“Could be anybody in the city.”
“Don’t I know it?”
There was a long silence on the line.
“I have a great idea,” Kling said.
“About the rapist?”
“No, about us.”
“Oh-ho,” she said.
“Want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you go take a shower...”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then put on your nightgown...”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then get into your nice, warm bed...”
“Mary’s bed, you mean.”
“Mary’s bed, right. And then I’ll call you back. How does that sound?”
“I don’t want to go to bed yet,” Eileen said. “It’s only ten o’clock.”
“So? Mary gets up at nine o’clock every weekday morning, doesn’t she? Besides, I didn’t say you should go to sleep, I just said you should go to bed.”
“Oh, I get it,” Eileen said. “You want to make an obscene phone call, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it exactly that,” Kling said.
“What would you call it exactly, you dirty old man?”
“Dirty, yes. Old, no. What do you say?”
“Sure, give me half an hour or so.”
“Half an hour? Didn’t you tell me you sometimes get calls from your lieutenant on emergencies or something and you’re showered and dressed in ten minutes flat? What’s gonna take you half an hour now?”
“If I’m gonna get an obscene phone call, I want to put on some perfume,” Eileen said, and hung up.
She was in the shower when the phone rang again. She was surprised; it wasn’t like Bert to call back five minutes after she’d asked him to give her a half-hour. She decided to let the phone ring. It kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing. She got out of the shower, wrapped a bath towel around herself, and went back into the bedroom — sidestepping the piles of debris she had littered all over the floor in an attempt at simulating Mary’s lifestyle — and then went into the living room, where the phone was still ringing. She picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” she said.
“Eileen?”
A woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“This is Mary Hollings.”
“Oh, hi,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice.”
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“I was just in the shower,” Eileen said. “That’s what took me so long to get to the phone. Are you calling from California?”
“Yes. This is an imposition, I know, but...”
“Not at all,” Eileen said. “What is it?”
“Well... I’m supposed to pay my rent on the fifteenth of the month. And the thing is... I took my small checkbook out here to pay any bills that were forwarded...”
“You asked the post office to forward your mail?” Eileen asked at once.
“Well... yes.”
There was a silence on the line.
“Did I do something wrong?” Mary asked.
“No, no, that’s fine,” Eileen said.
She didn’t think it was so fine. Every morning, as part of the routine Mary had described to her, she’d gone down to the mailbox, surprised to find only third-class mail — magazines, solicitations, and so on. No first-class mail. This had seemed odd to her; even if no friends or relatives ever sent Mary a letter, there surely should have been bills. Now she had the answer. Mary had asked the post office to forward her mail to Long Beach, undoubtedly specifying that the order applied to first-class mail only. But if the rapist had been watching Mary before she’d gone to California, would he have seen her when she went to the post office? And if he’d followed her inside, would he have seen her filling out a CHANGE OF ADDRESS card? And if so, did he now know that the woman living in Mary Hollings’s apartment wasn’t Mary Hollings at all? Eileen didn’t like it one damn bit. The silence on the phone lengthened.
At last, Mary said, “I thought I’d paid the rent before I left. I usually try to pay it two or three days before it’s due. I sent it to this company that manages the building, they’re called Reynolds Realty, Inc.”
“Uh-huh,” Eileen said.
“But I took only my small checkbook out here, the one I usually carry in my handbag...”
“Uh-huh.”
“And what I normally do is I pay the rent from the big checkbook. The one with three checks on a page, do you know the kind I mean?”
“Uh-huh,” Eileen said.
“So I have no way of checking,” Mary said, “on whether I paid the rent or not. I wouldn’t want to come home and discover I’ve been dispossessed or something.”
“So... uh... what is it?” Eileen said.
“I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
“You’re in the living room, aren’t you? That’s where the phone is, so that’s where I guess you are.”
“That’s where I am,” Eileen said.
Dripping all over your Oriental rug, she thought, but did not say. “Well, in the desk where the phone is...”
“Uh-huh.”
“The bottom drawer on the right-hand side...”
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s my big checkbook. The one I didn’t take out here. Because I figured I could pay any forwarded bills from my small checkbook.”
“Okay,” Eileen said.
“Would you mind terribly looking at the checkbook, the big one, and seeing if I paid the rent? If I paid it, it would be around October twelfth or thirteenth, sometime around then. Could you please look?”
“Sure, just a sec,” Eileen said.
She opened the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of the desk, rummaged around under some folders and loose sheets of paper and found the checkbook.
“I’ve got it,” she said, “let me take a look.”
She pulled the chair out from the kneehole, sat, turned on the desklamp, and opened the checkbook.
“October twelfth or thirteenth,” she said.
“Around then,” Mary said.
“October seventh,” she said aloud, turning the pages of stubs in the binder, “October ninth... what was the name of the place again?”
“Reynolds Realty, Inc.”
“October eleventh,” Eileen said, “October... here it is. October twelfth, Reynolds Realty, Inc., six hundred and fourteen dollars. The stub is marked ‘Rent due 10/15.’ I guess you paid it, Mary.”
“What a relief,” Mary said. “I really was worried that they’d change the lock on the door or something. I’d get home and find...” She hesitated. “When do you think that’ll be?” she asked. “My coming home, I mean. Have you had any luck yet?”
“Not a nibble,” Eileen said.
“Because... my sister’s a lovely person, and she’s very happy to see me and all... but I’ve been here almost a week now...”
“Yes, I know.”
“And I have the feeling I’m overstaying my welcome a bit.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not that she’s said anything to me...”
“I understand.”
“But you begin to sense things, you know?”
“Yes.”
“So... when do you think you’ll be finished there? I mean, how long will you keep doing this? If he doesn’t show up, I mean.”
“I’ll have to discuss that with Detective Rawles,” Eileen said. “I don’t know how long she plans to keep the job running. Can I get back to you sometime tomorrow?”