Mourners: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) by Bill Pronzini Page A

weren’t.
    The two women who owned FashionSense had nothing to tell him. At first there was a pretense of restrained cooperation, but after a handful of questions it was plain that they resented the intrusion. One of them, Joy Something, a sleek blonde in her early thirties, ended the pretense finally by saying, “Oh, Lord, we don’t
know
anything about what happened to Erin, if we did we’d have told the police. We’ve answered these same questions so many times already. Really, it’s becoming tedious.”
    “Tedious,” Runyon said flatly. “A young woman who worked for you was brutally raped and murdered less than two months ago, the man responsible still hasn’t been identified, and you find the investigation tedious.”
    The other woman, dark-haired, Tess Something, said, “For heaven’s sake, Joy didn’t mean it that way.”
    “Of course I didn’t,” Joy Something said. “We’re not insensitive people. But you have to understand our position, Mr. . . . what was your name again?”
    “Runyon.”
    “Mr. Runyon. Policemen and now a private detective trooping in and out, asking questions . . . it isn’t good for business. We’re just making ends meet as it is, and the landlord is threatening to raise our rent again. . . .”
    “Who hired you anyway?” Tess Something asked. “Erin’s sister?”
    He just looked at her.
    “I didn’t think she had enough money. And besides, what can you do that the police haven’t?”
    “We’d help if we could,” Joy Something said. “We liked Erin, she was a pleasant girl, a good employee, what happened to her was a terrible thing, but we just don’t know anything.”
    “Nothing at all.”
    “And we do care, even if you don’t think so.”
    “But you can only grieve for someone so long, especially someone you didn’t really know well. Life has to go on. You can’t expect us to put ours on hold.”
    Runyon still didn’t trust himself to speak. He put his back to them and walked out, fast, before the anger in him boiled over and he said or did something he would later regret.
    Risa Niland said, “Fatso? Yes, I remember Erin mentioning him. But that was two years ago, and she didn’t have any trouble with the man.”
    On the phone her voice sounded lower, with some of the same huskiness as Colleen’s. Imagination? He tried not to focus on it as he said, “Are you sure about that?”
    “She’d have told me if she had.”
    “What did she say about him, exactly?”
    “Just that he was worshipful, like a big dog. She laughed about it.”
    “Did she say where and how she’d met him?”
    “Let me think. . . . In the park somewhere, the first time. Stow Lake? Yes, Stow Lake. She was there with one of her girlfriends and he came up and spoke to her. I guess it surprised her.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Well, he weighed three hundred pounds.”
    “You saw him yourself?”
    “No, that’s what Erin said. I never saw him.”
    “Did she describe him in any other way?”
    “. . . Yes. Long hair in a ponytail.”
    “What color?”
    “I don’t remember her saying.”
    “Age?”
    “Around her age. Not much older or she wouldn’t have found him so amusing. She had a thing about older men hitting on her.”
    “Anything else you can tell me about him?”
    “Apparently he was shy and stumbled over his words. Afraid of rejection, I suppose. He must have had a lot of it in his life. Oh, and she said he looked silly in his uniform. She laughed about that, too.”
    “Uniform?”
    “That’s all. Not what kind it was.”
    Runyon asked, “The first time she saw him at Stow Lake—what did he say to her?”
    “He offered to buy her a soda. Erin said no, and that was the end of it.”
    “Did he tell her his name?”
    “Well, he must have at some point, at least his first name.”
    “But she didn’t mention it and you didn’t ask.”
    “I didn’t see any reason to.”
    “How soon did he turn up again after Stow Lake?”
    “A few days later. At a tavern