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lake?”
     
    “Was
she there then?”
     
    “Sure.
Identified the body.”
     
    “No, I
wanted to know what she was wearing on the day of the accident, Mr. Courtenoy.”
     
    “Oh,
skirt and a blouse, I think. Ribbon in her hair. Loafers. I’m not sure.”
     
    “What
color blouse? Yellow?”
     
    “No.
Blue.”
     
    “You
said yellow.”
     
    “No,
blue, I didn’t say yellow.”
     
    Carella
frowned. “I thought you said yellow earlier.” He shrugged. “All right, what
happened after the inquest?”
     
    “Nothing
much. Miss Davis thanked me for being so kind and said she would send me a
check for the time I’d missed. I refused at first and then I thought, What the
hell, I’m a hard-working man, and money doesn’t grow on trees. So I gave her my
address. I figured she could afford it. Driving a Caddy, and hiring a fellow
to take it back to the city.”
     
    “Why
didn’t she drive it back herself?”
     
    “I don’t
know. I guess she was still a little shaken. Listen, that was a terrible experience.
Did you ever see anyone die up close?”
     
    “Yes,”
Carella said.
     
    From
inside the house Courtenoy’s wife yelled, “Sidney, tell those men to get out of
our driveway!”
     
    “You
heard her,” Courtenoy said, and finished rolling up his garage door.
     
    * * * *

 
     
    8
     
     
    Nobody likes Monday morning.
     
    It was
invented for hangovers. It is really not the beginning of a new week, but only
the tail end of the week before. Nobody likes it, and it doesn’t have to be
rainy or gloomy or blue in order to provoke disaffection. It can be bright and
sunny and the beginning of August. It can start with a driveway interview at
seven a.m. and grow progressively worse by nine-thirty that same morning.
Monday is Monday and legislation will never change its personality. Monday is
Monday, and it stinks.
     
    By
nine-thirty that Monday morning, Detective Steve Carella was on the edge of
total bewilderment and, like any normal person, he blamed it on Monday. He had
come back to the squadroom and painstakingly gone over the pile of checks
Claudia Davis had written during the month of July, a total of twenty-five,
searching them for some clue to her strangulation, studying them with the
scrutiny of a typographer in a print shop. Several things seemed evident from
the checks, but nothing seemed pertinent. He could recall having said: “I look
at those checks, I can see a life. It’s like reading somebody’s diary,” and he
was beginning to believe he had uttered some famous last words in those two
succinct sentences. For if this was the diary of Claudia Davis, it was a
singularly unprovocative account that would never make the nation’s
best-seller lists.
     
    Most of
the checks had been made out to clothing or department stores. Claudia, true to
the species, seemed to have a penchant for shopping and a checkbook that
yielded to her spending urge. Calls to the various stores represented revealed
that her taste ranged through a wide variety of items. A check of sales slips
showed that she had purchased during the month of July alone three baby doll
nightgowns, two half slips, a trenchcoat, a wrist watch, four pairs of tapered
slacks in various colors, two pairs of walking shoes, a pair of sunglasses,
four bikini swimsuits, eight wash-and-wear frocks, two skirts, two cashmere
sweaters, half-a-dozen best-selling novels, a large bottle of aspirin, two
bottles of Dramamine, six pieces of luggage, and four boxes of cleansing
tissue. The most expensive thing she had purchased was an evening gown
costing $500. These purchases accounted for most of the checks she had drawn in
July. There were also checks to a hairdresser, a florist, a shoemaker, a candy
shop, and three unexplained checks that were drawn to individuals, two men and
a woman.
     
    The
first was made out to George Badueck.
     
    The
second was made out to David Oblinsky.
     
    The
third was made out to Martha Feldelson.
     
    Someone
on the