Jan Burke - Dear Irene

On the other hand, we had checked out the second envelope and figured out that it had been mailed from the downtown post office, not far from the Express .

Had Thanatos been down this way to find his next victim? Or had he been near the newspaper, watching me again?

I PICKED UP the phone and tried calling the one person left on my list of Dr. Blaylock’s former lovers: Steven Kincaid. As far as I knew, Kincaid had been Dr. Blaylock’s last lover; he was the only one who admitted still being involved with her at the time of her death.

The phone rang about five times before he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Kincaid?”

“Yes.”

“This is Irene Kelly with the Las Piernas News Express .”

He hung up in my ear.

I took it in stride. Certainly wasn’t the first time it had ever happened to me. Angry sources come with the territory. Before I could decide on my next move, the phone rang. It was Kincaid.

“I called to apologize, Miss Kelly. That was very rude of me. I don’t usually hang up on people. This has been a very difficult time for me. I’m not sure why I…” His voice faltered.

“It’s okay, Mr. Kincaid. I understand.”

“I’m not sure you do. The newspapers – I wasn’t very happy with what they said.”

“Let me assure you right off the bat that I’m not interested in adding anything more to what Mr. Baker has written about your relationship with Dr. Blaylock. I just thought you might be interested in trying to help out. I received another letter from Thanatos today.”

There was about a full minute’s silence. I knew he hadn’t hung up on me again, because I could hear him breathing. It was the kind of breathing you hear when someone is trying to bring themselves back under emotional control.

“I don’t know how I could possibly be of help,” he said, “but go ahead.”

I had already decided to try to meet him face-to-face. It’s much harder to walk away from a person than to hang up on a voice. “Look, why don’t we meet for a cup of coffee? I’ll buy.”

There was another pause before he asked, “Where?”

“You live near campus?”

“Yes.”

“You have classes today?”

“No, winter break is just starting. Finals just ended.”

“Hmm. What about the Garden Cafe – is it still around?”

“Yes. That sounds fine.”

I described what I was wearing and arranged to meet him at this old college haunt in half an hour. I hung up and wondered at the differences between this man and Henry Taylor. Taylor had seemed no more personally affected by Edna Blaylock’s death than a man reading about a flood in a distant country. Kincaid, on the other hand, sounded as if he was just keeping his head above water.

Just before I left, I stopped in to see John, and told him of my plan to meet with Kincaid.

“Watch out, Kelly. For all we know, he could be the one who killed her.”

“He had an alibi, John.”

“You’ve covered trials. I don’t need to tell you that sometimes an alibi can be pretty easy to come by.”

I shrugged. “Maybe so. But then again, maybe this kid is innocent and will end up telling me things he wouldn’t tell the cops.”

“And if he gives you any information? Is this going straight to Frank’s ears?”

“That’s why I came in to talk to you. I won’t talk to Frank if you tell me not to. I just need to know where the paper stands on all of this.”

“You’ve got an obligation to Kincaid. He can’t act as a source and not be made aware of what you plan to do with the information. If he asks for confidentiality, he should get it.

“On the other hand, I’m not overlooking our obligation to the community. Had a long talk with Frank about this, and later with his lieutenant – what’s his name?”

“Carlson.”

“Yeah, well, we’re all on thin ice here. And if Wrigley gets word of this, we could both end up sending out our résumés. For now, I’d prefer you talk things over with me before you say a word to anyone connected to the police – anyone. The only exception would be if you were fairly sure that someone might be physically harmed if you didn’t contact the police immediately. Can you live with that?”

“Sure. I’m going to be pestering you a lot, but I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”

“Well, let’s just play it this way for now. Now scram. You’re going to miss Kincaid and deadline both if you don’t get a move on.”

THE GARDEN CAFE hadn’t changed much since the 1970s, other than the clothing and hairstyles of the clientele, and even some of those were the same. It was a college hangout when Lydia and I were students, as it had been twenty years before we started school. The walls were covered with photos of Las Piernas from about 1910 up to the present day. There was no particular theme, except that after the cafe’s founding in the 1950s, photos of alumni who had made good decorated portions of the wall behind the old-fashioned cash register. I wasn’t up there.

The “garden” was a small enclosure behind glass that featured a couple of ficus trees, a few ferns, and a small fountain. They used to have finches in there, but every once in a while they’d bang up against the glass and kill themselves, which didn’t do much for the appetites of the customers who saw it happen. So the birds had been gone for some time.

I stood by the door, catching snippets of conversations that ranged from the Lakers’ chances to go all the way this year to whether or not the Stanford-Binet tests were a valid measure of intelligence. There were one or two people who looked like they might be faculty members, but I was definitely an oldster in this crowd.

A few people turned my way when I walked in, but nobody seemed to take special notice. I was a few minutes early, but wondered if Kincaid was already there. I looked to see if anyone might be trying to attract my attention. I saw a self-conscious young man peering up at me over the rim of his glasses. He studied me for a while, and I figured him to be Kincaid. He was skinny and had that archival pallor that scholars develop. I decided that he looked to be the type that would take his fifty-four-year-old professor to bed with him.

“Miss Kelly?”

I jumped and turned to look behind me, where the voice had come from. I was almost nose-to-nose with one of the most gorgeous men I have ever laid eyes on. And he knew my name.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He extended a hand. “I’m Steven Kincaid.”

I decided to close my gaping mouth before I gave him enough time to examine my dental work, and reached out with my right hand. He glanced down and noticed the swelling, and gave me a gentle but warm handshake. I was still speechless.

He grinned. Goddamn. No wonder old Edna hadn’t been able to keep her mitts off him. I tried to imagine having this stone fox stare at my podium for an hour or two a day. I would have been sorely tried.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said, and led the way toward the back of the cafe. With his back to me, I was able to shake myself out of the daze I was in and follow him. I thought of Frank and felt a wave of guilt, then smiled to myself. I could enjoy looking at Frank for a hundred years, go blind, and still want to be next to him for another hundred. More than just another bonny lad, Frank Harriman.

Feeling my equilibrium return, I sat down across from Steven Kincaid in the last booth outside the kitchen. It was only then that I realized that conversations had been dropping off in volume or halting all together, and that some people were openly staring at us. Kincaid saw me looking around and said, “I’m afraid I’ve become notorious, at least around campus.” He swallowed hard. “Some of them probably think I killed E.J.”