Vitali and Mishkin exchanged glances.
Then Ida Frost was back, using two hot pads to hold a large rectangular pan of brownies generously dusted with powdered sugar. They smelled delicious.
'Hot from the oven,' she said. 'My mother's recipe and her mother's before her.' She offered the pan.
'Can't say no to all that history,' Mishkin said. He delicately lifted one of the end brownies.
Vitali, thinking that for all they knew the brownies could be poisoned, smiled and shook his head no. Ida Frost moved in on him with the brownies. He raised a hand, still smiling. The edge of the hot pan was almost touching his tie. She was smiling up at him insistently, still advancing. If he didn't back up he'd have a brownie pan scar on his stomach.
'These are great, Sal,' Mishkin said. There were brownie crumbs and powdered sugar in his bushy mustache, on his tie. 'You oughta try one.'
Vitali gave in and helped himself to a brownie. Ida Frost withdrew from his personal space.
'You said on the phone that you recalled something,' Mishkin said, and took another bite of brownie.
'Did I? Oh, yes.' Ida Frost looked at Vitali and at the half a brownie in his hand. 'Do they meet with your approval, Detective?'
Vitali growled around a mouthful of brownie that they did.
'What was it you recalled?' Mishkin asked.
Ida Frost appeared puzzled.
'You called the precinct house and asked for Detective Mishkin,' Vitali reminded her. 'You left a message saying you remembered something about the Mary Bakehouse case and were calling as we'd requested.'
'I liked Mary,' Ida Frost said. 'I wish she hadn't moved away.'
'Probably it's better for her that she went somewhere else,' Vitali said.
Ida Frost seemed to consider that; then she smiled. 'Yes, she's probably safer if she moved out of the city. People in these big apartment buildings don't seem to know each other, don't have the time. Everyone's always rushing around wrapped up in their own thoughts, busy, busy. I'm afraid we lead very insulated and uncaring lives.'
'We should all take better care of each other,' Mishkin said.
'Yes. We all share the guilt, in a way.'
'We all agree that's true,' Vitali said dismissively, trying to keep the Frost woman and Mishkin on point and hurry things along. What was it with Harold sometimes? 'About your phone call, ma'am…'
Ida Frost's smile widened. 'Am I a suspect?'
'Gosh, no!' Mishkin said, helping himself to another brownie.
She saw that Vitali had finished his brownie and advanced on him again with the pan. Though she had a slight limp, she was fast off the mark. 'Do take another, Detective. They're sinfully delicious.'
'They should be against the law,' Mishkin said, and he and Ida Frost laughed.
Vitali took another brownie in self-defense. Or so he told himself, the brownies being hell on his diet. 'You did call the precinct house,' he reminded Ida Frost. 'What was it you remembered, ma'am?'
'A hat. I understand the thug who attacked Mary wore a hat.' She paused for what might have been dramatic effect.
'A hat,' Mishkin said.
'I saw a man with a hat that very evening, standing outside and looking suspicious. I passed him when I went out for my daily walk.'
'What time was that, ma'am?'
'Why, I couldn't say.'
'Was it still light outside?'
'Outside, yes.'
'What did he look like?' Mishkin asked.
'He was…just a man in a hat. A cap, rather. A baseball cap.'
Mishkin glanced over at Vitali and almost imperceptibly shrugged. He couldn't recall if he'd mentioned to Ida Frost that the attacker had worn a baseball cap. 'Do you remember the color, ma'am?'
'Blue, or perhaps gray. Or both. Now that I think of it, It was a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, I'm sure,' Ida Frost said. 'I spend enough time in Ebbets Field, I should be able to recognize a Dodgers cap.'
'The Los Angeles Dodgers, you mean, ma'am?' Vitali asked. There was powdered sugar on his brown suit coat. 'The Dodgers haven't been in Brooklyn for a long time.'
'I attended the games often with my father when I was a young girl.'
'We all miss the Dodgers,' Mishkin said.
'The man in the cap. He might have been Pee Wee Reese.'
Mishkin grinned broadly. 'Say, you're a real Dodgers fan.'
'I've always been partial to Pee Wee. Would you like a glass of milk with those brownies? I have nice cold milk for all my visitors.'
Vitali and Mishkin regarded each other. Vitali had powdered sugar on his suit and the back of his right hand. Mishkin had more of the white dusting on his mustache and tie. Probably some on his white shirt that wasn't visible unless you looked closely. Some of the powdered sugar on Mishkin had drifted down and was on his right shoe.
'Milk would be great!' Mishkin said, and Vitali seconded him.
Ida Frost set the pan of brownies on a magazine on the coffee table and hurried off again to the kitchen. The two detectives shook their heads silently. They were going to get nothing of value from this witness other than brownies. Ida Frost was one of the older, lonely women who inhabited many of Manhattan's small, rent-controlled apartments. What she wanted was company, somebody to appreciate her brownies. She had found two such people. Alleviating her loneliness might have been the sole purpose of her phone call.
Mishkin helped himself to another brownie while Vitali stood brushing at the powdered sugar on his suit coat with the backs of his knuckles, making more of a mess.
'Pee Wee,' Ida Frost said to them, when she came back from the kitchen with two tall glasses of milk on a tray, 'would never have harmed Mary Bakehouse.'
Not Pee Wee, they agreed.
After leaving Ida Frost's apartment, Vitali and Mishkin slapped at their clothes to rid them of powdered sugar, trailing a white haze as they strode toward the elevator.
They both saw her at the same time, a woman standing watching them from beyond the elevator, near the end of the hall. She was wearing a dark raincoat and a dark hat with the wide brim bent low so her face was in shadow.
As if she'd just noticed them, she turned and walked quickly away, rounding the corner at the end of the hall and passing out of sight.
'I'll go after her,' Vitali said. 'You take the elevator and beat her to the lobby, Harold. We'll have her between us, and we can flush her out.'
Off he went.
The elevator was already at lobby level and took its time rising to where Mishkin waited.
When it arrived at his floor he quickly stepped in and punched the lobby button, then the button that closed the elevator door.
The elevator stopped at the floor below, and a woman with two identical corgis on red leather leashes got in. One of the corgis began licking Mishkin's right shoe.
Another floor down, an elderly but alert-looking woman with an aluminum cane boarded the elevator. She and the woman with the Corgis ignored each other. No one paid the slightest attention to Mishkin except for the corgi licking his shoe.
When they reached lobby level, Mishkin, out of habit and because they crowded past him, let the women and the two dogs exit the elevator ahead of him. He stepped out just in time to see the door to the stairwell burst open and a panting and heaving Vitali come skidding out.
Both men looked at the street door shutting slowly on its pneumatic closer as the women and dogs disappeared into the night.
'I don't want to hurt your feelings, Sal,' Mishkin said, 'but I think our shadow woman beat you down the
