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“Oh sure,” Betsy said, moving over on the bed. “Not much for socializing, is it?”
Robin smiled kindly, then jumped right in with her first question. “Tell me now, you were sleeping downstairs that night. Why was that?”
She looked a little chagrinned. “Maybe half my nights I spent on the sleeping porch,” Betsy explained.
“Was Felicia expecting someone else, perhaps?”
“No. But we’d been fighting a lot and I wanted to be by myself. Besides, Felicia would often stay up late and read, or do whatever she did by herself, and I was tired.”
“So you heard nothing, until you discovered her the next morning?”
“I got up about seven and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I went upstairs to get dressed. I found her there…” Her voiced trailed away, and her face turned ashen.
“You took the knife and held on to it?” Robin continued. “That’s what I understand from the police report.”
“I thought she might be alive, that I could revive her. I had to pull it out. I think I must have screamed, because Martha came running and well you know the rest.”
Betsy’s sadness ran so deep that it seemed to overwhelm them both. “Tell me a little more about your housemates,” Robin changed the subject.
“Remy and Martha?”
“And Zelda.”
“Well, she wasn’t really a housemate,” Betsy said.
“Yes, I know, but she was there the night that Felicia was murdered, which makes her a suspect, as much as anyone.”
“Well, let me see,” the pale-faced Betsy said thoughtfully. “Remy and Martha came from Maine, I know that.”
“They were living with Felicia before you and she got together?”
“Yes. They were always friendly with me, really pleasant.”
“Do you know how they met?”
“I think they were in college together somewhere. The name Brightwood comes to mind, but that’s not a college, is it?” The small woman looked uncertain, as if a cloud obscured the truth. “They never really talked about their pasts. But I always got the impression that things had been kind of bad for Remy and she was happier not talking about her life.”
“Did they go anywhere, out of town? Have any friends they talked about.?”
“I don’t remember that they took any trips,” Betsy shook her head. “They went to movies together, and talked about work, but I can’t recall anything else. They were very quiet women most of the time.”
Robin knew that there were likely a dozen clues Betsy might mention, but the woman just didn’t know where in her memory to look.
“To your knowledge were they into S&M?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she started anxiously, a little surprised. “I can’t, even in
my wildest imaginings, see Remy doing any sort of scene like that. She’s much too fragile.”
“And what about Zelda?”
“We were told she was a friend of Remy’s. I kind of figured that she knew Zelda from college maybe, certainly before she came here. It wasn’t explained. But it was obvious that the two hadn’t seen each other in some time.”
“Why do you say that?” Robin probed.
“Oh, you know. It was awkward, like they didn’t know what to say. They hugged but little more.”
“They were close then, at one time?”
