Soon they were out on the dance floor, gliding to the strains of "The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else" as performed, and nicely, by Ina Ray Mutton's all-girl band. The world was bathed in coral lighting. They held each other close; she was a rather tall girl and they made a nice fit.
As the number was concluding, Ina Ray announcing the band's break, he felt a tap on his shoulder, as if someone were cutting in.
He turned and looked into the jade-green eyes of Vivian Chalmers.
"Am I going to have to ask to be introduced?" Viv's voice was cordial and her smile pleasant and white and dazzling; but Ness recognized something hard and hurt lurking in her eyes.
"Of course not," he said, and gestured. "Vivian Chalmers, this is Evelyn-"
"MacMillan," Viv finished, smiling tightly but sincerely, shaking Ev's hand. Ev seemed a little embarrassed. "You're the talk of the town."
"Am I?" Ev asked ingenuously.
"Why, of course, dear," Viv said. "That's a plum job you pulled down at Higbee's. You must have friends in high places."
Neither Ness nor Ev knew what to say to that. They just gave her polite smiles, and finally Viv slipped an arm around Ev's shoulder and said, "Come on. Let's not be enemies."
"Enemies?"
The two women physically were quite similar; only their hair color and apparel differed. Where Ev wore an evening gown, Viv's slender shape was tucked away in a crisp white flannel mannish suit, pin-striped black, over a black blouse.
Viv looked sharply at Ness. "Hasn't this insensitive heel even mentioned me to you?"
"I can't say that he has."
Ness wished he were anywhere else. Picking torso pieces out of the Cuyahoga, for instance.
"We were an item," Viv said, walking Ev toward a side table. Ness followed like a pet. "I don't say this to be bitchy. But some bitch will tell you about it-I'm surprised you haven't heard already-so let's get it out in the open."
"F-fine," Ev said.
"It's over between this big sap and me. Okay?"
"Okay," Ev said tentatively.
"Now why don't you join us," she said, "for a drink."
Ev glanced desperately at Ness. He shrugged. This was one rescue he couldn't manage.
And they approached the table where a dark, vaguely dissipated young man in a tux sat gloomily nursing a double Scotch; next to him was a couple, sitting close to each other, holding hands, apparently very much in love. The woman was older than twenty, but not by much, a pretty redhead who worked hard though not successfully at covering her freckles with makeup; she wore a rather low-cut, shiny green gown and, hidden freckles or not, was a fine-looking woman. Her beau was a husky, towheaded guy in white dinner jacket with black tie.
"I'm sure you folks know our celebrated safety director," Viv said with a casual, almost dismissive nod in Ness's direction, "but I know you haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting his lovely young dinner companion, Evelyn… what was it, dear?"
"MacMillan," Ev said, a little confused, since Viv had known her last name a few minutes ago.
"She's a fashion illustrator with Higbee's," Viv said. "And this dashing drunken young fellow is Kenneth Morrison-his father is the real estate Morrison, a business which Kenneth seems also to be in, as coincidence would have it."
The young man smirked at her and lifted his glass.
"And this charming couple is Jennifer Wainright and Lloyd Watterson. They're engaged, they're in love, they're disgusting."
Watterson, whose blond, sunburned handsomeness was of a baby-face variety, stood and reached a hand out to Ness.
"This is a real pleasure," he said with a big white smile. "I've long been an admirer of yours, Mr. Ness."
Ness shook the somewhat sweaty but very strong hand and smiled back and said, "Call me Eliot. Isn't your father professor of anatomy at Western Reserve?"
"Why yes he is," Watterson said, his smile turning crooked. He sat back down.
Ness held a chair for Ev, and then took a chair himself, with his back to the wall, while saying to Watterson, "Your father was of some help to me, not so long ago."
"Really?" Watterson said. He was sipping at a glass of red wine. "He's very civic-minded, father is. What exactly did he do?"
"Well," Ness said, sorry he'd brought it up, "that really isn't suitable table conversation."
Watterson snapped his fingers. "It was that Torso Clinic! He helped you on that 'Mad Doctor of Kingsbury Run' affair."
Viv laughed. "I never heard him referred to as a 'doctor,' before, Lloyd. Isn't it 'butcher'?"
"Not according to Lloyd's father," Ness said. "He studied the.. evidence and said he felt the Butcher had surgical training. But I'm really not so sure this is proper cocktail-party conversation."
Ev touched his hand. "Eliot doesn't take his business along on social occasions."
Viv studied the couple over the rim of her glass. "But he always sits with his back to the wall, doesn't he?"
Ev gave Ness an odd look, realizing that what Viv said was true.
Ness grinned and shrugged and said, "Old Chicago habits die hard."
"Does this mean," Kenneth Morrison said, with a sneering little smile, "that our safety directors packing heat?"
"Oh, no," Viv said, putting her Bacardi glass on the table next to two other empty ones. "He never carries a gun. It's against his philosophy."
"Is that right?" Watterson said with an interested smile. "Now why is that?"
Ness smiled shyly back and shrugged.
Viv said, "Something about people being disinclined to shoot an unarmed man. Besides, he knows judo. Don't you, Eliot?"
Ness leaned over to her and said, very softly, so that no one else at the table could hear, "Stop it, Viv."
Viv's lips trembled and her eyelids fluttered nervously. "I'm just a little drunk," she said.
He smiled charitably. "Happens to the best of us."
They leaned back away from each other.
"Do you think the Mad Doctor is dead, Mr. Ness?"
He turned his attention to Lloyd Watterson, who had posed the question.
"Lloyd," Ness said firmly, "I don't think this is a topic of conversation that's really suited for-"
"No! No!" Kenneth Morrison was gesturing rather drunkenly. "It's a fascinating topic! Share the inside dope with us poor outside dopes."
Ness felt ill at ease, but as he glanced around the table, he saw all eyes on him, none of them belonging to anybody who seemed to feel uncomfortable about the subject.
And now Viv got into the act.
"The newspapers," she said, "and the public, too, assume that the Butcher is dead. I mean, he is dead… what was his name?"
"Dolezal," Ness said softly.
"He hanged himself in the jailhouse," Morrison said cheerfully. "Spared the state the expense and the trouble."
"I don't know about that."
All eyes turned toward the pretty redhead at Watterson's side, whose small, high-pitched voice had finally entered the conversation.
"Everyone seems to think," Jennifer Wainwright said, "that the reign of terror is over. But it seems to me a lot of questions died unanswered with that poor man."
"Poor man?" Morrison said. "He was a maniac!"
"He never had a trial," she said reasonably. "How do we know he really was the Butcher?"
Watterson, his face blank but for intensely interested eyes, said, " Do you think this fellow Dolezal was guilty, Mr. Ness?"
"Eliot," Ness corrected with a smile, "I have my doubts. The evidence is less than overwhelming."
"Well, hell, man," Morrison said. "Didn't he confess?"
"Those confessions were beaten out of him."
"I thought," Watterson said, "that the coroner's inquest cleared the sheriff in Dolezal's death."
Ness smiled gently. "Not exactly. In fact, Coroner Gerber's autopsy established that four of the suspect's ribs were broken while he was in custody. It's just that those injuries could also be attributed to Dolezal's two failed suicide attempts."