After the First Death - Lawrence Block [27]
“Nothing seems likely. What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. Kay would know—”
“Is she home?”
“Sleeping. She went to sleep about an hour ago.” He looked down at his pajamas and robe. His feet were bare. “I was reading, just about ready to turn in myself.”
“Sorry to bother you.”
“Don’t be silly.” His eyes met mine. “I think you could use a drink. What can I get you?”
“Nothing for me.”
“Well, I can use one, then.”
He found a bottle of Scotch and carried it into the kitchen. I followed him. He filled a tall glass with ice cubes, added a jigger of Scotch, then filled the glass the rest of the way with tap water. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to join him.
“Maybe some coffee,” I said.
“Instant all right?”
“Sure.”
We waited while the coffee boiled. We sat at the kitchen table, he nursing a drink, me working on the coffee.
I said, “The name.”
“I don’t remember it, Alex.”
“Wake Kay.”
“I can’t do that”
“Why the hell not? Christ, Doug, I don’t have an abundance of time. I can’t afford to wait until things are convenient for people. The time’s too short as it is.”
“I can’t wake her.”
“Why?”
“She’ll panic. She’ll want me to call the police. She thinks—”
“That I’m a killer?”
He shrugged, drank, nodded. “You know women.”
“The hell I do.”
“Well I don’t know what to do. You really think this guy—”
“I don’t think anything, but it’s a place to start.”
“You figure he and Gwen—”
“Uh-huh.”
He got to his feet “No. Not a chance.”
“She wouldn’t have to have known what he did. She could have thought it was all straight, that I really killed Evangeline Grant.”
“But you figure she was having an affair with him.”
“That’s how it would read, yes.”
He shook his head. “Not Gwen,” he said.
“You sound sure of yourself.”
“Dammit, I am! She loved you—”
“And I loved her. But it didn’t keep me out of Evangeline Grant’s bed, or too many other beds before that. People are unusual animals. They don’t always do things for the right reasons. They don’t always do things that make a vast amount of sense.” I lit a cigarette. “I need that name, Doug.”
“Kay has an address book. I’m not sure where she keeps it, but I could dig it up.”
“Do that.”
He sighed, set his glass down empty. “All right,” he said. “Wait here.”
I waited while he went off to hunt for the name and address of my wife’s current husband. I waited, smoking my cigarette, drinking my coffee, listening very intently. At first I didn’t realize what it was that I was listening for. Then all at once I did. I was waiting for the sound of him making a telephone call to the police. The sound never happened, and he came back with a red leather book in his hand, and I wondered when if ever I would be able to start trusting people again.
“This is it,” he said.
The entry, carefully inscribed in Kay MacEwans’s small neat hand, read:
Mr. & Mrs. Russell J. Stone (Gwen Venn)
4315 Portland Hill Drive
Los Angeles, California
“She didn’t take down the zip code,” Doug said idiotically.
“I don’t think I’ll need it.”
“Are you going out there?”
“God, no. Too dangerous. And not worthwhile, yet.” I copied down name and address on a scrap of paper, tucked it away in a pocket. “Mr. Russell J. Stone sounds very possible,” I said. “But there are other possibilities.”
“Like who?”
“Like an old boyfriend of hers whom I don’t think you know. Like a departmental colleague of mine whom, come to think of it, you do know. Whatever happened to Warren Hayden?”
“Hayden? You must be kidding.”
“I haven’t done any kidding in almost five years, Doug.”
“Well, why in hell would Warren Hayden—”
“Cam Welles got put out to pasture, didn’t he?”
“Oh, sure, Just a couple of months after you, uh—”
“You can say went to jail, you know. I know. I went There’s no point in pretending it didn’t happen.”
“Just a few months after you went to jail, Cam Welles retired.”
“And Warren got the top spot?”
“Who else was there?”
“My point,” I said.
He stared incredulously at me. “Do you mean to suggest,” he said, “that for the sake of a department chairmanship, a meek little man like Warren