Free Enough! (A Travesty and Ordo) by Donald E. Westlake Page B

Why?”
    “I see what you mean,” I said.
“A lover wouldn’t be kept hidden unless there was a reason for it.”
    “Right.” He
checked off the possibilities on his fingers. “He’s married. He’s
homosexual and doesn’t want to make a complete break with the homosexual world.
He’s her father.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “Neither do I,” Staples assured me.
“But at this stage of the game, I keep an open mind.”
    I was beginning to feel a bit wary of that
open mind of Staples’. If he was so eager to think the unthinkable, why
wouldn’t it occur to him to play with the thought that my guaranteed innocence
might in itself be an indication of guilt? I was, after all, the Least Likely
Suspect. And as with all Least Likely Suspects, I was in reality the Murderer.
    Staples and I talked for half an hour more,
with him drawing another three or four names from me of men who knew Laura but
whose pictures had not been snapped by the private detectives. Finally he
seemed satisfied that he’d squeezed me dry, and he made ready to leave, saying,
“I do appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Thorpe. And the coup you pulled in
the Wicker killing this afternoon was really beautiful. You made my day.”
    “It’d be interesting to find out the rest
of that story.”
    “Oh, I’m sure Al Bray’s got the whole
thing by now.” Then, seeming to be struck by a sudden thought, he said,
“Say. That girl friend of yours is tied up tonight, isn’t she?”
    Meaning Kit, who had said so on the machine. “Yes, I guess she is.”
    “Why not have dinner
with us? Patricia and me. She’d love to meet you, she’s as big a fan as I am. And I’ll have the story
from Al by then, I can tell it to you at dinner.”
    “Oh, I don’t think I should—”
    “Listen, you’re not imposing.” He
was very eager, very determined. “And Patricia’s a wonderful cook. I tell
you what, I’ll call her from here, you’ll see there’s
no problem. Okay?”
    I was ambivalent. On the one hand, I wanted to
be near Staples as much as possible, I wanted to know what he was thinking so I
could steer him away from dangerous shallows. On the other hand, his presence
made me nervous. As to the grubby details of Jack March and his fatal grudge
against Jim Wicker, they interested me not at all.
    But Staples was waiting for an answer, all
eagerness and bounce. “All right,” I said. “If
it’s all right with your wife.”
    “Patricia’s gonna flip,” he assured
me. “Okay if I use your phone?”
    “Go right ahead.”
    He did, and though he kept his voice too low
for me to hear the exact words—I had politely removed myself to the far end of
the room—the syrupy note in everything he said suggested he couldn’t have been
a husband more than fifteen minutes. True love birds, icky-wickies together.
But it was too late now to back out.
    Cradling the phone at last, Staples turned his
beaming smile toward me and said, “It’s all set, Mr. Thorpe. I’ll pick you
up around seven-thirty, okay?”
    “Fine,” I said. “But if I’m going
to eat at your table, I think you’d better call me Carey.”
    “Terrific.” He stuck out his hand,
saying, “And I’m Fred.”
    The hunter and the quarry shook hands.
    *
    It was like being stuck in one of the sweeter
Disney cartoons, one of the early ones where the sentimentality really cloys.
Great pink clouds of love floated everywhere, and tiny bluebirds seemed to
flutter just beyond my peripheral vision.
    Patricia Staples wasn’t at all difficult to
look at, but God have mercy if she wasn’t a penance to listen to. Of medium
height and weight, with silky blonde hair and clear innocent blue eyes, pert
lips and straight nose, she looked like something on a corn flakes box or on
the cover of a 1943 issue of Liberty Magazine, and in the course of dinner
alone she called her husband “sweetness” and “honey” and
“sugar” often enough to produce terminal diabetes. (Even though he
did send nearly