“Thomas told me. Would you look at this mess! Nat loved his books, and now they’re thrown all over.” Clara shook her head. “It’s terrible. And those sheep. They were in this living room for so long. Now they’re out of the building at that crazy movie set. Daphne had no right to let those weirdos take them away.”

“She promised they’d be back tonight.”

“She still had no right. They were Nat and Wendy’s babies.”

“How long have you worked here, Clara?”

“Ten years next Sunday.”

“So you knew both Nat and his wife?”

Clara nodded. “A darling couple. A little too crazy about sheep for my taste, but to each his own.”

“Thomas told me that Wendy was from England and had grown up in the country where there were a lot of sheep.”

“Yeah, so, I grew up next to a dog pound. You don’t find me with a bunch of stuffed dogs cluttering up my apartment.”

Regan didn’t argue the point. “They must have been perfect for each other then.”

“You know what their song was?” Clara asked Regan. ‘I Only Have Eyes for You.’ That’s E-W-E. Nat used to sing it to her all the time. They’d laugh and laugh.” Clara’s voice became softer. “He loved to play practical jokes. He definitely liked to have fun.”

“Clara, did you see any sign that Nat had a girlfriend in this past month?”

Clara looked thoughtful. “You know, Regan,” she said as she started walking down the hall, Regan following her, “he did buy a few new clothes about three weeks ago. He came in with a bunch of shopping bags, and he’d gotten a haircut and a shave at the barber’s. He told me he hadn’t gone out for a shave in years. He laughed and said the barber went to town on him, clipping his nose hairs and pruning his eyebrows. But then one day last week, as he was leaving, I asked if he was going out to get his nose hairs clipped, just kind of making a joke, and he said he didn’t need to bother with silly things like that anymore.”

That must have been when he decided to break up with her, Regan thought. “But he didn’t tell you anything about a girlfriend?”

“No! He might have felt funny, because all he did before that was talk about Wendy. Almost as if she were still alive. Come to think of it, for a few weeks there, he didn’t say a thing about her, but then last week it was Wendy this and Wendy that again. I don’t think he ever got over losing her.”