In Susan's bedroom closet, they found a full-length mink coat and a fox jacket . . .
"He's getting richer and richer by the minute," Kling said.
. . . three dozen pairs of shoes . . .
"Imelda Marcos here," Brown said.
. . . eighteen dresses with labels like Adolfo, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior . . .
"I wonder what his wife wears," Kling said.
. . . three Louis Vuitton suitcases . . .
"Planning a trip?" Brown said.
. . . and a steel lockbox.
Brown picked the lock in thirty seconds flat.
Insjde the box, there was twelve thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.
The doorman was a dust-colored man with a thin mustache under his nose. He was wearing a gray uniform with red trim and a peaked gray hat with red piping, and he spoke with an almost indecipherable accent they guessed was Middle Eastern. It took them ten minutes to learn that he had been on duty from four p.m. to midnight last night. Now what they wanted to know was whether or not he'd sent anyone up to Miss Brauer's apartment.
"Dunn remembah," he said.
"The penthouse apartment," Kling said. "There's only one penthouse apartment, did you send anybody up there last night?"
"Dunn remembah," he said again.
"Anybody at all go up there?" Brown asked. "A whiskey delivery, anything like that?"
He was thinking about the martinis.
The doorman shook his head.
"Peckage all the time," he said.
"Package, is that what you're saying?"
"Peckage, yes."
"People delivering packages?"
"Yes, all the time."
"But this didn't have to be a delivery," Kling said. "It could've been anyone going up there to the penthouse. Do you remember anyone going up there? Did you buzz Miss Brauer to tell her anyone wanted to come up?"
"Dunn remembah," he said. "Peckage all the time."
Brown wanted to smack him in the mouth.
"Look," he said, "a girl was killed upstairs, and you were on duty during the time she was killed. So did you let anyone in? Did you send anyone upstairs?"
"Dunn remembah."
"Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around the building?"
The doorman looked puzzled.
"Suspicious," Kling said.
"Someone who didn't look as if he belonged here," Brown explained.
"Nobody," the doorman said.
When finally they quit, it felt as if they'd been talking to him for a day and a half. But it was only a little after three o'clock.
274 Sounder was a brownstone on a street bordered by trees in full summer leaf. It had taken them close to an hour in heavy traffic to drive from the penthouse apartment on Silvermine Oval all the way down here to the lower end of Isola, and they did not ring Phyllis Bracken's doorbell until almost four o'clock that afternoon.
Mrs Brackett was a woman in her early fifties, they guessed, allowing her hair to go gray, wearing no makeup, and looking tall and slender and attractive in a wide blue skirt, thong sandals, a sleeveless white blouse, and a string of bright red beads. They had called before coming, and not only was she expecting them, she had also made a pitcher of cold lemonade in anticipation of their arrival. Brown and Kling almost kissed her sandaled feet; both men were hot and sticky and utterly exhausted.
They sat in a kitchen shaded by a backyard maple. Two children were playing in a rubber wading pool under the tree. Mrs Brackett explained that they were her grandchildren. Her daughter and her son-in-law were on vacation, and she was baby-sitting the two little blonde girls who were splashing merrily away outside the picture window.
Brown told her why they were there.
"Yes," she said at once.
"You were renting the apartment to Susan Brauer."
"Yes, that's right," Mrs Brackett said.
"Then the apartment is yours …"
"Yes. I used to live in it until recently," she said.
They looked at her.
"I was recently divorced," she said. "I'm what is known as a grass widow."
Kling had never heard that expression before. Neither had Brown. They both gathered it meant a divorced woman. Live and learn.
"I didn't want alimony," she said. "I got the apartment and a very large cash settlement. I bought this brownstone with the settlement money, and I get twenty-four hundred a month renting the apartment. I think that's a pretty good deal," she said, and smiled.
They agreed it was a pretty good deal.
"Was anyone handling this for you?" Brown asked. "Renting the apartment uptown? A real estate agent, a rental agent?"
"No. I put an ad in the paper."
"Was Susan Brauer the one who answered the newspaper ad?"
"Yes."
"I mean personally," Brown said. "Was she the one who wrote … or called . . .?"
"She called me, yes."
"She herself? Not anyone calling for her? It wasn't a man who called, was it?"
"No, it was Miss Brauer."
"What happened then?" Brown asked.
"We arranged to meet at the apartment. I showed it to her, and she liked it, and we agreed on the rent, and that was it."
"Did she sign a lease?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"A year."
"And when was this?" Kling asked.
"In February."
Fast worker, Kling thought. He meets her on New Year's Day, and he's got her set up in an apartment a month later. Brown was thinking the same thing.
