Vic Daniel 6 - As she rides by

and what to pack away. Want a brand-new skiing outfit, forty-two short? No, I guess not. Oops, here I go again.” She began to cry, quietly. “Where do it all come from?” She headed for the door. She was back a few minutes later, bandana off, hair combed, and with fresh lipstick on. She sat down opposite me, gave King’s back a brisk rub, then said, “Business, as in down to, please, Victor.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” I cleared my throat officiously, and got out my memo pad, list of questions, and a ballpoint pen, courtesy the D. Jacobs Funeral Home, which I picked up who knows where, but it sure wasn’t the D. Jacobs Funeral Home (Open 24 Hours Daily For Your Convenience).
    “Please, Debby, understand, as I said on the phone, I’m only doing what King was just doing, sniffing around, trying to justify the rather large fee Jonesy gave me.”
    “I understand.” She twisted her plain gold wedding band around a couple of times, then gave herself a slap, then folded her hands together primly on the tabletop.
    “OK. In no particular order. Did you know Mrs. Jones too?”
    “Sure.”
    “Well?”
    She shrugged. “I wouldn’t say well, no. We’d see each other three, maybe four times a year.”
    “How did you and your husband know her?”
    “They worked together, didn’t you know?”
    “Nope,” I said. “I did not, there was nothing in the reports that I read that mentioned it.”
    “Well, they did,” she said. “So there.”
    “Whereabouts?”
    “IMM,” she said. “Ever heard of them?” As IMM was the eighth or ninth largest corporation in the State of California , right up there with the giants like Hughes Aircraft and McDonald and Grummond and Pan-Am and IBM and Standard Oil, I allowed that yes, I had heard of them from time to time, they made components for everything seem ingly but the one-celled amoeba.
    “Mary was his boss, actually,” Debby said. “She was the Senior Personnel Executive while he was but a lowly Personnel Executive without the senior, although he was due for her job when she moved up, but she liked it where she was.”
    “What’s the diff?”
    “About twelve thousand, a bigger office, and classier artwork on the walls,” she said.
    “So where would you and Mary see each other?” I said. “Outside of maybe running into each other at the office?”
    “We’d see each other at the annual convention,” she said. “And the annual Easter Egg hunt for children with learning impairment, as we now put it, at which attendance was compulsory for all executive types and their downtrodden wives. Then the company has a cheap theater ticket plan and we’d run into one another maybe a couple of times a year at a concert or some play. Like that.”
    “The night in question,” I said. “They’d been to see some play together, as I recall.”
    “They sure had,” she said.
    “How come you and Mr. Jones weren’t along if I’m not being indelicate?”
    She laughed. “You mean you think they might have snuck into some handy motel instead?”
    “Why, the thought never crossed my mind,” I said.
    “Mine neither,” she said. “Have you ever seen Mary?”
    “No, I haven’t had the pleasure as yet.”
    “She’s at least fifty-five,” Debby said. “Not that means much, thank goodness. However, not to be impolite or catty in the slightest, she looks like a cross between the wicked witch of the west and Hollywood ’s idea of what a spinster librarian looks like—all mincey and prissy and gloves and pearls and always in frilly blouses.”
    “Ah,” I said wisely. “So not your ravishing beauty, then.”
    “She also has no tits, blue hair, green glasses that glitter, and, giving her a break, about one and a half lips. I suppose she’s a nice enough lady, though. She’s certainly efficient at her job, according to John, and he knew more about computers than most.”
    “Wish I did,” I said. “Debby, I have a dream. And in my dream I am sitting at my little Apple II and I am not playing Dungeons and Dragons or listing expenses or just typing out some boring report, what I am doing is plugging in.”
    “Some dream,” she said. “To what?”
    “To all those sources of information that I now have to expend a considerable amount of time and a great deal of money to crack,” I said. “Given the right modems and the right codes, and I guess I’d need a new computer, too, as my Betsy is a bit of an antique, but much beloved nonetheless, or maybe because of, and