"I'm sure as hell not." He got up, poured more Patron. "Guess I'm still in that denial stage. Like when my mother passed. I kept expecting to hear her voice, it went on for weeks. Last night, I dreamed about Elise, saw her walking through the door, like the whole ice thing was a stupid joke. What was the point of that? The ice?"

"That's what we're trying to find out, Sal."

"Well, I say it's weird. Elise didn't even like ice in her vodka. I don't want you to think she was some drunk, there was plenty of times, like out to dinner, she'd have a nice cocktail--a Stinger, a Manhattan, like anyone else. She could keep control, you know?"

"She'd pick the time and place to finish a bottle."

"The place was always her house."

"What about the time?"

"When she worked she needed to be sharp. Who's gonna hire a teacher stumbles in drunk as a skunk?"

"What subjects did she teach?"

"English. She substituted at that place, anytime a regular English teacher was out, she was on call. Like a doctor."

"Did she teach anywhere other than Windsor Prep?"

"Not since I knew her. She said they made her an offer she couldn't refuse."

"Do you know the details?"

"Something like thirty grand just to be on call, then thirty bucks for every hour over ten per week that she actually worked. She was putting away decent dough. Also, she did tutoring at night, for that she got eighty, ninety an hour, more if she sniffed out the family was filthy rich."

"How much tutoring did she do?"

"To be honest, I couldn't tell you. But she was busy, plenty of times I called to go out and got her machine. The pressure worked for her."

"The pressure?"

"On the kids. She didn't tutor just dumb kids, she had smart ones, too, parents pushing on them. She told me sometimes a kid would come in with an A-minus, parents wouldn't let up till the minus went away."

"These are students from Windsor Prep we're talking about."

"Yeah," said Fidella. "She did SAT tutoring. And that other test, I forget the name."

I said, "The ACT."

"That's the one. She said all those tests were stupid and meaningless but God bless whoever invented them because rich people were so insecure they needed their kids to be perfect, she could charge 'em big bucks for something they could do themselves."

"What was her training?"

"What do you mean?"

"To tutor SATs."

"She went to college."

"Where?"

"Somewhere in the East, I don't know. The thing about Elise, she didn't like to talk about herself." He spread his palms. "I'm the kind of guy, you want to know something about me, ask. Elise was just the opposite. 'We're not going there, Sal.' She said that a lot. 'We're not going there.' But I stuck with her, she was good-looking, could be a ton of fun."