with no ID in a vacant lot."

"And you don't think Anthony's capable of that?"

"Doesn't seem his style."

"Still it sounds like a crime of anger. Rape and manual strangulation."

"Or a crime made to look like that."

"By whom?"

"Anytime there's a brutal crime and Marty Anaheim is around, it's worth thinking he might have done it."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"But you don't want to come home not knowing?"

"No."

"And you wouldn't want to abandon the charmingly named Bibi to her fate."

"No."

"Of course not," Susan said.

"Is Hawk willing to stay on?"

"I don't know," I said.

"I hope he will. I feel better when he's with you."

"Hell," I said, "so do I."

"But you'll stay whether he stays or not."

"Yes."

"So, when are you coming home?"

"I miss you," I said.

"I'll come home as soon as I can."

"Good," Susan said, and there was that sound in her voice again.

"Because I intend to boff your brains out when you arrive."

"Sure, I'm projecting," I said.