Nightlife: A Novel

11

Hello? Mrs. Halloran?”

Eve Halloran wasn’t quite sure, but the young female voice made her think it just might be. “Yes?”

“This is Tanya Starling calling. I’m very sorry to bother you, but I wondered whether anyone had tried to get in touch with me since I left, or asked about me. There might have been a man named David?”

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Halloran. She spoke with barely suppressed excitement. “I haven’t heard from anyone like that. But a couple of days ago I did have a visit from a pair of police officers.” She stopped, waiting for a reaction.

“Police? Why? What did they want?”

Eve Halloran relished the suspense, loved holding back and tantalizing, but she could hardly withhold this information. It was too dramatic, too delicious. “There were two of them, a man and a woman. They came all the way from Portland, Oregon. They said—I don’t know how to break this to you—that a friend of yours has been the victim of a crime. It sounded as though he’s been murdered.”

“Who?”

“I think they said Dennis Poole.”

“Oh, my God. Dennis Poole?”

“That’s right.” Now Eve was feeling better. That last exclamation had carried the sort of emotion that she had been hoping for. What could that man Dennis Poole have been except Tanya’s lover? “I’m very, very sorry, honey. I hated to tell you this way, but there just wasn’t any other way.”

“I can’t believe it. How could he have been murdered? He was such a sweet man. He had no enemies. Was it some kind of robbery?” There were tears in her voice. Eve Halloran could hear the tension in the throat, the higher voice.

“They didn’t say, but I don’t think that was it,” said Eve Halloran. She allowed herself to give in to an ungenerous impulse. “That was what they wanted to talk with you about.” She felt a tiny bit of guilt about holding back the next part of what they’d said, but she was still too curious. “They seemed to think you might know something about what happened. They said you had left town just about the time when he was killed.”

“You mean they think I had something to do with Dennis’s death?”

There. That was said just as Eve Halloran had imagined it. She didn’t mind that she had to say the next part now. “Oh, no, dear. They said you were not a suspect. They definitely said that. I didn’t mean to imply anything of the kind. Stupid me. I should have said that right away, first thing.”

“I’m just overwhelmed. It never seems as though something like this can happen to anybody you know.”

Eve Halloran said eagerly, “Were you very close?”

“I just can’t believe it.”

That answer was unsatisfactory. In fact, it had been an evasion. “Was he your boyfriend?”

“No.”

Mrs. Halloran waited, but there was no more to the sentence. “Well, it’s very sad. I’m sorry.” Eve Halloran was growing tired of this conversation. She had built an expectation of a flood of intimate details, but she had been repeatedly disappointed.

Tanya said, “Did the police say how I was supposed to get in touch with them? Did they leave a number or anything?”

“I’ll see if I can find it.” Her voice was glum. This had been a disappointing conversation, and the fact that there was no further excuse to prolong it made her feel even more frustrated. She had taped the card to the wall right above the phone, but she stood leaning against the kitchen sink with her arms folded for thirty seconds. Let Tanya wait. She had become awfully demanding for a former tenant, calling up at night and expecting Eve to be her message board. After a time she sauntered back to the telephone. “Tanya? Still there?”

“Yes.”

“Have a pencil?”

“Yes.”

“The name is Detective Sergeant Catherine Hobbes. She’s on the homicide squad.” She added that part with a tinge of malice. She read off the various telephone numbers and the address of the police station, slowly and distinctly, to prolong the time of feeling important while Tanya silently copied down every word, probably with her hands shaking. When she had read everything on the card she said, “Got all that?”

“Yes, thanks. I’ll give her a call.”

Eve said, “Have you thought about hiring a lawyer?”

“No. I just heard about this.”

“Well, from what I hear, the time to think about lawyers isn’t after you’ve talked to the police, it’s before.” She was spiteful now.

“I’ll think about it.”

“You do that.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Halloran.”

“You’re welcome.” She was about to add a little jab about how she was going to tell the police that she had talked to her, but she realized that the line was dead.

Nancy Mills stood beside the row of telephones in Topanga Plaza, gazing at the food court. She looked down at the little spiral notebook she had bought at the stationery store to prepare for this call, and reread the phone numbers of the cop who was after her. The name disturbed her: she had never expected that it would be a woman.