New, Improved Murder

12

You can find Donna Harris’s address merely by looking in the phone book, which is what I did.

I drove over to the modern and modest brick apartment house, went to her mailbox-speaker, and announced myself.

“Boy, you really like surprising people, don’t you?”

“Can I come up?”

“I don’t look so hot and neither does my apartment.”

“That’s all right.”

I knew I should have called, but all of a sudden I had this real need to see her.

The buzzer sounded in the small lobby and I went on up.

Donna wore a blue T-shirt with the state university logo on it and designer jeans. I could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. I ached to touch her.

Her apartment looked as frazzled as she had the first night I’d met her. There was something endearingly sloppy about the paperbacks piled everywhere and the empty TV dinner trays that almost looked like decorator items and an occasional stray piece of clothing. The oblivion express apparently ran through here regularly.

“Now you know,” she said.

“Now I know what?”

“What a shitty housekeeper I am.”

“Gee, I don’t think I’m going to hate you for it.”

“My husband did. It was one of the reasons he divorced me.”

“What were the other reasons?”

“Nosy bastard, aren’t you?”

“I seem to remember you asking me a personal question the other night.”

“He divorced me for several reasons, but the big one was that he fell in love with the court stenographer.”

“You lost me.”

“He’s a lawyer.”

“I see.”

“And there was a court stenographer who was really quite beautiful and he fell in love with her. I don’t suppose he could help himself, the rotten sonofabitch.”

“I can tell you don’t hold anything against him.”

“Not a damn thing as far as I know.”

We both stood there laughing. She got the sense of what was about to happen at approximately the same time I did. Only she moved away from it, stopped it from happening.

She took me on a nervous tour of the place rather than face what had passed between us.

Not much to see, actually: three rooms decorated with posters of people who had been fashionable in the seventies — everybody from Dr. Wayne Dyer to Jerry Brown — but who were now just voices from the media grave.

The kitchen was big enough to take rumba lessons in, but that was about all. The sink was piled high with dishes left to dry in a drainer. On the counter were two boxes of doughnuts and an angel food cake. How did this woman stay so slim?

That was where it happened, where I reached out and touched her and brought her to me.

I couldn’t remember having a kiss like that since high school. My head felt as if it were going to come off. I felt her tender breasts against my chest and the sway of her shapely hips against mine.

Then she pushed me away. “This is not what I need right now, Dwyer. Sorry.”

She left me staggering and stammering there, so overcome by desire that all I could do was open my mouth and let spittle run down my jaw.

“God, Dwyer, do you look silly.”

“Shit,” I said, “shit.”

“Very articulate.”

“Listen, I—”

A shadow crossed her face and she smiled gently. “I want it, too, Dwyer, I really do. But not now, okay? God, after my divorce I used to hop in the sack with almost anybody who’d ask me, but I kinda lost sight of me in that process, you understand? I want this to mean something because I really kinda like you. Even if you are still in love with Jane.”

I started to respond to her last statement, but I still hadn’t found my tongue. Anyway, I didn’t know what I felt for Jane anymore. A lot of things — confusing things — maybe nothing more than duty. I wanted to help her out of her predicament with the police, I knew that. Beyond duty, though, I wasn’t sure anymore...

“Why don’t you ask me what I found out at the bank?” she said.

Finally I could feel desire slowly, slowly leave me. I said raspily, “Yeah, what?”

“Boy, that was good. ‘Yeah, what?’”

She made me laugh, and I loved it. “Okay, what did you find out at the bank?”

“That an older woman came in, handed over cash, and took a certified check.”

“Cash?”

“Cash.”

“This older woman—” Then I explained to her what the Branigans had told me about the older woman in the art gallery. Who was she? What did she have to do with all this? Was that who Carla Travers had been on the phone with when I was there?

She whistled softly. “Maybe that’s who I should start checking out.”

“The older woman?”

“Yes.”

“You may make it yet.”

“As a journalist?”

“Among other things.”

“If I put my arm on your shoulder and kiss you on the cheek, will you promise not to grab me?”

“I’m going to have to think it over.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

I thought it over. “Okay. But make it fast.”

“Here goes.”

She leaned over and kissed me. I wanted to grab her. I didn’t.

“That was sweet,” she said.

“If you say so.”

“What a jerk.”

During our little romance here I’d made up my mind to something. “I have to go,” I said.

“Where?”

“You keep trying to find something out about the older woman.”

“And you’re going to be doing what?”

I shrugged. “Nothing much,” I said, “just a little breaking and entering.”