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through my teeth.
    Maybe it would be a good idea to drop the whole thing, go back to the office, and continue with cleaning up the mess my old man had left me. Maybe I should wait for something respectable to walk in my door.
    I looked back across the years, searching for something respectable that had occurred to me in this business.
    That way lay madness.

FIVE
     
    S HE SAT on the couch and looked stunned.
    “Dead,” she said softly.
    “Somebody had to tell you,” I said. “I didn’t want you to read it in the papers. As it is, the police will probably locate you before long. I’m sorry.”
    She kept on staring at me. Her eyes were glazed, and she was pale. She wasn’t seeing me. She was looking at something inside her head. The thick auburn hair shone in dull lamplight. She wore a soft aqua robe, belted tightly at the waist with a broad white sash, and except for the stunned expression she was lovelier than ever.
    She swallowed slowly. “How could he die?”
    This was never easy. “He was murdered.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Somebody didn’t want him to go on living, Ivor.”
    She stood up. The robe opened the full length of long white thigh. She closed it with an absent brush of palm. I had been seated on the chair in front of the couch. I got up and went over to her.
    “It’s all right,” I said foolishly. “Easy, now.”
    The robe was made of thin soft material that looked wet in places where it clung to her body. There was nothing underneath the robe.
    “No,” she said. She looked at me with the tragic eyes. The mouth was red and damp and soft, the lips parted. “Don’t you see? They’ll think I killed him.”
    I thought of him lying out there and what had been done to him. I had seen plenty dead bodies, enough to pin down how long they’d been dead quite closely, as closely as anybody. “Don’t worry about that,” I told her as kindly as I could. “You were in Orlando, at Carl’s aunt’s. He’s been dead well over a week. You don’t have to worry.”
    She stepped back. “Over a week? It couldn’t be.”
    “Is, though.” I didn’t want to detail it. “I’m positive it’s not less than eight days.”
    She was suddenly eager. “It’s not Carl.”
    I reached for her. “Steady.”
    “I tell you, it’s not my husband. I spoke with him on the phone day before yesterday. It was a short conversation—but I
did
talk with him.”
    I was holding her shoulders. I let go. Neither of us breathed for a moment.
    I said, “You told me he wouldn’t answer the phone.”
    “Not since then—day before yesterday. He was very angry—I told you how he acted.”
    “You’re absolutely certain it was your husband?”
    “Positive.”
    She lifted one hand suddenly and touched her face. “It’s Vince,” she said softly. “He’s killed Vince.” She paled. “I’m scared. He’s killed Vince, and now he’ll kill me.” She looked at me. “You’ve got to stop him. It’s plain now—he’s trying to find me.”
    “You mean Vince Gamba?”
    She fixed me with quizzical eyes.
    “It’s not Vince Gamba,” I said. “I talked with him, out there. He was—around.”
    She sat on the couch again. I tried to put myself in her place. It was a bad place to be in. The world had gone cockeyed for her. Nothing added up. I sat beside her.
    She said, “Where did you find the dead man?”
    I told her.
    “What made you think it was Carl?”
    I explained about the note I’d found written by her, and told her Carl’s wallet was in a pants pocket. She broke in.
    “There’s something I haven’t told you. It didn’t mean anything till now. A few days before I left, a man came to see Carl. I don’t know who he was, except Carl said he was an old friend. Said his name was Bill Black, but I doubted it then.”
    “Why?”
    “The way he said it, I think. I know Carl didn’t like seeing him, at first. The man was sick. He asked Carl to put him up for a while.”
    “What makes you think Carl