“WE GO TO THE POLICE?”
“’Course we don’t.”
“Another suicide—but there’s no Abraham Penn on here.” They were sitting back in the Delahaye, and Barbara had unfolded that faded guestlist for the premiere of Broken Looking Glass once again.
“I think Abe was just…” He shook his head. “What would the military call it? A civilian casualty.”
“The wrong person in the wrong place?”
“Exactly.”
Poor old Abe Penn. Not that he’d known him well—not that he reckoned anyone had. Just another sleazy guy in a too-tight suit, and not particularly fragrant even when he was alive. He remembered him mostly from a case where they’d been hired by opposite sides in a divorce, which had been no problem at all. They’d gone and got drunk on the fees after the case was finished, which was when Clark had probably given him his card. Since then, he’d heard that Abe had been mostly doing freelance employee reference and insurance investigations. Basic trudgework. Abe might have had a license, but he couldn’t do a Don’t you remember me from the talkies? turn to persuade the lady clients to hire him for messy matrimonials the way Clark could.
Now the guy had gone and got sucked into this business and killed, probably for no better reason than that April Lamotte had seen one of his adverts in the cheaper rags promising secrecy and discretion. Not that Clark reckoned that Abe had ever got as far as going up to see April Lamotte. That had been someone else—whoever had listened in on her calls on a link from the automatic exchange, then staged Abe’s suicide using whatever was in those syringes, and had driven up to Erewhon themselves pretending to be Abe, and then probably delivered that unpostmarked letter to the communal postbox at the Doge’s Apartments, most likely driving a Mercury sedan.
Once again, Clark had that itchy feeling of being followed, hunted. What puzzled him most by now was how he and Barbara had managed to get this far along Dan and April Lamotte’s tracks without being killed. That, and how all the others who’d been touched by this strange affair had also made it. Kisberg. That doctor woman—if she was still living. Lars Bechmeir, even. And, yes, Peg Entwistle. He remembered again the gaps he’d noticed in Erewhon’s viewing library. Those missing feelie reels. The Virgin Queen amongst them.
“Barbara, what else have you got in that bag of yours.”
“I told you, Clark. I’m just collecting stuff that’s relevant. It isn’t as if you’ve—”
“No. That isn’t what I mean. Have you got that receipt—the big-bucks one for the feelie studio dated earlier this year?