Murder in the Wings

7

“You want some?”

Donna Harris had not only let me in, she’d been happy to see me. She’d put Ad World to bed earlier in the evening and was celebrating. Now we were in bed, finished with our lovemaking, watching a John Hodiak mystery on her small Sears black-and-white, and she was offering me some Dannon yogurt.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Yogurt’s good for you.” Even in the darkness her hair was very red and she was very pretty.

“Not your kind,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What’s in there.”

“What’s in there?”

“Now I know I’ve got you. Whenever you turn my statement into your question, you’re doing some number. So what’s in there?”

“I just put in a marshmallow.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

“Donna, c’mon.”

“You c’mon, Dwyer. I offer you some yogurt and I get the third degree. God.”

“So what else did you add besides the marshmallow?”

She sighed, turned around, and faced the TV. It was ghosty again. When we bought the thing the sales lady said that this ultracheapo model sometimes had reception problems in apartment houses due to all the steel in the building framework. We’d taken it as a sales pitch, but it wasn’t one. If an ant so much as crawled across the floor the TV set started ghosting out.

“Is that John Hodiak or Betty Hutton?”

“Funny,” she said, still pissed.

I leaned over and kissed her. “You really mad?”

“Yes.”

“Honey, I’ve got to watch my waistline. You know that.” It was true. Fat guys didn’t get many acting jobs in commercials. “I mean, you can get away with eating what you like, but I can’t.”

She looked at me and sighed and then kissed me on the cheek. “You’re right, Dwyer. I was being selfish. You know how some people hate to drink alone? I guess I hate to pig out alone.”

“Right. So now will you tell me what you put in there?”

She held it up to the black-and-white glow of the TV set as if we could see into the yogurt with our X-ray vision.

“Well, the marshmallow like I said, and it really was tiny. Then some carob-covered raisins. But just a few.”

“Right.”

“And then about six Hershey’s kisses I had lying around in the cupboard.”

“How many is ‘about’ six.”

“Boy, Dwyer, what an asshole.”

“How many?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe a dozen, I guess.”

“A dozen. God.” Her metabolism was phenomenal. She ate pancakes for breakfast, Big Macs for lunch, and Red Lobster specials for dinner and never gained a pound. She worked out three times a week, but not as if she were training to take on the heavyweight champ. I envied her, especially when, as now, we were watching TV and she had a bed full of junk food boxes (exactly what is a “Whanger,” anyway?) and was eating enough to feed all the starving orphans in Korea. All I got was my little glass of Pepsi Free.

She finished the yogurt, looking at me occasionally with a demonic gleam in her eyes.

“What’re you doing?” she said twenty minutes later.

“Just writing some things down on a clipboard.”

“What things?”

“About the case.”

“Wade’s case? You going to let me see?”

“I guess.”

She had one of those tiny lights that clip on to a book to read in bed. She hooked it on the clipboard and read.

“Wow,” she said, “we’ve got some real leads here.”

I paid special notice to the “we.”

“Nothing real strong, unfortunately.”

“The ex-convict named Lockhart talks his way into Reeves’s office, obviously looking for something. Keech tries to slap Reeves a few days ago. Evelyn could have known that Reeves was stepping out on her. Anne Stewart was up in Reeves’s office tonight. You don’t think they’re real strong? You’re nuts, Dwyer.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I’m nuts.”

“I don’t have anything to do tomorrow — and you have the day off — so I’ll prove it to you,” she said.

“Great.”

“I can tell you’re looking forward to this.”

She leaned over and kissed me. The kiss got a lot more serious than I thought it would, but it didn’t go anyplace. For the next few minutes we went through our nighttime ritual. I always muttered a few prayers under my breath, and so did she, except she always muttered louder than I did. She must have known what I was doing, and I sure knew what she was doing, but we never once discussed it. Adults with any pretense of hipness should never admit that they pray.

I was asleep in three-and-a- half minutes.

The phone was on my side. I got it.

“Hello,” I said.

There was traffic noise in the background. He was obviously calling from an outdoor phone.

“Wade, I know it’s you.”

Nothing.

“Wade, you really should turn yourself in. You really should.”

I felt Donna press against my back. Muzzily, she said, “Let me talk to him, hon.” I handed her the phone. “Stephen, listen, please. We love you very much and we’re very afraid of what might happen if you don’t turn yourself in. Stephen? Do you understand?”

She held the phone out so we could both hear anything he said. What he said was nothing, at least for a long time. Then, “I really fucked it up good this time, didn’t I?”

No doubt about it. It was Stephen Wade. Then he hung up.

Five minutes later I was wide awake. Donna, next to me in the darkness, had started to cry softly. “We’re going to find out who really killed him, Dwyer. The first goddamn thing tomorrow that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

She was serious, too.