Make Out with Murder by Lawrence Block Page B

and she got a little rattled and said that Harrison Harrison was unusual, to say the least, and ultimately we got that straightened out. She didn’t ask me what Chip was short for, which was one strong point in her favor.
    There were other points in her favor. Maybe her husband jogged every morning before breakfast because he was trying to catch up with her. The money she spent on her clothes and her hair didn’t hurt, but it didn’t account for her figure or the general youthfulness of her appearance. She was tall for a woman, and quite slender, and her breasts were not especially easy to ignore.
    There was more to it than all that, though. She was damned attractive and damned well knew it, and she knew how to play off this attractiveness and, oh, hell, there’s only one way to say it. She was very good at getting people horny.
    She ordered mussels and a glass of white wine and another martini. I didn’t want anything to eat, which surprised her but didn’t seem to annoy her. She made a lot of small talk during her meal, and when I would start to turn the conversation around to Melanie she managed to sidetrack it. After this happened a few times I stopped thinking that she was more shook up then she was showing and Got The Message.
    What I remembered, actually, was one time when I was taken out to lunch by Joe Elder, who is my editor. We went to a place around the corner from his office where they have a working antique telephone on each table. The food is better than you’d expect. The only thing wrong with Mr. Elder is that he can actually drink a Daiquiri without making a face. God knows how. But all through lunch I kept trying to talk about an idea I had for a book, and he kept changing the subject, and later they brought the coffee and he started talking about the book, and it was the same way now with Caitlin Vandiver. She had decided that we were having a business lunch and she knew that meant not saying a word about business until we were done with the lunch.
    She finished her mussels about the same time I ran out of Irish to sip at. When the coffee came she settled herself in her chair and came in right on cue.
    “You were a friend of Melanie’s,” she said.
    Which was my cue, so I picked it up. “I was the one who discovered the body,” I said.
    “Oh, dear. That must have been awful for you.”
    It had been, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. I told her I was concerned professionally, which brought that tension into her expression, which I later realized was because she thought I might be working up to some sort of blackmail pitch. But I went on to say that I worked for Leo Haig. “The prominent detective,” I said.
    “Oh, yes.”
    Sure, lady. “I have to tell you this in confidence. We have grounds to believe that Melanie was murdered.”
    “But I thought it was an overdose of heroin.”
    “It was.” The autopsy had confirmed this. “That doesn’t mean she gave it to herself.”
    “I see.” She thought for a minute. Then she said, “Oh.”
    “I’m afraid so. It puts things in sort of a different light. Jessica’s suicide and Robin’s accident—”
    “Might not be a suicide and an accident. Well, Robin’s certainly was, although I suppose someone could have tampered with Ferdie’s car. Do those things happen? I know they do in books, but my God, if I were going to kill someone I would take my trusty little gun and shoot him in the back of the head.” She was silent for a moment, and I wondered who she was killing in fantasy. (Whom, I mean.) Then she said, “I never thought Jessica was the type to commit suicide. She was always a tougher and bitchier broad than I am, and that’s going some. And she was a dyke, too.”
    I had sort of assumed this, but I still didn’t have a reply worked out.
    “Of course she might have grown out of that,” Caitlin went on. “I did, you know. Although I never embraced lesbianism as wholeheartedly as Jessica did. I never stopped liking