She paused a moment, and Eve could see it sink in. “He took it? He took her ring? The bastard, the filthy son of a bitch. That ring mattered to her.”
“The fact that her killer took the ring may help us find and identify him. When we find it, and him, you’ll be able to positively identify it. That will help us build our case.”
“All right, all right. Thanks. I can think of it that way now, think of it as a way to lock him up. That helps.”
“Did she mention anything, however casually,” Eve began, “about meeting someone, seeing someone hanging around the neighborhood?”
“No.” Her kitchen ’link beeped, and she ignored it.
“You can get that,” Eve told her. “We can wait.”
“No, it’s someone calling with condolences. Everyone who knew her is calling. This is more important now.”
Eve angled her head. “Officer Peabody’s right. She must’ve liked you very much.”
“She’d have expected me to handle this, the way she would’ve handled it. So I will.”
“Think carefully then. Any mention of anyone she might’ve met or seen in the last few weeks.”
“She was friendly, the sort who talks to strangers on line at the market or strikes up conversations in the subway. So she wouldn’t have mentioned anything like that unless it was out of the ordinary for her.”
“Take me through the places she’d go, the routes she’d take. Daily business sort of thing. I’m looking for repetition and habit, the kind of thing someone who was tracking her could use to determine she’d have been alone in the apartment Sunday morning.”
“Okay.” Leah began to outline Lois’s basic routines as Eve took notes.
It was a simple life, if an active one. Fitness classes three times a week, bi-weekly sessions at a salon, market on Fridays, Thursday evenings out with friends for a meal and a vid or play, volunteer work Monday afternoons at a local day-care center, her part-time job at a lady’s boutique on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.
“She dated once in a while,” Leah added. “But not so much recently, and nothing serious. As I said, Sam was it for her. If she’d been seeing anyone, even very casually, I’d have known about it.”
“Customers in the shop? Men?”
“Sure, she’d tell us about some of the guys who’d come in and throw themselves on her mercy, looking for something for a spouse or girlfriend. Nothing lately, not that she mentioned. Wait.”
Her back went steel straight. “Wait. I remember her saying something about a man she ran into when she was shopping for produce. A couple of weeks ago. Said he looked sort of lost over the tomatoes or something.”
As if to nudge the memory clear, Leah rubbed her temples. “She helped him pick out some vegetables and fruit, that was just like her. She said he was a single father, just moved to New York with his little boy. He was worried about finding good day care, so she told him about Kid Time, that’s the place she volunteers, gave him all the information. Being Lois, she pumped him for personal information. She said he was a good-looking guy, concerned father, looked lonely, and she was hoping he checked out Kid Time so she could maybe fix him up with a woman she knew who worked there. God, what did she say his name was? Ed, Earl, no, no, Al. That’s it.”
“Al,” Eve repeated and felt it hit her gut.
“She said he walked her part of the way home, carried her bags. Said they talked kids for a few blocks. I didn’t pay much attention, it was the kind of thing she did all the time. And knowing Lois, if they talked kids, she talked about hers, about us. She probably said how we got together Sunday afternoons, and how she looked forward to it. About how she knew what it was like to raise kids alone.”
“Did she tell you what he looked like?”
“She just said he was a good-looking boy. That doesn’t mean anything. Damn it! She’d call any guy under forty a boy, so that’s no help.”
Yes, it was, Eve thought. It eliminated Elliot Hawthorne, as her own instincts already had.
“She was a born mother, so if she saw this guy puzzling over tomatoes, she’d have automatically stepped up to give him a hand and talk to him, try to help him out with his problems. Southern,” Leah said on a rise of excitement. “That’s what she said. A good-looking Southern boy.”
“She was a jewel. You know what I’m saying?”
Rico Vincenti, proprietor of the family-run market where Lois Gregg did her weekly shopping, unashamedly wiped his tears with a red bandanna, then stuff
ed it away in the back pocket of khakis that bagged over his skinny butt. He went back to stacking a fresh supply of peaches in his sidewalk bin.
“That’s what I’m hearing,” Eve said. “She came in here regularly.”
“Every Friday. Sometimes she’d come by other times, pick up a couple things, but she was in every Friday morning. Ask me about my family, give me grief about prices—not bitchy,” he said quickly. “Friendly like. Some people they come in here, never say a word to you, but not Mrs. Gregg. I find the bastard . . .” He made an obscene gesture. “Finito.”