Free Copp On Fire, A Joe Copp Thriller (Joe Copp, Private Eye Series) by Don Pendleton Page B

Melissa?"
           "No, actually Melissa came to me and asked me to do the script. I'd known her since her first week in town. She—"
           "This was before her marriage to Albert?"
           "Yes, about a year before. She'd done a couple of the adult films when we first met. I didn't know about that at the time. She had an interest in writing and I was doing weekend seminars at UCLA."
           "So you got together over the writer's version of the casting couch."
           "Oh no, not me," he protested amiably. "I suppose she would have but—"
           I asked it pointblank: "Are you gay?"
           "As a circumstance of birth, yes. As a choice of lifestyle, no. I haven't slept with a man since I was eighteen. Fallen in love with a few, yes, but I never worked it out through the act."
           "Must be difficult."
           He smiled, relit his pipe. "Not really. There are other ways of working it out. I have a rich fantasy life. It suffices."
           "Ever fantasize about Bernie Wiseman?"
           "Of course." He said it easily. "I was in love with Bernie."
           "I see."
           "Do you?"
           "Not really, but it's okay by me if it's okay by you. Maybe I'm out of line to say it, but you don't act like a man whose lover just died."
           "We weren't lovers," he corrected me.
           "Can you give me a story treatment on Melissa?"
           "I'd prefer she be here."
           "She may never get here. People connected to Bernie seem to be at high risk. Maybe you too. Was it for your convenience or Melissa's that you two married?"
           "Sorry. I really can't talk about that."
           "Even if it kills you to not talk about it?"
           No answer.
           "Would you give me her address? I seem to have gotten it wrong."
           "If you find it, would you give it to me? She's become very mysterious lately. I have no idea where she is."
     
    It had been an illuminating conversation, but I still was not sure what had been illuminated.
           I decided I wanted another talk with Melissa Franklin.
           And I could only hope that it was not too late for that.
     

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
    When I left Charles Franklin's place in Glendale I felt I had the pieces for the puzzle but wasn't seeing how to put them together, and it was driving me crazy.
    Maybe that was why it took me a couple of minutes to realize I had picked up a tail car at Franklin's. My first thought was a police tail, and I was reasonably certain it hadn't followed me up that hill because night had come while I was at the Wiseman place in San Marino and you do not drive the Glendale hills at night without lights.
    Next thought was that the bodies of Forta and Rodriguez had been discovered at my place and now I was, again, on the want-list. It was a logical assumption . . . they had gone to my place with a search warrant, and it was past time that someone would begin to wonder what had become of them.
    I tried to lose the tail. Didn't work through two
    switchback turns and a high-speed run along the Glendale Freeway. But nobody else joined in the chase, so I had to revise my reading as well as my response.
    I left the freeway at Calle Verdugo and swung toward downtown Glendale with the tail intact, ducked into a small shopping center and parked in front of a liquor store. The other car eased on past and parked at the curb just beyond the entrance to the parking lot. Couldn't see the occupant but it was a late model Honda sedan with personalized plates—not an official police vehicle.
    I went on into the liquor store and bought a pack of cigarettes, paused outside at a pay phone for a shot at Abe Johnson but could not connect, then sat in the Cad eyeing the Honda and trying to figure it.
    Obviously someone other than cops of either force was interested in me and my movements. Someone had invaded my office, someone had invaded