He was saying there wasn't a jealous bone in his body. He was saying he couldn't possibly have killed Jerry McKennon, whoever the hell that was, because he didn't know him and he wouldn't have cared if he and Marilyn were screwing day and night on the sidewalk in front of the police station.
"I think so," Willis said. "Thanks very much for your time."
McKennon's Week-at-a-Glance calendar for the better part of March looked like this:
Carella began cross-checking the appointment calendar against the personal telephone directories he had taken from McKennon's apartment and from his office at Eastec.
The frequently mentioned "Ralph," of course, was the president of Eastec and the many meetings with him were perfectly appropriate for a company that had "a brilliant future."
From McKennon's office directory, Carella learned that:
Eltronics was not a misspelling of Electronics. There was in fact an Eltronics, Inc. in Calm's Point, and it was a supplier of electronic equipment for digital systems.
Pierce Electronics was another supplier, this time in Isola itself.
Dynomat was a burglar-alarm company in Riverhead.
Karl Zanger, Paul Hopkins, Lawrence Barnes, Max Steinberg, Geoffrey Ingrams, Samuel Oliver, Dale Packard, Louis King, George Andrews, Lloyd Davis, Irwin Fein, Peter Mclntyre, Frederick Carter, Joseph Di Angelo, Michael Lane, Richard Heller, Martin Farren, Thomas Haley, Peter Landon, John Fields, Leonard Harkavy, John Unger, Benjamin Jagger and Axel Sanderson were all potential Eastec clients, listed as such in McKennon's directory. Some of the names were already crossed out. Either they had by then become active clients or else they were no longer interested.
From the Isola phone book, Carella learned—as if he hadn't already surmised it—that Mario's, The Coffee Shack, The Ascot House, Jackie's, Jonesey's, L'ltalico and Nimrod's were restaurants. He could find no similar listing for Harold's, where McKennon had dinner at 7:00 p.m. on March 8, so he assumed Harold Somebody was a personal friend, as probably were Hillary (the 8:00 p.m. party on March 15) and Colly (the 7:00 p.m. party McKennon would never attend on the thirtieth).
At this point, Meyer Meyer, smoking a cigarette and kibitzing while Carella was preparing his lists, casually mentioned that he shouldn't too easily chalk off the March 8 and March 15 parties as too distant in time from the poisoning. He reminded Carella that way back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, they had together investigated a poisoning in which a television comic named Stan Gifford dropped dead while performing live before an estimated forty million viewers. After autopsy, the M.E.—Paul Blaney in that case as well—reported that Gifford had ingested a hundred and thirty times the lethal dose of a poison named strophanthin, and that death would have occurred within minutes.
"Turned out the killer built himself a home-made spansule, remember?" Meyer said. "So maybe this is the same thing here."
"Maybe," Carella said.
But he knew that would be too easy.
Cross-checking nonetheless, he found a Harold Sachs and a Hillary Lawson in the personal directory he had taken from McKennon's apartment, and made a note to call them to ask about those parties. He also found a listing for a Nicholas Di Marino, whom he guessed was the Colly throwing the party this Saturday night, but he couldn't see much sense in calling him at this point.
The identical eleven o'clock appointments on March eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-ninth (another appointment McKennon would never keep) led Carella to suspect "Ellsworth" was either a doctor or a dentist. In the cross-check against McKennon's directory, he found a listing for a Ronald Ellsworth, DOS, with offices at 257 Carrington Street, here in Isola.
The Kreuger whose job was being installed was a Henry Kreuger in Calm's Point. Carella learned this from calling McKennon's boss. But Gregorio did not know either an Annie or a Frank, and there were no listings in McKennon's directory for either of them. Carella surmised that Frank Whoever had been in the hospital—hence the flowers—and that McKennon had called Annie Whoever to find out which hospital.
Carella did not enjoy movies with casts of thousands.
Neither did he enjoy cases where the possibilities multiplied geometrically.
Just once in his life, he would love investigating a case involving two men stranded on a desert island, one the victim, the other the obvious killer.
Just once.
Meanwhile, he was stuck with this one.
CHAPTER 4
By eight o'clock that Tuesday night,Willis had talked to all three men on the short list of "friends" Marilyn Hollis had less than graciously provided, and he figured it was time he paid the lady herself another visit.
He did not call first.
Unannounced and uninvited, he drove to 1211 Harborside Lane, and parked his car at the curb adjacent to the small park across the street from her building. It was still bitterly cold. March had come in like a lion and was going out like a lion, so much for the Farmer's Almanac disciples. The wind tossing his hair, his face raw after only a short walk from his car across the street, he rang the front doorbell and waited.
Her voice over the speaker said, "Mickey?"
"No," he said, "it's Detective Willis."
There was a long silence.
"What do you want?" she said.
"Few questions I'd like to ask you. If you have a minute."
"I'm sorry, I can't talk to you just now," she said. "I'm expecting someone."
"When can I come back?" he asked.
"How about never?" she said, and he could swear she was smiling.
"How about later tonight?" he said.
"No, I'm sorry."
"Miss Hollis, this is a homicide…"
"I'm sorry," she said again.
There was a click. And then silence.
He pressed the doorbell button again.
"Listen," she said over the speaker, "I'm truly sorry, but…"
"Miss Hollis," he said, "do I have to get a warrant just to talk to you?"
Silence.
Then: "All right, come in."
The buzzer sounded. He grabbed for the doorknob and let himself into the entrance foyer. Another buzzer sounded, unlocking the inner door. He opened the door and stepped tentatively into the paneled living room. A fire was going in the fireplace across the room. Incense was burning. Not a sign of her anywhere.
He closed the door behind him.
"Miss Hollis?" he called.
"I'm upstairs. Take off your coat, sit down, I'm on the phone."
He hung his coat on a rack just inside the door, and then sat close to the door in a chair upholstered in red crushed velvet. Mickey, he thought. Mickey who? He waited. He could hear nothing from the upstairs levels of the house. The fire crackled and spit. He waited. Still no sounds from upstairs.
"Miss Hollis?" he called again.
"Be with you in a minute!" she called back.
He'd been waiting for at least ten minutes when finally she came down the walnut-bannistered staircase from above. She was wearing something glacial-blue and clingy, a wide sash at the waist, sapphire earrings, high-heeled pumps to match the dress. Blonde hair pulled back from the pale oval of her face. Blue eye shadow. No lipstick.
"You caught me at a bad time," she said. "I was dressing."
"Who's Mickey?" he asked.
"An acquaintance. I just called to say I'd be running late. I hope this won't take too long. Would you like a drink?"