Read Online A Perfect Crime by Peter Abrahams - Free Book Online Page B

to her? She turned the key, switched on the heater, full-blast. The engine was still warm. It had been only a few minutes. She clung, shaking, to the steering wheel, and remembered
oh garden, my garden
: gone, too.
    It was after midnight when Francie got home. From his basement office, Roger heard her footsteps overhead. He waited an hour by the clock and went upstairs.
    Francie’s boots were on the mat by the front door. They looked wet. Roger went closer. They were wet. He picked one up. Soaked, inside and out, and it was too cold for rain. Had she gone for a walk on the beach, strayed too close to the surf? He sniffed: no salty smell, but to be sure he gave the leather a lick of his tongue as well. Freshwater, then, and at least a foot deep. Fresh-water: ponds, lakes, rivers. He gazed up the stairs, thinking.
    Roger put the boot down, aligned the pair neatly. He went into the kitchen. Francie’s purse lay on the table. He looked through it: wallet, with driver’s license, credit cards, forty-two dollars; zinc lozenges, tissues, vitamin C, a key ring. Key ring. Not like her. She always left her keys in the ignition when she parked in the garage, no matter what he said.
    There were seven keys on the ring: car key; two house keys, front and back; a key to her locker at the tennis club—he had had one just like it—a small key that would be for luggage; and two he couldn’t identify. These two he removed from the ring and laid on the table.
    Roger went to Francie’s kitchen desk, found paper and a pencil. He placed the keys on the paper and traced their patterns. Then he pocketed the paper, put the keys back on the ring, left the purse the way he’d found it, went downstairs to his basement room. The crossword waited, unfinished. One down, nine letters: loss. That would be
ruination
.

7
    “G ood show this afternoon, Ned,” said Kira Chang, vice president of Total Entertainment Syndication, raising her glass. “Here’s to
Intimately Yours
.”
    Sitting at the table in Ned’s dining room, they drank to the show: Anne, at the far end; Trevor, Ned’s producer, on her right; Lucy, the director, next to him; Ned at the end; Kira Chang on his right; Trevor’s assistant next to her. Ned didn’t like the wine at all, wished that Anne could have done a little better. And he wished she could have done better with the whole dinner, despite the late notice.
    Ned had called at 3: 30, and Anne had said, “I wasn’t planning any dinner at all—isn’t it Thursday?”
    For a moment he found himself holding his breath. “Meaning what?” he said.
    “Thursday, Ned. When you stay late to plan the shows.”
    “Yes. Normally. But Kira Chang’s in town.”
    “Who’s she?”
    “I told you. Sweetheart. The syndicator.”
    “I thought that was next week.”
    “The meeting’s next week, but she happened to be in town today and she dropped in. Trevor says it’s a good sign, so we should take advantage of it.”
    “I’ll do my best,” Anne said.
    Her best: the oyster stew, the lemon chicken with snow peas, the tiramisu from Lippo’s. And this marooncolored wine, possibly Romanian—he couldn’t read the fine print on the label.
    “Delicious, Anne,” said Kira Chang. “And I hear you’re quite a tennis player, too.”
    Anne smiled nervously. The light in the dining room was a little too strong; it made her look washed out, or was that just the effect of Kira’s presence?
    Trevor refilled his glass—not for the first time—and said, “One thing we’ve never discussed, Kira, is the name of the show. What do you think of it?”
    Kira looked at Trevor across the table. “There’s only one answer to questions like that—I’ll let you know after we poll the audience.”
    “To see what
it
thinks, you mean?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Isn’t that leading by following?”
    Kira smiled at him. “This isn’t art, Trevor. It isn’t even politics. It’s just entertainment.”
    “Total entertainment,” said