Poor Amos, Brown thought.
"So who else is left?" she asked, and grinned in what Carella could only interpret as a wise-ass hippie challenge of the sort she'd extended all too often when the world was young and nobody wore a bra and everybody had long blond hair and all cops were pigs.
"Nobody, I guess," he said, and turned to Brown. "Can you think of anybody else, Artie?"
"Gee, no," Brown said. "Unless maybe her father."
"Oh, right, right," Carella said. "He was killed, too, wasn't he? Your father."
Betsy scowled at him.
"But let's start with the first one," Carella said. "The bimbo. Susan Brauer. That would've been Tuesday night, the seventeenth. Can you tell us . . .?"
"Am I going to need a lawyer here?" she asked.
"Not unless you want one," Carella said. "But that's entirely up to you."
"Because if you're going to ask me where I was and all that shit. . ."
"Yes, we're going to ask you where you were," Brown said.
And all that shit, he thought.
"Then maybe I need one," she said.
"Why? Were you someplace you shouldn't have been?"
182
"I don't remember where I was. I don't even know when that was."
"Today's Saturday, the twenty-eighth," Carella said. "This would've been eleven days ago."
"A Tuesday night," Brown said.
"The seventeenth," Carella said.
"Then I was in Vermont."
"I thought you went up to Vermont after your father's funeral."
"I went back up. I've been there since the beginning of July."
"Did your mother know this?"
"I don't tell my mother everything I do."
"Where do you go up there?" Brown asked.
"I have a little place my father gave me after the divorce. I think he was trying to win me over. He gave me this little house up there."
"Where?"
"Vermont. I told you."
"Where in Vermont?"
"Green River. It's a little house in the woods, I think one of his clients gave it to him years ago, instead of a fee. This was even before he married Mom. So it was just sitting there in the woods, practically falling apart, and he asked me if I wanted it. I said sure. Never look a gift horse, right?"
Carella was thinking she wouldn't even give her father the time of day, but she accepted a little house from him.
"Anyway, I go up there a lot," she said. "Get away from the rat race."
"And your mother doesn't know this, huh?" Brown said. "That you go up to Vermont a lot to get away from the rat race."
"I'm sure my mother knows I go up to Vermont."
"But she didn't know you went up there on the first of July ..."
"The beginning of July. The fifth, actually. And I don't remember whether I told her or not."
183
"But you were up there when Susan Brauer was killed, is that right?"
"If she was killed on the seventeenth, then I was up there, yes."
"Anybody with you?"
"No, I go up there alone."
"How do you get there?" Carella asked.
"By car."
"Your own car? Or do you rent one?"
"I have my own car."
"So you drive up there to Vermont in your own car."
"Yes."
"All alone?"
"Yes."
"How long does it take you to get there?"
"Three, three-and-a-half hours, depending on traffic."
"And it takes the same amount of time to get back, I suppose."
"Yes."
"When did you come back down again?"
"What do you mean?"
"You said you went up on the fifth ..."
"Oh. Yes. I came down again right after my sister called me."
"When was that?"
"The day after my father got killed. She called to give me the news."
"That he'd been murdered."
"Yes."
"Then your sister also knew you were in Vermont."
"Yes."
"Both your mother and your sister have the number up there."
"Yes, they both have the number."
"So the day after your father got killed ..."
"Yes."
"Your sister called you."
184
"Yes."
"That would've been Saturday, the twenty-first."
"Whenever."
"What time would that have been?"
"She called early in the morning."
"And you say you came back to the city right after she called?"
"Well, I called my mother first. After I spoke to my sister."
Which checked with what Gloria Sanders had told them.
"What'd you talk about?"
"About whether or not I should go to the funeral."
Which also checked.
"And what'd you decide?"
"That I'd go."
"So what time would you say you left Vermont?"
"I had breakfast, and I dressed and packed some things . . . it must've been eleven o'clock or so before I got out of there."
"Drove straight back to the city, did you?"
"Yes."
"Took you three, three-and-a-half hours, right?" Brown said.
"About that, yes."
They were both thinking that Vermont wasn't the end of the world. You could get up there in three hours. You could be here in the city killing somebody the night before and you could be back in Vermont taking a telephone call the next morning. People could see you coming and going in Vermont, into a grocery store, into a bakery, into a bookshop, into a bar, and no one would know whether you were in residence in your little house in the woods or commuting back and forth to the city to do murder.
"Did you know that under the provisions of your father's will, you would inherit twenty-five percent of his estate?" Carella asked.
"Yes, I knew that."
"How'd you happen to know?"
"Mom constantly told us."
185
"What do you mean by constantly?"
"Well, all the time. Certainly while they were negotiating the settlement ... we weren't children, you know, this was only two years ago. Mom told us she wouldn't give him a divorce unless he agreed to put both of us in the will. Me and Lois. For half the estate. Together, that is. Sharing half the estate. So we knew about it at the time, and since then she's repeated the story again and again, with a great deal of pleasure and pride. Because she felt she'd done something very good for us. Which she had."
"Where were you on Friday night, Miss Schumacher?" Brown asked.
"Vermont. I told you."
The hippie grin again. Her mother's daughter for sure. No tricks, please. Just the facts, ma'am.
"You weren't down here in the city?"
"No. I was in Vermont."
"Anyone with you?"
"I told you. I go up there alone."
"I didn't ask if you went up there with anyone," Brown said pleasantly. "I asked if anyone was with you on the night Margaret Schumacher was killed."
"No. I was home alone. Reading."
"Reading what?" Carella asked.
"I don't remember. I read a lot."
"What kind of books?"
"Fiction mostly."
"Do you read murder mysteries?"
"No. I hate murder mysteries."
"You said you read about Margaret Schumacher's murder in the newspaper ..."
"Yes."
"Local Vermont paper?"
"No. I picked up one of our papers at the ..."
"Our papers?"
"Yes. From here in the city. We do get them up there, you know."
186
"And that's when you saw the headline ..."
"It wasn't a headline. Not in the paper I bought. It was on page four of the metropolitan section."
"A story about Mrs Schumacher's murder."
"Yes. Mrs Schumacher's murder."
Repeating the title scornfully, so that it sounded dirty somehow.
"And you say you felt gleeful..."
"Well, perhaps that was too strong a word to use."
"What word would you use now?"
"Happy. The story made me happy."
"Reading about a woman's brutal murder ..."