How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Gillian Roberts Page B

R.’s an itty-bitty one.”
    A small, lame woman. We were back to zero. “Who else was here?” I asked. “Who else heard the joke about the suite?”
    “Anybody who was around, I guess.” Frankie worked at an imaginary stain on the bar top and I drummed my fingers. Finally, he looked up with an expression that suggested that he was tired of the conversation and of me. “There were people all over the place. I don’t pay much notice. They’re faces and orders.”
    People were haircuts and bad music to the secretary in Wisconsin, faces and orders to Frankie. I couldn’t decide whether I’d stumbled on a great unifying truth or a trivial sadness.
    “Was anybody else here, aside from his wife, who knew Jesse Reese?”
    “How’d I know something like that?” Frankie asked, with some justification. “He had his briefcase. I guess he was doing business down here, so whoever that was with might have been around.”
    “Do you have any idea with whom?” Why did I ask?
    He shook his head.
    “Do you remember anybody else? How about a woman in a sari?”
    “Probably. There often is, even though they’re not drinkers, you know.”
    “Somebody pregnant with a ponytail?”
    Frankie shrugged. “Why would I remember? And what are you trying to say? That somebody who heard my joke about the room framed Sasha?” He sounded nervous, overly incredulous, like a bad actor. “That doesn’t make any sense.” He wasn’t doing a convincing job of making the idea preposterous.
    Neither of us mentioned that there was one person who didn’t have to overhear a thing in order to know about the room because he’d arranged for the switch.
    “Who’d have done such a thing?” Frankie asked.
    “Somebody who wanted to get away with murder, that’s who.” I left him a generous tip, to stay on his good side.

Eight
    I CHECKED THE DESK. Half an hour ago Mackenzie had called in a message that he’d be back “soon.” Exactly how long from now constituted soon? An advanced degree in semantics would come in handy around that man.
    Explication would also be helpful with Frankie the bartender. I mentally poked through everything he’d said, and came up with precious little. The papers had already made clear Reese’s solid financial status and prestige, but they hadn’t mentioned the angry wife. Or the pending TV show—could it be relevant? Or the business he had in Atlantic City. What had it been?
    The paper had said that Jesse Reese’s office was in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, about an hour away, just across the bridge from Philly. What better place than a man’s home away from home to dig for information about appointments, angry wives, and pending TV shows? I knew I was throwing out a net over nothingness, but maybe something would come up. Something that would get Sasha out of prison before sundown.
    * * *
    I wished I were wearing more businesslike garb than Mackenzie’s oversized maroon sweater over linen slacks which were even more intensely wrinkled after the hour-long drive to Cherry Hill. And my convertible-whipped hair was the most rumpled of all. I smoothed myself down, futilely, and hoped my creased aura made me look authentically a member of the working press. Whether I could behave like one was another question. I had only old movies and the six o’clock news upon which to base my performance, but I felt in need of an alias here. I didn’t want anybody associated with Jesse Reese to know that I was associated with his accused murderer.
    I was surprised by the modesty of the investment counselor’s offices. I always thought the handling of money required vaulting spaces and the hush of expensive carpeting, but Jesse Reese’s reception area looked a lot like a dentist’s waiting room. Three chairs covered in a blurred orange and brown stripe sat on colorless flat carpeting across from a desk occupied by a middle-aged woman in taupe hair and suit. A small name plaque said NORMA EVANS.
    “Yes?” She stood up. She