slowly to the O'Hagens'. Cleaning their apartment would use up the rest of my Friday morning.
Jenny answered my knock, so I knew she'd had the two o'clock to ten o'clock shift at Bippy's the night before. After closing, the O'Hagen on night duty usually got home by eleven or twelve and slept in the next morning, while the other one had to get up at five o'clock to make the six o'clock opening. Shakespeare is a town that rises early and beds early.
Jenny has red hair and freckles, a flat chest, and wide hips, and she dresses well to camouflage those features. But today in her flowered bathrobe, she was not aiming to impress me. Jenny likes to regard me as part of the furniture, anyway. After saying hi indifferently, Jenny plopped back in her recliner and lit a cigarette, her eyes returning to a talk show I had never thought of watching.
Jenny was the only person I'd seen in the past five days who was acting completely normal.
The O'Hagens do their own laundry, but Jenny and Tom hate cleaning their kitchen, not too surprising when you consider they manage a restaurant. So I almost always have plenty to load in the dishwasher, sometimes what I estimate to be a whole week's worth, and the garbage is always full of microwave meal trays and heat-and-eat cans. It also isn't too surprising, I figure, that they don't want to cook when they are home.
Jenny ignored me utterly as I moved around the apartment, to the point of not reacting at all when I took everything off the TV tray table set up next to the recliner and dusted the tray, putting its contents back in pleasing order afterward. I hate Jenny's cigarette smoke; she is the only client I have who smokes, I realized with a little surprise.
The phone rang after I'd had been working an hour. I heard Jenny pick it up and turn down the volume on the television set. Without trying, I heard Jenny murmur into the receiver for a few minutes, then thunk it back in its cradle.
I had worked my way back to the master bedroom, where I changed the sheets in a flash and snapped the bedspread back into order. I dumped the ashtray on Jenny's side of the bed (red hair on that pillow) and was walking around the bed to empty Tom's ashtray when Jenny appeared in the doorway.
"Thanks for backing up Tom," she said abruptly.
I glanced up, trying to read the round freckled face. All I could see was reluctance. Jenny didn't like feeling beholden.
"Just told the truth," I said, dumping the butts into the garbage bag and wiping out the ashtray. I replaced it with a little clunk on the bedside table. I spied a pencil on the floor, stooped to pick it up, and dropped it in the drawer of the bedside table.
"I know Tom's story sounded a little funny," Jenny said tentatively, as though she was waiting for my reaction.
"Not to me," I said crisply. I scanned the bedroom, couldn't spot anything I'd missed, and started out the door to the second bedroom, which the O'Hagens had fitted up as an office. Jenny stepped back to let me pass.
I'd tucked the corner of the dust cloth into my belt as I finished the bedroom. Now I whipped it out and began dusting the office. To my surprise, Jenny followed me. I glanced at my watch and kept on working. I was due at the Winthrops' by one, and I wanted to have something for lunch before I got there.
The glance wasn't lost on Jenny. "Keep right on working," she said invitingly, as though I wasn't already. "I just wanted you to know we appreciate your remembering correctly. Tom was relieved he didn't have to answer any more questions."
One had occurred to me during the morning. In the normal course of things, it wouldn't have crossed my mind to ask Jenny, but I was fed up with Jenny alternately ignoring me and following me around.
"So, did the police ask him what he was doing coming down the stairs from the other apartments, when he lives on the ground level?" I asked. I had my back to Jenny, but I heard a sharp intake of breath that signaled shock.
"Yes, Claude did, just now," Jenny said. "He wanted to ask Tom about that, since Tom hadn't mentioned that earlier."
I could see why Claude Friedrich would think of asking, since his own apartment