'Too tough?'
'Some people thought so,' I said.
'Tougher than you?'
'Never a horse that couldn't be rode, little lady. Never a rider that couldn't be throwed.'
'Good heavens,' Susan said.
'Does that mean he might be?'
'Means maybe we'll find out some day,' I said.
'What do you know about Rikki Wu?'
'Rikki?'
'Yeah. It's not much, but so far she's the only one who's objected to my looking into the murder.'
'Oh, well, yes, I suppose so. It's hard to take Rikki seriously.'
'Somebody does,' I said.
'If she pawned the jewelry she was wearing the other night, she could buy this house.'
'Her husband, Lonnie Wu, is very wealthy, and Rikki is totally indulged. A Chinese American Princess. It has left her with a feeling of near total entitlement.'
'Perhaps we should introduce her to Pearl,' I said.
'A Canine American Princess,' Susan said.
'Rikki gives large sums of money to the theater.'
'And now she's on the board,' I said.
'Can you arrange for me to have lunch with her?'
'I'm not sure she'd be willing to see you.'
'Mention to her about me being hunk city.'
'I'll ask her to lunch with both of us, and then I'll have a crisis with a patient and you can convey my apologies.'
'Okay,' I said.
'But I think hunk city would have worked just as well.'
'Rikki's too self-centered to be flirtatious,' Susan said.
'Shows what you know,' I said.
'You seriously think…' Susan started, but Pearl started barking and jumping around, and the real-estate lady pulled up in her maroon Volvo station wagon. When the real-estate lady got out, Pearl dashed up to her and rammed her head between the real estate lady's thighs.
'How embarrassing,' Susan said.
The real-estate lady smiled and patted Pearl. She didn't mind at all. She knew Pearl's owner was a live one.
'House needs a lot of work,' I said.
'We prefer the term 'great potential,'
' the real-estate lady said.
'I bet you do,' I said.
'In this price range. In a lower price range we would prefer the term 'handyman's special,'
' she said.
'You like this kind of work,' Susan said to me.
'At my own pace,' I said.
'Of course,' Susan said and smiled at me.
I smiled back. I didn't believe her for a moment, but her smile was worth any servitude. Which is how I found myself, an hour later, the co-owner of a very large house, with a jumbo mortgage, on a street where other home owners raised cows and rode horses and drove Volvo station wagons.
If I weren't so heroic, I would have been nervous.
CHAPTER 9
I felt like a college recruiter. All day I had been sitting in the back row of the empty theater interviewing people about Craig Sampson. I had begun at eight in the morning with Leonard O, himself, in to audition for Craig Sampson's replacement. The first thing I noticed was that Leonard had no beard. It wasn't that he was clean- shaven; he appeared never to have needed a shave. His blond hair was shoulder-length and lank. He had a small voice like the bleat of a goat, and he chewed gum very rapidly. I trow he were a gelding or a mare.
We shook hands. His eyes seemed not to register me, and his handshake was a limp squeeze with the tips of his fingers.
