The eyes sparkled. The impudent little chin came down.
“Boo!” said Mrs. Silberwetter.
Matt took a step back. Mrs. Silberwetter started forward and Matt took five giant steps back. A slow, deep smile rolled across the woman’s rosy face. Every millimeter of exposed tooth brightened the room sixteen candlepower. Eyelashes that should have been registered with the police batted mocking messages across glowing round eyes. Matt’s brother George had always told him, “Stay away from women with big round eyes: nobody’s THAT innocent.” Matt had found this dependable.
Ada Silberwetter was known as a woman of easy virtue, but that was untrue. She had none at all. Matt’s mind swept against his will to a sweltering summer afternoon when she had popped out of his closet. Although the visit had been brief, he remembered the location of every dimple in that peach-frosted angelfood body. Today, Mrs. Silberwetter was clothed, in a severe brown suit, which was all right, but…wasn’t there supposed to be something under the jacket?
“Well?” The word dipped and swooped so nicely that she said it again. “Well? Are you surprised to see me?”
He must not appear flustered: that was what she wanted. He growled, “Surprised you didn’t come in a window this time.”
She tipped her head toward one round shoulder, and rolled her eyes up. “In this weather?”
Her hands clasped in front of her. A nostalgic little sigh shook her lapels, and Matt’s composure. “That was a red-letter day,” she said. “And I had so hoped for a scarlet letter day.”
Matt’s throat seemed to be closing off. Probably acold: he coughed. “You’d never make it today. They installed screen locks.”
“Here you go,” said his mother, stepping from the kitchen with two steaming cups. “What are you talking about?”
“The screen locks,” Matt told her.
“Oh, the screen locks,” she repeated, with an uneasy disinterest that indicated complete ignorance of what a screen lock might be. “The screen locks. Of course.”
“Those new security locks on the window screens,” Matt told her. “So no one can get in.”
She nodded. “A very good idea.” She turned to Ada, waving one teacup. “You know, the way people break into places is scandalous. Stealing, killing…someone was killed on this very floor last summer.”
“Ah,” said Mts. Silberwetter. “How naughty.” Matt winced. Having known, worked with, and disliked the deceased, he still expected the long arm of the law to drop a hand on his shoulder any day. The police had found him far too interesting.
“Matt? Are you here?” His mother blinked in his direction. “It was right on this floor, wasn’t it? Two doors down?”
Mrs. Silberwetter was opening her mouth to reply. “So!” Matt exclaimed. “Mrs. Silberwetter! How’s Marhsall? Marshall Silberwetter, your husband! Remember him?”
Ada crossed her eyes at him, and a soft pink tongue jabbed out for a second before she replied, in tea party tones, “Not well, really.”
“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Benz inquired. This was something she did understand.
“Fatal complaint,” Ada replied. “Ignoring his doctor.”
The older woman nodded. “I’ve got a bad case of that myself.”
“Very sad,” Matt added. “However would you get along without him?”
An insincerely dimpled smile came his way as a reply. “Marshall IS such an intelligent man,” said its owner. “HE appreciates fine things.” She raised a hand to her hair, carelessly exposing one round, perfect arm as the sleeve slid back. “You’d never guess how much he gives to Public Television.”
Matt cleared his throat. “I see his son lost that race for the thirty-fourth.”
Ada shrugged. “It wasn’t his fault. A poor lad can’t always get laryngitis when he needs it. But we must get back to business, and not detain your little boy, right, Mrs. Benz?” She nodded to Matt and ambled around the corner into the dining nook.
The older woman nodded and followed, still holding two cups of tea.
Matt, who had been wishing Ada Silberwetter was out of his sight, irrationally chose to hustle down the hall after them. “Business,” he said, coming around the corner, “What business?”
“I suppose you think I do nothing all day but eat bonbons and read True Romances,” answered Mrs. Silberwetter. She arched her spine, squared her shoulders, and wriggled a bit in her chair. “I came to consult an expert. One of our guests dropped dead at our little Thanksgiving party.”
Mrs. Benz frowned. “I didn’t read a thing about that in the newspapers.”
Ada patted Mrs. Benz’s hand. “You won’t,” she said. “Now, he had a weak heart, so it might have been nothing at all. But he’d been receiving those threatening letters.” She spread one hand on the table, palm up.
Matt took a long breath. “Do you have something personal about telling the police?”
“Oh, that’s so indiscreet,” Ada sighed, arching her back again.
“No, no,” Matt assured her. “Very discreet chaps, those police. Nobody better than this city’s police at keeping a secret. I’ve said so time and again. Any cases of murder with threatening letters that my friends turn up, I always tell them to go to the police. I….”
“Matt,” his mother broke in, “How CAN you be such a stick-in-the mud?”
He glared at her. “Willpower.”
Ada gave a little bounce of glee. “And don’t you read books?” she demanded. “The detective is always the least likely to get killed. It’s the safest job in the story!”
Sensing, without seeing, that her son was seething, Mrs. Benz added “You know what trouble I’ve had starting stories these days. I thought this might give me some ideas.”
Matt opened his mouth to =reply but shut it again as Ada announced, “great oaks from little okras grow.”
In the silence that followed this, she studied both Benzes. “The detective has to say profound things. Then the sidekick gushes over them.”
“And those pictures are a perfect plot device,” said Mrs. Benz, visibly resolving not to try to figure this out right away. She pushed her chair back and jumped up. “That’s right! I was going to look in my room! Just a moment.”
Muttering “I’d forget my head if it didn’t have my glasses on it,” she bustled through the kitchen to get to her bedroom without passing Matt. She just missed kicking over the trash bin as she turned the corner.
“She’s already looked there,” said Ada, looked back and up at Matt. “She didn’t find them.”
Matt had planned to say something entirely else, but found himself apologizing. “No, I accidentally took those to work…if you mean the skull ad the tombstones. But I can bring them back tomorrow.”
He caught himself, and his breath, and started over. “Now….”
“Oh, don’t be that way,” Ada interrupted, setting one elbow on the table in a way that endangered the top button of her jacket. “I need somebody to hunt clues and I can’t use any of Marshall’s creatures.”
“Why us?” Matt demanded. Setting his hands on the table, h e glared into her face, ignoring other options, “With Marshall’s money you could rent Clint Eastwood.”
“What? That fellow who looks like Dick Cavett?” Ada retorted. “You’re handier, and you’re the only private eye I know who doesn’t submit an expense account.”
“I am not….”
“Besides.” Her lower lip came out in a pout and her eyebrows went up. “You wouldn’t let me come around this summer and solve Gus’s murder. One of my own ex-husbands, and you hogged that all to yourself.”
Matt rose, covering his eyes so she couldn’t see how hard we winced. She went on, “Anyway, I love the funny faces you make every time I come within five feet. Guys who blush aren’t that easy to come by.”
Matt’s teeth were clenched so tight he expected to hear them snap. “I will not….”
“Ha!” Ada pointed one sharp red fingernail at him. “And I really like your mom. I bet we could do this without you, once you stop stealing the evidence. We were having a lovely chat before you came in to play spoilsport.”
Standing up, she marched to the front door, collecting a hat, coat, and scarf that matched her lipstick from the front closet. “See you tomorrow, Mrs. Benz!” she called, sashaying her way from the apartment.
“Does she have all the answers already?” Matt’s mother asked, stepping out of her bedroom.
Matt sighed. “She thinks she does.”
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