'"Cause I use all this crap on my skin. But I got a tendency to acne, you know?"
"Uh-huh."
"From when I was a teenager. So if I use all this crap to keep my skin from turning gray, I bust out in pimples instead. It's another vicious circle. I'm thinking of growing a beard, I swear to God."
Carella didn't know what that meant, either.
"Up ahead," he said.
"I see it."
Brown turned the car into the curb, maneuvered it into a parking space in front of 322 South Dreyden, and then got out of the car, locked it, and walked around it to join Carella on the sidewalk.
"Ingrown hairs," he said.
"Uh-huh," Carella said. "You see a boutique? It's supposed to be a boutique."
The shop "was named Vanessa's, which Lois Stein explained had nothing to do with her own name, but which sounded very British and slightly snobbish and which, in fact, attracted the upscale sort of women to whom her shop catered. She herself looked upscale and elegantly groomed, the sort of honey blonde one usually saw in perfume commercials, staring moodily out to sea, tresses blowing in the wind, diaphanous skirts flattened against outrageously long legs. Margaret Schumacher had told them her stepdaughter was thirty-seven years old, but they never would have guessed it. She looked to be in her late twenties, her complexion flawless, her grayish-blue eyes adding a look of mysterious serenity to her face.
In a voice as soft as her appearance - soft, gentle, these were the words Carella would have used to describe her - she explained at once how close she had been to her father, a relationship that had survived a bitter divorce and her father's remarriage. She could not now imagine how something like this could have happened to him. Her father the victim of a shooting? Even in this city, where law and order -
"Forgive me," she said, "I didn't mean to imply . . ."
A delicate, slender hand came up to her mouth, touched her lips as if to scold them. She wore no lipstick, Carella noticed. The faintest blue eye shadow tinted the lids above her blue-gray eyes. Her hair looked like spun gold. Here among the expensive baubles and threads she sold, she looked like an Alice who had inadvertently stumbled into the queen's closet.
"That's what we'd like to talk to you about," Carella said, "how something like this could've happened." He was lying only slightly in that on his block, at this particular time in space, anyone and everyone was still a suspect in this damn thing. But at the same time …
"When did you see him last?" he asked.
This because a victim - especially if something or someone had been troubling him - sometimes revealed to friends or relatives information that may have seemed unimportant at the time but that, in the light of traumatic death, could be relevant . . . good work, Carella, go to the head of the class. He waited. She seemed to be trying to remember when she'd last seen her own father. Who'd been killed last Friday night. Mysterious blue-gray eyes pensive. Thinking, thinking, when did I last see dear Daddy with whom I'd been so close, and with whom I'd survived a bitter divorce and subsequent remarriage. Brown waited, too. He was wondering if the Fragile Little Girl stuff was an act. He wasn't too familiar with very many white women, but he knew plenty of black women - some of them as blonde as this one - who could do the wispy, willowy bit to perfection.
"I had a drink with him last Thursday," she said.
The day before he'd caught it. Four in the face. And by the way, here's a couple for your mutt.
"What time would that have been?" Carella asked.
"Five-thirty. After I closed the shop. I met him down near his office. A place called Bits."
"Any special reason for the meeting?" Brown asked.
"No, we just hadn't seen each other in a while."
"Did you normally…"
"Yes."
". . . meet for drinks?"
"Yes."
"Rather than dinner or lunch?"
"Yes. Margaret. . ."
She stopped.
Carella waited. So did Brown.
"She didn't approve of Daddy seeing us. Margaret. The woman he married when he divorced Mother."
The woman he married. Unwilling to dignify the relationship by calling her his wife. Merely the woman he married.
"How'd you feel about that?"
Lois shrugged.
"She's a difficult woman," she said at last.
Which, of course, didn't answer the question.
"Difficult how?"
"Extremely possessive. Jealous to the point of insanity."
Strong word, Brown thought. Insanity.
"But how'd you feel about these restrictions she laid down?" Carella asked.
"I would have preferred seeing Daddy more often. . . I love him, I loved him," Lois said. "But if it meant causing problems for him, then I was willing to see him however and whenever it was possible."
"How'd he feel about that?"
"I have no idea."
"You never discussed it with him?"
"Never."
"Just went along with her wishes," Carella said.
"Yes. He was married to her," Lois said, and shrugged again.
"How'd your sister feel about all this?"
"He never saw Betsy at all."
"How come?"
"My sister took the divorce personally."
Doesn't everyone? Brown wondered.
