And I gather he was dipping into his welfare clients.'
'What about his wife?'
'I gather he was dipping into her, too. I don't-'
'Was she having an affair with anybody?'
She leaned forward, took hold of her coffee mug. Her hands were large for a woman, their nails clipped short. I suppose long nails would be an impossible hindrance for a sculptor.
She said, 'I was paying her a very low salary. You could almost call it a token salary. I mean, high-school kids got a better hourly rate for baby-sitting, and Barb didn't even get to raid the refrigerator. So if she wanted time off, all she did was take it.'
'Did she take a lot of time off?'
'Not all that much, but I had the impression that she was taking an occasional afternoon or part of an afternoon for something more exciting than a visit to the dentist. A woman has a different air about her when she's off to meet a lover.'
'Did she have that air the day she was killed?'
'I wished you'd asked me nine years ago. I'd have had a better chance of remembering. I know she left early that day but I don't have any memory of the details. You think she met a lover and he killed her?'
'I don't think anything special at this stage. Her husband said she was nervous about the Icepick Prowler.'
'I don't think … wait a minute. I remember thinking about that afterward, after she'd been killed. That she'd been talking about the danger of living in the city. I don't know if she said anything specific about the Icepick killings, but there was something about feeling as though she was being watched or followed. I interpreted it as a kind of premonition of her own death.'
'Maybe it was.'
'Or maybe she was being watched and followed. What is it they say? 'Paranoiacs have enemies, too.'
Maybe she really sensed something.'
'Would she let a stranger into the apartment?'
'I wondered about that at the time. If she was on guard to begin with-'
She broke off suddenly. I asked her what was the matter.
'Nothing.'
'I'm a stranger and you let me into your apartment.'
'It's a loft. As if it makes a difference. I-'
I took out my wallet and tossed it onto the table between us. 'Look through it,' I said. 'There's an ID in it. It'll match the name I gave you over the phone, and I think there's something with a photograph on it.'
'That's not necessary.'
'Look it over anyway. You're not going to be very useful as a subject of interrogation if you're anxious about getting killed. The ID
won't prove I'm not a rapist or a murderer, but rapists and murderers don't usually give you their right names ahead of time. Go ahead, pick it up.'
She went through the wallet quickly, then handed it back to me. I returned it to my pocket. 'That's a lousy picture of you,' she said. 'But I guess it's you, all right. I don't think she'd let a stranger into her apartment. She'd let a lover in, though. Or a husband.'
'You think her husband killed her?'
'Married people always kill one another. Sometimes it takes them fifty years.'
'Any idea who her lover may have been?'
'It may not have been just one person. I'm just guessing, but she could have had an itch to experiment.
And she was pregnant so it was safe.'
She laughed. I asked her what was so funny.
'I was trying to think where she would have met someone. A neighbor, maybe, or the male half of some couple she and her husband saw socially. It's not as though she could have met men on the job.
We had plenty of males there, but unfortunately none of them were over eight years old.'
'Not very promising.'
'Except that's not altogether true. Sometimes fathers would bring the kids in, or pick them up after work. There are situations more conducive to flirtation, but I had daddies come on to me while they collected their children, and it probably happened to Barbara. She was very attractive, you know. And she didn't wrap herself up in an old Mother Hubbard when she came to work at the Happy Hours. She had a good figure and she dressed to show it off.'
The conversation went on a little longer before I got a handle on the question. Then I said, 'Did you and Barbara ever become lovers?'
I was watching her eyes when I asked the question, and they widened in response. 'Jesus Christ,' she said.
I waited her out.
