Act of God

else. Even when times were bad—businesswise, I mean—Abe would always say he remembered a time when things were a lot worse — not businesswise—and reach for the check.”
    The waiter in the black Eisenhower jacket came by with our drinks, serving them with a flourish and apparently knowing how Swindell took hers because he brought it with cream and maybe sugar already mixed into the cup. After we assured him we didn’t need anything else, he went back into the kitchen.
    I said, “Mrs. Swindell, did Mr. Rivkind ever talk to you about the time he was in the concentration camp?”
    Her brows went up. “The camp?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Mr. Bernstein told me the front of the store looks like a picture of the entrance to Buchenwald.”
    Swindell hunched a little on the elbows, not drinking her coffee. “Joel also tell you that was why I got hired on originally?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, the Liberators, that was why Abe gave me the chance, but not why he kept me on.”
    “Why did he give Darbra the chance?”
    Swindell’s face darkened again, deeper now than her untouched coffee. “Her brother said something to Pearl, and Abe got it into his head that the girl was an orphan.”
    “Because of her mother being killed?”
    Again the eyebrows went up. “Killed? I heard she fell from a building.”
    “There’s some question about the ‘fell’ part.”
    “Oh.” Swindell pushed her coffee away. “Oh, my.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    She looked up at me. “I just thought.”
    “What?”
    “That there was something about that girl from the first time I saw her.”
    “Something?”
    “Something... evil might be too strong a word for it. More like... a twist.”
    Bernstein had said the same, something off about her. Go on.”
    “I sometimes... sometimes I thought Darbra was working with us as part of something else.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, like I told you before, she was always trying to do things a little different than what you wanted?”
    “The paperwork example.”
    Swindell’s head bobbed. “It was almost that she was... using the job, not trying to learn it, but more learn from it. Only not to do it better. Just to do it differently, like... vary it, keep her interested in it without trying to better herself at it.”
    “Any idea why?”
    “I got the impression... Maybe I shouldn’t say this.”
    “Maybe you should.”
    A hesitation. “I got the impression that Darbra was just using us, too. Like her in here that night, kind of using me as an audience for a little scene she was playing with that poor man she threw the wine at.”
    “Again, any idea why?”
    “No. None.”
    Swindell seemed sad, and I regretted having to add to it. I said, “Have the police been in touch with you about Darbra’s boyfriend?”
    “The boy who was killed in her building?”
    “Yes.”
    “They came by Sunday, just before we were closing, and talked to us.”
    “Us?”
    “Joel, me. Finian, too, I think.”
    “I tried to see Quill today. Karen at the door said he wasn’t around.”
    “I don’t know where he is. Joel might.”
    “I think I’ll have to skip that.”
    Swindell tried a smile, but it didn’t work. “Everything’s been kind of a mess since ..
    She didn’t have to finish it. “What did the police ask you?”
    Swindell looked at me a little sharply. “It’s okay for ffle to tell you that?”
    “Unless you don’t want to.”
    Another hesitation. “Don’t see that it makes any difference. They—this policewoman—asked me did I know the boy, a musician?”
    “Rock band.”
    “And I told her I didn’t, and Darbra never mentioned him.”
    “Did Cross also tell you how he was killed?”
    “No.”
    Something in Swindell’s face made me ask it differently. “Did you read about it?”
    She shook her head but said, “Yes. In the Herald, yesterday, but the paper didn’t say anything about Darbra, just the address, which I recognized.”
    “Recognized.”
    “From Darbra’s personnel file. For her W-4, health plan, that kind of thing, I had to send notices to her apartment.”
    “She ever mention keeping a spare key around the
    office?”
    “No. She kept things pretty close that way.”
    “What way?”
    “Personal things. Didn’t really talk to me about them. Didn’t really talk to anybody at the store about them, far
    as I know.”
    Darbra, the butterfly at the Jersey shore with Teagle, the caterpillar in her cocoon at work. “Her apartment was