“Go home, Harold.”
Snow stopped at the door. “You wanta get the door at least?”
Dill moved over and opened the door that led to the stairs. “Lemme ask you something,” Snow said. “She was on the pad, wasn’t she — Felicity?”
“I don’t know, Harold.”
“You oughta’ve looked after her better.”
Dill nodded. “Probably.” He paused. “One last thing, Harold.”
“What?”
“That tape we just heard. Can you put a date to it?”
The greed popped back into the coyote eyes. “For a hundred bucks, I can.”
Dill shook his head in defeat, took out his wallet, removed two fifties, and stuck them down into Snow’s pants pocket.
“It was this Wednesday,” Snow said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I cleaned the tape off on Tuesday. It had to be Wednesday because on Thursday — well, you know what happened on Thursday.”
“She died on Thursday,” Dill said.
Snow nodded, started to say something, changed his mind, and started down the stairs. When he was halfway down, he stopped, turned, and looked back up at Dill.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, I’m sorry she got killed.”
“Thanks, Harold.”
Snow again nodded, again turned, and continued on down the stairs.
Chapter 24
Dill was seated, drink in hand, on the couch in Anna Maude Singe’s living room. He again was staring at the large Maxfield Parrish print when she came in from her shower wearing a short white silk robe that was transparent enough to see through. She sat down on the couch. The couch’s large center cushion separated them.
Dill put his drink down on the coffee table and said, “I can see through that.”
“I know.”
“You got a built, as they say in Baltimore.”
“Part’s inherited, part’s acquired.”
“Dancing?”
“How’d you know?”
“The way you move mostly.”
“They thought it would help me with this,” she said and touched the slight scar on her upper lip.
“What’s that?”
“It used to be a harelip. Until I was seven I talked funny — or peculiarly, I suppose. Then I had the operation and a lot of speech therapy, and I didn’t talk funny anymore. But I thought I still did. So I was given dancing lessons — to increase my confidence.”
“Did it?”
“Not really. But at thirteen I turned pretty. It was almost overnight. It seemed that way anyhow: all of a sudden. So I decided I wanted to do something where looks didn’t much count. I decided to become a lawyer.”
“At thirteen?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“At thirteen,” Dill said, “I wanted to be ambassador to the United Nations.”
“Whatever for?”
“You got to live in New York. You didn’t have to stand up when you worked. There were always people seated behind you, whispering secrets into your ear and handing you important slips of paper. It looked like a steady job. I was very impressed by people with steady jobs when I was thirteen.”
He picked up his drink from the coffee table, swallowed some of it, put it back down, and moved over next to Anna Maude Singe. He touched the small scar on her lip. “I still have a little trouble with my R’s,” she said.
“I didn’t notice,” Dill lied and kissed the scar.
“You know why I really gave up dancing?”
“Why?”
“Because it was therapy. They said I was very good, but I figured that meant I was just good at therapy — at curing myself. So when I got to be thirteen I decided I was cured and gave it up.”
Dill’s hand went to her waist and began to untie the loosely knotted sash. She bent her head to watch. “Your robe,” he said. “It looks something like the ones in the Parrish print.”
“I know. When I was taking my shower, I thought about you and got all excited. I thought the robe might help things along.”
He slipped the robe from her shoulders. Her breasts were several shades lighter than the rest of her skin, which was nicely tanned. The nipples were erect. He touched first the right one, then the left. “In the Parrish print,” he said, “I never could figure out whether they’re boys or girls.”
“I hope you like girls or we’re going to a lot of bother for nothing.”
“I like girls very much,” he said and kissed the right nipple.
“Strawberry,” she said. “The other one’s vanilla.”
He kissed the left one. “So it is.”
As he straightened up, she said, “You’ve got too many clothes on,” and started loosening his tie. Dill worked on the buttons of his shirt. Seconds later, his clothes were on the floor. She examined him with frank interest and said, “I like looking at naked men.”
“Women are better.”
“They’re okay, but men are better — I don’t know — engineered. Take this, for example.”
“You take it.”
“All right,” she said. “It’s the most remarkable thing in the world.”
“Not quite,” he said, his hand and fingers now exploring the wet softness between her legs.
She closed her eyes and smiled, her head thrown slightly back. “We can begin on the couch and then move to the floor.”
“Where there’s more room.”
“Right. Then you can carry me into the bedroom, throw me on the bed, and have your way with me.”
“Sounds like a hell of an afternoon.”
“I hope so,” she said.
They came together then in a hot hungry frantic kiss. They remained on the couch for a while and then somehow found themselves on the floor. They were there for a long time. They never did make it to the bed.
Dill was still lying on the carpeted floor, his arms folded beneath his head, when Anna Maude Singe came naked into the living room carrying two cans of beer. She knelt beside him and put one of the ice-cold cans on his bare chest. Dill said, “Christ!” and grinned, removed his right hand from behind his head, and snatched the beer from his chest.
Singe raised her own beer in a mock toast and said, “To one hell of an afternoon.”
“It was that,” he said and raised himself up so he could lean on his left arm.
“Do you run?” she said, examining his body again. “You look like you run.”
Dill looked down at his body. “No, I don’t run. It’s my inheritance, and it’s just about spent. It’s all my old man left me — a remarkably sound metabolism. He left me his nose, too, but he could’ve kept that.”
“It’s a fine nose,” she said. “It makes you look like Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune.”
“You don’t remember Captain Easy.”
“He had a sidekick named Wash Tubbs. I had a case once involving copyright infringement of an old comic strip. During the research I learned just one heck of a lot about what they used to call the funnies — more than I wanted to learn probably. But then that’s really why I like the law. It leads you down some strange paths.”
She rose, shivered slightly in the air-conditioning, put her beer down, and slipped on the sheer white robe. Dill continued to lie on his side, propped up on his left elbow. Singe sat down on the couch and picked up her beer.
“Well,” she said, “what d’you think?”
Dill lay back down on the carpet and stared at the ceiling. “Felicity wasn’t on the take.”
“No, I don’t think so either.”
“She got the money someplace, though.”
“I wonder where.”
“Who knows?” Dill sat up without using his hands, reached for his shirt and shorts, and started putting them on. “What d’you do — keep it around sixty-eight or sixty-nine in here?”