“Customers in the shop? Men?”
“Sure, she’d tell us about some of the guys who’d come in and throw themselves on her mercy, looking for something for a spouse or girlfriend. Nothing lately, not that she mentioned. Wait.”
Her back went steel-straight. “Wait. I remember her saying something about a man she ran into when she was shopping for produce. A couple of weeks ago. Said he looked sort of lost over the tomatoes or something.”
As if to nudge the memory clear, Leah rubbed her temples. “She helped him pick out some vegetables and fruit, that was just like her. She said he was a single father, just moved to New York with his little boy. He was worried about finding good day care, so she told him about Kid Time, that’s the place she volunteers, gave him all the information. Being Lois, she pumped him for personal information. She said he was a good-looking guy, concerned father, looked lonely, and she was hoping he checked out Kid Time so she could maybe fix him up with a woman she knew who worked there. God, what did she say his name was? Ed, Earl, no, no, Al. That’s it.”
“Al,” Eve repeated and felt it hit her gut.
“She said he walked her part of the way home, carried her bags. Said they talked kids for a few blocks. I didn’t pay much attention, it was the kind of thing she did all the time. And knowing Lois, if they talked kids, she talked about hers, about us. She probably said how we got together Sunday afternoons, and how she looked forward to it. About how she knew what it was like to raise kids alone.”
“Did she tell you what he looked like?”
“She just said he was a good-looking boy. That doesn’t mean anything. Damn it! She’d call any guy under forty a boy, so that’s no help.”
Yes, it was, Eve thought. It eliminated Elliot Hawthorne, as her own instincts already had.
“She was a born mother, so if she saw this guy puzzling over tomatoes, she’d have automatically stepped up to give him a hand and talk to him, try to help him out with his problems. Southern,” Leah said on a rise of excitement. “That’s what she said. A good-looking Southern boy.”
– -«»--«»--«»--
“She was a jewel. You know what I’m saying?”
Rico Vincenti, proprietor of the family-run market where Lois Gregg did her weekly shopping, unashamedly wiped his tears with a red bandanna, then stuffed it away in the back pocket of khakis that bagged over his skinny butt. He went back to stacking a fresh supply of peaches in his sidewalk bin.
“That’s what I’m hearing,” Eve said. “She came in here regularly.”
“Every Friday. Sometimes she’d come by other times, pick up a couple things, but she was in every Friday morning. Ask me about my family, give me grief about prices-not bitchy,” he said quickly. “Friendly like. Some people they come in here, never say a word to you, but not Mrs. Gregg. I find the bastard…” He made an obscene gesture. “Finito.”
“You can leave that part to me. You ever notice anybody hanging around, look like he was watching her?”
“I see somebody bothering one of my customers, even if it ain’t a regular, I move ‘ em along.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder like an umpire calling out a base runner. “I been here fifteen years. This is my place.”
“There was a man, a couple of weeks ago. She helped him pick out some produce, struck up a conversation.”
“Just like her.” He pulled out the bandanna once more.
“He went out with her, carried her bags. Nice-looking guy, probably under forty.”
“Mrs. Gregg, she was always talking to somebody in here. Let me think.” He raked his hands through his thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, screwed up his narrow face. “Yeah, couple Fridays back, she took this guy under her wing, picked out some nice grapes for him, some tomatoes, head of romaine, radishes, carrots, got a pound of peaches.”
“Can you tell me as much about him as what he bought?”
Vincenti cracked his first smile. “Not so much. She brought him up with her-I always checked Mrs. Gregg out-and she says: ‘Now, Mr. Vincenti, I want you to take good care of my new friend, Al, when he comes in here by himself. He’s got a little boy who needs your best produce.’ I say something like, ‘I got nothing but the best.’”
“What did he say?”
“Don’t recall that he did. Smiled a lot. Had on a ball cap, now that I think. And sunshades. This heat, most everybody’s got on a cap and shades.”
“Tall, short?”
“Ah, damn me.” He mopped at his sweaty face with the bandanna now. “Taller than me, but who the hell isn’t? I top out at five six. We were busy, and I wasn’t paying much attention. She was doing all the talking, like always. She asked me to put some peaches aside for her the next week. She was going to her daughter’s in Jersey Sunday next, whole family deal, and she wanted to take her some peaches ‘cause her girl had a fondness for them.”
“She come in for them?”
“Sure, this past Friday. Five pounds. I put them in a little basket for her, let her take them home in it ‘cause she’s a good customer.”
“The guy who went out with her, has he come back?”
“I haven’t seen him again. I don’t come in on Wednesdays, like to golf on Wednesdays, so he coulda come in and I wouldn’t know. But if he’d come back any other day, I’m here. You think that’s the guy? You think that’s the sick prick who killed Mrs. Gregg?”
“Just covering the ground, Mr. Vincenti. I appreciate the help.”
“You need any more, you need anything, you come see me. She was a jewel.”
– -«»--«»--«»--
“You think he might be the killer,” Peabody said as they walked the neighborhood, following the route Leah had outlined for them.
“I think he was being a smart-ass, introducing himself with the nameAl -AlbertDeSalvo, the method he planned to use for her murder. I think it would have been a very smart way to feel her out, coming to the market, putting on the baffled single-daddy routine. If he’d scoped out the area, looking for a woman, a single woman of her age group, spotted her, considered her while he was trolling, he’d have watched her routine, gotten her name, looked up her data, so he’d know she volunteered at a kid care place.”
He knew how to research,Eve thought. Knew how to take his time, get the data, digest it before he made a move.
“A woman does time in day-care, voluntarily, she’s into kids, so he tells her he’s got a kid when he makes his first contact.”
She nodded as she spoke, as she studied the neighborhood. It was smart. It was simple. “Good place to make that contact is the market. Ask her for advice, give her a story about having a kid needing day-care. Walk her part of the way home. Not all the way. He doesn’t have to, he knows where she lives. Just like he knows her plans for Sunday. Not the next Sunday, the following, so he can have plenty of time to watch her, get it all down, plan it out, enjoy the anticipation.”
She stopped on the corner, watched people walk by, most with the nativeNew York stare that stopped well short of eye contact. Not a tourist sector, she acknowledged. People lived and worked here, went about their business.
“She’d have strolled, though,”Eve said aloud. “Strolled along with him, chatting, giving him what seemed like harmless little details of her life. Peaches for her daughter, but there wasn’t a basket of peaches in the apartment on Sunday. He took them. A nice edible souvenir to go with the ring. Walked out of her place after he did what he did, carrying a little basket of fruit. I bet he got a real kick out of that, really enjoyed taking a big juicy bite.”
Feet planted, she hooked her thumbs in her pockets, too intent on what she was seeing in her head to notice the quick and wary glances tossed her way when her stance revealed her weapon. “But that’s a mistake, a stupid, cocky mistake. People might not notice some guy walking out of an apartment building with a toolbox, but they might, just might, notice one walking out with a basket of peaches and a toolbox.”