• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“When did she say all this?”

“A couple of weeks before he was found dead.”

“Are you sure it was Max who initiated the idea?”

She lifted the glass of wine to her lips and paused. “That’s a good question. It could have been her. She was the one who brought it up in our conversation. At first, I thought she was joking, but now I’m not sure.”

I remembered the strange look of excitement and surprise, the double take, when the lieutenant and I had driven out to tell her about Heinie’s murder. How she had said, “He wouldn’t.”

“How was it supposed to happen?”

“Oh, they had several scenarios …”

“They?”

“Oh, yes, Merissa was in on it, too.”

“Go on.”

“Anyway, Heinie drank a lot, and they thought they could doctor a bottle of whiskey on his boat so that he would pass out and fall overboard when he was out sailing. Merissa said they talked about how she would sneak Max on board and how after she got Heinie drunk, they would dump him overboard and say it was an accident.”

“And what other way?”

“She was going to get him drunk and drugged at home and Max would have someone burn the house down.”

“Nice. Real nice.”

“But, you see, she treated this whole thing as though it were a joke.”

“What about using a gun?”

“Oh, that was their favorite. They thought of having Max shoot him … Max has lots of guns. Or he knows how to get them. His father used to own that pawnshop. And making it look like a suicide. Or self-defense.”

“Self-defense?”

Diantha, I could tell, had already told me more than she meant to.

“Well, okay. It seems that Heinie got all worked up one morning after Merissa had been out with Max. He took your gun and went to Max’s office.”

“To shoot him?”

“No. Just to scare him off. Merissa and Max were going at it hot and heavy at the time.”

“Did it work?”

“I guess not. Heinie came back lower than ever.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked.

“Merissa swore me to secrecy and then said she was joking, that it was only a fantasy. And even after they found Heinie murdered, I still couldn’t believe she had anything to do with it.”

She paused, pondering, and I could sense there was more. “Okay, but you’ve got to promise me that you won’t tell a soul. Especially not the police.”

“I can’t promise, Di, you know that. But you can trust me to be discreet.”

“Okay.” But she hesitated. “Okay. On the night Heinie was murdered, he had set up a meeting with Max.”

My nose actually twitched. I experienced that atavistic, very nearly spinal response of a hunter sensing his quarry. “Do you know at what time?”

“The meeting? She didn’t say, but I think it was late.”

“Did they meet?”

“Merissa didn’t tell me that. She said she didn’t really know.”

“You asked her?”

“Of course.”

I refrained from telling her how smart she was. Compliments like that flatter the giver more than the recipient. Instead I thanked her. “I know Merissa is your friend.”

She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Yeah, she’s also kind of a ditz. I mean she wouldn’t know which side of a book to open.”

We drank our wine and ate our steaks, which were quite delicious. We looked into each other’s eyes. It was she who said, “Want to take a cabin for a while?”

It was very simple. To the buxom lady behind the cash register, I asked if there was a cabin available.

“You want it for a couple of hours or for the night.”

“Half an hour will do,” Diantha giggled beside me.

The woman rolled her eyes. “It’s seventy-five dollars until ten thirty.”

Passion, alas, can neither be feigned nor premeditated. Perhaps it was our surroundings, a sagging bed in a mean little room quaintly and disagreeably redolent of postcoital cigarette smoke. Or perhaps our expectations got ahead of us, or ahead of me, at least. Simply put, I could not rise to the occasion. With the bases loaded, I struck out. I didn’t even swing.

Diantha’s sympathy shriveled me inwardly edged as it was with the kind of concern one expresses for a medical condition. “Norman, it’s all right,” she said, patting my knee. “You’ve been through a lot lately.”

It was then that