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“No. Once they were inside, I never heard a sound.”

“Have you ever seen any of these people anywhere else?”

“Only one. A woman. I don't know her name, but she works in the antique shop down at the corner. Pedrick's.”

I ran out a fresh point on my pencil. “What's she look like?”

“Well, she's kind of tall — almost as tall as Nadine. And she has red hair. Her hair isn't a real bright red, though; it's closer to auburn.”

“You have any idea what was going on in there?” I asked as I wrote down the description.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No idea at all.”

“Still, isn't it only natural you'd be curious about it?”

“I was — but it wasn't any of my affair. I — well, I got so I just didn't think very much about it.”

“When was the last time you saw this woman? The one from Pedrick's.”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Late?”

“No, it was about two o'clock.”

“How about this morning?” I said. “Say, between one and eight. Did you hear anything?”

“No. I went to bed early and slept late. I hadn't been up more than an hour or so when I started down to the grocery.” She crossed her legs again, and this time she let the skirt go where it would. “I'd like to help you, Mr. Selby,” she said. “But I really don't know much more about Nadine's personal life than you do. She never talked about people at all. She only talked about things. You know — dresses, music, movies — things like that. All she ever told me about herself was that she used to sing with dance bands.”

“Here in New York?”

“No. I got the impression it was mostly out on the West Coast.”

“She ever say which bands they were?”

“No, she was always a little vague about it. But she did know an awful lot about music and musicians. I didn't know what she was talking about half the time.”

“How'd you first meet her, Mrs. Bowman?”

“In the hall. She'd dropped an earring, and I helped her look for it. It was a little sapphire pendant, and when I found it and handed it to her, I told her how pretty I thought it was. She said the stones were real and that they'd been in her family for years. Then we got to talking about earrings, and I asked her if it had hurt when she had her ears pierced. She said no. and that if I wanted her to, she'd pierce mine for me. I'd been thinking about having it done for a long time, so I said all right, and she sent me down to the drug store for a bottle of peroxide.”

She reached up to touch one of the small gold hoops in her ears. “When I got back, she pierced them for me with a needle and a cork, and then she gave me these little earrings to put in them right away, to keep them from closing up. She said someone had given her the hoops a long time ago, but that she never wore anything but the sapphires and never would. The sapphires matched her eyes, she said, and she didn't care whether they matched all her clothes or not.”

“You mean she wore them all the time?”

“Yes, always. She told me she even wore them to bed. And that's very unusual. I'd never heard of a girl doing that before.”

I put the unlighted cigar in my mouth and sat chewing on the end of it for a while. “Are you sure you've nothing else to tell me, Mrs. Bowman?” I asked. “Something that might seem pretty trivial to you might not seem that way to the police at all.”

She started to say something, then changed her mind and sat completely motionless for fully half a minute, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she apparently tried to search her memory for anything she had forgotten. Finally she made the same small gesture with her hands and shook her head. “I can't think of anything, Mr. Selby,” she said. “I only wish I could.”

I slipped the notebook back into my pocket and got to my feet. “Maybe something will come to you later,” I said as I walked to the door. “Meanwhile—”

“Wait!” she said, straightening up abruptly. “There is something.”

I waited.

“I overheard her talking to someone on the phone,” she said excitedly. “It was the only time I ever heard her raise her voice loud enough for me to hear, and I could tell she was very angry about something. I don't know how long she had been talking, but all at once she raised her voice and started cursing someone. It was just one terrible name after another.” And then she said, “To hell with you, Clifford! I'll make you the sorriest son of a bitch that ever lived!” She paused. “Pardon me; I just wanted you to know exactly what she said.”

“She say anything more?”

“Yes, but that's all I could make out. She was practically shouting when she said it. When she got through she banged the phone down so hard it sounded like someone slamming a screen door.”

“Clifford could be either a first name or a last one,” I said. “You sure she didn't put a 'Mr.' in front of it?”

“I'm almost positive she didn't. I'll never forget how she sounded. The way she said 'Clifford!' you'd have thought it was something nasty she was trying to spit out of her mouth.”

“When did this conversation take place?”

“Day before yesterday, about the middle of the morning.”

I stood with hand on the door knob, not saying anything, while Judy Bowman's expression changed slowly from excitement to perplexity.

“How stupid of me,” she said at last, her voice uncertain. “I can't understand why I didn't think of that right away.”

Neither could I; it was something that, under the circumstances, most people would have recalled immediately.

“We'll see what we can do with it,” I said as I opened the door. “Thanks again, Mrs. Bowman.”

She had been searching my face carefully; now she looked away from me, her dark eyes suddenly troubled.

“Poor Nadine,” she said softly, more to herself than to me. “She was the happiest girl I ever knew.”

There didn't seem to be very much I could say to that. I stepped into the hall and closed the door behind me.

Chapter Three

STAN RAYDER came out of the dead girl's apartment just as I reached her door. Draped loosely over his forearm he was carrying what appeared to be a woman's white petticoat; and, as usual, he seemed to be mildy surprised about something.

“What's that you're carrying?” I asked.

“When you get a little older, you'll recognize such things right off, Pete. It's a petticoat.”

“And?”

“I found it in her dresser,” he said, handing it to me. “Take a look at those creases.”

I shook the petticoat out, and it almost immediately bunched itself together again in a number of lengthwise creases.

“I see what you mean,” I said.

He nodded. “I think maybe we've got our murder weapon, Pete. A guy could grab both ends, loop it around a girl's neck, and have himself the sweetest little garrote he could want.”

“And it would be too wide to leave any ruptured blood vessels,” I said.

“That's the clever part.”

“You say you found this in her dresser?”

“It was in a drawer with a bunch of other underclothes. Right on top. None of the other stuff had so much as a wrinkle. That's why I noticed it.”

“Was it bunched up when you found it?”

“No, but I saw the creases. The guy'd spread it out real neat and nice, but when I picked it up it jumped right back into the shape it was in when he had hold of both ends of it.”

“You ask the M.E. what he thought?”

“Sure. He says it could be.”

“You mean he has doubts about it?”