As a Favor Read Online Free Page B

“I thought this would take twenty minutes maximum, but it looks bad in here.”
    I nodded to Connie Pereira as she rushed up behind Howard, and I was about to speak when the lab van pulled up and the crew eased out.
    “Do the lamp and the door jambs for prints,” I said as they walked up the steps. “And get the blood on the wall.”
    The lab man nodded.
    “Take a look at the yard for footprints, if you can find anything through the ivy.”
    “Right, but there’s not much chance. What ivy doesn’t prevent, it covers.”
    I shrugged. “Start with the yard; it’s already pretty dark out.”
    Turning to Howard and Pereira, I explained Nat’s request. “As far as I know, Anne Spaulding was at work at the Telegraph office of the welfare department yesterday.”
    “That would be eight-thirty to five, then?” Pereira asked.
    I thought a moment. The eight-hour day in government offices varied a bit throughout the state, some counties working eight to four-thirty, some eight-thirty to five. I nodded; Pereira was right “I assume she was there all day, but I’ll have to ask Nat.”
    “Do we know what she was doing afterwards?” Howard looked at the upturned chairs.
    “That’s something else I’ll have to ask.”
    “Presumably,” Pereira said, “whatever it was ended up here.”
    “Right,” I said. “Let’s see what this place can tell us. Howard, you want to take the yard? The lab man should be through in a couple minutes.”
    “Okay.”
    As he headed through the kitchen I could see the fading light from the back windows. Why couldn’t Nat have called earlier, when there was still enough light to do a decent job?
    “I suppose that leaves the kitchen for me,” Pereira said.
    “And the living room. If you’d seen the bedroom you’d know I was doing you a favor.”
    I followed the lab crew into the bedroom, checking through the piles of clothing—clean, washed but unironed, dirty—and the more homogeneous clutter of sweatshirts, sweatpants, shorts, T-shirts, and leotards that had found a home on the closet floor. Despite the overwhelming picture of disorder the room presented, each pile contained a specific variety of garment and the slips and blouses from the “dirty” pile had not invaded the “clean” or the “unironed.” While the room did make that suggestion about Anne’s character—order within disorder—it told me little more. There were no letters, no notes—only a movie schedule and a Theater on Wheels handbill advertising Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.
    I moved on to the bathroom.
    It was a small room, obviously a necessity squeezed uncomfortably into a hallway when the building had been converted into flats. A stall shower occupied nearly half the floor space and a waist-high quilted cabinet stood by the bedroom door. I opened the medicine chest and found it surprisingly neat Bottles of Vaseline, deodorant, Maximum Tan tanning oil, make-up in beige and alabaster pink, eyedrops, and astringent stood in rows with no space unfilled. Nothing could have been removed.
    Turning to the quilted cabinet I squatted and pulled open the door.
    Pereira came in, looked and whistled. “She must have been either a real beauty or an utter witch to justify this investment in make-up.”
    I laughed, and the unnatural sound that came from my own throat made me aware of how tense I was. Pereira continued to survey the bottles and tubes in amazement For Pereira, the Department’s investment maven, this type of extravagance was almost a personal affront Connie Pereira spent her leisure hours taking classes in accounting, tax law, and commodities strategies. All that kept her from making a killing was a set of parents and two brothers who drained off her savings on a regular basis.
    She held up a bottle of Corn-Silk Blonde. “Look at this. So her hair wasn’t natural either.”
    I nodded as she replaced it in the cabinet. “What did you find in the kitchen and living room?”
    She shrugged. “Nothing