She wore faded Levi's and a slate-blue chamois shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Her face was heart-shaped, its contours accentuated by a sharply defined widow's peak. Her hair, dark brown salted with gray, hung almost to her shoulders. Her gray eyes were large and well-spaced, and a touch of mascara around them was the only makeup she wore.
We sat in a pair of chairs at right angles to one another and set our coffee mugs on a table made from a section of tree trunk and a slab of slate. She asked if I'd had trouble finding her address and I said I hadn't.
Then she said, 'Well, shall we talk about Barb Ettinger? Maybe you can start by telling me why you're interested in her after all these years.'
SHE'D missed the media coverage of Louis Pinell's arrest. It was news to her that the Icepick Prowler was in custody, so it was also news that her former employee had been killed by someone else.
'So for the first time you're looking for a killer with a motive,' she said. 'If you'd looked at the time-'
'It might have been easier. Yes.'
'And it might be easier now just to look the other way. I don't remember her father. I must have met him, after the murder if not before, but I don't have any recollection of him. I remember her sister.
Have you met her?'
'Not yet.'
'I don't know what she's like now, but she struck me as a snotty little bitch. But I didn't know her well, and anyway it was nine years ago. That's what I keep coming back to. Everything was nine years ago.'
'How did you meet Barbara Ettinger?'
'We ran into each other in the neighborhood. Shopping at the Grand Union, going to the candy store for a paper. Maybe I mentioned that I was running a day-care center. Maybe she heard it from someone else. Either way, one morning she walked into the Happy Hours and asked if I needed any help.'
'And you hired her right away?'
'I told her I couldn't pay her much. The place was just about making expenses. I started it for a dumb reason- there was no convenient day-care center in the neighborhood, and I needed a place to dump my own kids, so I found a partner and we opened the Happy Hours, and instead of dumping my kids I was watching them and everybody else's, and of course my partner came to her senses about the time the ink was dry on the lease, and she backed out and I was running the whole show myself. I told Barb I needed her but I couldn't afford her, and she said she mostly wanted something to do and she'd work cheap. I forget what I paid her but it wasn't a whole lot.'
'Was she good at her work?'
'It was essentially baby-sitting. There's a limit to how good you can be at it.' She thought for a moment. 'It's hard to remember. Nine years ago, so I was twenty-nine at the time, and she was a few years younger.'
'She was twenty-six when she died.'
'Jesus, that's not very old, is it?' She closed her eyes, wincing at early death. 'She was a big help to me, and I guess she was good enough at what she did. She seemed to enjoy it most of the time. She'd have enjoyed it more if she'd been a more contented woman generally.'
'She was discontented?'
'I don't know if that's the right word.' She turned to glance at her bust of Medusa. 'Disappointed? You got the feeling that Barb's life wasn't quite what she'd had in mind for herself. Everything was okay, her husband was okay, her apartment was okay, but she'd hoped for something more than just okay, and she didn't have it.'
'Someone described her as restless.'
'Restless.' She tasted the word. 'That fits her well enough. Of course that was a time for women to be restless. Sexual roles were pretty confused and confusing.'
'Aren't they still?'
'Maybe they always will be. But I think things are a little more settled now than they were for a while there. She was restless, though.
Definitely restless.'
'Her marriage was a disappointment?'
'Most of them are, aren't they? I don't suppose it would have lasted, but we'll never know, will we? Is he still with the Welfare Department?'
I brought her up to date on Douglas Ettinger.
'I didn't know him too well,' she said. 'Barb seemed to feel he wasn't good enough for her. At least I got that impression. His background was low-rent compared to hers. Not that she grew up with the Vanderbilts, but I gather she had a proper suburban childhood and a fancy education. He worked long hours and he had a dead-end job. And yes, there was one other thing wrong with him.'
'What was that?'
'He fucked around.'
'Did he really or did she just think so?'
'He made a pass at me. Oh, it was no big deal, just a casual, offhand sort of proposition. I was not greatly interested. The man looked like a chipmunk. I wasn't much flattered, either, because one sensed he did this sort of thing a lot and that it didn't mean I was irresistible. Of course I didn't say anything to Barb, but she had evidence of her own.
She caught him once at a party, necking in the kitchen with the hostess.