True-Life Adventure

looked very sad, like somebody who’s lost a good friend. I hoped like hell she hadn’t.
    We thanked her and left, Sardis and I, feeling a bit under the weather. Susanna’s grief was catching.
    “I think,” I said, “that I’d better have a talk with Joan. And I think I’d better start flying solo.”
    If I’d thought that last was going to hurt Sardis’ feelings, I was mistaken. “Okay,” she said. “I’m feeling slightly guilty about calling in sick. I was thinking I might go to the office and play catch-up.” She fished in her purse and came up with a key to her apartment. “Here’s an extra in case you get home first. I think I might be pretty late.” It’s weird, but I was the one whose feelings were hurt. I’d sort of forgotten Sardis was a busy person with her own life and probably two or three boyfriends. I took the key and thanked her just as the elevator hit bottom.
    We walked out in silence and continued walking that way until Sardis screamed. It wasn’t a scream, really; just one of those funny syllables like aaaagh that people blurt out when they’re too surprised to think of a real word.
    When she finished blurting aaagh! , she said, “Look!” And she pointed to a newsstand with a brand-new Examiner in it. The Ex has a way of bannering the lead story so at first all I saw was some recession nonsense. And then I saw a picture of a man I didn’t know beside a headline that said: DEVELOPER COMMITS SUICIDE . The caption said the man was Peter Tillman.

CHAPTER 11
    The story said Tillman was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in his car, which was in his garage. It said he had left no note. It said his wife knew of no reason why he would want to kill himself. She was “shocked,” it said.
    Involuntarily, Sardis and I stared at each other. She had a lot of pain in her face, and worry. “I’ll call Joan,” she said. “She’ll be expecting you. Go right now. Quickly.”
    She gave me a quick but very tight hug and left to find a phone booth.
    I found my own phone booth and looked up the Women’s Bank of the Golden State. It was in the financial district, just a few blocks away, so I walked. It may not have been the fastest way to get there, but I figured Joan was safe as long as she was at work, and I needed time to think.
    At first, all I could think of was Philip MacDonald, yet another successful mystery writer with my surname. I was thinking of a book by Cousin Phil called The List of Adrian Messenger, in which everyone on Adrian’s list is found to have died under mysterious circumstances.
    I was also thinking about the list I had made of the people involved in the Koehler case. If I didn’t live out the day, I was wondering, would Blick find it and would its significance penetrate his thick skull? No, of course he wouldn’t. He couldn’t find it. It had burned up with everything else I owned.
    I made a new list in my head. On it were Jack Birnbaum, Paul Brissette, and Peter Tillman. Somebody wanted me on it. Maybe they wanted Joan, Susanna, and Sardis on it. Maybe Lindsay, too. Or maybe Lindsay was already dead. Or maybe she was the murderer.
    But I didn’t think so. She might be a bit unstable, but I didn’t think she was systematically killing off all her friends. I thought there was something in those reports that was dangerous to someone else. Jacob and Marilyn had read them— did that mean they were in danger, too? Or were they suspects? That was too hard to figure, so I went back to the reports themselves— trying for the umpteenth time to imagine what tiny piece of information they contained that was worth killing three people. Four if you counted me. Were the damn things in code or something? But they couldn’t be. I’d written them myself.
    I shook my head to clear it. It didn’t work. I tried to start at the beginning.
    Okay. Someone had killed Birnbaum. Someone had tried to kill me. But maybe Brissette had really fallen down the stairs and Tillman had really committed suicide. I never was good at math, but I tried to figure the probabilities. I did it by counting up all my ex-girlfriends who had died violent deaths within a few hours of each other. The number was zero. All two hundred and eighty-odd of them were healthy as horses. I’ll bet nine out of ten people could say that, and the tenth would only have one dead lover. And nine out of ten of those who did have dead lovers could say with certainty that the deaths were from natural causes. So