5
Home wasn't as I'd pictured it, a house. It was an apartment, but a big one---ten rooms, I learned later---on Coleman Boulevard just north of Howard. It was fourth floor, but there were elevators. Now that I thought of it, I realized that Ollie, because of his angina, wouldn't be able to live in a house where he had to climb stairs. But later I learned they'd been living there ever since they'd married, so he hadn't had to move there on account of that angle.
It was a fine apartment, nicely furnished and with a living room big enough to contain a swimming pool. “Come on, Ed,” Ollie said cheerfully. “I'll show you your room and let you get rid of your suitcase, freshen up if you want to---although I imagine we'll all be turning in soon. You must be tired after that long trip. Eve, could we talk you into making a round of Martinis meanwhile?”
“Yes, Oliver.” The perfect wife, she walked toward the small but well-stocked bar in a corner of the room.
I followed Ollie to the guest room that was to be mine. “Might as well unpack your suitcase while we talk,” he said, after he closed the door behind us. “Hang your stuff up or put it in the dresser there. Well, so far, so good. Not a suspicion, and you're doing fine.”
“Lots of questions I've still got to ask you, Ollie. We shouldn't take time to talk much now, but when will we have a chance to?”
“Tomorrow. I'll say I have to go downtown, make up some reasons. And you've got your excuse already---the business you came to do. Maybe you can get it over with sooner than you thought---but then decide, since you've come this far anyway, to stay out the week. That way you can stick around here as much as you want, or go out only when I go out.”
“Fine. We'll talk that out tomorrow. But about tonight, we'll be talking, the three of us, and what can I safely talk about? Does she know anything about the size of my business, or can I improvise freely and talk about it?”
“Improvise your head off. I've never talked about your business. Don't know much about it myself.”
“Good. Another question. How come, at only twenty-five, I've got a business of my own? Most people are still working for somebody else at that age.”
“You inherited it from your stepfather, Cartwright. He died three years ago. You were working in the shop and moved to the office and took over. And as far as I know, or Eve, you're doing okay with it.”
“Good. And I'm not married?”
“No, but if you want to invent a girl you're thinking about marrying, that's another safe thing you can improvise about.”
I put the last of the contents of my suitcase in the dresser drawer and we went back to the living room. Eve had the cocktails made and was waiting for us. We sat around sipping at them, and this time I was able to do most of the talking instead of having to let Ollie filibuster so I wouldn't put my foot into my mouth by saying something wrong.
Ollie suggested a second round but Eve stood up and said that she was tired and that if we'd excuse her, she'd retire. And she gave Ollie a wifely caution about not having more than one more drink. He promised he wouldn't and made a second round for himself and me.
He yawned when he put his down after the first sip. “Guess this will be the last one, Ed. I'm tired, too. And we'll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow.”
I wasn't tired, but if he was, that was all right by me. We finished our nightcaps fairly quickly.
“My room's the one next to yours,” he told me as he took our glasses back to the bar. “No connecting door, but if you want anything, rap on the wall and I'll hear you. I'm a light sleeper.”
“So am I,” I told him. “So make it vice versa on the rapping. I'm the one that's supposed to be protecting you, not the other way around.”
“And Eve's room is the one on the other side of mine. No connecting door there, either. Not that I'd use it, at this stage, even if it stood wide open with a red carpet running through it.”
“She's still a beautiful woman,” I said, just to see how he'd answer it.
“Yes. But I guess I'm by nature monogamous. And this may sound corny and be corny, but I consider Dorothy and me married in the sight of God. She's all I'll ever want, she and the boy. Well, come on, and we'll turn in.”
I turned in, but I didn't go right to sleep. I lay awake thinking, sorting out my preliminary impressions. Eve Bookman---yes, I believed Ollie's story about their marriage and didn't even think it was exaggerated. Most people would think her sexy as hell to look at her, but I've got a sort of radar when it comes to sexiness. It hadn't registered with a single blip on the screen. And Koslovsky is a much better than average judge of people and what had he said about her? Oh, yes, he'd called her a cold potato.
Some women just naturally hate sex and men---and some of those very women become things like strip teasers because it gives them pleasure to arouse and frustrate men. If one of them breaks down and has an affair with a man, it's because the man has money, as Ollie had, and she thinks she can hook him for a husband, as Eve did Ollie. And once she's got him safely hog-tied, he's on his own and she can be her sweet, frigid self again. True, she's given up the privilege of frustrating men in audience-size groups, but she can torture the hell out of one man, as long as he keeps wanting her, and achieve respectability and even social position while she's doing it.
Oh, she'd been very pleasant to me, very hospitable, and no doubt was pleasant to all of Ollie's friends. And most of them, the ones without radar, probably thought she was a ball of fire in bed and that Ollie was a very lucky guy.
But murder---I was going to take some more convincing on that. It could be Ollie's imagination entirely. The only physical fact he'd come up with to indicate even the possibility of it was the business of the missing will. And she could have taken and destroyed that but still have no intention of killing him before he could make another like it; she could simply be hoping he'd never discover that it was missing.
But I could be wrong, very wrong. I'd met Eve less than three hours ago and Ollie had lived with her eight years. Maybe there was more than met the eye. Well, I'd keep my eyes open and give Ollie a run for his five hundred bucks by not assuming that he was making a murder out of a molehill. I went to sleep and Ollie didn't tap on my wall.