“Norma, I think that I’ll have more on this for you this afternoon after I see his mother and—” He didn’t want to say “first wife”; he checked the card on his desk—“Betty Kaminsky. If I get any cooperation from them, I won’t have trouble bringing it up. Until then, I don’t think you and I should try to discuss it. Do you think you can agree with that?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

“It’s hard for me to tell over the telephone if you’re all right.”

“Oh, yes. I could have called you last night if I had been really upset.”

“That’s the ticket. Now, listen. I’ve called the field where I keep my plane and they say we’ll be able to go any time after eleven o’clock. You better figure two-thirty or three. I’ll call you in plenty of time.”

“You’re in a much better mood today than you were yesterday.”

“I guess I am. Part of it has to do with the fact that I’m going to do some flying.”

“I see,” she said. “You’ll call me?”

“That’s right.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Norma.”

He had to remember that she didn’t know even approximately when MacIver had acquired the scar. For all Leland knew, she could be thinking that it predated the first marriage. He doubted that. Although MacIver had assured her that there had been no adultery, she would not be able to think of anything else. What stuck with Leland was the facility with which MacIver had lied—long after she had embraced for a certainty the idea that his knowledge of her background shielded her from lies from him. He had spun it off with stunning ease. “Let’s face it,” she had said yesterday, “he was slick.” Yes, Leland thought. It was too soon to stop jumping from point to point: Leland thought of the small fortune MacIver had left. “Another kid knocked me off my bicycle.” When Leland had been in the Police Academy he had known a fellow who had told all his women that he had never been in love before. This wasn’t on the same order. It was something else.