Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [34]
“I didn’t know there was one in town. And?”
“What? You want to know what we ate?”
“I want to know what you did the rest of the evening.”
“We—we went back to her apartment and—you know, we screwed.”
“A happy screw?”
He laughed. “Yeah, of course it was.”
“No problems between you.”
“Nope.”
“You stay the night?”
“Nope. Came back here. She—”
“She what?”
“She—she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to get a good sleep. I left right after we—”
“You didn’t see her again after Saturday?”
“No.”
“I’ll probably want to talk to you again. You’re not planning to go anywhere, are you?”
“Hell, no.” He let out a stream of air, shook his head, and looked to a far corner of the workout area.
“I’ll be back in touch,” Klayman said. He left the building and rejoined Marcia outside.
“An impressive young man, isn’t he?” she said.
“Very. I’d like to go back and talk to the two young men in the room she lived in.”
“All right.”
When they reached the room, its occupants were playing a computer video game, the music again cranked up to an uncomfortable level. After getting them to lower the volume and to turn away from the computer screen, Klayman said, “Joe Cole says he talked to you after his date with Nadia Zarinski over the weekend.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah. What did he tell you?”
The roommates looked at each other before one said, “He was bellyaching like he always does about Nadia.”
“He was angry with her?”
The other roommate guffawed. “Angry? He was boiling, a volcano erupting.”
“Over what?”
“Over Nadia.”
“Yeah, but what had she done to make him so mad?”
The second roommate cocked his head and asked, “You sure Joe said he’d talked with us?”
“Go ask him,” Klayman said, confident they wouldn’t.
“She was always seeing other guys. Not that Joe was serious about her, like marriage or anything. Nobody would want to marry somebody like Nadia. But—”
“Why do you say that?” Klayman asked. He looked to Marcia, whose discomfort with the conversation was obvious.
“Because she was a round heels,” the student said. “Sleeping around with everybody. I mean, that’s good for fun, but serious? Nah. Joe wasn’t serious about her.”
“So why did he get mad if he wasn’t serious?”
“Because she goes out with him, like, you know, to a fancy restaurant and all, like that, and then she hops in the sack with somebody else who doesn’t spend a nickel on her. That makes you pretty mad, huh, like you’re being played for a sucker.”
“Joe felt like he was being played for a sucker?”
They nodded in unison, a matching pair of toy dogs in the rear window of a moving car.
“What did he tell you about the weekend?” Klayman asked.
Shrugs, then, “He took her to this nice Italian restaurant and goes back to her place to make it with her. He says the minute they were through, she starts talking about another guy she’s seeing who she tells Joe is a better lover than him. What do you think of that?”
“He mention who this other guy was?”
“You don’t know?”
Klayman wrote in his notebook and ignored the question.
“Big deal. So he’s a senator’s kid and all. He’s a bum.”
Klayman looked up from his notebook. “What senator?”
“Lerner.” It was spoken as though the world knew. “His son, Jerry. Him and Nadia have been getting it on for months.”
Klayman was tempted to correct his grammar but didn’t. “Nadia was dating Jeremiah Lerner?” he said.
“Right, along with a dozen other guys. Man, what a slut.”
“Are we finished here?” Marcia asked Klayman.
He nodded, wrote down their home addresses, closed the notebook, thanked them for their time, and left the building with Marcia.
“I must say I’m shocked,” she said as they returned to the Hamilton Building, where Klayman had parked his car. “I trust you won’t judge all our students by those two.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Klayman responded. “Mr. Jessup said I could speak with Nadia’s faculty adviser.”
“Yes. Would you like to do that now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
JOHNSON WAS SITTING in his car in front of the Thai restaurant when Klayman pulled up. He got into Johnson’s vehicle.
“How’d it go?” Johnson asked.
“Good. Better