Walking Shadow

CHAPTER 10

Deirdre's chest was no less aggressive than it had been at the reception, and neither was she.

"Alone at last," she said when she sat down.

She might have been twenty-five, with wide blue eyes, and a lot of auburn hair, worn big. Her dark green spandex health club gear was iridescent. An oversized gray sweatshirt reached nearly to her knees. It had a New York Giants logo on the front.

"Craig Sampson's loss is our gain," I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said.

"I don't mean to be frivolous about something so awful."

"I doubt that it makes much difference to Sampson," I said.

"What can you tell me about him?"

"He was fun," Deirdre said.

"He'd been around, you know, and he knew the score."

"Which was what?"

"Excuse me?"

"The score? What was it?"

"Oh, you know what I mean. He was older. He knew the whole downtown theater scene in New York. He'd done cruise ships and dinner theaters. He was good to talk to about the business."

"He ever in any trouble you know of?"

"Craig? No. He was too smart. He kept his nose clean and his mouth shut and went about his business."

"Love life?"

"He wasn't gay. I'm pretty sure. In the theater it's not that big a deal, you know? And besides, I could tell. He was straight."

"Did he have a girlfriend?"

"Nobody in the company. I don't know why. He had plenty of chances, but he didn't seem interested."

"Outside the company?"

Deirdre was sitting sideways on the chair with her legs tucked under her. It was hard to figure how she'd achieved that position, but it made her look good, so I assumed it wasn't accidental.

"Oh, I don't know," she said.

"Most of us don't have much life outside the company. You know? I mean Port City… really!"

"Did he go away much? Boston? New York?"

"Not that I can remember. Most of us are working most of the time. He'd go to New York a couple times when the theater was dark, make a commercial, he said."

"What commercials?"

"I don't know. I never watch television. And I don't ever want to do commercials. Craig said it covered expenses."

"He have an agent?"

"I don't know."

"Management of any kind?"

"I don't know."

"How'd he get the commercials?"

"I don't know. It wasn't a big deal. He'd go away occasionally and come back and say he'd made a commercial. It's not cool to ask a lot of stuff about things like that."

"Except when I do it," I said.

"Oh, anything you do is cool," Deirdre said.

"It's a gift," I said.

She grinned at me, full of herself, pleased with her body, enjoying her sexiness, glad about her vocation, optimistic about the future, younger than a new Beaujolais.

"So what do you think? You got any clues yet?"

"Not yet."

"Do you get a lot of cases that are hard to figure out?"

"Well, the process sort of selects them out. People don't usually call me if the local cops solve it promptly. Even then, though, most cases aren't complicated to solve. A lot of them are more complicated to resolve."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean sometimes I know who did what, but I'm not sure what I should do about it."

"What do you do?" Deirdre said.

"I normally have two courses of action. I follow my best instincts guided by experience, or I do what Susan says."

Deirdre grinned again.

"I bet you don't do what anyone says."

Without moving, she appeared somehow wiggly.

"Do you ever get a case where there are no clues? You know, when you can, like, never figure out who did it."

"I solve all my cases," I said.

"Some of them are just not solved yet."

Deirdre clapped quietly.

"Great line," she said.

"Thanks, I'm trying it out for my ad in the Yellow Pages."