9

Talking softly, Eliza Morgan led me to the living room. "I just got him settled down with lunch in front of the TV. Channel Four is having a discussion with the press, and then they're showing live coverage of the march down Illinois Avenue."

"So that's where all the reporters went," I said.

"Would you like some lunch? Mushroom soup and chicken salad sandwich? Oh, there he goes."

Alan's voice came booming down the hall. "What the dickens is going on?"

"I'm starved," I told Eliza. "Lunch sounds wonderful."

I followed her as far as the living room. Alan was seated on the chesterfield, threatening to upset the wooden tray on his lap as he twisted to look at me. A small color television on a wheeled stand stood in the middle of the room. "Ah, Tim," Alan said. "Good. You don't want to miss this."

I sat down, taking care not to upset his tray. Beside the bowl of soup and a small plate containing the crusts of what had been a sandwich stood a bud vase with a pink, folded rose. A linen napkin was flattened across Alan's snowy white shirt and dark red tie. He leaned toward me. "Did you see that woman? That's Eliza. You can't have her. She's mine."

"I'm glad you like her."

"Splendid woman."

I nodded. Alan leaned back and started on his soup.

Geoffrey Bough, Isobel Archer, Joe Ruddier, and three reporters I did not recognize sat at a round table under Jimbo's kindly, now slightly uncertain gaze.

"—extraordinary number of brutal murders in a community of this size," Isobel purred, "and I wonder at the sight of Arden Vass parading himself in front of television cameras during the funerals of persons whose murders may as yet be unsolved, despite—"

"Despite what, get your foot out of your mouth,"Joe Ruddier yelled, his red face exploding up from his collar without the usual buffer provided by the neck.

"—despite the ridiculous readiness of certain of my colleagues to believe everything they're told," Isobel smoothly finished.

Eliza Morgan handed me a tray identical to Alan's, but without a rose. A delicious odor of fresh mushrooms drifted up from the soup. "There's more, if you'd like." She crossed in front of me to sit in a chair near Alan.

Jimbo was trying to wrestle back control of the panel. Joe Ruddier was bellowing, "If you don't like it here, Miss Archer, try it in Russia, see how far you get!"

"I guess it's interesting to imagine, Isobel," said Geoffrey Bough, but got no further.

"Oh, we d all imagine that, if we could!"yelled Ruddier.

"Miss Archer," Jimbo desperately interposed, "in the light of the widespread civic disturbance in our city these days, can you think it is responsible to bring further criticism against—"

"Exactly!"Ruddier bellowed.

"Is it responsible not to?" Isobel asked.

"I'd shoot myself right now if I thought it would protect one good cop!"

"What an interesting concept," Isobel said, with great sweetness. "More to the point, and for the moment setting aside the two recent Blue Rose murders, let's consider the murder of Frank Waldo, a local businessman with an interesting reputation—"

"I'm afraid you're getting off the subject, Isobel."

"We'll get 'em and put 'em away! We always do!"

"We always put somebody away." Isobel turned, grinning Geoffrey Bough into a smoking ruin with a glance.

"Who?" I asked. "What was that?"

"Are you done, Alan?" Eliza asked. She stood up to remove his tray.

"Who did she say was killed?" I asked.

"A man named Waldo," Eliza said, returning to the room. "I read about it in the Ledger, one of the back pages."

"Was he found dead on Livermore Avenue? Outside a bar called the Idle Hour?"

"I think they found him at the airport," she said. "Would you like to see the paper?"

I had read only as far as the article about the fire in Elm Hill. I said that I would, yes, and Eliza left the room again to bring me the folded second section.

The mutilated body of Francis (Frankie) Waldo, owner and president of the Idaho Wholesale Meat Co., had been found in the trunk of a Ford Galaxy located in the long-term parking garage at Millhaven airport at approximately three o'clock in the morning. An airport employee had noticed blood dripping from the trunk. According to police sources, Mr. Waldo was nearing criminal indictment.

I wondered what Billy Ritz had done to make Waldo look so happy and what had gone wrong with their arrangement.

"Oh, Tim, I suppose you'd be interested in that thing April was writing? The bridge project?"

Alan was looking at me hopefully. "You know, the history piece about the old Blue Rose murders?"

"It's here?" I asked.

Alan nodded. "April used to work on it in my dining room, off and on. I guess John hardly let her work on it at home, but she could always tell him she was coming over here to spend time with the old man."

I remembered the dust-covered papers on Alan's dining room table.

"I plain forgot about the whole thing," he said. "That cleaning woman, she must have thought they were my papers, and she just picked 'em up, dusted underneath, and put 'em back. Eliza asked me about them yesterday."

"I'll get them for you, if you like," Eliza said. "Have you had enough to eat?"

"Yes, it was wonderful," I said, and lifted the tray and hitched forward.

In seconds, Eliza returned with a manila folder in her hands.