expression. He was talking in a tone so low I couldn’t be sure I was picking up every word.
“We found a hair,” he said. “Just one hair, and it didn’t match Gibson, Ms. Braxton, or Mrs. Gibson. We ran it through the DNA files of known offenders who’ve given samples, through the FBI, and we hit a match. A guy from Texas, Branford T. Purell.”
“What did Mr. Purell get convicted of?” I asked, in a tone almost as low as Abrams’. Some things are catching.
“Murder. He killed three women in Texas in the late eighties.”
I started breathing a little faster. “Did he use a knife?”
“No, a shotgun. Mr. Purell wasn’t exactly subtle.” Abrams was-n’t making eye contact—there was something he wasn’t telling me.
“Okay, so let’s find this Purell guy. Where is he?”
Abrams set his jaw, and turned his head to make direct eye contact with me. His eyes weren’t amused.
“He’s dead,” Abrams said. “Branford T. Purell was executed seven years ago.”
Chapter
Eight
Abrams and I exchanged incredibly unlikely suggestions on how a dead man’s hair could make it into a live secretary’s apartment seven years after he met his end in Texas, but neither of us was terribly enthusiastic about our theories. Mine, that he had been put to death unbelievably slowly by watching an attractive woman have sex with all sorts of other men, was not entirely serious. Abrams suggested it would lead to a new form of cruel and unusual punishment: death by pornography.
I thanked him for the information, however weird, and went back to the hotel. Abby and the kids were at the pool again, but now I had time to put on a bathing suit and join them, thus delighting my children and disappointing all the other men at the pool, who had been watching my wife and hoping she was a divorcée or a widow. No, I’m not paranoid—they all are truly against me.
We spent the evening quietly, going out to a restaurant and avoiding all mention of Legs or Stephanie. After dinner, the kids retired to their lair to see if Fred Flintstone had come up with anything new to say since 1966 (it was new to them), while Abby and I headed to our bedroom to collapse into two separate exhausted heaps on the bed.
Since my wife is incapable of collapsing into an exhausted heap without doing at least 30 minutes of prep work in the bathroom, I had plenty of time to set the stage. I shut off all the lights in the room except the one over her pillow, then turned down Abby’s half of the bed. The hotel had been kind enough to supply a chocolate for her pillow, and I moved it to a spot just below there.
I stripped down to the boxers with the New York Yankees emblem she had gotten me as a gag gift for my latest birthday, and climbed under the blanket. So when Abby (finally) emerged from the bathroom, she saw a dimly lit, quiet hotel bed, lavishly made up, with a chocolate and a husband.
And, of course, on her pillow, a screenplay.
She laughed, then walked over and sat down, careful to pick up the chocolate first. She looked at me and determined that I was not, in fact, asleep. Then she looked at the script, and chuckled again.
“The Minivan Rolls for Thee?” she asked, looking at the title.
“Hemingway,” I said.
“I understood the reference,” she admonished. “I’m just wondering if it’s about. . .”
“It kind of is,” I said. “And it’s kind of not. You decide.”
Abby lay down, her short pajamas showcasing her magnificent legs. She picked up the script and opened it.
“You realize I’m not going to read it all tonight,” she said.
“Of course,” I told her. “I’ll be glad if you get past page one.”
She bent her magnificent legs to make a reading stand for the script, and got to work. I did my best not to watch, but then she chuckled, and I tried to catch a glimpse of which page she was on, to see what was funny, and whether it had been intentional.
“Stop watching me,” she said. “You know it makes me nervous.”
“I wasn’t watching you,” I told her. “I was ogling your legs.”
“That’s different.”
She went back to reading, and I lay there, eyes ostensibly closed, appreciating her. Okay, so I was watching to see if she’d find anything else amusing.
“You’re making this difficult,” she warned.
“Me? I’m as quiet as a mouse.”
“A mouse with a pair of binoculars.”
“They’re still quiet,” I