“No. Nothing.”
“You’re saying there was no blood?”
“I say only that I didn’t notice any.”
“Was the door to outside closed all the way and locked?”
“I couldn’t say. I didn’t pay attention to the door, only to my work.”
Fedderman stared at her. He knew she was lying, but probably not about anything pertinent. Maybe she’d seen Becker’s body before it was moved and then hightailed away. Or maybe she had seen the bloodstain, though on the maroon carpet it wouldn’t have been very noticeable. He could take Rosa Pajaro in and lean on her, make her afraid, even suggest she was a suspect. But she couldn’t be held, and when she got the opportunity she might run. If she was an illegal, so what? Fedderman didn’t want to make trouble for her. There was really no reason to push her, he thought, unless she might be the killer, which was too unlikely to consider.
“I am in trouble?” she asked, alarmed by his thoughtful silence.
Fedderman smiled at her. “Not as long as you’ve told the truth.”
“That’s what I’ve done, I swear.” She crossed herself. Fedderman wasn’t sure, but he thought she might have done it backward.
40
Wow. Something’s not right.
She knew she was beginning to slouch on the sofa, but she couldn’t seem to make herself sit up straight.
The food, the wine, the walk from the subway stop to her apartment had made Terri Gaddis exhausted. After the third glass of wine, her eyes began involuntarily closing. It felt as if invisible fingers were pushing them shut.
She didn’t want to feel this way. Richard expected some of that wild sex she’d mentioned at lunch. She’d almost promised him. He’d certainly be willing, but the wine was having its effect and she was fast losing her desire.
What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so…
Struggling not to fall asleep, she heard him rise from beside her on the sofa and cross the room, go into the kitchen.
When he returned, he lifted her head and gently placed the rim of a glass against her lips.
“Drink this, sweetheart. It’ll fix you up.”
His voice sounded far, far away. She sipped and was mildly surprised. She tasted the same wine she’d been drinking, one of the reasons she felt so tired.
“S’more chardonnay,” she muttered.
“You say you want more?” he asked, amused.
He’s deliberately misunderstanding.
“Same…” she murmured. She tried to say the word chardonnay again, but it was too difficult. Her tongue was getting numb, and there was no feeling in her cheeks. If she tried to touch them, they might not be there. They might be made of wood. She tried again. “Chardonnay.” She heard something slurred and incomprehensible and realized it was her own voice.
Richard answered, she was sure, but she couldn’t understand him as she dropped into a comforting warm darkness.
As she was keying the dead bolt on the door, Pearl heard the phone ringing inside her apartment. Which of course made her hurry and fumble and drop the key on the hall carpet.
By the time she’d opened the door and reached the phone, it had rung at least nine times. Maybe something important.
Too exhausted to be cautious and check caller ID, she took several long steps across the living room and scooped up the receiver.
“Pearl? Is that you, dear?”
Her mother, calling from Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey. Pearl’s heart took a dive.
“Pearl?”
“Me.”
“It’s your mother, Pearl, calling from Hades.”
Pearl tried at least to keep a civil tone in her voice. “Assisted living isn’t Hades, Mom.”
“So purgatory then. A stop on the way down, just to torture. I’ve been calling and calling, and not even your machine answers anymore.”
Pearl saw that the LED display on her answering machine was signaling that there was no more room for messages. It also indicated that she’d received fifteen messages. She stretched the phone cord so she could sit on the end of the sofa.
“Is something wrong, Mom?”
“I thought you’d never ask. Yes, wrong. I’m concerned, as a good mother should be, about my daughter, which is only natural and is why I’m calling, to find out some pertinent information about it.”
Pearl didn’t like this at all. She was worn down by the gauntlet of conversations she’d run all day with people who couldn’t remember, didn’t recall, didn’t care, might be lying anyway. “What would it be, Mom?”
“The thing just behind your ear, dear. That’s what it is, and it’s more important than you, in your hectic and solitary life, seem to think.”
“It’s only a mole, Mom.”
“You know this?”
“I’m sure enough of it that I’m not worried.”
“So now you have medical opinions? Are you an actual medical doctor, like Dr. Milton Kahn? No, Pearl, you are not. It’s not your place to examine a mole and just make up a diagnosis, not to mention a prognosis. This is a worry to me and to all who love you, and you should consider that and them.”
“It’s my mole,” Pearl said, feeling at that moment the hopelessness of her position.
“So have you recently checked your mole?” her mother asked.
“Recently enough.”
“And is it the same in shape, color, and size? Has it moved at all?”
Moved? “Everything looks the same, Mom.” Pearl slipped her shoes off her aching feet and wriggled her toes. She wished she could hang up the phone, go into the bedroom, get naked, take a shower, and scrub off the lousy day that she’d spent in the hole in the world left by violent untimely death. If people only knew, if they understood…
“Pearl,” said her mother’s voice on the phone, calling from purgatory, “have you ever looked at a mole under a microscope?”
“No.”
“They are not a pretty sight. And, I might add, it is the consensus of medical experts that you might think you’re looking at a mole and be looking at something else very much more dangerous.”
“I’m not dying of mole poisoning, Mom.”
“This is not a venue for humor, Pearl. A doctor, like Dr. Milton Kahn, who would examine you free and avoid all the expense and insurance nightmare, should be the one to make that critical interpretation.”
“Dr. Milton Kahn has pretty much examined all of me already,” Pearl said, getting angrier by the second.
“Pearl!”
“I’m only trying to make a point, Mom. If Milton Kahn thought the mole behind my ear was dangerous, he would have mentioned it to me long ago.”
“So you think he was concentrating on an out-of-the-way spot behind your right ear while you two were-”
“Mom! Damn it!” The plastic receiver was getting slippery in Pearl’s sweaty hand, as if it might slip from her
