there? You ever seen anybody climbing up the fire escape? Don’t know how you’d get a satellite dish up that ladder. Jeez. Not a job for me. Couldn’t pay me enough.”
He looked out the window, at the darkness. This time of year, daylight was gone by four.
“I don’t know about the ladder,” she said. “Can’t think of a time I’ve seen anybody climbing it, and I suspect there’s some other access to the roof. You’re thinking the burglar got in through a roof access? If so, that’s of great concern. Makes me worry about this building.”
She looked up at her plaster ceiling, wondering what might be on the other side of it.
“I’m on the second floor, and that certainly would make me vulnerable to an intruder, I should think. They must lock access doors.”
She was working herself into quite a state over it.
“This building has an old fire escape, too, you know,” she said.
“Tell me about the lady who gave you the puppy.”
He sat down heavily, and the chair creaked as if it might snap in half.
“I know only her first name, Terri. She’s very easy to describe because, and the proper way to say it is, she’s a little person. Not the dwarf word. I’ve learned never to use that. There are a number of shows about little people, which I watch with great interest since I live across the street from one. And her boyfriend is a little person as well. Blond, handsome, a well-built man, although extremely short, of course. I happened to be returning from the market not so long ago, and saw him up close as he got out of his SUV, and I said hello and he said hello back. He was carrying a single long-stem yellow rose. I remember that vividly. Do you know why?”
The investigator’s big face and glasses waited.
“Yellow suggests sensitivity. Not the same old red, red rose. It was sweet. It was the same yellow as his hair, almost. As if he were saying he was also her friend, not just her boyfriend, if you see what I mean. I remember it touched my heart. I’ve never had a yellow rose in my life. Not once. I would have liked yellow ones so much better than red on Valentine’s Day. Not pink, mind you. Pink is anemic. Yellow is strong. It fills my heart with sunlight to see a yellow rose.”
“When exactly was this?”
She thought hard. “I’d bought a half-pound of sliced honey-glazed turkey breast. Would you like me to dig up the receipt? Old habits die hard. My husband was an accountant.”
“How ’bout a guess.”
“Well, of course. He comes to see her on Saturdays, that I’m sure of. So it must have been this past Saturday, late afternoon. Although there are other times when I think I’ve spotted him in the area.”
“You mean driving around? Walking around? Alone?”
“Alone. I’ve seen him drive by. A couple times in the last month. I go out at least once a day to get a little exercise, run errands. Unless the weather is impossible, I have to get out. Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”
Both of them looked at her drink at the same time.
“Do you remember the last time you saw him in this area?” he asked.
“Christmas was on a Tuesday. I believe I actually saw him that day. And then a few days before that. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve spotted him three or four times over the past month, just driving by. So he’s likely done it more than that, you know, when I didn’t see him. Well, that was poorly worded. What I’m trying to . . .”
“Was he staring at her building? Was he going slow? Did he pull over at any point? And yeah, I get it. If you saw him once, he might have been here twenty other times when you didn’t see him.”
“He was driving slowly. And yes.” She sipped. “You said it exactly the way I meant.”
This investigator was far more intelligent than he looked and sounded. She wouldn’t want trouble from him. He was the sort who caught people without them ever having the slightest premonition, and it entered her mind again. What if he were an agent investigating terrorist funding or who knows what? And that’s why he was here?
“What time of day?” he asked her.
“Different times.”
“You’ve been home throughout the holidays. What about your family?”
The way he said it made her suspect he already knew she had two daughters who lived in the Midwest, both of them very busy and disingenuous when they were attentive.
Shrew replied, “My two children prefer I go see them, and I don’t like to travel, certainly not this time of year. They don’t like to spend the money to visit New York. Certainly not these days. I never thought I’d live to see the Canadian dollar worth more than ours. We used to make jokes about the Canadians. Now I suspect they’re making a few jokes about us. As I believe I mentioned, my husband was an accountant. I’m glad he’s not one anymore. It would break his heart.”
“You’re saying you never see your daughters.”
He’d yet to pick up on any comments about her husband and respond. But she felt sure the investigator knew about him, too. It was a matter of public record.
“I’m saying I don’t travel,” she said. “I see them now and again. Every few years, they come here for several days. In the summer. They stay at the Shelburne.”
“The place near the Empire State Building.”
“Yes. That lovely European-looking hotel on Thirty-seventh Street. Within walking distance of here. I’ve never stayed there.”
“Why don’t you travel?”
“I just don’t.”
“No big loss. Expensive as hell these days, the planes always late or canceled. Not to mention getting trapped in one on the runway and the toilet overflows. That ever happen to you? Because it happened to me.”
She had completely shredded the tissue and felt foolish as she thought about the Shelburne and imagined times in her life when it would have been wonderful to stay there. Not now. She couldn’t possibly get away from her work. And why bother?
“I just don’t travel,” she said.
“So you keep telling me.”
“I like to stay put. And you’re starting to make me uncomfortable, as if you’re accusing me of something. And then being friendly to break me down, as if I have information. I don’t. I don’t have any. I shouldn’t talk to you while I’m drinking.”
“If I accused you of something, what might it be?” he said in that rough New Jersey accent of his, his glasses looking right at her.
“Ask my husband.” Nodding at the recliner chair, as if her husband were in the room. “He’d look you squarely in the eye and with all seriousness want to know if nagging is a crime. If so, he’d tell you to lock me up and throw away the key.”
“Well, now.” The chair creaked as he leaned forward a little. “You don’t seem like the nagging type. You seem like a nice lady who shouldn’t be all alone over the holidays. Someone smart who doesn’t miss a trick.”
For some reason, she felt like crying, and she remembered the little blond man with the single long- stemmed yellow rose. But thinking about that made her feel worse.
“I don’t know his name,” she said. “Her boyfriend. But he must be pretty crazy about her. He’s the one who gave her the puppy that she in turn gave to me. Apparently, he surprised her with it, and she couldn’t possibly have one and the store wouldn’t take it back. An odd thing to do, as I reflect on it. Someone you talk to now and then on the sidewalk, and out of the blue one day she appears at my door with a basket covered with a towel, as if bringing me something she’d just baked, which wouldn’t have made sense, either, since, as I said, I didn’t know her and she never made overtures like that to me. She said she had to find a home for a puppy, and wondered if I’d please take it. She knew I lived alone and didn’t work outside of the apartment, and she didn’t know where else to turn.”
“When was this?”
“Around Thanksgiving. I told her it died. This was a week or so later, when I happened to bump into her on the street. She was upset about it and apologetic, and insisted on buying me another one as long as I picked it out myself. She said she’d give me the money, which I found rather impersonal. I can see the wheels turning in your
