Free Rex Stout_Nero Wolfe 46 by A Family Affair Page B

Only a ten-minute walk if you feel like company.”
    “You are not company. As you know, we are still trying to decide what each other is. I speak English. Lunch is nearly ready. Cross on the green.”
    We hung up. That’s one of the many good points:
we
hung up.
    Even with another tenant, it would be a pleasure to enter that penthouse on East Sixty-third Street, but of course with another tenant it wouldn’t be furnished like that. The only two things that I definitely would scrap are the painting on the living-room wall by de Kooning and the electric fireplace in the spare bedroom. I also like the manners. Lily nearly always opens the door herself, and she doesn’t lift a hand when a man takes his coat off in the vestibule. We usually don’t kiss for a greeting, but that time she put her hands on my arms and offered, and I accepted. More, I returned the compliment.
    She backed up and demanded, “Where were you and what were you doing at half past one Monday night, October twenty-eighth?”
    “Try again,” I said. “You fumbled it. Tuesday morning, October twenty-ninth. But first I want to confess. I’m here under false pretenses. I came because I need help.”
    She nodded. “Certainly. I knew that when you said the top of the afternoon to me. You only remind me that I’m Irish when you want something. So you’re in a hurry and we’ll go straight to the table. There’s enough.” She led the way through the living room to the den, where the desk and files and shelves and typewriter stand barely leave room enough for a table that two can eat on. As we sat, Mimi came with a loaded tray.
    “Go ahead,” Lily said.
    I want to like my manners too, so I waited until Mimi had finished serving and gone and we had taken bites of celery. Also, at Lily’s table, especially when no guest had been expected, often not even Fritz wouldhave known what was on his plate just by looking at it, so I looked at her with my eyebrows up.
    She nodded. “You’ve never had it. We’re trying it and haven’t decided. Mushrooms and soy beans and black walnuts and sour cream. Don’t tell
him
. If you can’t get it down, Mimi will do a quick omelet. Even he admitted she could do an omelet. At the ranch.”
    I had taken a forkload. It didn’t need much chewing, not even the walnuts, because they had been pulverized or something. When it was down I said, “I want to make it perfectly clear that—”
    “Don’t
do
that! I’ve told you. Even a joke about him turns my stomach.”
    “You’re too careless with pronouns. Your hims. Your first him’s opinion of your second him is about the same as yours. So is mine. As for this mix, I’m like you, I haven’t decided. I admit it’s different.” I loaded a fork.
    “I’ll just watch your face. Tell me why you came.”
    I waited until the second forkful was with the first. “As I said, I need help. You once told me about a girl from Kansas named Doraymee. Remember?”
    “Of course I do. I saw her yesterday.”
    “You
saw
her?
Yesterday?
You saw Mrs. Harvey H. Bassett?”
    “Yes. You must know about her husband, since you always read about murders. She phoned me yesterday afternoon and said she was—” She stopped with her mouth half open. “What is this? She asked about you, and now you’re asking about her. What’s going on?”
    My mouth was half open too. “I don’t believe it. Are you saying that Mrs. Bassett phoned you to ask about me? I don’t—”
    “I didn’t say that. She phoned to ask me to come and hold her hand—that was what she wanted, but she didn’t say so. She said she just had to see me, I supposebecause of what I had done before, when she couldn’t make it in New York and was going back home to get a meal. I hadn’t really done much, just paid for her room and board for a year. I hadn’t seen her for—oh, three or four years. I went, and we talked for an hour or more, and she asked if I had seen you since her husband died. I thought she was just