“I’ll just put the coffee on,” Mrs. Miller said, disappearing into the kitchen.
I moved closer to the photographs, skirting cats as I went. Most were older—the photographs, I mean, although the cats may have been, too. There were faded color photos from the seventies and eighties, black and white ones that had to be from the fifties and sixties.
The wedding photo was in the center of the collection.
Mrs. Miller couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or -three, in a very short white dress with matching go-go boots and a puffy shoulder-length veil. The whole ensemble should have looked ridiculous, but somehow it worked. Her intended stood beside her in a powder-blue tuxedo with a ruffled shirt, grinning at the camera like he’d won the lottery.
She’d been a brunette then, with dark hair falling past her shoulders in fluffy curls, and a build that was petite but voluptuous, quite unlike the desiccated specimen she was these days.
Something about her was familiar, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It might have been that she bore a superficial resemblance to Jacquie. They were two olive-skinned brunettes with bouncy dark curls, fifty years or so apart in age, both compact and neatly curved.
But that didn’t feel like quite enough. There was something about the face, something specific.
I thought back to the people I had seen recently, so many of them with that Mediterranean coloring. Mendoza, of course. And Jacquie. Sal Gomorra. The two mob guys.
If I shrank Izzy Spataro down to human size in my head, and gave him a neck and feminine features… would he look like Mrs. Miller did in her youth? Or Gio Abruzzi? There was something about that bone structure, the set of the eyes, that was familiar.
“That’s me and my Henry,” Mrs. Miller said, making me jump. She’d come back from the kitchen carrying two mugs of coffee. “Married forty-three years before the cancer took him.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said automatically, accepting the mug she offered. The coffee smelled fine—nothing obviously wrong with it—although I had no intention of drinking it. Not until I was sure Mrs. Miller wasn’t trying to poison me.
“It’s been more than ten years now.” Mrs. Miller settled into an armchair, cradling her own mug. “You get used to the loneliness.”
As if on cue, Patches jumped into her lap. Mrs. Miller stroked her absently.
“Did you and your husband have children?” I asked, keeping my own mug carefully in my hands but not raising it to my lips.
She shook her head. “Not for lack of trying. We went at it like rabbits when we were young. But I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. And then after he passed, well, the cats became my babies.”
I glanced around the room, counting again. Definitely more than twelve. Possibly more than fifteen.
“Mrs. Miller,” I said, “can I ask you about Nick?”
Her expression shifted, the smile fading. “Poor boy. I still can’t believe he’s gone. The police were here most of Saturday, you know. Going through his things, asking me questions.”
“Lieutenant Copeland?”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s her name. Very professional, she was. Asked me the same questions you did—when I last saw Nick, whether I heard anything unusual, whether he had any enemies.” She shook her head. “I told her what I told you. Nick was a good boy. Quiet, polite, always helped with my groceries.”
“What about his girlfriend? Jacquie?”
“Oh, she’s a sweet thing. Pretty as a picture. You could tell she loved him.” Mrs. Miller took a sip of her coffee. “They had a fight a few weeks back. I could hear them through the wall—these old places, you know, the insulation isn’t what it should be.”
“What did they argue about?” Megan, by any chance? It would have been too recent to be about David, but Kenny might not be off the table. If Nick had known about him and had minded, of course.
“Oh, I don’t know, dear.” She flapped a thin hand. “I could hear them yelling at one another, but not what they said. Just the raised voices.”
But something, then. Some reason why Jacquie might still have been upset with Nick.
Then again—I told myself sternly—I wasn’t getting paid to prove that Jacquie was guilty.
“What about other women? Did you ever see anyone other than Jacquie?”
Mrs. Miller thought about it. “There was the blonde, like I said. But I don’t think that was romantic. He never seemed happy to see her.”
No, I could imagine. “What about problems at work? Did he ever mention anything like that?”
“Not to me,” Mrs. Miller said. “He’s worked at the same place for as long as he’s lived here. And he paid his rent on time.”
