Marge’s close friend was the Crowleys’ housekeeper, Brenda. Brenda and her husband Curt, a retired plumber, lived in Westwood, New Jersey, a few miles from Saddle River. Curt Niemeier had often worked on construction projects with Jack Chapman. Like Jack and Marge, the Niemeiers had lived in a small Saddle River ranch house before the price of real estate had gone up dramatically. They had sold and bought a house in nearby Westwood and a small place at the Jersey Shore.
While Curt was enjoying retirement, Brenda found herself restless. In the early years of their marriage she had been a housekeeper to bring in extra money. She realized she had enjoyed the work and was good at it. “Some people go to a gym. I get my exercise by cleaning.” She decided to look for that kind of work to fill her days. The result was she worked three days a week as a combination housekeeper and cook.
She and Marge had remained close over the years, and when she confided gossip to Marge, Brenda knew it would not go any further. A medium-sized woman with short gray hair and narrow shoulders, she liked her job at the Crowleys’, but did not like them. She considered June Crowley stuck-up and cheap, and her husband full of himself and a total bore. The one person in the family she cared about was Alan. The poor kid got stuck with those two. In their eyes, he can’t do anything right. When he gets an A in school, it should have been an A+.
I know he’s got a temper, Brenda often thought to herself, but I swear those two drive him to it.
Their constant hope was that in September Alan would be enrolled in an Ivy League college so they could brag to their friends.
They’re always after him, Brenda confided to Marge. “If I were in his boots, I’d have applied to the University of Hawaii just to get away from them.
“Of course, I wasn’t there over the weekend when that poor girl was killed. But I gather that when the Crowleys found out that a cop had come over and talked to Alan, they hit the ceiling. And now all I hear around town is that everyone thinks that Alan did it.
“The way the Crowleys are carrying on, I swear I wonder if they don’t think so themselves.”