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dollars in their purses; in this city any immediate member of the family was not only a possible murderer but a probable one. The crime statistics here changed as often as did the weather, but the latest ones indicated a swing back to so-called family homicides, as opposed to those involving total strangers, where the victim and the murderer alike were unknown to each other before that final moment of obscene intimacy.
        A witness had described George Chadderton's killer as a tall skinny man, almost a boy. A man who looked like a teen-ager. Chloe Chadderton was perhaps five feet nine inches tall, with the lithe, supple body of a dancer. Given the poor visibility of the rain-drenched night, mightn't she have passed for a teenage boy? In Shakespeare's time, it was the teen-age boys who'd acted the women's roles in his plays. Chloe had taken offense at a question routinely asked and now chose to cloud the issue with black indignation, perhaps genuine, perhaps intended only to bewilder and confuse. So Carella looked at her, and wondered what he should say next. Get tough? Get apologetic? Ignore the challenge? What? In the silence, rain lashed the single window in the kitchen. Carella had the feeling it would never stop raining.
        "Ma'm," he said, "we want to find your husband's murderer. If you'd feel more comfortable with a black cop, we've got plenty of black cops, and we'll send some around. They'll ask the same questions."
        She looked at him.
        "The same questions," he repeated.
        "Ask your questions," she said, and folded her arms across her breasts.
        "All right," he said, and nodded. "At any time during the past few weeks did you notice anything strange about your husband's behavior?"
        "Strange how?" Chloe said. Her voice was still edged with anger, her arms were still folded defensively across her breasts.
        "Anything out of the ordinary, any breaks in his usual routine-I take it you knew most of his friends and business acquaintances."
        "Yes, I did."
        "Were there any such breaks in his usual routine?"
        "I don't think so."
        "Did your husband keep an appointment calendar?"
        "Yes."
        "Is it here in the apartment?"
        "In the bedroom. On the dresser."
        "Could I see it, Mrs. Chadderton?"
        "Yes," she said, and rose and left the room. Carella and Meyer waited. Somewhere outside, far below, a drainpipe dripped steadily and noisily. When Chloe came back into the room, she was carrying a black appointment book in her hand. She gave it to Carella, and he immediately opened it to the two facing pages for the month of September.
        "Today's the fifteenth," Meyer said.
        Carella nodded, and then began scanning the entries for the week beginning September eleventh. On Monday at 3:00 p.m., according to the entry scrawled in black ink in the square for that date, George Chadderton had gone for a haircut. On Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., he'd had lunch with someone identified only as Charlie. Carella looked up.
        "Who's Charlie?" he said.
        "Charlie?"
        " 'Lunch 12:30 p.m., Charlie,' " Carella read.
        "Oh. That's not a person, it's a place. Restaurant called Charlie down on Granada Street."
        "Have any idea who your husband had lunch with that day?"
        "No. He was always meeting with people, discussing gigs and contracts and like that."
        "Didn't Ambrose Harding handle all his business affairs?"
        "Yes, but George liked to meet who he'd be playing for, the promoter or the man who owned the hall or whoever."
        Carella nodded and looked down at the calendar again. There were no entries for Wednesday. For Thursday, the fourteenth, there were two entries: "Office, 11:00 a.m." and "Lunch 1:00 p.m. Harry Caine."
        "What would 'Office' be?" Carella asked.
        "Ame's office."
        "And who's Harry Caine?"
        "I don't