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but it was a long time ago. He was a tall, good-looking man, dark hair, nice smile. He adored her, I can tell you that.”
    “Do you remember his last name?”
    We were in the street now, walking to the car. “If I ever knew it, it’s gone now. I bet it’s thirty years since I first met him.”
    “Do you know what he did?”
    “No idea.” She unlocked the car. “He was just Aunt Iris’s guy. I think she brought him around once when Melanie was a baby and he was very sweet to her, cooed at her. A nice man.”
    We started down the Concourse, staying on the service road. At a light we turned right into a busy street with shops and people and cars, an elevated subway just down the hill. “It’s like a little city,” I said.
    “Anywhere else it would be a city. Here it’s a neighborhood. We’re heading west now. Pretty soon we’ll be at the northern end of Manhattan. Then we’ll go downtown to my father’s apartment.”
    “Marilyn, is there any family gossip about Iris that you can remember?”
    “Like what?”
    “Having to do with Harry or another boyfriend, some relationship that might have caused the family a problem?”
    “There may have been. I may have heard some whispers, but I can’t tell you anything more than that. Remember I was the next generation, and if my parents, my aunts and uncles, knew something they weren’t happy about, they would try to keep it to themselves.”
    “Sylvie said Iris’s boss was Mr. Garganus.”
    “That’s it!” Marilyn said excitedly. “Wilfred Garganus. I recognized it the minute you said it. Sylvie’s memory’s not that bad, is it?”
    “It’s pretty good, actually. But she may be holding something back.” I didn’t want to say more. I felt in an awkward situation. If there was something embarrassing about Iris’s life, I didn’t want it to get out to the family without the permission of the generation that was keeping it secret. “Have you given any thought to whether Iris could have been having an affair with Mr. Garganus?”
    “I really don’t think so,” Marilyn said as though she had just now considered it. “I think she was very fond of him, but I don’t think it went any further than that.”
    “You know, Iris could have been having an affair with Mr. Garganus, or with someone else, after a long relationship with Harry ended, and she still might have been killed by a mugger when she slipped out of the seder to go home.”
    “That’s true. And you may dig up some unpleasant things about Iris that we’d all rather had never been unearthed and still not find out who killed her or why. Her life may have nothing to do with her death.”
    “Exactly.”
    “So what are you telling me?”
    “I want a reason to continue, some piece of information that was overlooked, some motive, something I can sink my teeth into.”
    “Well, we’ll be at Pop’s soon. Maybe it’ll turn up.”
    I could see why Abraham Grodnik wanted to hang on to his apartment. The building was like many others, a pale beige brick with a facade flush with the sidewalk, a design that made the most of the available space, leaving nothing for a plant or a tree. But the location was irresistible, East Seventy-first Street, just a brisk walk from the beautiful shops on Madison and Lexington Avenues. And the apartment, when we got up there, had large rooms, including a sunken living room, a kitchen large enough for a family to eat in, and two bathrooms.
    “It’s wonderful,” I said.
    “A nice place to grow up. My parents were the first family to live in this apartment. My mother used to tell us how she came down the day they began renting and got in line. The ones on higher floors were two or three dollars a month more, so she always thought she got a real bargain on the fourth floor.”
    “Two or three dollars a month,” I said with amazement.
    “It’s hard to believe anyone could think of that as a big saving, but remember, we’re talking about a time when stamps were