Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

a brother.”
    I said, “It must have upset you the way he didn’t take care of himself.”
    “What?” Now he did look. It was written all over his face:
Who is this broad, and what the hell is she talking about?
    “I mean his apartment. It was just so depressing.”
    He stared. “His apartment was depressing?”
    “You know, the black walls. No furniture. And the mess— I guess he wouldn’t even get a cleaning lady.”
    His cheeks grew slightly pink. “It’s a funny thing. I don’t even know if I was ever in it. We used to meet in restaurants, or at the theater sometimes. And of course he came over here— about once a month, I guess. I guess we dropped him off there— a million times maybe— but I never thought about it. In all the years I’ve known him it just never came up.” The announcer said, “There’s a play at the plate,” and his head turned like a robot’s.
    “And of course there was that terrible old car.”
    The side of his face said, “Jason loved that car. Everybody teased him about it.” His mouth drew down at the memory.
    “Did you know his assistant was living with him?”
    “Adrienne. Sure. That was Jason’s one bad quality. Boy, he treated that kid bad.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, it’s no secret— he had a million women. Clarice and I tried to talk to him, but”— briefly, he turned toward us, then back to the screen— “I guess there’s a piece of Jason that just never grew up.”
    Then, as if he’d had an electric shock, he swiveled to face us. “Omigod. You don’t think Adrienne finally…”
    Rob shrugged. “She says she wasn’t his girlfriend. That he was just letting her stay there for a while.”
    “Oh, no way. The two of ’em tooled around all the time. After she moved in, we started having ’em both over to dinner.” His face took on the look of someone reaching back into the past. “They kidded around. They were involved. Believe it.”
    “Why the other women then?”
    His shoulders went up. “Jason was like that— a big kid. Liked to have a pretty woman on his arm, but I guess he was more comfortable with someone like Adrienne. Young, not real smart…”
    “Malleable.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did he ever get involved with the others, or was all that just for show— so no one would know he was living with his assistant?”
    “You bet he got involved. He was crazy about that doctor— Felicity something. You should talk to her.”
    “We did. She says she hardly knew him.”
    “Oh, come on. He was nuts about her.” He sighed. “Of course, he was nuts about some disc jockey a few months ago, and before that…I forget.”
    “Did you know them?”
    “Funny thing was, sometimes we met them— we’d run into Jase at the theater or something— but he never brought them over. He talked about them, though. He and I’d go out and shoot a few baskets, something like that, he always had some new lady friend.”
    “But he always dumped them.”
    “I don’t know. He didn’t keep them long; that’s all I know.”
    I said, “What we were wondering was, did any of them go off the deep end when he dumped her? Did he ever talk about one of them acting strange?”
    “Well, one used to call him a lot at work. But Adrienne mentioned that, not him. I know what you’re getting at, but if he had any enemies, I don’t know about them. I still can’t believe somebody murdered him. Those witnesses were probably wrong, you know what I mean? You know how people can think they saw something they didn’t?” Suddenly a tear popped out of his eye, and he turned quickly away, not wiping it, which would have drawn attention to it.
    Neither of the other men friends were home, so we took a desperately needed lunch break and called on a couple, Nick and Susie Rodenbom. They had known him as long as anyone, Adrienne had said, Nick having been his mentor years ago when he’d first come to the Chronicle . Rob could remember him— a white-haired editor who’d left to teach college journalism; a kindly sort who had taken the raw material of a brash young man with a brand-new diploma and a ton of ambition and made him the extraordinary writer Jason had been when he died.
    Despite the hair, he didn’t look old— probably about fifty or thereabouts, but he had an avuncular presence, and I could see why Adrienne had put the Rodenboms on the list of “couple” friends and Barry (though obviously part of a couple) on the men’s list. Barry was a