"Oh, we didn't buy them," Teresa Beele said.
"They were gifts to Evelyn. Isaac is madly in love with her."
"Teresa"' her sister said, blushing.
"You know that's not so."
"It is so. I see how he looks at you."
"Isaac is a lonely boy," Judson Beele said in a troubled voice.
"I don't think he has many friends. Evelyn is…" He didn't finish.
Calazo turned to the young woman in the wheelchair.
"How did you meet him, Miss Packard?"
"At the Center. Teresa took me there once, and I never want to go again; it's so depressing. But I met Isaac, and he asked if he could come visit me."
"A perfect match," her sister murmured, fitting another cigarette into the long holder.
Bitch, Calazo thought.
"And how long have you known him, Miss Packard?"
"Oh, it's been about six months now. Hasn't it, Judson?"
"About," her brother-in-law said, nodding. Then to Calazo: "Can you tell us what this is all about?"
"In a minute," the detective said.
"Does he come to visit you every Friday night, Miss Packard?"
"He comes a-courting," Teresa said blithely, and Calazo realized he could learn to hate that woman with very little effort.
"Yes," the girl in the wheelchair said, lifting her chin.
"He visits on Friday night."
"Every Friday night? Hasn't he ever missed? Come to see you some other night?"
She shook her head.
"No. Always on Friday night." She looked at the other two.
"Isn't that right?"
They agreed. Isaac Kane visited only on Friday nights.
Every Friday night. For almost six months.
"You're always here when he comes?" Calazo asked the Beeles.
"You're never out-to a movie or somewhere else?"
"We're here," the wife said grimly.
"I wouldn't leave Evelyn alone with that person. Considering his mental condition, I think it best that we be present."
"Teresa!" her sister said angrily.
"Isaac has always been perfectly well behaved."
"Still, you never know with people like that."
"Look," Calazo said.
"There was a very minor robbery in the brownstone where Kane lives. It doesn't amount to much, but it's my job to check the whereabouts of everyone in the building at the time it happened. It was four weeks ago, at about nine-thirty on a Friday night."
"He was here," Evelyn said, promptly and firmly.
"He couldn't have done it because he was here. Besides, Isaac wouldn't do anything like that."
"all of you would swear that he was here?" the detective said, looking from one to another.
They nodded. it wasn't complete. It wasn't absolutely perfect. But it never was.
There were always possibilities: forgetfulness, deliberate lying, unknown motives. But it would take a hundred years to track down everything, and even then there might be blanks, questions, doubts.
Calazo couldn't recall ever clearing a case where every goddamned thing was tied up neatly. You went so far and then decided on the preponderance of evidence and your own instinct. There came a time when more investigation and more and more was just gunning an engine with no forward motion: a waste of time.
"I think Isaac Kane is clean," he declared, standing up.
"Of course he is," Evelyn Packard said stoutly, "He's a dear, sweet boy.
He'd never do anything bad."
"Sure," her sister said skeptically.
Her husband blinked behind his rimless glasses.
"How did you connect Isaac with us?" Teresa Beele asked.
"I followed him to this building last night," he told her.
"Then, this morning, I rang every bell until I found someone who knew him."
"My," she said mockingly, "aren't you the smart one."
"Sometimes," he said, staring at her coldly.
"Judson," she said, "bring the policeman his hat and coat."
Calazo drove home and spent Saturday afternoon working on a report for Boone. He wrote that in his opinion Isaac Kane could be cleared, and further investigation was unwarranted.
When he had finished, he read over what he had written and reflected idly on the relationship between Teresa and Judson Beele, and between Evelyn Packard and Isaac Kane, and between Teresa and her sister, and between Evelyn and her brother-in-law.
"You know, han," he said to his wife, "life really is a fucking soap opera."
"I wish you wouldn't use words like that," she said.
"Soap opera?" he asked innocently.
"What's wrong with soap opera?"
"Oh, you," she said.
He laughed and goosed her.
"What's for dinner?" he said.
Calazo wasn't the only one thinking about Saturday night dinner.
Detective Timothy (Big Tim) Hogan was beginning to wonder if he would ever eat again.
It had been a long day. Hogan was parked outside Ronald J. Bellsey's high-rise by 8:00 A.M and sat there for almost an hour. Just when he thought it might be safe to make a quick run for a coffee and Danish, he saw Bellsey's white Cadillac come out of the underground garage.
The subject was alone in the car, and Hogan tailed him over to the wholesale meat market on West 18th Street. Bellsey parked and went inside.
Hogan had no idea how long he'd be there, but figured this would be a good chance to brace Bellsey's wife without her husband being present.
Hogan was not a great brain and he knew it. So he always did his best to go by the book, thinking that would keep him out of trouble. It hadn't, but none of his stupidities had been serious enough to get him broken back to the ranks-so far.
It wasn't strictly true that Big Tim was stupid, but he was unimaginative and not strong at initiating new avenues of investigation.
Another problem was that he didn't look like a detective, being short, dumpy, and bald, with a whiny voice.
His third wife called him Dick Tracy, which Hogan didn't think was funny at all.
As soon as Bellsey was safely inside his place of business, the detective drove back to the high-rise to put the arm on the wife. As long as he was deserting the subject, he could have stopped for breakfast right then, but it didn't occur to him.
Hogan found it difficult to keep two ideas in his head at the same time.
Mrs. Lama Bellsey let him into her apartment without too much of a hassle.
She was so flustered that she didn't even ask to see his ID. Hogan planned to lean on her hard. He didn't even take his hat off, fearing his nude pate wouldn't enhance the image of the hard-boiled detective.
She was a wisp of a woman with thinning gray hair and defeated eyes. She was wearing something shapeless with long sleeves and a high neck that effectively hid her body.
Hogan wondered what she was like in bed, and guessed she'd be similar to his second wife who, during sex, would say things like, "The ceiling needs painting."
"Look, Mrs. Bellsey," he started, scowling at the timid woman, "you know why I'm here. Your husband is involved in the murder of Doctor Ellerbee, and we don't believe he was home that night like he says."
"He was," she said nervously, "he really was. I was here with him."
"From when to when?"
"All evening. All night."
"And he never went out?"
"No," she said, lowering her eyes.
"Never. He was here all the time."
"Did he tell you to say that?"
"No, it's the truth."
"Did he say if you didn't back him up, he'd belt you around?"
"No," she said, finally showing a small flash of spirit, "it's not like that at all."
"You say. We're checking all your husband's hangouts those bars he goes to where he beats up strangers. If we find out that he wasn't here that night, do you know what we'll do to you for lying?"
She was silent, clasping her hands tightly, knuckles whitening.
"Come on, Mrs. Bellsey," Hogan said in a loud, hectoring voice, "make it easy on yourself. He went out that night, didn't he?"
"I don't know," she said in a low, quavery voice.
"What do you mean you don't know?"
She didn't answer.