“Thanks, I think we can handle it.”
“I bet he makes tons in tips,” Peabody commented as they entered the small, dignified lobby. “Great smile, nice butt. What else could you ask for in a doorman?”
She studied the lobby with it
s discreet name plaques, polished brass elevator, and attractive arrangement of spring flowers. “I never figured a place like this for a nude dancer. It’s more like what you’d think of for upper-level office drones and junior execs. I wonder what she makes a year.”
“Thinking of switching professions?”
“Yeah, right.” Peabody snorted as they stepped onto the elevator. “Guys are lining up to see me naked. Though McNab—”
“Don’t go there. I just can’t take it.” Eve hurried off the elevator on six, made a beeline for apartment C. She was relieved when the door opened promptly and cut off any idea Peabody might have harbored about finishing the statement.
“Nancie Gaynor?”
“Yes.”
“Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD. Can we come in and speak with you?”
“Oh, sure. This is about Taj.”
Nancie fit the image of the apartment. Tidy, attractive and pretty as a sunbeam. She was young, midtwenties by Eve’s estimation, and cute as a damn button with a curling mop of golden hair, doll-baby lips painted rosy pink, and huge green eyes. The buttercup-yellow skin suit she wore showed off her talent and still managed to look sweet.
She stepped back into the room on bare feet, leaving a faint trace of lilies in the air.
“I’m just sick about it,” she began. “Just sick. Rue called us all yesterday to tell us.” Those big eyes filled, swam like irrigated green fields. I just can’t believe something like this could happen at Purgatory.”
She made a helpless gesture toward a long, curving sofa covered in velvety pink fabric and an avalanche of shimmering pillows. “I guess we’d better sit down. Should I get you something, like to drink?”
“No, don’t bother. Do you mind if we record this conversation, Miss Gaynor?”
“Oh. Oh. Golly.” Nancie bit her pretty bottom lip, clasped her hands together between her truly spectacular breasts. “I guess not. Are you supposed to?”
“With your permission.” A stripper who said golly, was all Eve could think. Just when you’d thought you’d seen it all.
“Okay, gee. I want to help if I can. But we can sit down, right? Because I guess I’m a little nervous. I’ve never been involved in a murder case. I was questioned once, right after I moved here from Utumwa, because my roommate, she was an LC, and she’d let her license lapse, but I’m sure it was just an oversight. Anyway, I talked to the officer in charge of the licensing committee and all. But that was different.”
Eve just blinked. “Utumwa?”
“Iowa. I moved here from Iowa four years ago. I was hoping maybe to be a dancer on Broadway.” She smiled a little. “I guess girls move here thinking stuff like that all the time. I’m really a pretty good dancer, but well, so are a lot of other girls, and it can be pretty expensive to live here, so I took a job in a club. It wasn’t a very nice club,” she confided, blinking those big eyes. “And I was getting pretty scared and discouraged and thinking maybe I should just go back to Iowa and marry Joey, but he’s sort of a cluck, you know, and then Rue came in to catch my act and got me a job at this better club. It was nice, and the pay was much better, and the customers didn’t paw at you. Then when Rue went to Purgatory, she took some of us with her. That’s a really classy club. I just want you to know that. Nothing hinky-dink goes on there.”
“Hinky-dink,” Eve repeated, slightly dazed by the tumble of words and information. “I appreciate you telling me all that.”
“Oh, I want to help.” Nancie leaned forward, leading with her eyes. “Rue said if any of us knew anything, we should contact you. Lieutenant Eve Dallas. And that we should answer all your questions and do whatever we could, because, well, it’s the right thing and you’re married to Roarke. He owns Purgatory.”
“I heard that somewhere.”
“Oh gee, I’d answer the questions even if you weren’t married to Roarke. I mean, it’s my civic duty and all, and Taj was a really nice guy. He respected your privacy, you know? Even in a classy club, some of the staff can take peeks when they’re not supposed to. But you could walk right in front of Taj naked as a jay, and he never looked. I mean he looked because you were right there, but he never looked. He had a wife and kids, and was a real family man.”
How did you shut this one off? Eve wondered. “Miss Gaynor—”
“Oh, you can call me Nancie.”
“Fine, Nancie, you were working last night. Was a dancer named Mitzie also on?”
“Sure. We work pretty much the same schedule. Mitzie left kind of early last night. She was blue, you know, because that asshole—excuse my French—of a boyfriend dumped her for some sky waitress. She kept breaking down and crying in the dressing room because like, well, he was the love of her life and all and was going to marry her and buy a house in Queens. I think, or maybe it was Brooklyn, and then—”
“Miss Gaynor.”