She smiled again at nothing, and looked down the slope of her backyard.
'He was my husband's friend, really,' she said.
'You didn't socialize.'
'Oh ... no ... not really.'
I took a quiet breath.
'Did you know Trent Rowley?'
'Ah, yes.'
'Marlene Rowley?'
'She ... she was ... Trent's wife ... I believe.'
'Bernie and Ellen Eisen?'
'He worked with my husband,' she said.
A full sentence. She was getting into the flow.
'But you didn't socialize,' I said.
She shook her head and giggled slightly. Then she stood suddenly. Or as suddenly as Big Wilma was as likely to do anything.
'Excuse me,' she said. 'I have to do something in the house.'
Then she turned and walked away. I watched her go. Her movements were stiff, as if she were not used to them. Was she leaving me in the lurch, or would she be back? I decided to wait it out. After all I had a whole pitcher of iced tea and a lovely platter of cookies. The circle at the far end of the sloping lawn made a fine spray full of small prismatic rainbows. A cardinal swooped past me, on his way someplace. Had it been something I said? I considered more tea and rejected the idea. It certainly wasn't my appearance. I had on my Ray-Bans, always a classic look. Extending the look, I was wearing a dark blue linen blazer with white buttons, a white silk tee shirt, a shortbarreled Smith & Wesson revolver with a walnut handle in a black leather hip holster, pressed jeans, and black New Balance cross trainers with no socks. How could she bear to leave me?
She couldn't. She reappeared and walked briskly back across her patio toward me.
'Sorry,' she said with a smile, 'something I forgot.'
'Sure,' I said.
She looked right at me. Her eyes were bright and wide. She sat down and drank some tea.
'So,' she said, 'where were we?'
'You didn't socialize much with the Eisens.'
'No.'
'Lovely home,' I said.
'Thank you,' she said. 'I was born here.'
She picked up an Oreo cookie and popped it in her mouth and chewed and swallowed.
'Really?' I said.
Y ou get a workable response, you stick with it.
'Yes, I moved here with my husband after my mother died.'
'That's great,' I said. Mr. Enthusiasm. 'Be an expensive house to buy now.'
'I could afford it,' she said.
'Mr. Cooper does very well,' I said.
'I could afford it without Mr. Cooper,' she said. 'I have plenty of money of my own.'
'Family money,' I said, just to say something.
'Yes. In fact my husband's own wealth is actually family money too.'
'His family or yours?'
'The business in which my husband has been so successful was once known as Waltham Tool and Pipe. My father started it after the war. When I married my husband, Dad took him into the business, and when Dad retired he made my husband the chief executive officer.'
'I know it's indiscreet,' I said, 'to ask. But who has the most money, you or Mr. Cooper.'
'Oh, God,' she said. 'I could buy and sell him ten times over.'
She ate another Oreo.
'Did you ever meet a man named Darrin O'Mara?' I said.
'The sex man on the radio?'
'Yes.'
'God no. Why do you ask? I would have little interest in anything he had to say.'
'He is apparently a friend of your husband's.'
