“Don’t look like she had much of any value. Not even electronic stuff. She hasn’t been back there to tell us whether anything’s missing.”
“Can we talk to her?” I asked.
“Yeah. She doesn’t see too good. Has real thick cataracts.”
Pridgen opened the door to the room and announced himself as we went in. “Hey, Miss Eliot, how’s it going? Pridgen here.”
“I’m doing well. Though the social worker says they won’t release me until Monday,” she said. “Observation and all that.”
The handsome woman, perfectly erect in a vinyl hospital chair with her feet on the ottoman, was dressed in a housecoat, listening to the opera on a small portable radio.
“I brought you those friends I told you about. This here is Ms. Cooper, and the big guy is Detective Wallace.”
“How do you do?” she asked, shifting her head as though trying to make us out. “I’m Jane Eliot.”
“I’m Alex and he’s Mercer. I guess you know who we are.”
“I do. And I know you’re not here for my blood or my temperature, so that’s just fine,” she said, smiling at us. “Pridgen, would you bring in a few chairs?”
I explained our purpose to Jane Eliot, without mentioning Tina Barr, and told her we needed to do another interview, to probe even more thoroughly.
“It’s rather odd for me, Alex. I’ve lived such an ordinary life for so very long that I can’t understand all this interest.”
“Why don’t we work backward, then?” I said, sitting on one of the chairs that the sergeant had brought into the room. “Get the worst over with first. When did this happen?”
I wanted the facts, and I also wanted to know how clear she was.
“Wednesday. It was shortly before noon,” Jane Eliot answered without any hesitation. “I’ve got my favorite shows to listen to, so I know exactly what day and time it was.”
“Where do you live?”
“ Greenwich Village,” she said. “On Bedford, between Morton and Commerce streets.”
“How lovely. Such a pretty area.” The historic district of tree-lined streets and small townhouses was one of the safest parts of the city. “That’s the block where Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house is, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Precisely, young lady. The narrowest house in the Village-nine and a half feet wide. Are you a poet as well as a lawyer?” Eliot asked, leaning over to pat me on the knee.
No question she was as sharp as a tack. I laughed. “No, ma’am. All lawyer.”
“I’ve been there for many, many years-on the first floor, thank goodness. I don’t think I could climb those steps very well anymore.”
“Do you live alone, Miss Eliot?”
“Yes, dear. Always have.”
“How large is your apartment?”
“Just a small parlor, my bedroom, the kitchen, and a little den.”
“Why don’t you tell us exactly what you remember about Tuesday?”
“Certainly. I was waiting to get my local news and weather, enjoy the chatter on one of those midday shows. There was a knock on my door, which surprised me, because the buzzer hadn’t rung.”
“There’s an outer entrance that’s kept locked?”
“Always.”
“What did you do?”
“I was in the den, turning on the television, so I walked through the apartment to the living room. The knocking came again, and I asked who was there.”
“Did someone respond?”
“Oh, yes. The young man spoke to me. Told me he had a package.”
“For you?”
“That’s what has me feeling foolish. I don’t get many packages, other than an occasional fruitcake from my niece and nephews around the holidays. Can’t give them away fast enough.” She was spunky and quick to smile. “‘Not for me, you don’t.’ That’s what I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“That it was a delivery for my neighbor. He even had the name and apartment right. Miss Ziegler in two-C. Then he told me to look through the peephole so I could see his uniform.”
While Jane Eliot was talking, I heard Mercer ask the sergeant whether there was a list of names in the building’s vestibule. He nodded and mouthed the word “yes.”
“My vision isn’t too good these days,” she said, “but I can make out shapes and colors. I can see, Mercer, that you’ve got a very large frame, that you’re a tall man, black skinned. And you’re quite tall yourself, Alex, with lovely golden hair.”
“Thank you.”
“Mine was red,” Jane Eliot said. “Fiery red. Well, there he was in one of those brown jackets. You know that delivery service that’s all done up in brown?”
Tina Barr’s assailant had dressed in a fireman’s uniform but lost his mask at the crime scene. Was he enough of a chameleon to change his disguise less than twenty-four hours later?
“Tell me about Miss Zeigler,” I said. “Have you ever taken packages for her before?”
“Heavens, yes. It’s hard for someone like me, without a computer, to understand how she does it, but the girl buys everything online-her books, her clothes, and sometimes even her food. She works for a travel magazine so she’s on the road often, and I’m used to accepting deliveries for her.”
“Had she asked you to take anything in this week?”
Jane Eliot bit her lip. “It’s not that I like to look foolish, Alex. But she doesn’t always remember to ask me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with what you did, Miss Eliot. What happened isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for opening the door,” I said. “Would you tell us what happened when you did?”
She inhaled deeply and continued speaking. “The fellow pushed his way in, and that’s when I lost my balance. I didn’t fall, thank the Lord, but I grabbed for the bench behind me and sat down on it. That’s when he dropped the parcel-a small box-and I thought maybe he had stumbled on something.
“Then he bent over, not to get the box, but to get me,” she said, becoming a bit emotional. “He covered my mouth with a cloth, with some kind of fabric that he’d soaked in something dreadful. I thought I was going to die, young lady. I-I couldn’t breathe. I got so dizzy. I remember the room spinning, and that’s all.”
“A few more things, if you don’t mind,” I said, letting her recover from reliving those frightening moments. “Can you tell us anything about the man who did this?”
“Nothing that Sergeant Pridgen found very helpful.”
“Now, Miss Eliot,” Pridgen said. “You’ve been terrific.”
“You called him a young man, Miss Eliot. And I understand you have cataracts, but do you have any idea how old he was?”
“Look at me, Alex. I call everyone young.”
My turn to bite my lip.
“He was white, I know that for sure. He was an adult, not a teenager. But I couldn’t see his features, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No marks on his face, when he got up close to you?”
“Clean shaven is all I can say. Usually I can make out facial hair if a man’s got it. Didn’t see any of that.”
“Did his uniform have any markings on it? Could you see?”
“You mean like the name of the company? I’m sorry. I just couldn’t tell you that.”
“We’ve checked those services, Alex. These days, they’ve got their scanners current to the second. They can account for all their drivers in the area,” Pridgen said. “He wasn’t legit.”
“Was the box still there when you came to?” Mercer asked.
“I never saw it again.”
“What’s the next thing you remember?” I asked.
