'No,' Clay said.
'Who do you think would have reason to kill him?' Bonnell said.
'Personally, from what you said,' Clay said, 'it sounds like robbery to me.'
'Not to me, Mr. Traynor,' Bonnell said. 'I feel sure this was done by somebody who knew him and knew him well.'
'Act of passion?' I said.
'Precisely.' He lit another Chesterfield. The sulphur smell from the match stayed on the air a long moment, not unpleasantly. 'Maybe what we're talking about here is a jealous husband-or jealous lover at any rate.' A kind of chuckle came into his throat. I qualify that only because the noise he made was far more ominous than a chuckle. 'From every person I talked to, I got the impression that Mr. Harris was not a stranger to love affairs, particularly with other men's wives.'
As he spoke he focused on me, not on Clay.
Now it was my turn to clear my voice, to reach far down the well of my throat and try to dredge up some words. 'I didn't think people got that bent out of shape anymore. I mean, these are supposedly liberated times.'
'Not that liberated, I'm afraid, Mr. Ketchum.' The melancholy in his voice seemed genuine, the irony gone from his gaze. For that instant I wondered if Clay and I weren't being paranoid. Maybe because we had things to hide we were overinterpreting everything Bonnell said. Maybe he didn't suspect us at all…
'I guess I'm still a little unclear,' Bonnell said, 'about how you and Denny Harris met each other.' He had his pen poised. 'Maybe you could run through that for me. Maybe that will help me get a better picture of Mr. Harris.'
Though I wasn't sure why he wanted to know-though I was starting to get suspicious again-I ran through it for him, the same story I'd gone through myself many times.
I had met Denny Harris when he was an assistant account exec at a large agency where I was a junior copywriter. We shared a hard-core ambition for success. At the large agency we wound up in control of our own team, attracting the second-largest account the agency had, and winning a dozen or so national awards for our work on two or three accounts. Inevitably, we started talking about having our own agency. My wife was equally ambitious. She thought it was a great idea. And that's how it came about. We had opened shop ten years before in a crackerbox over by the river. We did well enough that we had moved downtown before a year was over. Except our relationship started falling apart. Denny had always been the troublesome little boy. He'd managed to be fetching about it-for a while. But I got sick of the hangovers, of the black eyes he occasionally sported, of the innumerable female employees who moped around the shop after he had visited them vampirelike the night before.
I also began to wonder about the finances of our shop. I was creative director and in charge of all writing, art, and production. Denny was to be in charge of business. But he began being secretive about things. His expense account, for example, swelled beyond recognition. I began to wonder if he ever paid for anything himself. Conservative by nature, I tended to leave everything I could in the business. I asked Wickes about what was going on many times-and many times he responded the same way, by showing me financial statements I didn't quite understand, no matter how hard I tried.
Along with the perilous business situation, my marriage began to suffer, (which, of course, I didn't share with Bonnell). It was obvious to everybody but me apparently that my wife Sylvia and I had nothing in common anymore. She had taken up the bar scene-the leper colony I referred to earlier-abdicating, as I saw it, her responsibilities as both wife and mother. Fortunately, our kids were old enough that they could accept the inevitable. They accepted it with much more grace than I did. Particularly after she told me she had had lovers over the past three years…
'I know how all this sounds,' I said to Bonnell. 'I wish I could say I liked Denny-I'd feel better about myself if I could-but I didn't.' I shook my head. 'But I didn't kill him, either.'
'I have to ask you something…' Bonnell began.
And then I knew that Sarah had told him. She was the only person up here who knew it-Denny had told her one day ostensibly because he felt guilty about it and needed to unburden himself; what he was really trying to do was establish himself forever as the dominant figure on this particular landscape. I didn't blame her, not really. She was being a good citizen, that was all, trying to help the police do their job the best way possible.
'Your wife-' Bonnell began.
'— Ex-wife-'
'— had a brief affair with Denny Harris. Is that right?' I nodded.
I could see by the indifferent way Clay looked that he'd known already. So much for shocking revelations. I suppose Denny had told everybody. I saw a terrible kind of justice in it-the lepers that Sylvia saw as so glittering and so much fun, using her for nothing more than cocktail chatter and gossip.
'You were married while this was going on?' Bonnell asked.
'Yes, though I didn't know about it until after I'd filed for divorce.'
'You didn't end your business relationship?' I shrugged. 'By then it didn't matter. I was pretty much numb.'
Bonnell nodded. 'Yeah, I went through a divorce myself. I know what you mean.' Human-at last, and however briefly.
'I didn't kill him. I really didn't,' I said. He assessed me. He seemed to believe me-or was I just hoping?
'I'm going to have to ask both you gentlemen where you were last evening. We don't have a medical examiner's report yet, but the lab is estimating the death at late afternoon-say around six o'clock.'
Which was when Clay Traynor said, in the cocky way I was used to, 'Hate to spoil your fun, Bonnell. But we were together, weren't we Michael? Working late right here in this office.' The hangdog Clay and the arrogant one.
The irony returned to Bonnell's gaze. He looked at me. 'True, Mr. Ketchum?'
At first I couldn't get it out-the single syllable that would make me a perjurer.
'Mr. Ketchum?' Bonnell repeated.
I looked at Clay, who was stupidly smiling. I thought of my kids and my old man in the nursing home, his paperlike flesh. The eyes that did not quite know me when I bent to kiss him. Losing the agency would cut me adrift-I wouldn't be able to help them.
'Yes,' I said. 'True.'
EIGHT
Around noon I decided to close the office for the rest of the day. Not out of any respect for Denny, of course- though I was beginning to feel guilty that my thoughts weren't at least occasionally reverent-but rather because nobody was getting anything done.
Clay Traynor had left a few minutes after Bonnell. Traynor had been grinning as he exited. Apparendy he wasn't feeling any worse about his good friend Denny than I was.
I closed my door and stood at the window looking down on the city. The sky was the slate gray it had been the past few days. Without snow to accompany them, the Christmas decorations hanging everywhere looked more hopeful than real-like the decorations you see in balmy Florida around the holidays. Shoppers leaned into the bitter wind and fled into storefronts for respite. Even shopping was edged with travail these days-at least that's how I'd come to see the world.
A knock on my door-discreet as only Sarah Anders could make it-caused me to turn around and get it over with. Sarah was going to apologize and I was going to accept- sincerely-and that was going to be that.
When I let her in, her eyes were red from crying and her voice was hoarse. She daubed at her cheeks with a handkerchief that had seen extra duty in the past few hours. 'I can't believe it,' she said. 'Dead.' I guided her to a chair.
I went back behind my desk and sat down and let her sniffle and sob until she was done.
Finally, she looked up and said, 'I have to tell you something, Michael.'
I stared across at her, trying to look as pleasant as possible. 'I know what you're going to tell me,
