well, then. I arrived here at my mother’s shortly after seven o’clock on Thursday evening . . .”
She visited at least four times a week, she said, but Thursdays were her night to stay over. She always stopped at B’hai, a very nice vegetarian restaurant located in Birch Hill Mall, and got their dinners, which she warmed up in the oven. (“Although Mother eats very little now, of course. Because of the pain.”) She told them she always scheduled her Thursday trips so she arrived after seven, because that was when the all-night parking began, and most of the streetside spaces were empty. “I won’t parallel park. I simply can’t do it.”
“What about the garage down the block?” Hodges asked.
She looked at him as though he were crazy. “It costs sixteen dollars to park there overnight. The streetside spaces are free.”
Pete was still holding the key, although he hadn’t yet told Mrs. Trelawney they would be taking it with them. “You stopped at Birch Hill and ordered takeout for you and your mother at—” He consulted his notebook. “B’hai.”
“No, I ordered ahead. From my house on Lilac Drive. They are always glad to hear from me. I am an old and valued customer. Last night it was kookoo sabzi for Mother—that’s an herbal omelet with spinach and cilantro—and gheymeh for me. Gheymeh is a lovely stew with peas, potatoes, and mushrooms. Very easy on the stomach.” She straightened her boatneck. “I’ve had terrible acid reflux ever since I was in my teens. One learns to live with it.”
“I assume your order was—” Hodges began.
“And sholeh zard for dessert,” she added. “That’s rice pudding with cinnamon. And saffron.” She flashed her strangely troubled smile. Like the compulsive straightening of her boatneck tops, the smile was a Trelawneyism with which they would become very familiar. “It’s the saffron that makes it special. Even Mother always eats the sholeh zard.”
“Sounds tasty,” Hodges said. “And your order, was it boxed and ready to go when you got there?”
“Yes.”
“One box?”
“Oh no, three.”
“In a bag?”
“No, just the boxes.”
“Must have been quite a struggle, getting all that out of your car,” Pete said. “Three boxes of takeout, your purse . . .”
“And the key,” Hodges said. “Don’t forget that, Pete.”
“Also, you’d want to get it all upstairs as fast as possible,” Pete said. “Cold food’s no fun.”
“I see where you’re going with this,” Mrs. Trelawney said, “and I assure you . . .” A slight pause. “. . . you gentlemen that you are barking up the wrong path. I put my key in my purse as soon as I turned off the engine, it’s the first thing I always do. As for the boxes, they were tied together in a stack . . .” She held her hands about eighteen inches apart to demonstrate. “. . . and that made them very easy to handle. I had my purse over my arm. Look.” She crooked her arm, hung her purse on it, and marched around the big living room, holding a stack of invisible boxes from B’hai. “See?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hodges said. He thought he saw something else as well.
“As for hurrying—no. There was no need, since the dinners need to be heated up, anyway.” She paused. “Not the sholeh zard, of course. No need to heat up rice pudding.” She uttered a small laugh. Not a giggle, Hodges thought, but a titter. Given that her husband was dead, he supposed you could even call it a widder-titter. His dislike added another layer—almost thin enough to be invisible, but not quite. No, not quite.
“So let me review your actions once you got here to Lake Avenue,” Hodges said. “Where you arrived at a little past seven.”
“Yes. Five past, perhaps a little more.”
“Uh-huh. You parked . . . what? Three or four doors down?”
“Four at most. All I need are two empty spaces, so I can pull in without backing. I hate to back. I always turn the wrong way.”
“Yes, ma’am, my wife has exactly the same problem. You turned off the engine. You removed the key from the ignition and put it in your purse. You put your purse over your arm and picked up the boxes with the food in them—”
“The stack of boxes. Tied together with good stout string.”
“The stack, right. Then what?”
She looked at him as though he were, of all the idiots in a generally idiotic world, the greatest. “Then I went to my mother’s building. Mrs. Harris—the housekeeper, you know—buzzed me in.