Read Online Make Out with Murder by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online

men, you see.”
    “Uh,” I said.
    “Do you want to know something interesting? When I was a girl, oh, way back before Noah built his ark, I always had a special preference for older men.”
    “Er.”
    “But now that I’ve slithered onto the dark side of thirty, I find I’ve done an about-face. I have a thing for young men these days.”
    “Uh.”
    “I’ve noticed, Chip, that some young men have a thing for older women.”
    I don’t have a thing for older women, but I certainly haven’t got anything against them. Actually, I don’t suppose chronological age means very much. There are women of thirty-six who are too old. There are other women the same age who are not. Caitlin was in the second category, and I was becoming more aware of this every minute.
    Her perfume may have had something to do with this. Her leg, which had somehow moved against mine under the table, may also have had something to do with it.
    “Well,” I said. “About Melanie—”
    “Were you sleeping with her, Chip?”
    Everybody wanted to know if I was sleeping with Melanie. First those cops, now Caitlin. I said, “We hadn’t known each other very long.”
    “Sometimes it doesn’t take very long.”
    “Er. The thing is, you know, that someone killed Melanie. And if someone also killed Jessica, and if it’s the same someone—”
    “Then Kim and I might be on somebody’s Christmas list.”
    “Uh-huh. Something like that.”
    She lit a cigarette. She had been lighting cigarettes all along, but I don’t think it’s absolutely essential to call it to your attention every time somebody lights a cigarette. This time, though, she made a production number out of it, winding up taking a big drag and sighing out a cloud of smoke.
    She said, “You know, Chip, I do have a little trouble taking this seriously.”
    “There may not be anything to it.”
    “But there also may be something to it, is that what you mean? Assuming there is, what do I do about it? Put myself in a convent? Hire around-the-clock bodyguards? Quickly marry the president so I qualify for Secret Service protection?”
    “The most important thing is to find Melanie’s killer.”
    “‘Catch him before he kills more?’ That makes a certain amount of sense.” She studied me for a moment. “The man you work for,” she said.
    “Leo Haig.”
    “He’s really good?”
    “He’s brilliant.”
    “Hmmm. And what do you do for him exactly? You’re a little young to be a detective, aren’t you?”
    “I’m his assistant. That doesn’t mean my job is taking out the garbage.” Actually, I do take the garbage out of the fish tanks some of the time. “I work with him on cases.”
    “So you’d be working on this, too.”
    “That’s right. I do the leg work.” I regretted saying that because she sort of winked and did some leg work of her own.
    “I’ll just bet you do, Chip.”
    “Uh.”
    “I’d like to see you devote all your energies to my case,” she said. As I guess you’ve noticed, she tended to say things with double meanings. “I’d like you working hard on my behalf. You don’t have a client, do you? You’re just investigating because of your friendship for my sister?”
    We had a client but he didn’t want his name mentioned, so I didn’t mention it. I agreed that we were involved in this out of friendship for Melanie. Which was true—I would have been working every bit as hard without Addison Shivers as a client.
    She opened her bag and found a checkbook. She wrote for a minute, tore out a check, folded it in half and slipped it to me. “That’s an advance,” she said.
    I took the check.
    “An advance,” she repeated. “Actually this is no day to be making advances, is it?”
    “Uh.”
    “It’s about that time, isn’t it? I have to pick up my darling husband at his club. On the way home I can hear how good it is to work up a sweat. That depends how you work it up, don’t you think?”
    “I guess.”
    “Do you? I suspect you do.