Death by the Riverside by J. M. Redmann; Jean M. Redmann Page A

myself as unthreatening as possible. I maintained eye contact with her, not letting her betray me without looking at me. I was betting that Barbara Selby was basically a decent person.
    The guard paused in the doorway, nodded to Barbara, and then moved on. His footsteps echoed down the hallway until we could hear them no more.
    “Thanks,” I said, letting out the breath I didn’t know I had been holding.
    “Don’t thank me yet. I’m still of half a mind to turn you over to the police. What’s the real story, industrial spy, theft, blackmail?”
    “Why don’t we get out of here and I’ll tell you?” We headed for the elevators and got on.
    “I came back because I remembered that tomorrow is Patrick’s, my son’s, school play. I thought you might be interested in that beer today, plus some help with the copying,” she explained as we rode down.
    “Where do your kids stay?” I asked.
    “With my mother. We live in the same apartment building.” She paused for a moment, then burst out, “Wait a minute, what is this? I find you behind a door you don’t have a combination for, you make some wild accusations about the company I work for, and now we’re talking about my kids?”
    “Where’s a good bar around here?” I replied.
    “What?…Oh, all right. This way. I’m probably safer with you in a bar than out on the street.” We walked a block to a wood and hanging plant type bar. It wasn’t very crowded. I ordered a beer and she ordered white wine.
    “Okay, Ms. Knight. Explain.”
    I handed her my private investigator’s license. She looked at it for a minute.
    “You’re not police.”
    “But I work for them.” I decided it was best to be honest with her.
    “Prove it.”
    “Tomorrow, at lunch, come with me and I’ll introduce you to my contact.” I wasn’t sure Ranson would approve of that, but I was sure she wanted to know what was in that locked drawer.
    “I can’t. I’ve got to go to the bakery and get something for the party after Patrick’s show.” I gave her my there-you-have-it look and shrugged my shoulders. “I can’t believe this,” she continued. “Drug smuggling and murders are something from T.V. It doesn’t happen in my life. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” She shook her head.
    “Not real? Ever seen a junkie?”
    “Well…yes, but…”
    “Where do you think they get their dope? Does the stork bring it?”
    “No…still…”
    “How old is Patrick? And your other kid?”
    “What? He’s eleven. Cissy’s nine.”
    “Do you worry about them?”
    “Of course, I worry.”
    “About doing drugs?”
    “No, I hope I’ve taught them better than that.” I looked at her, not believing that no. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “You can’t live today and not worry…I still don’t know.”
    But she was wavering. I decided to try a little logic.
    “Look, there’s a locked file drawer that…”
    “None of them are locked,” she broke in. “I have access to them all.”
    “At the end, where you found me. The bottom one under Z.”
    “But that’s not used.”
    “So why is it locked?” She looked puzzled, searching for an innocuous reason to explain the drawer being locked.
    She finally replied, “I don’t know. Are you sure it’s locked and not just stuck?”
    “Positive.”
    “That’s strange,” she said, more to herself than to me. “I can’t think what might be in it.”
    “There’s one way to find out. Let’s look.”
    “How? It’s locked.”
    “File cabinet drawers are very easy to pick, if you know how.”
    She thought about this for a while before she said, “All right. But I have to be there to make sure that’s all you do.”
    “If you insist. And if we find what I think we may find, I’ll let you go with me to the police. If not, we’ll probably find out what Milo’s taste in porn is.” Milo was Barbara’s boss. And possibly Mr. Big.
    “You think?” She laughed. Barbara had a deep hearty laugh. I liked this woman. I was much