There were seventeen letters in all, five fewer than Schumacher had written. The first one - the one Brown had been reading - was dated three days after Schumacher's first letter, and seemed to be in direct response to it. Like his letters, none of these were signed. Each of the letters was neatly typed. Each started with the same salutation and ended with the same complementary close. Hi\ and Bye\ Like a vivacious little girl writing to someone she'd met in camp. Some little girl, Brown thought.
"You think he was losing interest?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, what?" Carella said.
His mind had been drifting again. He could not shake the image of his mother in the bakery shop, wandering the shop, touching all the things that had belonged to his father.
"I mean, he meets her on New Year's Day, and this is only June when he gets her to write him these hot letters. Sounds as if he was maybe losing interest."
"Then why would he be taking her to Europe?"
"Maybe the letters got things going again," he said, and was silent for a moment. "You ever write any kind of letters like these?"
"No, did you?"
"No. Wish I knew how."
They were approaching the Selby Place apartment. Carella searched for a parking spot, found one in a No Parking zone, parked there anyway, and threw down the visor to display a placard with the Police Department logo on it. It seemed cooler outside the car than it had inside. Little breeze blowing here on the tree-shaded street. They walked up the street, announced themselves to the doorman, and then took the elevator up to the sixth floor.
What they had already concluded was that Arthur Schumacher and Susan Brauer had been exchanging intimate letters and that they'd been planning to fly to Italy together at the end of the month. What they did not know was whether Margaret Schumacher had known all this. They were here to question her further. Because if she had known . . .
"Come in," she said, "have you learned anything?"
Seemingly all concerned and anxious and looking drawn and weary; her husband had been buried yesterday morning. They had to play this very carefully. They didn't want to tell her everything they knew, but at the same time it was virtually impossible to conduct a fishing expedition without dangling a little bait in the water.
Carella told her they were now investigating the possibility that her husband's death may have been connected to a previous homicide they'd been investigating . . .
"Oh? What previous homicide?"
. . . and that whereas when they were here on Saturday they'd merely been doing a courtesy follow-up for the two detectives who'd initiated the investigation into her husband's death . . .
"A courtesy follow-up?" she said, annoyed by Carella's unfortunate choice of a word.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, "in order to keep the investigation ongoing …"
. . . but under the so-called First Man Up rule, the previous homicide demanded that both cases be investigated by the detectives who'd caught the first one. This meant that her husband's case was now officially theirs, and they'd be the ones. . .
"What previous homicide?" she asked again.
"The murder of a woman named Susan Brauer," Carella said, and watched her eyes.
Nothing showed in those eyes.
"Do you know anyone by that name?" Brown asked.
Watching her eyes.
"No, I don't."
Nothing there. Not a flicker of recognition.
"You didn't read anything about her murder in the papers …"
"No."
". . . or see anything about it on television?"
"No."
"Because it's had a lot of coverage."
"I'm sorry," she said, and looked at them, seemingly or genuinely puzzled. "When you say my husband's death may have been connected …"
"Yes, ma'am."
". . .to this previous homicide …"
"Yes, ma'am, that's a possibility we're now considering."
Lying of course. It was no longer a mere possibility but a definite probability. Well, yes, there did exist the remotest chance that Arthur Schumacher's death was totally unrelated to Susan Brauer's but there wasn't a cop alive who'd have accepted million-to-one odds on such a premise.
"Connected how?"
The detectives looked at each other.
"Connected how?" she said again.
"Mrs Schumacher," Carella said, "when we were here on Saturday, when we found that key in your husband's desk, you said the only safe-deposit box you had was up here at First Federal Trust on Culver Avenue, that's what you told us on Saturday."
"That's right."
"You said you didn't know of any box at Union Savings, which was the name of the bank printed on that little red envelope. You said …"
"IsriWdon't."
"Mrs Schumacher, there
They were still watching her eyes. If she'd known what was in that box, if she now realized that they, too, knew what was in it, then something would have shown in her eyes, on her face, something would have flickered there. But nothing did.
"I'm surprised," she said.
"You didn't know that box existed."
"No. Why would Arthur have kept a box all the way downtown? We …"
"Union Savings on Wellington Street," Brown said. "Three blocks from his office."
