Free The Sunset Gang by Warren Adler Page A

apartment. He was still buoyant and the brief
anxiety that once in New York he would change his mind had passed. He let
himself in with his key, feeling the tension rise, knowing at once that she was
already home. He could see the reflection of the bedroom lamp and the triangle
shaft of light that it threw on the white shag carpet of the living room. He
tossed his jacket on a chair and walked into the bedroom, where she lay,
pillows propped, the New York Post on her lap, lifting her face to his.
He sat beside her on the bed, he kissed her on the lips, tasting, knowing he
gave off the scent of imbibed champagne.
    "I had a party on the plane," he said. "In
celebration."
    "Of what?"
    "Us."
    "The two of us."
    "No." He poked a finger and gently hammered at
the tip of her nose. "The three of us."
    Her eyes opened wide for a moment, then blinked.
    "That's over," she said, shrugging.
    "What's over?"
    "It." She winced and he noticed that she was
pale. "It has been eliminated."
    "But--" He felt the airplane food begin to float
in his stomach.
    "Why louse up a weekend?" she said. "It was
a good day for it. Why leave things hanging?"
    He got up from the bed, turning his face quickly. He did
not want her to see his pain. He walked into the kitchen, ran water from the
tap, and drank two glasses swiftly. Perhaps, he thought, there was something
inside of him he was trying to drown.

The
Detective
    From the lounge chair on the screened porch of their
condominium, Seymour Shapiro heard the slamming of the kitchen cupboards. The
sound was foreign enough to his ears to disturb his concentration. Putting the
Ross Macdonald, spine up and spread-eagled on his lap, he cocked his head and
listened.
    "Anything wrong, Bernice?" he called, waiting.
More slammings intervened.
    "I can't find the tuna fish," she shouted.
"I saw it yesterday."
    "Maybe we ate it," he said, lifting the book
again, gathering his concentration. A new Ross Macdonald was always welcome,
and he had waited nearly three weeks for the library to obtain it for him. The
repetitive theme of the lost relative never failed to hold his interest. Lew
Archer was one of his special favorites, along with Harry Kemelman, and
Inspector Maigret and the inimitable Hercule Poirot. Mystery paperbacks overflowed
the bookcase in their small Sunset Village condominium. Most of them he was
able to buy for a dime apiece at flea markets and secondhand bookshops in the Poinsettia Beach area. And there was always a pile of library hardbacks on tables, chairs,
and even stacked under the bed.
    Bernice had long since given up any attempt to thwart this
passion on the part of her husband. The best she could muster was to keep the
books piled neatly and well dusted, although she did confide to her wide circle
of friends that she was stymied by his obsession with the mystery books.
    "He has always read them," she had complained to
her friends. "But now he devours them like potato chips."
    "It'll keep him out of trouble," Harriet Feldman
said. Harriet was a widow and could be suspected of selfish motives. To her,
men were a nuisance. Better to keep them busy somewhere. That way they couldn't
interfere with the lives of her married girl friends. Marcia Finkelstein, on
the other hand, had another view.
    "They develop crazy ideas in their retirement,"
she confided one day over the mah-jongg table. "Mr. Magaziner, who lives
upstairs in my section, was a cutter in the garment center for nearly fifty
years. Now he's a fisherman. Every day he goes to the beach and sits there in a
chair a fishing pole."
    "Does he catch anything?"
    "Once in a blue moon. And when he does, his wife says
it stinks up the whole place. As a matter of fact, even Mr. Magaziner is
beginning to stink from fish."
    "And the case of Morris Greenberg, Rose's
husband," Judy Stein interjected. "He sold insurance, came home,
watched television, slept on the couch. That was his whole life. Now he's a
birdwatcher. Every day he gets up at five to watch the