Elmore said, 'But there were good deadbolt locks on both doors, I'd seen to that, I don't see how anybody could break in, but you say it looked as if she'd opened the door to somebody.' He shook his head. 'She wouldn't have let anybody in after dark.'
'Unless it was someone she knew,' said Palliser.
'But nobody like that would've hurt her.' They were incredulous.
'She knew a lot of people around that neighborhood,' said Julia. 'She'd lived there for more than forty years, but I don't think she'd have opened the door to anybody after the store was closed.'
He said, 'She'd had some trouble with kids. Some of the kids there-coming in and stealing candy bars. She was always having to chase them off. But no kid-'
'Oh, we did worry,' she said. 'I wanted her to close the store and come to live with us. She was sixty-nine and her arthritis was getting worse all the time, and she had Daddy's Social Security, but she'd had the store so long she didn't want to change. That isn't too good a neighborhood now, not like it used to be. Oh, I can't stand thinking how scared she must've been-the last time we saw her was a week ago today, she had a little birthday party for Toby-'
'Who's that?' asked Higgins.
'My sister Eva's boy, Toby Wells. Eva died last year. We were all there, she had a cake and ice cream and she gave Toby ten dollars for a birthday present. It was his twenty-fourth birthday. He's a nice boy, Toby. Got a good job at a Thrifty drugstore up in Hollywood.' She wiped her eyes.
Higgins asked, 'Was she hard of hearing at all, Mrs. Elmore? How was her sight?'
She was shrewd enough to catch his thought. 'You mean she might've thought somebody she knew was at the door when it wasn't? Oh, no, I don't think so. She wasn't deaf and her eyes were good. It was just the arthritis bothered her. I just can't imagine her opening the door to anybody after dark.'
'Do you know anyone in that area? Does anyone there know your name?' asked Palliser.
What had occurred to him, someone like that might have got her to open the door with a tale that the family had tried to call her-that the phone was out of order.
'Not for twenty-four years-since Bob and I were married,' she said. 'Of course, we didn't live in the store, then. We had a house on Twentieth. It was just since Dad died I that she lived in the back of the store. And the neighbor hood had changed, not the same kind of people around.'
Higgins explained about the mandatory autopsy. That they'd be told when they could have the body. They just nodded quietly.
'Did she have any close friends around there?'
'Well, there's Mrs. Wiley. She lived next door on Twentieth Street and she's still there, she's a widow now. She came to see Mother now and then-and Mrs. Buford, but she's in a rest home on Vermont. Sometimes Mother went to see her.'
Back in the car, Palliser rubbed a finger along his handsome straight nose and said, 'Ways it could've happened-so she was a careful old lady. If somebody banged at the door and said the building was on fire-'
'She wasn't attacked in the store,' said Higgins. 'Not until they'd gone into the living room at the back.' He hunched his bulky shoulders.
'Well, the women friends. Nothing likely there.'
'I suppose they had families and she'd know them. But damn it!-that was a crude spur-of-the-minute attack-don't see any rudimentary planning to it. She was an old lady, John. She'd been familiar with that neighborhood for years-before the crime rate started to climb. Maybe she wasn't just as cautious as the family thinks. She might've opened the door for any reason. Wait and see what the lab report has to say. There just could be some prints on that hammer.'
'Wait and see,' agreed Palliser.
WHEN IT COULD BE EXPECTED that people would be up and dressed on Sunday morning, Galeano drove up to Beachwood Drive and at the little frame house found Cora Delaney at home. She looked at stocky dark Galeano- according to regulations in a whole business suit, white shirt and tie, when most men wore casual and sports clothes, and at the badge in his hand-with surprise and curiosity. She was somewhere around Rose Eberhart's age, short and plump and defiantly blond. She let him into a neat livingroom with a collection of old but good furniture, and Galeano told her about Rose Eberhart. She broke down and cried for five minutes and then sat up and blew her nose.
'We knew each other for forty-five years, since we were in kindergarten together. She was only forty-nine. But how could it have happened? You said it looked like she was attacked by somebody. I don't understand-a burglar-'
It hadn't been a burglar. The apartment had been intact, not ransacked, and there'd been thirty dollars in her wallet, a modest amount of good jewelry undisturbed.
'That's what it looks like, Mrs. Delaney. When did you see her last?'
'I talked to her on the phone Wednesday night. She sounded just her usual self, but of course she wouldn't know she was going to be attacked. She'd been feeling run-down lately, said she was taking extra vitamins.' She blew her nose again. 'Oh, and she was annoyed at some woman who'd been pestering her. Some woman named Arvin.'
'What about?' asked Galeano.
'Oh, she was claiming Rose owed her some money and she didn't. It was some woman she used to work with. She hadn't seen her in a long time and ran into her at the corner market. She wasn't really worried about it, just annoyed. Have you talked to Alice-her daughter? Does she know?'
He told her about that, gave her the name of the funeral parlor. The body would probably be released tomorrow.
'Oh, I'd better call Alice, I'll be glad to make the arrangements. This is all the poor girl needed, a sick baby and her husband laid off. Yes, I've got her number, thanks.' She began to cry again. 'We were going out to lunch together today. It's her day off. I said I'd meet her at the Tick-Tock at twelve-thirty. It just doesn't seem possible she's dead.'
Galeano drove up to McClintock's Restaurant. It was just open, no customers in yet. He ordered a cup of coffee from Marie Boyce, who said blankly, 'I don't think I ever heard the name. Arvin? l can't recall anybody named that ever worked here. Since I've been here anyway.'
Whitney came over and sat on the opposite side of the booth. 'Arvin,' he mused. 'It seems to ring a faint bell. I've heard the name somewhere.' He accepted a cigarette and brooded over it. 'Somebody she used to work with. Well, she'd been here ten years. About as long as I've managed the place. I tell you, in that time there's been a little turnover in the staff. Most of our girls are pretty steady, but now and then we get one who isn't satisfactory and I let her go, or one doesn't stay for some reason. It could've been one like that-here for just a short while- sometime back. I just don't remember, Mr. Galeano.'
Galeano went back to the office. Jason Grace had just come in, having taken the morning off. He had just bought himself a Polaroid camera, and he was passing around shots of the christening, a broad smile on his face. Galeano grinned at him over the snapshots. Grace's wife, Virginia, was a nice-looking woman, and the baby was a cute one, round and brown with solemn eyes and a little fuzz of hair. The little three-year-old girl was a honey, in a starched white dress and a red hair ribbon. 'Nice family, Jase.' Galeano had been a bachelor for a long time and he was looking forward to a family of his own.
He told Grace what meager information he had turned up and Grace said, 'It doesn't sound like much, Nick, but we don't know one hell of a lot about this anyway.'
MENOZA WASN'T supposed to come in on Sunday, but he usually did for a while, to keep track of what was going on. He drifted in about two o'clock and Lake said that Sergeant Donovan from Chicago had been asking for him. 'So get him on the phone.' Mendoza swept off the Homburg and went into his office.
'We've got damn all for you,' said Donovan. 'There are about a thousand and one Hoffmans in the greater
