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"Sorry about that. I just couldn't get the damn wording right. This one's for Viewer's Digest, and I have to explain drop ship technology for morons without talking down to them or the minimal viewer won't buy it. What's the problem?"
He
His face took on an expression He
He remembered that evening well enough. "Sure, Jeff Walters came back about the time we were finishing coffee. We had brandy with the coffee, and then Hank and, ah, Je
"How did you do?"
"I beat him. Something was bothering him; he wasn't playing very well. I thought he wanted to talk, but he wouldn't talk about whatever was bugging him."
"His ex-wife?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I'd only just met her, and she seemed nice enough. And she seemed to like Jeff."
"Yah. Now, Jeff left with Alicia. How long were they gone?"
"Half an hour, I guess. And he came back without her."
"What time?"
"Quarter past seven or thereabouts. Ask Hank. I don't wear a watch." He said this with a certain pride. A writer doesn't need a watch~ he sets his own hours. "As I said, we had dessert and coffee and then played dominos for an hour, maybe a little less. Then I bad to go home to see how my wife was getting along."
"While you were having dessert and coffee and playing dominos, did Jeff Walters leave the table at any time?"
"Well, we switched tables to set up the game." Larimer shut his eyes to think. He opened them. "No, he didn't go to the bathroom or anything."
"Did you?"
"No. We were together the whole time, if that's what you want to know."
He
Alicia had lived in the mountains, within shouting distance of Lake Arrowhead. Property in that area was far cheaper than property around the Lake itself. The high rent district in the mountains is near streams and lakes. Her own water supply had come from a storage tank kept filled by a small JumpShift unit.
Fisher was hot and sweaty and breathing hard, as if he had been working. He dropped into a chair and wiped his forehead and neck. "There wasn't much point in going," he said.
"We found what was left of a bacon and tomato sandwich sitting on a placemat. Probably her last meal. She wasn't much of a housekeeper. Probably wasn't making much money, either."
"How so?"
"All her gadgetry is old enough to be going to pieces. Her, Dustmaster skips corners and knocks things off tables. Her chairs and couches are all blow-ups, inflated plastic. Cheap, but they have to be replaced every so often, and she didn't. Her displacement booth must be ten years old. She should have replaced it, living in the mountains."
"No- roads in that area?"
"Not near her house, anyway. In remote areas like that they move the booths in by helicopter, then bring the components for the house out through the booth. If her -booth broke down she'd 'have had to hike out, unless she could find a neighbor home, and her neighbors aren't close. I like that area," Fisher said suddenly. "There's elbow room."
"She should have made good money. She was in routing and distribution software." He
The autopsy report was waiting on his desk. He read through it.
Alicia Walters had indeed been killed by a single blow to the side of the head, almost certainly by the malachite box. Its hard corner had crushed her skull around the temple. Malachite is a semiprecious stone, hard enough that no part of it had broken off in the wound; but there was blood and traces of bone and brain tissue on the box itself.
There was also a bruise on her cheek. Have to ask Walters about that, he thought.
She had died about 8:00 P.M., given the state of her body, including body temperature. Stomach contents indicated that she had eaten about 5:30 P.M.: a bacon and tomato sandwich.
He
Fisher heard. "Walters?"
"Sure, Walters. Look: he came back to the Sirius Club at seven twenty, and he called attention to the time. He stayed until around eight thirty, to hear Larimer tell it, and he was always in someone's company. Then he went home, found the body and called us. The woman was killed around eight, which is right in the middle of his alibi time. Give or take fifteen minutes for the lab's margin of error, and it's still an alibi."
"Then it clears him."
He
"You could be jumping to conclusi
"So he's not a cop. So he reads detective stories. So someone murdered his wife in his own living room. Naturally he wants to know if he's got an alibi."
He
"She didn't bleed- a lot," said Fisher. "Maybe enough, maybe not. Maybe she was moved."
"I noticed that too."
"Someone who knew she had a key to Walters' house killed her and dumped her there. He would have hit her with the cigarette box in the spot where he'd already hit her- with something else."
He
"Most people get used to it," said Fisher. "My mother used to flick in to visit me at work, remember?"
He
"It didn't really sound that bad. Lovejoy said it was a friendly divorce. So he was always ru
"She took away his clubs."
Fisher snorted. But Fisher was young. He had grown up with the short-distance booths.
For twenty years passenger teleportation had been restricted to short hops. People had had time to get used to the booths. And in those twenty years the continuity clubs had come into existence.
The continuity club was a guard against future shock. Its location was ... ubiquitous: hundreds of buildings in hundreds of cities, each building just like all the others, inside and out. Wherever a member moved in this traveling society, the club would be there. Today even some of the customers would be the same: everyone used the long distance booths to some extent.
A man had to have some kind of stability in his life. His church, his marriage, his home, his club. Any man might need more or less stability than the next. Walters had belonged to four clubs ...and they were no use to him if he kept meeting Alicia there. And his marriage had broken up, and he wasn't a churchgoer, and a key to his house had been found in Alicia's purse. She should at least have left him his clubs.