Honeymoon for Three by Alan Cook Page A

he’s guilty.
If he’s innocent, you can go ahead and get married. If he’s guilty,
it’s better you find out now. I know because I been through it.
More than once.”
    This made a strange sort of sense. The
woman’s name was Rowanda. She began talking about her own
husbands—plural. Right now she was here because her son was in
trouble. As Penny listened to her sad story, she felt a little bit
better about her own situation. Then she remembered Emily.
    When Rowanda paused in her story, Penny
said, “I may be jinxed. My best friend was murdered a year ago,
just before she was going to get married. She would have been the
perfect wife. Sometimes I have the feeling that because she
couldn’t get married, I can’t either.”
    “That’s silly talk.” Rowanda took Penny’s
hand in her own baseball gloves and patted it. “If the Lord means
for you to be married, you will get married. It don’t matter what
happened to your friend.”
    ***
    Gary didn’t know why the young police
officer whose badge said his name was McGinty and who had thick
eyebrows that gave him a perpetual scowl kept asking him about
Kentucky. He had never even been to Kentucky, as he tried to point
out. He certainly hadn’t killed anybody there.
    “I grew up in Western New York—near
Buffalo.” This wasn’t the first time he had said it. “That’s where
my parents live. They’re both alive. You can call them and verify
it.”
    “We’ve been calling the number you gave us.
There’s no answer.”
    Gary suddenly remembered that his parents
were in Europe. He had completely forgotten that. His heart sank.
Who else could vouch for him? His brother, Tom, was a grad student
at Harvard. He was in L.A. for the summer, working as a FORTRAN
programmer for an aerospace company. He lived in an apartment, but
Gary didn’t know his phone number. The youngest of the three
brothers, Archie, was with his parents. He had just finished his
undergraduate work and was taking some time off before getting
serious about life.
    Gary’s aunt and uncle were the best
possibilities. He had lived with them during his senior year of
high school. He knew the phone number of their farm house well.
They might be home today, since it was Saturday. With the
three-hour time difference between here and New York, it would be
late afternoon there.
    Gary gave an “I completely forgot that my
parents are in Europe” excuse to McGinty. It sounded lame. He told
the officer to call his aunt and uncle and gave him the phone
number at the farm. McGinty wrote down the information and went out
of the room, leaving him alone.
    The wooden chair was uncomfortable. The room
was dismal. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he was starving.
His white shirt was wet with sweat under his arms, and not just
from the afternoon heat. Even if he were let go, would Penny still
want to marry him? Would he want to marry her if the situation were
reversed?
    McGinty returned, holding Gary’s driver’s
license. “These things can be faked.” He looked at the license from
various angles, as if searching for some elusive truth. “Make it
easy on yourself. Tell me how you killed your parents.”
    Gary stared at the officer with the neck as
wide as his head. Certainly not somebody to get into a fight with.
And he was taking a bull-in-the-china-shop approach with his
questioning. A young man, trying to make a name for himself. What
did you do when you were telling the truth but you weren’t
believed? Make up a lie that would be better received? Should he
say that he had chopped them up with an ax, a la Lizzie Borden? He
didn’t answer.
    “What’s your real name?”
    “My real name is Gary Blanchard.”
    “How long have you lived in California?”
    “Four years. Well, four and a half
years.”
    The questions were getting repetitive. He
stole a glance at his watch. One forty-five. He had been here
almost an hour. Where was Penny? Poor Penny. She must be either
worried sick or ready to dump him.