Read Online The Valentine's Day Murder by Lee Harris - Free Book Online Page B

those three men had. Each of the wives has told me that her husband loved the other two, but Bambi thought Matty was jealous of Val, and Annie thought there was bad blood between Val and Matty because of her.”
    “That’s absurd.”
    “It doesn’t matter whether it’s absurd. It doesn’t even matter whether it’s true. They have these perceptions. You seem to be the only one of the three who doesn’t feel there was trouble between any two of them.”
    “There wasn’t. They were friends, they loved each other, they went out together and we went out as couples. Annie and Bambi are looking for something where nothing exists. I understand why. They’ve lost their husbands—and maybe I have, too, but I think when they were having dinner that night at Giordano’s, they were three happy guys.”
    “One of whom had a gun.”
    She didn’t answer. She looked down at the drawer next to her and pulled out a couple of pieces of paper. “I certainly haven’t found a license to carry a gun here.”
    “Bambi was home the whole night on February fourteenth. She says Clark never came back after he left for dinner. He was wearing work boots when he went out.”
    “He always did in the winter,” Carlotta said. “He would have to go outside with a customer to pick something up or put it in the car.” Her voice was low. Only her husband had no one to vouch for him.
    * * *
    I sat in the living room and looked at the local paper. There’s nothing stranger than reading the problems of a community about which you know nothing. The names make no sense, the problems, while often similar to hometown problems, have their own peculiar spins. Carlotta had said the
New York Times
would not be available till about noon; they were flown in from New York and then had to be driven from the airport. You forget sometimes how much you get used to living in the New York metropolitan area.
    I had walked out of the study to leave her alone. She had invited me here to try to find her husband, and everything I had learned made it seem that he was the man with the gun. I put the paper down and thought about who else I needed to find and talk to. Jake, Val’s business partner, was at the top of the list, and every time I had mentioned him, Carlotta had rather deftly turned the conversation away from him. It might not hurt to talk to the detective in charge of the case, too. He would know whether any taxi drivers remembered driving Val away from the beach that night, and maybe he would have tried to find the bus drivers, too, although that was surely a slim possibility. So there was Jake and there was the detective. And after that, there was the inevitable question: Then, what? It’s the question I hate most.
    I put my forehead in my hand, closed my eyes, and tried to see where all this was leading. Val had no family to turn to, so where would he go? But he did have a family, parents who lived somewhere in Germany. Could he have left the country?
    “Sorry I fell apart, Chris.” Carlotta’s voice came from behind.
    “Carlotta, did Val have a passport?” I stood, suddenly filled with renewed energy.
    “Yes, we both did.”
    “Where did he keep it? It wasn’t in the safe deposit box.”
    “You’re right. Let me think. He kept both our passports. We went to England and France last year, so they’re new. They must be in his chest of drawers. You didn’t find them in the desk, did you?”
    “No. I would have looked at his.”
    “You think he left the country?”
    “I don’t know what to think. But he has parents over there. Even if they weren’t on good terms, when you’re in trouble, you go home.”
    “Come upstairs with me. I’ll look in the chest.”
    I followed her up to her bedroom, a large room with an adjoining sitting room and bath, the kind of luxury that takes my breath away. She went directly to a large chest of drawers and opened the top drawer.
    “He keeps certain personal papers here,” she said. “I’ve never looked