'Of course not.'
'Then she must have claimed to be working. She must have provided references.'
'I should have thought of that,' he said. He shuffled more papers and came up with the application she had filled out. I looked at it. She had claimed to be employed as an industrial systems analyst at a salary of seventeen thousand dollars a year. Her employer was one J.J. Cottrell, Inc. There was a telephone number listed, and I copied it down.
I asked if the references had been checked.
'They must have been,' Kalish said. 'But it doesn't amount to anything. It's simple enough to fake. All she needs is someone at that number to back up her story. We make the calls automatically, but I sometimes wonder if it's worth the trouble.'
'Then someone must have called this number. And someone answered the phone and swore to her lies.'
'Evidently.'
I thanked him for his time. In the lobby downstairs I put a dime in a pay phone and dialed the number Wendy had given. A recording informed me that the number I had dialed was no longer in service.
I put my dime back in the phone and called the Carlyle. I asked the desk for Cale Hanniford's room. A woman answered the phone on the second ring. I gave my name and asked to speak to Mr. Hanniford.
He asked me if I was making any progress.
'I don't know,' I said. 'Those postcards you received from Wendy. Do you still have them?'
'It's possible. Is it important?'
'It would help me get the chronology in order. She signed the lease on her apartment three years ago in October. You said she dropped out of college in the spring.'
'I believe it was in March.'
'When did you get the first postcard?'
'Within two or three months, as I remember it. Let me ask my wife.' He was back a moment later.
'My wife says the first card arrived in June. I would have said late May. The second card, the one from Florida, was a few months after that. I'm sorry I can't make it more specific than that. My wife says she thinks she remembers where she put the cards. We'll be returning to Utica tomorrow morning. I gather you want to know whether Wendy went to Florida before or after she took the apartment.'
That was close enough, so I said yes. I told him I'd call him in a day or two. I already had his office number in Utica, and he gave me his home number as well.
'But please try to call me at the office,' he said.
BURGHASH Antiques Imports was on University Place between Eleventh and Twelfth. I stood in one aisle surrounded by the residue of half the attics in Western Europe. I was looking at a clock just like the one I had seen on Gordon Kalish's wall. It was priced at $225.
'Are you interested in clocks? That's a good one.'
'Does it keep time?'
'Oh, those pendulum clocks are indestructible. And they're extraordinarily accurate. You just raise or lower the weight to make them run faster or slower. The case of the one you're looking at is in particularly good condition. It's not a rare model, of course, but they're hard to find in such nice shape.
The price might be somewhat negotiable if you're really interested.'
I turned to take a good look at him. He was in his middle or late twenties, a trim young man wearing flannel slacks and a powder-blue turtleneck sweater. His hair had been expensively styled. His sideburns were even with the bottoms of his earlobes. He had a very precise moustache.
I said, 'Actually, I'm not interested in clocks. I wanted to talk to someone about a boy who used to work here.'
'Oh, you must mean Richie! You're a policeman? Wasn't it the most unbelievable thing?'
'Did you know him well?'
'I hardly knew him at all. I've only been here since just before Thanksgiving. I used to work at the auction gallery down the block, but it was terribly hectic.'
'How long had Richie worked here?'
'I don't honestly know. Mr. Burghash could tell you. He's in back in the office. It has been pure hell for all of us since that happened. I still can't believe it.'
'Were you working here the day it happened?'
He nodded. 'I saw him that morning. Thursday morning. Then I was on a delivery all afternoon, a load of perfectly hideous French country furniture for an equally hideous split-level chateau in Syosset.
That's on Long Island.'
'I know.'
'Well, I didn't. I lived all these many years in blissful ignorance that there even was a place known as Syosset.' He remembered the gravity of what we were talking about, and his face turned serious again.
'I got back here at five, just in time to help close up shop. Richie had left early. Of course by then it had all happened, hadn't it?'
'The murder took place around four.'
