Эд Горман - Murder on the Aisle

Then finally he just rolled over and did it, brought her to him and really kissed her. They’d made a pass at it before, but this time it truly happened. She even parted her lips and let his tongue come in and then it was as if he were in the electric chair and she had just dropped the switch.

Fortunately, she seemed to be as much in need of him at that moment as he of her. So she didn’t stop him when his hand found her heartbreakingly gorgeous breast, nor when his legs began to entwine with hers.

It was one of those sweet little sessions, very passionate at first but ending up very tender, his head between her legs, almost as if he were praying in a shrine, her hand gently stroking his head (he might have been her child) as he brought her to release, and finally, when he was cradled inside her and just about to come himself, she said, “Thanks for putting up with me tonight, Tobin.”

“That’s all right,” he whispered back. “Thanks for putting up with me. I’m not exactly a prize.”

And then he died the death of pure pleasure and laid beside her watching as snowflakes hit the bedroom window and melted and slid down the black glass, and as the Christmas tree’s lights alternated flashing colors.

She was asleep in moments, and moments later he was, too.

He woke up a few hours later subconsciously expecting to find her across the bed from him. But he patted empty space. Cold empty space. Then one eye came open, then another, then he did a half-push-up and looked around the bedroom. Her prom gown was tossed with teenage abandon over the chair. Where had she gone?

When he decided she was in the living room, he assumed she was watching a movie, maybe The Naked Spur they’d been discussing.

But instead she was curled up by one of the windows, looking out over the city. Her hair and her pajamas were tousled and she looked very young and very pretty and he found himself moved in some simple way he hadn’t been for many years.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?” He found his voice tender, the way it was with his own kids. Or a woman he’d cared about a long time.

“Guess not.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I’ll give you a quarter if you’ll turn around and look at me.”

Which she did. Sort of grinning. “Sorry. I guess that is kind of rude.”

“So what’re you thinking about?”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“I’m thinking about what I’m going to tell you when you ask me why Michael Dailey was handing me an envelope yesterday afternoon.”

“I see.”

“Because you are going to ask me, right?”

“Right.”

“So I’ve got to come up with an answer.”

“You could always tell me the truth.”

“Then I’d have to give the money back.”

“I see.”

She read the disappointment in his eyes. “That makes me sound like a real bitch, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged, not quite sure what to say.

“The trouble is,” she said, “I really like you now. I really do.”

“And I like you.”

“And the fact is, I don’t like Dailey at all. He’s really a creep.”

She was going to talk herself into telling him the truth. He knew better than to interrupt the process by encouraging it. He simply sat on the edge of a leather recliner and listened to her.

“Do you have any hot chocolate?”

He thought. “Maybe some of that instant stuff.”

“That’d be okay.”

“Fine. I’ll fix some.”

“You wouldn’t have any marshmallows, would you?”

“I can look.”

“Then will you sit on the couch next to me, when you come back, I mean?”

“Sure.”

In the kitchen he made instant cocoa in big fancy cups in the microwave and dropped half a dozen pearl-like marshmallows in the cups and carried them back to the living room and sat next to her.

She leaned over and kissed him and then said, “The only thing we need now is some Christmas music. I mean it’s so nice here with the little tree and everything. So peaceful.”

“You serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you stand Perry Como?”

“Perry Como? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to watch his Christmas specials. I love Perry Como.” She smiled. “Just don’t tell anybody, okay?”

“Okay.”

So he found his Perry Como record, which he kept in a file behind a lot of other albums — he got tired of record snobs going through his albums whenever he had a party and finding the Como and then running around all night showing it to people and laughing — so he put it on and went back to the couch and sat tight against her there in the Christmas-light darkness and they sipped their cocoa and didn’t say anything much at all, just sort of touched each other and smelled each other, just sort of listened to Como do wonderful things with “The Christmas Song” and “Silent Night” and songs like that.

She put her head on his shoulder and said, “This reminds me of being with my father.”

At first he felt insulted, at least a bit, seeing that the season and her own turmoil had caused her to turn to him as a father substitute, but then he realized that he’d been able to give her something more substantive than he was able to share with many one-night stands. It wasn’t just quick forgettable sex; there was real kindness between them, and he loved her for it.

She started to talk about her father, an insurance salesman, and how he’d died of heart disease, and the struggle her mother had had ever since with money and loneliness and, ironically, with her own heart disease.

Then she surprised him by saying, “But I still shouldn’t have taken money from Michael Dailey. I mean, there are people a lot worse off than I am.”

“We do what we have to.”

“I think he’s broken into Dunphy’s office.”

“Dailey did the break-in?”

“Not the break-in. That came later.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There were two break-ins. One earlier. One later.”

The Como record ended and he got up to start it again but she said, “No, that music makes me too sentimental about my father. Leave it off while I talk, all right?”

“All right.”

He went back and sat next to her again.

“I usually work in the department at night on my film. That’s what I was doing last night when I heard this noise down the hall. It was around seven o’clock and pretty dark and I got kind of scared, you know, thinking maybe somebody had broken in, or it was some rapist or something. But I went down the hall anyway, just to check it out, and that’s when I found him there.”

“Dailey?”

“Right. Dailey.”

“What was he doing?”

She grinned. “Making a jerk out of himself, actually. He was bent over in front of Dunphy’s door and trying to pick the lock with a credit card. Obviously it was something he’d seen on TV. The trouble was it didn’t have the right kind of lock.”

“So what happened?”

“I just kind of stood there and watched him. I wanted to see what he did next.” She smiled. “Then the security guard came along.”

“What did Dailey do?”

“Really panicked. Plus he looked very dorky. He had on this red lamé dinner jacket and this cummerbund and he was running all over the office trying to find someplace to hide when he heard the guard coming.”

“He still hadn’t seen you?”

“No.”

“So the guard came.”

“So the guard came, and I... I don’t know why I did this — I stepped in his way and said hello. He’s sort of a young guy and always vaguely putting the moves on me. So he stood there and talked with me and then he went on without checking out the inner offices.”