Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

Fenster got out of his swivel leather chair, paced. “She moved back in with her mother. She was concerned about her mother; she thought if she moved back she could watch out for her.” Fenster might be old, but he paced like a young man.

“Her mother is sick? What’s wrong with her?” George had his pen poised on his notebook.

“If you call it a sickness, I guess she was. Her mother was enamored of a young man. Ms. Precious considered him a gigolo.”

“Ms. Precious’s father is deceased?” I asked. Ms. Precious was in her mid-twenties; that would make her mother close to fifty one way or another, kind of in my ballpark. Early for death this day and age, assuming that the father was in the same age bracket.

“No, her mother divorced him. As a matter of fact, I handled the legal work for Ms. Precious’s mother. We did rather nicely in the financial division, and Ms. Precious managed to separate her mother from the would-be Romeo, so it seemed to me that her troubles were over.” He clicked his tongue. “This is terrible, truly terrible.”

“Was the Romeo responsible for the dental problem?” I asked.

Fenster gave me a quick glance. “She never said so — Ms. Precious was reticent about personal matters — but I understand she had some sort of a confrontation with him. I offered to represent her in a harassment suit, but she refused. Ms. Precious was quite shy. Very astute of you, young man. What did you say your name was?”

“I’m Ben Edison. I believe you knew my father.”

“Edison? I certainly did. So you are his son Ben? I recall they nicknamed you Genius for some reason or another. Your dad’s running airboats down around Okeechobee, I hear. That’s Sam’s way, all right. He always went against the tide. Running airboats when he should be up there in Tallahassee running the state.”

The thought made me smile. “I reckon he’d turn Florida upside-down. My mother, bless her soul, called him a maverick.”

Fenster shook his head of thick silver hair. “Too bad she had to leave you. That cancer is a pure devil disease. But enough reminiscing, young Edison. You’ll want Ms. Precious’s address and maybe her father’s and the name of the Romeo and all such. And you’ll want to go through her desk, I wager.” He shook his head again. “I almost called for Ms. Precious to give you the details, but I guess I’ll have to do it myself.” More headshaking. “A terrible thing, terrible.”

Ms. Precious’s desk was nasty-neat. Everything in it pertained to Fenster’s legal affairs so far as I could tell at a glance, but there was something stuck in the back of the bottom file drawer, some kind of plastic bag. Dillard’s was the name of the store supplying the bag, and inside we found some tiny shirts, a pair of bootees, and a soft yellow blanket, a pathetic collection for a baby who never lived. George was touched. “The bastard,” he muttered. I took it that he didn’t refer to the baby.

There was something else in the back of the filing cabinet, a book. The front of it identified the volume as My Diary, and on the flyleaf she had written DIARY OF ROSEJOY PRECIOUS. THIS IS MY BOOK. I once had a girlfriend who kept a diary. She wrote faithfully in it for about a week, then it began to peter off, but Rosejoy Precious was faithful to her diary. I skimmed to the last page, dated the day before she died. I felt as though I’d come upon a pot of gold beneath a thundercloud.

The last entry read, “I have wonderful news, Diary, but I won’t let you in on the secret until it really comes true — I might jinx myself. But I will say this, tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of my life! Like Edgar Allan Poe wrote, ‘And all my days are trances, and all my nightly dreams are where thy grey eye glances, and where thy footstep gleams — in what ethereal dances, by what eternal streams....’ Oh my dear diary, I can hardly wait!”

“I don’t get it,” said George. “What’s Edgar Allan Poe got to do with—”

“I’m taking these items as probable evidence, Mr. Fenster. I’ll sign for them.” To George I wondered aloud, “Grey eyes? Did she mean that literally?”

“Grey eyes? Oh, I get it. The guy, whoever he is, has grey eyes. And she was expecting a proposal.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Could be. You never know.”

According to the obituary, services for Ms. Rosejoy Precious will be held at Saint Mary’s by the Lake Church at two P.M., followed by interment at Blessed Angels Memorial Gardens. Well, well, they made the connection sooner than I expected... well, well. It would be fun to attend her funeral. I suppose I’ll find the Winged Angel sitting in the front pew...

Ms. Precious’s mother was, in George’s words, a dish. Fiona Precious was indeed most attractive, a slender lady with a fine-boned face and a cascade of silky blonde hair. Of course, we weren’t seeing her at her best; she’d been crying, and her nose was red and the almost platinum hair disarrayed.

The first thing she said to us was, “Jeffrey. Jeffrey Wilson. I tried to tell her...” And she began to tear up again.