know it. I neglected to fill him in. My fault. I’m sorry.
Would you tell him?”
She turned to Graham. “Edna was a stripper. just like me.”
“I know the Rhinestone Palace,” Graham said.
“You’ve been there?” Preduski asked.
“No. But I know it’s fairly high class, not like most striptease
clubs.”
For a moment Preduski’s watery brown eyes seemed less out of focus than
usual. He stared intently at Graham. “Edna Mowry was a stripper.
How about that?”
He knew precisely what the detective was thinking. On the Prine show he
had said that the victim’s name might be Edna Dancer. He had not been
right-but he had not been altogether wrong either; for although her name
was Mowry, she earned her living as a dancer.
According to Sarah Piper, Edna had reported for work at five o’clock the
previous evening. She performed a ten-minute act twice every hour for
the next seven hours, peeling out of a variety of costumes until she was
entirely nude. Between acts, dressed in a black cocktail dress, sans
bra, she mixed with the customers-mostly men, alone and in
groups-hustling drinks in a cautious, demure and stylish way that
skipped successfully along the edge of the state’s B-girl laws. She had
finished her last performance at twenty minutes of twelve and left the
Rhinestone Palace no more than five minutes after that.
“You think she came straight home?” Preduski asked.
“She always did,” Sarah said. “She never wanted to go out and have fun.
The Rhinestone Palace was all the night life she could stomach.
Who could blame her?”
Her voice wavered, as if she might begin to cry again.
Preduski took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
She let him hold it, and that appeared to give him an innocent pleasure.
“Did you dance last evening?”
“Yeah. Till midnight.”
“When did you come here?”
“A quarter of three.”
“Why would you be visiting at that hour?”
“Edna liked to sit and read all night. She never went to bed until
eight or nine in the morning. I told her I’d stop around for breakfast
and gossip. I often did.”
“You’ve probably already told me . . .” Preduski made a face:
embarrassment, apology, frustration. “I’m sorry. This mind of
mine-like a sieve. Did you tell me why you didn’t come here at
midnight, when you got off work?
“I had a date,” she said.
Graham could tell from her expression and from the tone of her voice
that the “date” had been a paying customer. That saddened him a bit. He
liked her already. He couldn’t help but like her. He was receiving
low-key waves, threshold psychic vibrations from her; they were very
positive, mellow and warm vibrations. She was a damned nice person. He
knew. And he wanted only pleasant things to happen to her.
“Did Edna have a date tonight?” Preduski asked.
“No. I told you. She came right home.”
“Maybe her boyfriend was waiting for her.”
“She was between boyfriends.”
“Maybe an old boyfriend stopped in to talk.”
“No. When Edna dropped a guy, he stayed dropped.”
Preduski sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head sadly.
“I hate to have to ask this….
You were her best friend. But what I’m going to say please understand I
don’t mean to put her down. Life is tough. We all have to do things
we’d rather not do. I’m not proud of every day of my life.
God knows. Don’t judge. That’s my motto. There’s only one crime I
can’t rationalize away. Murder. I really hate to ask this…. Well,
was she … do you think she ever .
“Was she a prostitute?” Sarah asked for him.
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way! That’s such an awful … I really
meant …”
“Don’t worry,” she said. She smiled sweetly. “I’m not offended.”
Graham was amused to see her squeeze the detective’s hand. Now she was
comforting Preduski.
“I do some light hooking myself ” Sarah said. “Not much. Once a week,
maybe. I’ve got to like the guy, and he’s got to have two hundred bucks
to spare. It’s all the same as stripping to me, really.
But it wouldn’t have been something Edna could do. She was surprisingly