The woman’s address was a three-story brick apartment building, but none of the mailboxes in the vestibule bore her name. I found the janitor and gave him Rosalie Rizzo’s description. It sounded like Mrs. Riggs to him.

“She’s a doll,” the janitor said. He was heavy-set and needed a shave; he licked his thick lips as he thought about her. “Ain’t seen her since yesterday noon.”

That was about nine hours after Stanley was killed.

He continued: “Her and her husband was going to the country, she said. Didn’t expect to be back for a couple of weeks, she said.”

Her husband.

“What’ll a look around their apartment cost me?”

He licked his lips again. “Two bucks?”

Two bucks it was; the janitor used his passkey and left me to it. The well-appointed little apartment included a canary that sang in its gilded cage, a framed photo of slick Boss Rooney on an end table, and a closet containing two sawed-off shotguns and a repeating rifle.

I had barely started to poke around when I had company: a slender, gray-haired woman in a flowered print dress.

“Oh!” she said, coming in the door she’d unlocked.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Who are you?” Her voice had the lilt of an Italian accent.

Under the circumstances, the truth seemed prudent. “A private detective.”

“My daughter is not here! She and her-a husband, they go to vacation. Up north some-a-where. I just-a come to feed the canary!”

“Please don’t be frightened. Do you know where she’s gone, exactly?”

“No. But…maybe my husband do. He is-a downstairs….”

She went to a window, threw it open and yelled something frantically down in Italian.

I eased her aside in time to see a heavy-set man jump into a maroon Plymouth with a silver swan on the radiator cap, and cream colored wheels, and squeal away.

And when I turned, the slight gray-haired woman was just as gone. Only she hadn’t squealed.