Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

couldn’t get to the front—and I got in my car. All I wanted was to get out of there. Pretend it never happened.’’
    “Pretend what never happened?” I was acutely aware I was sounding like Sergeant Jacobson.
    He was unfazed. “That she was dead.” He let a moment go by, apparently trying once more to assimilate her death.
    “But I couldn’t go anywhere. I was shaking. I shook for a while, all over, like someone with hypothermia, and finally I cried. And then when I could see, I drove. I don’t know where I was going—but I didn’t go very far. I guess some adrenaline kicked in or something and I realized I had to report it and that I could be in trouble about the window—and I thought of you. I thought you’d know what to do. Rebecca, did you ever see
Harold and Maude
?”
    I gasped. As we talked, we’d been gradually moving away from the window, or more precisely, away from the shrill barking, but I could still see inside. The woman in the room was dressed in white slacks and some kind of pink silky blouse. She looked very slender and she had short blond hair. From the twenty or so paces I was staring from, I could see her cheekbones. Her body was crumpled, her mouth was caught in a grimace, and her head was tilted at a hideous angle; I could see ugly bruises on her neck and a rope or something around it. And yet there was no doubt in my mind she had been elegant—not flashily, ephemerally pretty, but lovely in her bones, as the saying went. She looked about thirty-five. I had assumed from Ricky’s distress and—I had to admit—from the dog’s name that she and Ricky had been close, but I wasn’t prepared for any
Harold and Maude
talk.
    “I was in love with her,” he said. “I can’t believe she’s dead. I just can’t believe it.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    He sighed. “I don’t guess anyone will. I swear to God, Rebecca! I swear it.”
    “Take it easy, Rick. I believe you. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t be in love with her. She was obviously a very beautiful woman.”
    And rich.
    “She was, wasn’t she? But the age difference—people are sexist about that sort of thing. They just don’t want to accept it.”
    “How old was she?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. Middle fifties, I guess. I’m twenty-nine.”
    “Well, she looked wonderful. Who was she?”
    “Didn’t I say? Katy Montebello.”
    “How do I know that name?”
    He shrugged. “It’s big around here.”
    “I remember now. Marty mentioned her. She was a patron of the aquarium.”
    “That’s right. We call it ‘sponsor.’”
    “So is that how you know her? From the aquarium?”
    He nodded.
    “Shall we sit on that bench and talk about it? You can tell me the whole story. Then we’ll call the police. Okay?”
    “You sit. I’ll pace.” But he seemed relieved that I’d agreed to sit down—had made that much of a commitment to hearing him out. I sat on the white metal bench, more to give him a focus than anything else, and he stood over me, not really pacing much, but occasionally patting his pockets as I’d seen Julio do earlier that day. I could smell a faint odor of alcohol on him.
    “You know, I’m a model-maker.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I do handyman stuff and carpentry and, oh, painting—stuff like that—to keep it together, know what I mean? I’m a sculptor, really. I’d like to devote full time to my art, but I have to make a living.” He smiled, sadly, I thought. “I have a little girl.”
    “Amber.”
    “Yeah. Amber’s mom left me because I could never get my money trip together, and now I have to scramble or I’d never get to see Amber at all—her mom would see to that. At least now I get her weekends and a few weeks in the summer—as long as I can provide a halfway decent place for her to live. So—we all got problems, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Well, along comes Katy and she sees my work—at the aquarium, I mean, I do a little carpentry there, too—and she wanted me to do some work on her guest house. She has a maid, see, and the maid had to live in the main house, and that cramped Katy’s style, so she had me do this work on the guest house—for the maid—and she asked me in to have coffee and drinks and—” he shrugged “—she liked me.” He sounded astonished.
    “And you liked her?”
    “Umm-HMMMM.” He swallowed. “Yeah, I liked her. I liked her a lot.”
    “Were you dating?”
    “No. No, I wouldn’t exactly call it that. But sometimes she’d