"She called early in the morning."
"And you say you came back to the city right after she called?"
"Well, I called my mother first. After I spoke to my sister."
Which checked with what Gloria Sanders had told them.
"What'd you talk about?"
"About whether or not I should go to the funeral."
Which also checked.
"And what'd you decide?"
"That I'd go."
"So what time would you say you left Vermont?"
"I had breakfast, and I dressed and packed some things . . . it must've been eleven o'clock or so before I got out of there."
"Drove straight back to the city, did you?"
"Yes."
"Took you three, three-and-a-half hours, right?" Brown said.
"About that, yes."
They were both thinking that Vermont wasn't the end of the world. You could get up there in three hours. You could be here in the city killing somebody the night before and you could be back in Vermont taking a telephone call the next morning. People could see you coming and going in Vermont, into a grocery store, into a bakery, into a bookshop, into a bar, and no one would know whether you were in residence in your little house in the woods or commuting back and forth to the city to do murder.
"Did you know that under the provisions of your father's will, you would inherit twenty-five percent of his estate?" Carella asked.
"Yes, I knew that."
"How'd you happen to know?"
"Mom constantly told us."
"What do you mean by constantly?"
"Well, all the time. Certainly while they were negotiating the settlement … we weren't children, you know, this was only two years ago. Mom told us she wouldn't give him a divorce unless he agreed to put both of us in the will. Me and Lois. For half the estate. Together, that is. Sharing half the estate. So we knew about it at the time, and since then she's repeated the story again and again, with a great deal of pleasure and pride. Because she felt she'd done something very good for us. Which she had."
"Where were you on Friday night, Miss Schumacher?" Brown asked.
"Vermont. I told you."
The hippie grin again. Her mother's daughter for sure. No tricks, please. Just the facts, ma'am.
"You weren't down here in the city?"
"No. I was in Vermont."
"Anyone with you?"
"I told you. I go up there alone."
"I didn't ask if you went up there with anyone," Brown said pleasantly. "I asked if anyone was with you on the night Margaret Schumacher was killed."
"No. I was home alone. Reading."
"Reading what?" Carella asked.
"I don't remember. I read a lot."
"What kind of books?"
"Fiction mostly."
"Do you read murder mysteries?"
"No. I hate murder mysteries."
"You said you read about Margaret Schumacher's murder in the newspaper …"
"Yes."
"Local Vermont paper?"
"No. I picked up one of our papers at the …"
"Our papers?"
"Yes. From here in the city. We do get them up there, you know."
"And that's when you saw the headline …"
"It wasn't a headline. Not in the paper I bought. It was on page four of the metropolitan section."
"A story about Mrs Schumacher's murder."
"Yes. Mrs Schumacher's murder."
Repeating the title scornfully, so that it sounded dirty somehow.
"And you say you felt gleeful…"
"Well, perhaps that was too strong a word to use."
"What word would you use now?"
"Happy. The story made me happy."
"Reading about a woman's brutal murder …"
"Yes."
"… made you happy."
"Yes."
"She'd been shot repeatedly in the head and chest…"
"Right."
"And reading about this made you happy."
"Yes," Betsy said. "I'm glad someone killed her."
Both detectives looked at her.
"She was a rotten bitch who wrecked our lives. I used to pray she'd fall out a window or get run over by a bus, but it never happened. Well, now someone got her. Someone gave it to her good. And yes, that makes me happy. In fact, it makes me gleeful, yes, that is the right word, I'm overflowing with glee because she's dead. I only wish she'd been shot a dozen times instead of just four."
There was a satisfied smile on her face.
You couldn't argue with a smile like that.
You could only wonder whether the newspapers had mentioned that Margaret Schumacher had been shot four times.
It was getting late.
They'd been talking in the living room of the house Angela had shared with Tommy until just recently, three-year-old Tess asleep in the back room, Angela telling her brother she was dying for a cigarette but her doctor had forbidden her to smoke while she was pregnant. Carella thought suddenly of Gloria Sanders, who'd been dying for a smoke when they'd talked to her at the hospital. He could not shake the persistent feeling that Penn Halligan had been describing a woman running through the rain. Or had the image been created by the foreknowledge that three women had survived Arthur Schumacher: two daughters, and an ex-wife who hated him.
"But it won't be long now," Angela said.
"You should stay off them," Carella said.
"Tough habit to kick," she said, and shrugged.
