Two Much!

53

The next four days were lived on tiptoe, but by God not a single egg got broken. The police seemed to have swallowed my Volpinex-as-murderer playlet, and lacking a denial from Volpinex himself there was nothing to jar their sweet certainty. Bart’s death certificate was as legitimate as the coroner’s office could make it; he had been such stuff as dreams are made on, and his little life was rounded with a sleep, as he rested, an unidentifiable mound of ashes, in a brass urn in the Kerner family vault, beside his bride.

The cat’s cradle of stories I’d told here and there held up very well, mostly because it was never really tested. No cop ever talked to Gloria or Ralph or Doris or Joe Gold, and why should they? My ex-wife Lydia was cooled out with the same coincidence gambit that had worked with Doris, and everybody else went on believing the various fantasies and half-truths I’d already delivered. With no arrests or other postmurder development, the news media lost interest in the BIZARRE SLAYING within two days, and that also helped.

Gloria continued to run Those Wonderful Folks, with no assistance from me other than erratic phone calls; I did not drop by my office, any more than I visited my former apartment. Ralph, based on the evidence of my few calls to him, continued to drink and mope and feel sorry for himself, with not the slightest thought for the outside world. As for Candy, the only loose end left to be tied, I had a story to tell her, of course, but she was unavailable to listen to it. She had dropped, as the saying goes, from the face of the earth, and could stay dropped forever for all of me.

Which left Liz. For a day or two she remained indignant and enraged with the altered contract, but by the weekend she had calmed down considerably and seemed prepared to accept the inevitable, saying to me, “What the hell, I kind of like you anyway. I could have done worse.”

“You have,” I told her. “Frequently. But that’s all over now.” And we went for another romp on her big bed.