“I’m not a bad housekeeper,” she said. “Dog hairs tend to work their way into things, and it’s difficult getting them out. Sort of like they do to your heart. Work their way in. I don’t know what it is about dogs, but God had a hand in it, and anybody who says they’re just animals has no soul. Dogs are fallen angels, while cats don’t live in this world. They just visit. Dog hairs can actually stick into your skin like splinters if you walk around barefoot. I’ve always had dogs. Just right now I don’t. Are you involved in Ms. Berger’s crusade against cruelty to animals? I’m feeling the bourbon, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean by animals?” he asked, and maybe he was trying to ease the tension, but she couldn’t be sure. “You talking four-legged or two-legged?”
She decided it was best to take him seriously and said, “I’m sure you deal with your share of two-legged animals, but in my book, that’s a terrible misnomer. Animals don’t have cold hearts and cruel imaginations. They just want to be loved, unless they’re rabid or have something else wrong with them or it’s about the food chain. Even then, they don’t rob and murder innocent people. They don’t break into apartments while people are gone for the holidays. I can only imagine what it was like to come home to find something as awful as that. Most of these apartment buildings around here are easy pickings, if you ask me. No doormen, no security, very few burglar-alarm systems. I don’t have one, I’m sure that hasn’t escaped your attention. Being attentive is your training, your job, and by the looks of you, you’ve been at it for a while. I meant the four-legged kind.”
“What four-legged kind?” Investigator Marino seemed on the verge of smiling, as if he found her entertaining.
It was probably her imagination. And the bourbon.
“Pardon my non sequitur,” she said. “I’ve read articles about Jaime Berger. What a fine woman. Anybody who’s a champion of animals is a decent person in my book. She’s cleaned up a number of these dreadful pet stores that sell sick and genetically compromised creatures, and maybe you’ve helped. If so, I thank you very much. I had a puppy from one.”
He listened with no discernible reaction. The more he listened, the more she talked and tentatively reached for her bourbon, usually three times before picking up the glass and taking a sip. She’d gone from thinking he found her interesting to believing he suspected her of something. All in a minute or two.
“A Boston terrier named Ivy,” she said as she clutched a tissue in her lap.
“I asked about a dog,” he said, “because I was wondering if you went out much. As in walking a dog. I’m wondering if maybe you’re observant about what goes on in your neighborhood. People who walk dogs notice what goes on around them. Even more than people with babies in strollers. That’s a little-known fact.” His glasses on her. “You ever observe how many people cross the street, pushing the stroller in front of them? What gets hit first? Dog owners are more careful.”
“Absolutely,” she said, elated that she wasn’t the only one who had noticed the same imbecilic thing about people letting strollers lead the way when they crossed busy New York streets. “But no. I don’t have one at the moment.”
Another long silence, and this time he broke it.
“What happened to Ivy?” he asked.
“Well, it wasn’t me who bought her in that pet shop around the corner. Puppingham Palace. ‘Where pets get the royal treatment. ’ What it ought to say is ‘Where vets get the royal treatment, ’ because vets around here must get most of their business from that unspeakable place. The woman across the street got Ivy as a gift, and couldn’t keep her and gave her to me in a panic. Not a week later, Ivy died of parvovirus. This wasn’t that long ago. Around Thanksgiving.”
“What lady across the street?”
It occurred to Shrew with a jolt of disbelief. “Please don’t tell me Terri’s the one who was burglarized. I wouldn’t have thought it since she’s the only one home over there, and her lights are on, so it wouldn’t dawn on me that someone would break into an apartment where the resident was home.”
She reached for her glass and held on to it.
“I suppose she might have been out last night like most people on New Year’s Eve,” she said.
She drank more than a sip.
“I wouldn’t know.” She kept talking. “I always stay in and retreat to my bedroom. I don’t wait to see the ball drop. I really have no interest. One day is the same as another.”
“What time did you turn in last night?” Investigator Marino asked.
She was certain he asked it as if he thought she was implying she hadn’t seen a thing, and he didn’t believe it for one minute.
“Of course, I understand what you’re leading up to,” she said. “It’s not exactly a matter of when I went to sleep. What I’m telling you is I wasn’t sitting at my computer.”
It was directly in front of the window that afforded a perfect view of Terri’s first-floor apartment. He looked right at it.
“Not that I’m staring out my window, down at the street, every other minute, either,” she said. “I ate in the kitchen at my usual time of six o’clock. Leftover tuna casserole. After that, I read for a while back in my bedroom, where the drapes are always drawn.”
“What are you reading?”
“I see, you’re testing me, as if I’m making this up. Ian Mc-Ewan’s Chesil Beach. It’s the third time I’ve read it. I keep hoping they’ll find each other again in the end. Have you ever done that? Read a book or watched a movie again, thinking it will end the way you wish?”
“Unless it’s reality TV, they end the way they end. A lot like crime and tragedy. You can keep talking about it for a hundred years, and people are still mugged, killed in a terrible accident, or, worst of all, murdered.”
Shrew got up from the sofa.
“I’m topping it off. You sure?” As she headed to her tiny kitchen that hadn’t been updated in forty years.
“Just so you’re aware,” his voice followed her, “no one else was home last night, not in your building or the one across the street. All the residents, except you, are gone for the holiday and have been since before Christmas.”
He’d run background checks. He knew all about everyone, including her, she thought, splashing more Maker’s Mark into her glass, the hell with ice. Well, so what? Her husband was a well-respected accountant, and neither of them had ever gotten into any kind of trouble or associated with unsavory people. Other than her secret professional life, which not even a police investigator could possibly know about, Shrew had nothing to hide.
“It’s very important you think hard,” he said as she returned to the couch. “Was there anything at all you saw or heard at any point yesterday that might be of interest? Maybe somebody in the area who caught your attention? What about in recent days or weeks? Anybody around here who might have raised your suspicions? Or just given you one of those feelings. You know what I’m saying? A feeling right here.”
He pointed at his gut, which she suspected used to be much more formidable than it was now. She based this on the sagging skin along his jaw. He used to be heavier.
“No,” she said. “This is a quiet street. Certain types don’t frequent this neighborhood. Now, the young man in the other apartment on my floor, he’s a doctor at Bellevue. He smokes pot and must get it from somewhere, but I don’t for a moment think he buys it right around here. More likely in the vicinity of the hospital, which isn’t the nicest area. The woman in the apartment directly under this one, which, of course, faces the street just like mine. . . .”
“Neither one of them were here last night.”
“She’s not friendly, and I started to say that she has a boyfriend she fights with a lot. But he’s been coming around for over a year, so I doubt he’s a criminal.”
“What about workmen, servicemen, anybody like that?”
“Now and then the cable company.” She looked at the window behind her computer. “There’s a satellite dish on top of the roof, which I have a good view of, and on occasion I’ve seen someone up there doing whatever it is they do.”
He got up and looked out the window at the flat roof of the building where the police car was parked. His suit jacket was taut across his shoulders in back, and it wasn’t even buttoned.
Without turning around, he said, “I see an old fire escape. Wonder if that’s how the servicemen get up
