Swan Dive

ever so slightly as I approached her. On the cocktail table next to her was a portable telephone and two bottom-of-the-glass water rings.
    ”Mr. Cuddy. Good timing. The afternoon was just growing tiresome.”
    ”Last night not enough for you?”
    She slid the glasses back into place. ”Was it for you?”
    ”Plenty.” I sat down on the other chair. The surface was slick, sweaty. Up close, her legs appeared waxy smooth, no varicose veins or blemishes of any kind. She had striking muscle definition, even in her upper arms and shoulders. ”The police said you directed them to me.”
    ”My duty as an officer of the court.”
    ”You don’t seem too crushed by your client’s death.”
    ”Perhaps I’m not the sentimental type.”
    ”Maybe—”
    ”What the hell do you want!”
    I stood up and turned to the voice. Paul Troller, coming out of the house. He wore a leopardskin bikini bottom with a desk-job spare bulging over the front and a lot of baby oil catching the sunlight. Even so, I pegged him as a light heavyweight. There were two tall drinks in his hands, and a match for Arnold ’s sunglasses rode up above his hairline.
    ”I said—”
    ”I heard you, Paulie. This your house or hers?” Troller thought about throwing the glasses, but instead set them down near the pool’s edge, clinking them a little and sloshing some booze in his rage. He started to stride manfully over to us.
    Arnold said, ”Paul, I don’t want any trouble.”
    ”He has no right barging in here.”
    ”He’s not ‘barging in,’ Paul. I asked Mr. Cuddy to come over.”
    ”You... asked him?”
    ”That’s right. And I would like to confer with him privately now.”
    ”Felicia, my God, he’s wanted for a murder.”
    ”Two murders,” I said.
    Troller’s eyes seemed to have the same problem with light as Marsh’s had. He looked at me as if he needed just one more little push.
    Arnold saw it too. ”Paul, please. Leave us alone.” Troller just about bit it back. ”Give me your car keys.”
    ”No.”
    He looked down at her, but behind the glasses I couldn’t read her eyes.
    ”Felicia, you drove me over here, remember?”
    ”Like it was only an hour ago, Paul. It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t you jog home?”
    She had the same control over her voice that she did over her body. I couldn’t say the same for Troller, whose lips were as blue and shivering as a five-year-old’s after a day in the surf. He turned and choked out, ”See you tomorrow at the office,” before stomping back into the house.
    I sat down again. ”You ever hear of the National Labor Relations Board?”
    She smiled. ”Paul’s position isn’t exactly unionized.”
    And my next line was supposed to be ”And what exactly is Paul’s position?” but instead I said, ”You and Paulie there are among the few people who knew Marsh and I had mixed it up.”
    ”And therefore?”
    ”Somebody who knew that set me up to look like his killer.”
    ”Oh, John—”
    ”I prefer ‘Mr. Cuddy.’ ”
    She took her glasses all the way off and stared at me.
    ”Why?”
    ”Maybe I’m not crazy about the way you treat people you call by their first names.”
    ”You are a bit different, aren’t you?”
    ”Let’s talk about Marsh instead.”
    ”Why bother? He’s dead, so the divorce case is over.”
    ”The murder case isn’t.”
    ”Oh, a lot of people could have known about you and Marsh. His girlfriend the nurse, his friends—”
    ”Assuming he had any—”
    ”—the police, Christides, Hanna...” Arnold stopped.
    ”Because Marsh had no will, Hanna gets everything, doesn’t she?”
    ” Roy was rather stupid in a lot of ways, Mr. Cuddy.”
    ”Tell me about them.”
    ”Look, anyone who lives on the coast up here tends to hear stories.”
    ”What kind of stories?”
    ”About fishermen whose insurance rates have gone so high they can’t pay the premiums. But the banks that lent them the money to buy the boats won’t let them leave the docks without full coverage. The real estate developers are bidding wharf space so high God herself couldn’t keep up with it. So one night, one dark, rainy night, the lobsterman brings in a few bales instead of a few pots and clears in five hours what it’d take him five years to earn legitimately.”
    ”Marsh wasn’t exactly your overwhelmed fisherman.”
    ”Everybody has pressure on them. Marsh gave me a handsome retainer, Mr. Cuddy. In cash. Drugs? I didn’t ask. He would have settled, and I...