Free Murder in the Air by Ellen Hart Page A

air. As a matter of fact, they never even came back to the apartment to get their clothes or any of their belongings.”
    “Creepy.”
    “I agree. All I can say is, there was something pretty intense going on in that group of friends. Beyond that, it's hard to speculate.”
    “What about the gun? Seems to me I remember something important about it.”
    The waiter arrived with their drinks and two dinner salads.
    “That's another interesting point,” said Bram, picking a crouton off the top of his salad and popping it in his mouth. “The gun was left at the scene. The only fingerprints on it were Bloom's.”
    “Pretty incriminating.”
    “The police shared the same opinion. The gun was registered to Cedric Bloom.”
    “Justin's father?”
    “His
stepfather.
And interestingly, Cedric Bloom had reported the gun missing just the day before. He usually kept it in his desk at the radio station. He sometimes worked lateat night. As I understand it, he'd been mugged once, so he said it made him feel safer to have one available.”
    “You think Justin took it?”
    “That's what the police think. Who had easier access?”
    “Well, lots of people, I suppose,” said Sophie. “What about all the station employees?”
    “Cedric maintained that only a few people knew about it. Since he didn't want any problems, he kept the drawer locked, and the key taped inside a filing cabinet.”
    “So who knew about both the gun and the key?”
    Bram ticked the names off on his fingers. “Besides Cedric and Heda Bloom, there were five people he mentioned specifically in his statement. Justin. Alfred Bloom, Justin's half brother. Valentine Zolotow. Mitzi Quinn. And George Chambers. Cedric said the last three people often worked late with him if they got behind on a
Dallas Lane
episode. They'd all seen him take it out of the drawer at one time or another.”
    “Fascinating,” said Sophie under her breath. “And now they're all back in town for
Dallas Lane's
last hurrah.”
    “Dallas Lane's
last hurrah, or is it Justin Bloom's?”
    They both sipped their drinks for several moments in silence. This was a lot of information to digest. Sophie wanted to read the report herself. “So what about the rumors that Justin spent the remainder of his life in Europe? That he died in a car crash sometime in the early Eighties.”
    Bram shrugged. “It's just that. Rumor. Although I did read something in the police report that suggested the FBI had watched Heda off and on for years after Bloom skipped the country. Sometime in the early Sixties she began taking a yearly holiday to Europe. They were never able to connect it to any kind of encounter between the two of them, so if they did meet, it was very discreet. I think the FBI probably gave up on the whole matter by the mid-Sixties. They had way too many civil-rights workers and antiwar demonstrators to harass to bother with small fry like Justin Bloom. Not that they still wouldn't like to get their hands on him, if he's still alive.”
    “Do you think he is?”
    “Well, it seems Heda attended a private funeral in Stressa,Italy, sometime in the early Eighties. It was autumn. She was alone and came by rental car. It was mentioned in an addendum to the police report Al gave me.”
    “You think it was her son?”
    “The authorities weren't sure. She was apparently very closemouthed about the entire matter, but it was definitely a middle-aged man who died. No one knew much about him. And there's a picture taken of her coming out of the church. She had on a dark veil, but you could see she'd been crying.”
    Sophie had no trouble picturing it. Heda, leaving the church. Walking alone back to the car. Standing for a moment and gazing at the damp Italian countryside. Was she mourning the son she'd lost so many years before? A mother who was denied her son's company in life, but refused to be parted from him in death? “Except, if it wasn't Justin, and he did come back to the U.S., he'd still be a