Let Me Call You Sweetheart

38

When Joe Palumbo finished his investigation of a break-in in Cresskill, he realized that it was only nine-thirty. Since he was a scant few minutes away from Alpine, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to look up Dolly Bowles, the baby-sitter who had testified at the Reardon murder trial. Fortunately, he also happened to have her phone number with him.

Dolly initially sounded a little guarded when Palumbo explained that he was an investigator with the Bergen County prosecutor’s office. But after he told her that one of the assistant prosecutors, Kerry McGrath, very much wanted to hear about the car Dolly had seen in front of the Reardon house the night of the murder, she announced that she had been following the trial Kerry McGrath recently had prosecuted and was so glad that the man who shot his supervisor had been convicted. She told Palumbo about the time she and her mother had been tied up in their home by an intruder.

“So,” she finished, “if you and Kerry McGrath want to talk to me, that’s fine.”

“Well, actually,” Joe told her somewhat lamely, “I’d like to come over and talk to you right now. Maybe Kerry will talk to you later.”

There was a pause. Palumbo could not know that, in her mind, Dolly was seeing again the derisive expression on the face of Prosecutor Green when he cross-examined her at the trial.

Finally she spoke. “I think,” she said, with dignity, “that I would be more comfortable discussing that night with Kerry McGrath. I think it’s best we wait until she is available.”