Samson's Deal: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) by Shelley Singer

course, one is not supposed to tell those secrets. But she’s dead, after all, and she seems, surprisingly enough, to have been some kind of public figure.” He sipped his brandy. I tasted my wine. It was icy cold and very good. “Let’s see… her art. She was beginning to work at it again. Once I even saw a sketchbook. Not what was inside it, of course.” He snorted. “We weren’t that close. But I saw the book itself. She was carrying that canvas bag of hers, and half of the book was sticking out the top.”
    “Did she ever talk about her husband, her marriage?”
    “Never. I didn’t even know she was married. She talked only about her past as an artist and her attempts to recapture her ability to work.” The phone was ringing again. This time it rang three times. I tossed him a questioning look. “Roger will get it,” he assured me. Roger did, in the middle of the fifth ring.
    “What was her relationship like with the rest of the group? The two of you didn’t get along, but what about the others?”
    “I won’t tell you by name,” he said, sipping again at his now-warmed brandy. I waited. I had finished my glass of wine. Roger reappeared and looked at our glasses. I nodded. He poured me some more wine. The phone rang again as he was leaving the room.
    “She didn’t approve of one of the women, and the other she seemed to be indifferent to. Of the men, besides me—well, it was odd. She seemed close to this young boy. A student. A very peculiar type. He doesn’t like me either.”
    “Not a very compatible group,” I remarked.
    “You’re right.” He laughed. “But there was some interesting counterpoint.”
    I tried a quick jab. “Just how much did you hate her, Mr. Cavour?”
    “Oh, now, Mr. Samson.” He shook his head at me. “That’s what I thought you were after. As I said, I despised her. But not enough to kill her. I’m able to insulate myself quite well against people like Margaret Bursky, even when I choose to dip a toe in their mud. I like my life just the way it is. Can you imagine me in prison?”
    I couldn’t. I finished my second glass of wine. I guessed I believed him. When I stuck out my hand, thanking him for his help, he clasped it warmly in both of his.
    “Good luck, Mr. Samson. In whatever it is you’re doing.” He escorted me to the hall. We passed a room where Roger sat, talking on the telephone.
    “Yes,” Roger was saying, “he has been given your phone number. I think you’ll like each other.”
    I turned to Cavour. “Call boys?” The question was casual and, I thought, nonjudgmental, but he looked at me with distaste. I realized he wasn’t having any of that “we’re all sophisticates together” stuff. Not from me. He’d been through a war I’d never had to fight.
    “Certainly not, Mr. Samson. I run a legitimate dating bureau. Relationship-oriented.”
    “Seems to be doing well.”
    He hadn’t forgiven me for my lapse of taste, but his manners remained impeccable. “Of course. Many of us prefer equal, non-paying relationships.” He opened the door and I went out, feeling like a clod.
    I tried reaching the two others whose phone numbers were listed but had no luck. The fifth, someone named Edward Cutter, had no phone number, just an address. I decided to visit him and check him out.
    Cutter lived in a run-down four-flat west of Grove Street in South Berkeley. The house was covered with crumbling gray imitation-shingle siding. The yard was trampled dirt with a few dusty and disheveled sections of what used to be a boxwood hedge. The sidewalk was cracked. The wooden steps leading up to the two doors were worn concave and smooth in the middle. There were two door bells next to each door. Three of them had names taped beside them, and none of the names was Cutter. I leaned on the nameless one. A window slid open above my head, and a male voice mumbled, “Who ya looking for?” I raised my eyes to a familiar face. I couldn’t tell whether he recognized