“Yes, I called at eleven-thirty. A man answered the phone and said he was a police officer. That’s when we learned she’d been killed.”
“Did the police officer identify himself?”
“Yes, but I forget his name.”
That would have been one of the laboratory technicians. Handkerchief tented over the telephone receiver. He’d answered the phone because it was ringing. A ringing phone at the scene of a murder could be the killer calling.
“Did you tell Mr. Preston what happened?”
“Yes.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Well, he... he was shocked, of course.”
“What else?”
“Just shocked.”
“You sounded—”
“No, no.”
“As if there might have been something else.”
“Well... he was very fond of her.”
“Mr. Preston was?”
“Yes.”
“So there was more than just shock?”
“He began crying.”
“Crying? When you told him Isabel was dead?”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“He asked me to please leave him alone. So I went out of his office, and in a little while he asked me to call the apartment again, to make sure there wasn’t some mistake.”
“Did you call again?”
“Yes, I did. I got the same police officer. He asked me who was calling, same as he’d done the first time, and I told him this was Prestige Novelty where Isabel worked, and was he sure she was, you know, dead. He said yes, she was dead. I thanked him, and then I went to tell Mr. Preston there was no mistake.”
“What did he say?”
“He just nodded, that was all.”
“Miss D’Amato, when you say Mr. Preston was very fond of Isabel, are you suggesting there was more between them than an employer-employee relationship?”
“I don’t know what was between them.”
“But something?”
“What Mr. Preston does is his own business.”
“Miss D’Amato, do you have any reason to believe there was something going on between Isabel and Mr. Preston?”
“I don’t know what was going on.”
“But I get the feeling you think something was going on.”
“Well, I told you, she was very flirtatious. If you didn’t know she was blind... well, she wore these big sunglasses, you know, you couldn’t tell she was blind when she was just sitting there and working. And she had a big smile for everybody, especially men, and I guess if you were a man looking for something, you might think Isabel was, you know, being flirtatious and looking for something, too.”
“Did Mr. Preston think she was looking for something?”
“I don’t know what he thought.”
“Did he joke with her the way Alex and Tommy did?”
“No. He never joked with her.”
“Then what gives you the idea he might have been interested in her?”
“Look, he’s a married man, I don’t want to get him in trouble. Isabel’s dead, nothing’s going to harm her anymore. But he’s still alive, and he’s married.”
“Was there some sort of relationship between them, Miss D’Amato?”
“I saw them together once.”
“Where?”
“There’s a cocktail lounge up the street from the office. I went there after work one day last week, and the two of them were sitting in a booth at the back of the place.”
“Did Mr. Preston see you?”
“I don’t think so. I went over to the other side of the room... my friend was waiting in a booth on the other side.”
“Was your friend someone who knew them, too?”
“No.”
“Did you mention to him—”
“Her.”
“Did you mention to her that your boss was sitting there with a girl from the office?”
“Yes, I did. Because I was embarrassed, you know, and I was thinking maybe I should leave the place.”
“But you didn’t leave.”
“No, my friend and I stayed to have a drink. They were holding hands.”
“Mr. Preston and Isabel?”
“Yes. Look, I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
“No, no, don’t worry about it,” Carella said. “These are just routine questions we’ve got to ask, no one’s about to arrest anybody for murder.”
“Well, I hope not. There’s no crime against... you know.”
“I know that.”
“Against holding a girl’s hand.”
“That’s right.”
“Or even... you know.”
“That’s right. Miss D’Amato, you’ve been very helpful, thank you for your time.”
“I just don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” she said.
“Goodnight, Miss D’Amato.”
“Goodnight,” she said.
Six
South Edgeheath Road was in a section of Riverhead that was still relatively untouched by urban deterioration. The street itself was rather less rural than its name suggested, but it nonetheless gave the impression of somewhat more stately living than areas as close as two miles away. Apartment buildings lined both sides of the short street, but at the northern end there was a park with a public golf course and even in November there was a sense of wide-open green space and a sky uncluttered by sharp architectural angles.
The street at nine a.m. that Saturday morning seemed only half awake. Carella parked his car, and then walked toward the entrance doors of the redbrick building in which Frank Preston lived. In the lobby he passed a woman in a black coat carrying an empty cloth shopping bag in her right hand. She seemed already cold in anticipation of the weather outside, her face pinched in dire expectation. He searched out Preston’s name in the lobby directory, took the elevator up to the fifth floor, went down the corridor to apartment 55, and rang the doorbell.
The woman who opened the door was in her mid-fifties, Carella guessed, brown hair cut in a stylish bob, brown eyes inquisitive behind eyeglasses too small for her face. The face itself gave an impression of angular sharpness, pointed chin and pointed nose, slender oval exaggerated by the narrow glasses and squinting eyes behind them. Carella had once worked with an English cop who told him that in England a person with a “squint” was a person who was cross-eyed. The woman standing in the doorway was not cross-eyed. She was peering out at him from behind narrow eye-slits; she was squinting.
“Let me see your badge, please,” she said.
He showed her the badge and the I.D. card. She studied both carefully, and then nodded and said, “Yes, what is it?”
“I'm Detective Carella, I called—”
“Yes, I saw that on the card. What is it, Mr. Carella?”
“I’d like to talk to Frank Preston, if he’s here.”
“I thought you talked to him last night.”
“Are you Mrs. Preston?”
“I am.”
“Mrs. Preston, there are some things I’d like to ask him in person. Is he home?”
“He’s home. I’ll see if he can talk to you.”
“Thank you.”
She closed the door. He stood in the hallway for several moments. The building was silent. These old buildings with thick walls... The door was opening again.
“Come in,” Mrs. Preston said.
The apartment was shaped like an upside-down L. The door opened at the bottom of the long branch of the L, a corridor running its entire length, and then angling to the left at the far end. Carella followed Mrs. Preston down the corridor, passing a kitchen on his left, and then a living room, and then a bedroom on the right, where the short tail of the L began. At the end of this shorter corridor, there was a small room, its door open.
Preston was sitting in an easy chair watching television. He was wearing a maroon bathrobe and brown house slippers. He seemed to be in his early sixties, a massive man with a large head and enormous hands. A thin fringe of white hair clung to his head, around his ears and the back of his skull. He was bald above that. His eyebrows were white and shaggy over piercing blue eyes. His nose would have been large in any other face, but seemed perfectly proportioned for his. He might have made a good stage actor; most stage actors had large heads and prominent features. One of the early morning news-talk shows was on. Preston rose ponderously from the chair, went immediately to the television set, and turned it off.