Nocturne Read Online Free

he said. “Did you ever see her?”
    “No, I never met her. I told you.”
    “What I’m asking is did you ever
see
her? Coming out of the apartment next door. Or in the hall. Did she ever come here to
visit
, is what I’m asking?”
    “Oh. No. I don’t think they got along.”
    “Then there
was
someone on unfriendly terms with her,” Carella said.
    “Yes, but family,” Karen said, shrugging it off.
    “Was it Miss Dyalovich who told you they didn’t get along?”
    “Yes.”
    “When was this?”
    “Oh, two or three months ago.”
    “Came up out of the blue, did it?”
    “No, she was lamenting the fact that her only daughter lived so far away, in London …”
    “How’d that lead to the granddaughter?”
    “Well, she said if only she and Priscilla could get along …”
    “Is
that
her name?” Hawes asked at once. “The granddaughter?”
    “Oh. Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t remember it until it popped out of my mouth.”
    “Priscilla what?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Maybe it’ll come to you.”
    “No, I don’t think I
ever
knew it.”
    “The obit will tell us,” Carella said. “Later this morning.”
    It was now exactly one a.m .
    The man who owned the liquor store told them Saturdays were his biggest nights. Made more in the hour before closing on Saturday
     nights than he did the rest of the entire year. Only thing bigger was New Year’s Eve, he told them. Even bigger than that
     was when New Year’s Eve fell on a Saturday night. Couldn’t beat it.
    “
Biggest
night of the year,” he said. “I could stay open all night New Year’s Eve and sell everything in the store.”
    This was already Sunday, but it still felt like Saturday night to the guy who owned the store. It must have still felt like
     Christmas, too, even though it was already the twenty-first of January. A little Christmas tree blinked green and red in the
     front window. Little cardboard cutouts, hanging across the ceiling, endlessly repeated happy holidays . Gift-packaged bottles of booze sat on countertops and tables.
    The store owner’s name was Martin Keely. He was maybe sixty-eight, sixty-nine, in there, a short stout man with a drunkard’s
     nose and wide suspenders to match it. He kept interrupting their conversation, such as it was, to make yet another sale. This
     hour of the night, he was selling mostly cheap wine to panhandlers who straggled in with their day’s take. This became a different
     city after midnight. You saw different people in the streets and on the sidewalks. In the bars and clubs that were open. In
     the subways and the taxicabs. An entirely different city with entirely different people in it.
    One of them had killed Svetlana Dyalovich.
    “What time did she come in here, would you remember?” Hawes asked.
    “Around eleven o’clock.”
    Which more or less tied in. Man down the hall said he heard the shots at about eleven-twenty. Super called 911 five minutes
     after that.
    “What’d she buy?”
    “Bottle of Four Roses.”
    Exactly the brand that had dropped to the floor when someone shot her.
    “How much did it cost?”
    “Eight dollars and ninety-nine cents.”
    “How’d she pay for it?”
    “Cash.”
    “Exact?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Did she hand you
exactly
eight dollars and ninety-nine cents.”
    “No, she handed me a ten-dollar bill. I gave her change.”
    “Where’d she put the change?”
    “In this little purse she was carrying. Took a ten out of the purse, handed it to me. Gave her one dollar and one cent in
     change. Put that in the purse.”
    “The dollar was in change, too?”
    “No, the dollar was a bill.”
    “And you say she put the change in her handbag?”
    “No, she put it in this
purse
. A little purse. A change purse. With the little snaps on top you click open with your thumb and forefinger. A purse, you
     know?” he said, seeming to become inappropriately agitated. “You know what a purse is? A purse ain’t a handbag. A purse is
     a purse.