Deadly Honeymoon by Lawrence Block

said she thought he was a salesman and she wasn’t interested. Then she caught sight of Jill and decided that he wasn’t a salesman and her face softened slightly. She still wasn’t thrilled to see him, her face said, but at least he wasn’t selling anything, and that was a break.
    He said, “Mrs. Penner?”
    She nodded. He searched for the right phrasing, something that would fit whether or not she knew Corelli was dead. “My name is Peter Miller,” he said. “Does a Mr. Joseph Corelli live in the upstairs apartment?”
    “Why?”
    “Just business,” he said, smiling.
    “He used to live here. I rented the place after he skipped on me. He lives here for three years, he pays his rent every time the first of the month, and then he skips. Just one day he’s gone.” She shook her head. “Just disappears. Didn’t take his things, that’s his furniture and he left it, everything. I figured he would be back. Leaving everything, you would think he’d be back, wouldn’t you?”
    He nodded. She didn’t know Corelli was dead, he thought. Maybe that was good.
    “But he never shows,” she said, shifting conveniently into present tense again. “He never shows, and I hold the place a month, waiting for him. That’s seventy dollars I’m out plus another week before I could rent it. I don’t rent to colored and it took a full week before they moved in, Mr. and Mrs. Haas. Eighty-five dollars he cost me, Corelli.”
    “Do you have his things? His furniture and all?”
    “I rented the place furnished,” Mrs. Penner said. She was defensive now. “Mrs. Haas, she didn’t have any furniture. They just got married. No kids, you know?” She shook her head again. “There’ll be kids, though. A young couple, they’ll have kids soon enough, you bet on it. One thing about Corelli, he was quiet up there. What about his things? He send you or something?”
    Jill said, “Mrs. Penner, I’m Joe’s sister. Joe called me, he’s in Arizona and he had to leave New York in a hurry.”
    “Cop trouble?”
    “He didn’t say. Mrs. Penner—”
    “There was cops came around right after he left. Showed me their badges and went pawing through everything.” She paused. “They don’t look like cops, not them. But they show me their badges and that’s enough. I don’t like to stick my nose in.”
    Jill said, “Mrs. Penner, you know Joe was in business here. There was a lawsuit and he had to leave the state to stay out of trouble. It wasn’t police trouble.”
    “So?”
    “He called me yesterday,” she went on. “There were some things of his, some things he had to leave here, and he wanted me to get them for him.”
    “Sure.”
    “If I could just—”
    The screen door stayed shut. “As soon as I get that eighty-five dollars,” she said. “That’s what he cost me, that eighty-five dollars. There was no lease so that’s all, just the eighty-five, but I want that before he gets his stuff.”
    Jill didn’t say anything. Dave took out a cigarette and said, “You can hold the furniture for the time being, Mrs. Penner. In fact I think Joe would just as soon you kept the furniture, and then you can go on renting the flat furnished. It’s worth more than eighty-five dollars, but just to make things easier you could keep the furniture for the rent you missed out on.”
    He could see her mind working, balancing the extra five or ten dollars a month against the eighty-five dollars Corelli had cost her. She looked as though she wanted a little more, so he said, “Unless you’d rather have the money. Then I could have a truck here later this afternoon to pick up the furniture.”
    He could imagine her trying to explain that to the Haases. Quickly she said, “No, it’s fair enough. And easier all around, right?”
    “That’s what I thought. Now if we could see Joe’s other stuff, his clothes and all. You kept everything, didn’t you?”
    She had everything downstairs in large cardboard boxes. Suits, ties, slacks,