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selecting a plain cotton suit with a skirt to the knee, and a tailored blouse. I was dressing for a part in a play, “working mother, extremely solid citizen.” No way could this woman be a murderer, right?
    I was thinking clearly this morning and was disgusted with myself for the half-wish I’d allowed myself last night. It made me painfully aware that I was still not free of Rich.
    As I downed the coffee, I planned my day. After seeing my morning clients I was going to Rich’s office. Pumping him for information wasn’t going to be easy. Most of the time we kept our conversations to subjects concerning Matt or Allie, but even those had deteriorated of late. The support checks came on schedule; he was good about that. I had not, like some women I know, had to deal with missed payments. He took the kids on his designated weekends, went with them to museums and movies and even an occasional show, but it seemed more duty than desire to spend time with them. They felt it and were confused. It was as though unconsciously he had gone back to being a bachelor. The father role held no attraction for him anymore. Seventeen years Erica’s senior, maybe he thought it made him look old in her eyes.
    This morning I was going to be all tea and sympathy, because it seemed to me that Rich or one of his friends or business buddies might have been a witness to Erica’s demolishing someone’s life or career. People like Erica, who adhere to the “end justifies the means” philosophy, make enemies. Who were her friends? Their friends? Rich’s stockbroker and his wife were frequent dinner companions. I made a note to call Gary on the pretext of asking about switching my IRA to a Roth. There were the guys Rich played racquetball with on Tuesdays. I didn’t know if the wives were friendly with Erica or not. I realized I didn’t know anything at all about their social life. I didn’t know if Rich still saw any of our old friends, because I rarely saw them. I now lived in a different town, and as a single woman, I moved in different circles.
    Then I remembered Herb Golinko.
    Herb was one of the company ad men, a scrawny little chain-smoking guy with only one eye and a twisted mouth made lopsided from nerve damage he’d sustained in the first Iraq war. He wore an eye patch but, unfortunately, without the Moshe Dayan dash. He was talented though, and a hard worker. He’d been in the marketing division since the inception of Your Face Is My Fortune, fifteen years earlier. I liked him and I’d never heard Rich say a bad word about him.
    Until Erica.
    Erica had humiliated Herb in front of the entire staff. It had happened at a marketing meeting. The story I heard later was that she was in a foul mood that day. Nothing anybody had presented was satisfactory, but when she got to Herb, she was in rare form. It was a crucifixion.
    “Christ Almighty, Golinko, that ad's so fucking cockeyed, I should know it’s yours! It might look fine to a Cyclops like you, but let me remind you, most of our customers have two eyes!” And then she’d proceeded to inform him that she didn’t want to see any of his copy until he’d run it by some college kid she had just hired.
    Herb quit the following week. I never heard what happened to him. Maybe he hadn’t been able to get another job. The economy was bad and jobs paying decent money in advertising were hard to come by. Maybe he was homeless, living out of garbage pails on the unfriendly streets of New York City. Maybe he had hated Erica even more than I had.
    The motive for the murder hadn’t been robbery; apparently nothing except the necklace had been taken. Erica hadn’t been molested, so a sex crime was out. A crime of revenge or rage was the only explanation that made sense to me. And to the cops, I was sure. And at the moment there was no question in my mind that I remained numero uno on their list of candidates.
    AS I OPENED the door to the lobby of my office building, my path was blocked by