Murder at Ford's Theatre Read Online Free PDF Page B

“This is where she lived, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. She rents from Mark and me. I . . .”
    Klayman and Johnson waited patiently until she realized she hadn’t responded to their request.
    “Of course, please. You’ll have to excuse the mess. Our housekeeper called in sick—she’s been doing that a lot lately, and I really wonder about her—and I haven’t had time to neaten up.”
    “Don’t worry about that,” said Johnson as they followed her into a foyer dominated by yellow and blue tile on the floor and walls, and into a living room to their left.
    “Ms. Zarinski rented a room from you?” Klayman asked.
    “No, not a room. An apartment. Upstairs. The third floor. We have the first and second.”
    Klayman turned his head left and right. “She used this same front entrance?”
    “No. There’s a staircase outside, at the rear of the house. We had it installed to accommodate a tenant.”
    “She’s your only tenant?”
    “Yes.” Laura Rosner sat in a tan leather director’s chair and exhaled loudly. “My God, who killed her?”
    “When did you last see her, ma’am?”
    “Last night, I think.” She screwed up her thin face in deliberate thought. “Yes, it was last night. Mark and I were cooking out in the yard. We asked her to eat with us, but she said she had a date.” A slow shake of her pretty head. “Nadia always seemed to have a date.”
    “She saw lots of men?” Klayman asked.
    “You met them?” asked Johnson.
    “Just one or two.”
    “Names?”
    “Jim, or John. I don’t know. They were a little weird.”
    “Weird?” Johnson repeated.
    “Theatrical-type people. You know.”
    “Last night,” Klayman said. “Any idea where she was going to meet her date?”
    “No. No idea. She worked for Senator Lerner. I wonder.”
    The detectives looked quizzically at her.
    “There were those rumors. She was very sexy. Sort of liked to flaunt it. She didn’t dress like an intern in a senator’s office.”
    “How would that be, ma’am?” Klayman asked.
    “Conservative. She didn’t dress conservatively.”
    “She pay her rent on time?” Johnson asked. “Was she a good tenant?”
    “Her father paid her rent. The check arrived from Florida right on time every month. A good tenant? She was all right, I guess, although Mark and I didn’t appreciate how many times her male friends slept over. Not that we’re prudes or anything. How can you be in this day and age? We just thought it was—well, you know, inappropriate.”
    They spent another ten minutes in the living room before asking to see Nadia’s apartment on the third floor, and followed her up the outside staircase. Their initial impression was that Nadia Zarinski wasn’t into neatness, and her landlady mirrored their reaction with a sour expression. A pile of dishes with baked-on food sat in the sink. The white tile floor had spots where food or liquid had fallen and hadn’t been wiped up. Johnson opened the refrigerator. There was little in it: milk with an expired sell-by date, two slices of pizza in Baggies, lemons and limes on their last legs, half a loaf of bread, and a bottle of vodka with enough left in it for two, maybe three, short drinks.
    Clothing was strewn everywhere, over the back of a chair in the kitchen, on a couch and chair in the small living room, and on the bed and floor of the bedroom. A peek in dresser drawers showed little regard for folding underwear or sweaters. The top of the dresser was covered with outdated fashion magazines and issues of
People, Cosmopolitan,
and
Washingtonian.
    Klayman sat at a desk in a corner of the bedroom and moved papers around, glancing at each before going on to the next. He opened a drawer. In it were Playbills from Ford’s Theatre; bills from department and smaller clothing stores; pens, pencils, and scraps of paper with what appeared to be phone numbers on them, but no names. A search of other drawers failed to come up with the address book he was looking for. At the bottom