Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [64]
“Late night?” she asked as they walked to their car.
“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep. I tried you and—”
“I heard your messages. I caught dinner and a movie with Betty. I thought I told you I was planning to do that.”
“Maybe you did. I must have forgotten.”
“You sounded agitated. Right word?”
He smiled. “As good a word as any to describe how I felt. I had a long talk with my father.”
“About the job?”
“Uh-huh. I told him I was thinking of quitting.”
“And he said?”
“He told me not to let Hatcher drive me away.”
“Good advice.”
“My dad always has good advice, but I don’t always listen.”
“Sounds like you’re listening this time.”
“Maybe I’m growing up.”
They spent the rest of the day canvassing residents of Rosalie’s building again, including the elderly couple who lived downstairs from the victim.
“Sorry to bother you,” Jackson told the wife when she finally let them in after spending what seemed an eternity at the peephole, and asking questions of him through the closed door.
“We thought you and your husband might have remembered something about the night your neighbor was killed that you didn’t recall the first time we questioned you,” Mary said.
She shook her head. “Like I told you the last time, I mind my own business.”
A cynical grunt came from her husband, who sat in a chair and continued to read a newspaper.
“I know this is a difficult question, ma’am,” Jackson said, “but were you and your husband aware of what Ms. Curzon did for a living?”
She energetically worked her mouth as though having inadvertently chewed a hot pepper at a Chinese restaurant.
“She was a whore,” the husband said. “Nice looking, too.”
“Harry!”
“Well,” he said, dropping the newspaper to the floor, standing with difficulty, and coming to where they stood in the open doorway, “that’s what she was, wasn’t she? Either that or she had a hundred boyfriends.”
“You never saw any of the men who came to her apartment?” Jackson asked the wife.
An emphatic shake of her head.
“I’ve seen some of them,” the husband said.
Jackson and Hall looked at each other, then Jackson said, “Why didn’t you mention that when we were here the night she was killed?”
“Nobody asked me, that’s why.”
“Well,” said Jackson, “can you describe any of them?”
“Harry, I don’t think that—”
“Hush,” he told his wife. He said to Jackson, “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t see many of them, just one now and then when I’d be coming into the building and he’d be coming out, or vice versa. Can I remember what they looked like? No. Just men. Mostly middle-aged, I’d say, and pretty well-dressed, as I recall. No bums or anything like that. Some of them looked like politicians.”
Jackson’s eyes opened a little wider. “Politicians? Anyone in particular?”
“No. They just had that look about them. Seems like from what I read, they’re all pretty much the same when it comes to having women on the side. Not one of them you can trust.”
“What about the night of her murder?” Hall asked. “Did you see any of them coming or going that night?”
The old man shook his head. “I didn’t go out that night, but we did hear the racket upstairs.”
More questioning failed to turn up anything more. The detectives thanked them again for their time and left. The wife followed them into the hallway. “He’s getting senile,” she said. “You shouldn’t pay any attention to what he says.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jackson said, smiling and patting her arm.
The super nervously answered their questions and had nothing new to offer when it came to knowing what Rosalie did for a living, or the men who might have visited her apartment. Jackson tried another tack: “What about women friends?” he asked. “Did you meet any of her girlfriends? Señoritas or señoras?”
His lowered eyes said that he had.
“It’s okay,” Jackson said. “Nobody will get in trouble. We just need to know.”
“One woman. Nice woman.” He pointed to his hair. “Very rojo, very red.”
“Her name Micki?”
“Sí. Miss Micki.”
“Well, thanks for your time. We’ll try not to bother you again.”
“Speaking of Micki Simmons,” Jackson said once they were outside, “I hope she