her eyes.
“You said it. Did she come here to meet this Mac? Did she just run into him by accident? Is he the one who threw her in the river after poisoning her? How do you go about locating a guy named Mac?”
Teddy pointed to the flap of skin between her thumb and forefinger.
“The tattoo parlors? I’ve already started checking them. We may get a break because not many women wear tattoos.”
Quickly, Teddy unbuttoned the top button of her blouse and then pulled it open, using both hands, spreading it in a wide, dramatic V.
“The Rose Tattoo?” Carella asked. “That’s fiction.”
Teddy shrugged.
Carella grinned. “Besides, I think you just wanted an excuse to bare your bosom.”
Teddy shrugged again, impishly.
“Not that it isn’t a lovely bosom.”
Teddy’s eyebrows wagged seductively. She curved her hands through the air and moistened her lips.
“Of course,” Carella said, “I’ve seen better.”
Oh? Teddy’s face asked, suddenly coldly aloof.
“There was this girl in burlesque,” Carella expanded. “She could set them going in opposite directions, one swinging to the right, the other to the left. Had a little light on each one. They’d turn out all the houselights, and you’d just see these two circles of light in the darkness. Fantastic!” He grinned at his wife. “Now, that’s what I call talent.”
Teddy shrugged, telling her husband that that was what she didn’t call any talent whatsoever.
“You, on the other hand…” His hand came up suddenly to cup her breast.
Gingerly, delicately, Teddy picked up his hand with her thumb and forefinger and deposited it on the arm of the chair.
“Angry?” Carella asked.
Teddy shook her head.
“Love me?” Carella asked.
Teddy shook her head most vigorously.
“Hate me?”
No.
“Who then?”
Teddy swung her forefingers in opposite directions, and Carella burst out laughing. “You hate the burlesque dancer?”
Teddy gave one emphatic nod.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “She was an old bag.”
Teddy beamed and threw her arms around his neck.
“Now do you love me?”
Yes, yes, yes.
“What’d you do all day?” he asked, holding her close, beginning to relax, succumbing to the warmth of her.
Teddy opened her hands like a book.
“Read?” Carella watched while she nodded. “What’d you read?”
Teddy scrambled off his lap and then clutched her middle, indicating that she had read something that was very funny. She walked across the room, and he watched her when she stooped alongside the magazine rack.
“If you’re not careful,” he said, “I’m going to undo that damn safety pin.”
She put the magazines on the floor, stood up, and undid the safety pin. The skirt hung loose, one flap over the other. When she stooped to pick up the magazine again, it opened in a wide slit from her knee to almost her waist. Wiggling like the burlesque queen Carella had described, she walked back to him and dumped the magazines in his lap.
“Pen pal magazines?” Carella asked, astonished.
Teddy hunched up her shoulders, grinned, and then covered her mouth with one hand.
“My God!” he said. “Why?”
With her hands on her hips, Teddy kicked at the ceiling with one foot, the skirt opening over the clean line of her leg.
“For kicks?” Carella asked, shrugging. “What kind of stuff is in here? ‘Dear Pen Pal: I am a cocker spaniel who always wanted to be in the movies…’”
Teddy grinned and opened one of the magazines for him. Carella thumbed through it. She sat on the arm of his chair, and the skirt opened again. He looked at the magazine, and then he looked at his woman, and then he said, “The hell with this noise,” and he threw the magazine to the floor and pulled Teddy onto his lap.
The magazine fell open to the personals column.
It lay on the floor while Steve Carella kissed his wife. It lay on the floor when he picked her up and carried her into the next room.
There was a small ad in the personals column.
It read:
* * *
Widower. Mature. Attractive. 35 years old. Seeks alliance with understanding woman of good background. Write P.O. Box 137.
* * *
The girl had read the advertisement six times, and she was now on her fifth revision of the letter she was writing in answer to it.
She was not a stupid girl, nor did she particularly believe anything romantic or exciting would happen after she mailed her letter. She was, after all, thirty-seven years old, and she had come to believe—once she’d turned thirty-five—that romance and excitement would never be a part of her life.
There was, in the girl’s mind, a certain cynicism. There were some who would call her cynicism a simple