.. even now.
.. the first cops said whoever– did those things to her, did them after she was dead.” Alarm brightened his eyes. “They were right about that, weren’t they?”
“Yes, sir.”
Paprock’s hands gripped the edge of his desk and he wheeled forward.
“Tell me the truth, detective–I mean it. I don’t want to think of her suffering, but if–no, forget it, don’t tell me a damn thing, I don’t want to know.”
“She didn’t suffer, sir. The only thing new is Mr. Shipler’s murder.”
More sweat. Another wipe.
“Afterwards,” said Paprock. “After I identified hen-I had to go tell my kids.
The older one, anyway–the little one was just a baby. Actually, the older one wasn’t much more than a baby, either, but he was asking for her, I had to tell him something.”
He knocked the knuckles of both hands together. Shook his head, tapped the desk.
“It took a helluva long time to get it set in my mind–what had happened. When I went to tell my boy, all I could think of was what I’d seen in the morgue-imagining her. .. and here he is asking for Mommy. Mommy, Mommy’–he was two and a half. I told him Mommy got sick and went to sleep forever. When his sister got old enough, I gave him the job of telling her. They’re great kids, my mother’s been helping me take care of them, she’s close to eighty and they don’t give her any problems. So who needs to change that? Who needs Myra’s name in the papers and digging it all up? There was a time, finding out who did it was all that mattered to me, but I got over that. What’s the difference, anyway? She’s not coming back, right?”
I nodded. Milo didn’t move.
Paprock touched his brow and opened his eyes wide, as if exercising the lids.
“That it?” he said.
‘Just a few questions about your wife’s background,” said Milo.
“Her background?”
“Her work background, Mr. Paprock. Before she became a real estate agent, did she do anything else?”
“Why?”
“Just collecting facts, sir.”
“She worked for a bank, okay? What kind of work did this Shipler do?”
“He was a janitor. What bank did she work for?”
“Trust Federal, over in Encino. She was a loan officer–that’s how I met her.
We used to channel our car loans through there and one day I went down there on a big fleet sale and she was at the loan desk.”
Milo took out his notepad and wrote.
“She would have probably made vice president,” said Paprock. “She was smart.
But she wanted to work for herself, had enough of bureaucracies. So she studied for her broker’s license at night, then quit. Was doing real well, lots of sales. ..”
He looked off to one side, fixing his gaze on a poster. Two perfect-looking, tennis-clad people getting into a turquoise Coupe de Ville with diamond-bright wire wheels. Behind the car, the marble-and-glass facade of a resort hotel.
Crystal chandelier. Perfect-looking doorman smiling at them.
“Bureaucracies,” said Milo. “Did she deal with any others before the bank?”
“Yeah,” said Paprock, still turned away. “She taught school– but that was before I met her.”
“Here in L.A.?”
“No, up near Santa Barbara–Goleta.”
“Goleta,” said Milo. “Do you remember the name of the school?”
Paprock faced us again. “Some public school–why? What does her work have to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing, sir, but please bear with me. Did she ever teach in L.A.?”
“Not to my knowledge. By the time she moved down here, she was fed up with teaching.”
“Why’s that?”
“The whole situation–kids not interested in learning, lousy pay–what’s to like about it?”
“A public school,” I said.
“Yeah.”
Milo said, “What subjects did she teach?”
“All of them, I guess. She taught fifth grade, or maybe it was fourth, I dunno. In elementary school, you teach all the subjects, right? We never really had any detailed discussions about it.”
“Did she teach anywhere before Goleta?” said Milo.
“Not as far as I know. I think that was her first job out of school.”
“When would that be?”
“Let’s see, she graduated at twenty-two, she’d be forty this May.” He winced.