After the First Death - Lawrence Block [29]
So I went back to my hotel and made more lists. Russell J. Stone. There had to be a way to find out something about him, but how? I would sleep on it. Warren Hayden—he did look out of the picture, it appearing highly unlikely that he would fly in from Peru, cut little Robin’s throat, and then resume his search for the lost city of the Incas, or whatever men sought in the Peruvian wilderness. His actual presence in Peru would need confirmation, and I would find a way to check it out but meanwhile he looked safe.
Pete Landis. He remained on the list with nothing I had learned to confirm him or clear him as the killer. Doug didn’t know him, so there had been no point in bringing up his name.
Don Fischer. I saw his name on the list from before and couldn’t imagine what it was doing there. I had bought an insurance policy from him. What did that have to do with murder? I closed my eyes and saw a pleasant-faced young man with thick glasses and thick eyebrows that had grown together to form one continuous ridge of brow. Gwen’s lover? My enemy? Inconceivable on both counts.
I solemnly crossed off Don Fischer’s name. And began to laugh, because the only suspect—if such a term were advised in my investigations—the only suspect thus far eliminated was a man of whom I had not consciously thought at all since first writing down his name.
Penn’s progress. At this happy rate, I could spend all my days writing down the names of strangers and all my nights crossing them off again, knitting a Penelope’s shawl of suspicion rather than the more purposeful tapestry of Madame DeFarge.
I put my lists away. They bored me. I turned on the television set, and watched several movies which differed each from the other by the number of times the word late appeared in their general titles. In the middle of one of these I turned off the set and got out of my clothes and went to bed.
“Mrs. Stone?”
“Yes.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Stone. I’m Curt Amory of Industrial Research Corp. I’ve a few questions in regard to a survey we’re preparing, and if you’ll give me a minute or two of your time I’ll be able to send you a free gift for your troubles. Could you tell me, for a starter, approximately how many hours a week you and your family watch television?”
“Oh, well, we watch about an hour a night, I suppose, but then I watch now and then in the day time—”
I didn’t much listen. I asked a few more routine questions, a handkerchief stretched over the mouthpiece of the telephone—I had read that this changes one’s voice, though I honestly don’t know why it should.
Then, “Now some statistics, Mrs. Stone. How large is your family?”
“Three of us. Myself, my husband, and our son.”
I hadn’t known about the child.
“Are you native Californians?”
“No. I moved here about four years ago.”
“And Mr. Stone?”
“Moved here ten years ago from Chicago.”
“And his occupation?”
“He’s purchasing director for Interpublic Chemical.”
I went on, picking up a few more facts to help me trace Russell Stone. As the interview progressed there was more and more space before Gwen’s answers, as if she wondered why Industrial Research Corp. was interested in such a mixed bag of trivia. Then the operator cut. in to announce that my three minutes were up, and at that point my once-wife tipped.
“Who is this?”
“Thanks very much for your cooperation,” I said smoothly, “and you’ll be receiving your free gift in the mail, Mrs. Stone—”
“Alex? Is that you? Alex, what’s going on?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Who is this? Alex? I don’t—”
I replaced the receiver and left the booth.
In an irrational way, I was pleased that Gwen had at last recognized my voice. After all, I had been married to the woman for quite some time. And even then, while we were married, I had occasionally found myself thinking of her as rather like those huge new glass and steel apartment buildings. One could live in one of those apartments for fifty years, and the day one finally moved out the apartment would shake itself utterly free of every trace of one’s occupancy; it would be as though one had never been there at