“What do you want?” she asked.
“Police,” I answered, peering over her shoulder to see if there was anyone behind her in the room. There didn’t seem to be. “We’re looking for Daniel Osgood.” I handed her the search warrant.
Her hand clutched it. She crumpled it without bothering to look at it and backed away from me into the room.
“He’s not here,” she answered.
“Do you know where he is?”
She shook her head from side to side. New tears coursed down the wet paths on her cheeks. “He’s gone. He left me for good.”
“You mean he moved out?” I asked.
I motioned Sergeant James into the house. He came through the door cautiously. He, too, glanced warily around the room before moving forward. While he crept from room to room making sure there was no one else in the house, I turned to the weeping woman.
“I begged him not to go,” she said. “I told him that I forgave him, but he said he was going all the same.”
“Forgave him for what?”
She looked down at her hands, and her lower lip trembled. “There’s another woman,” she said. “I suspected for a long time, but the other night I knew for sure. He came home late. I could tell he had showered. His hair was still damp. He had used some other kind of soap, and he smelled of perfume.”
I couldn’t help feeling some compassion for her. This was a woman with blinders on. If she was devastated by the idea that her husband was messing around with another woman, I wondered what would happen to her when she figured out he was a drug-dealing murderer to boot.
“Do you have any idea where he would have gone?” I asked. “Relatives? Friends?”
She shook her head. “I suppose he went to work. There’s a show down at the Fifth Avenue Theater. He couldn’t afford to lose his job.”
“What did he take with him?”
“Just a suitcase.”
“Only one?”
“That’s all I saw.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know. He was just zipping it up when I came into the bedroom. He didn’t expect me home from work that early. He was going to leave me a note. He wasn’t even going to tell me good-bye.” She burst into tears again.
“How long ago was this?”
“Two hours ago, about.”
Just then Sergeant James came back into the living room. He was shaking his head. Hawkins and Maynard trailed behind him. “There’s nobody here,” James said.
Hawkins was carrying a crumpled paper sack. “Have a look at this, Beau.” He held it up and I looked inside. I caught a glimpse of blue material.
“The dress?” I asked.
Hawkins nodded. “And a pair of white gloves,” he added. “He didn’t even bother to ditch them in somebody else’s dumpster.”
“He didn’t think we’d follow him home,” I said.
I turned to the woman again. She was blowing her nose, attempting to regain her composure. She seemed oblivious to what Hawkins had said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Julia,” she whispered. “Julia Osgood.” Her answer was almost inaudible.
“I’m correct in assuming you’re his wife?”
“Yes.”
“And you had quarreled?” I asked.
Julia Osgood nodded slowly. “I told him I was sick and tired of him coming and going at strange times. I told him I wanted a husband who was a real husband. I wanted to wake up in bed at night and find him there.”
“He was out late often?”
“He works nights whenever a show’s in town, but the night before last he didn’t come in until it was almost light.” Julia Osgood looked down at her hands. Her lower lip trembled. “I didn’t worry about the partying, but knowing he had been with someone else…” Her voice trailed off.
It wasn’t so much that Dan Osgood had been with someone else. He had actually been someone else. But I wasn’t prepared to go into that with Julia Osgood. Not right then.
“And you think he may have gone to work, even though he packed a suitcase and was leaving home?”
“Dan doesn’t miss work,” Julia declared. “He prides himself on that.”
“What kind of car does he drive?”
“A Honda Accord. But it’s in the garage; it broke down. The transmission went.”
“So when he left, how did he go?”
“He called a cab.”
“Do you know what kind?”
She nodded. “I watched him from the window. It was a Yellow Cab.”
I turned to Sergeant James. He was shaking his head. “I’ll bet he skipped,” I said to him. “We’d better check with the theater. If he’s not there, we’ll issue an APB.”