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Haydon followed Montrose out until it crossed Buffalo Bayou and became Studemont, went under the Katy Freeway to Studewood, and then turned right on Bayland. Alice Parnas’ house was closed and dark. There were no police, no gawking neighbors, no sound from the grackles. Only silence.
He parked in front of the house and turned off the motor. Mrs. Spiegler lived in the house across the crushed shell drive, on the other side of the juniper hedge. Haydon got out of the car and walked along the pavement, across the spill of crushed shell that had worked its way out into the street, and onto the sidewalk that led to Mrs. Spiegler’s. Her house was open, trying to circulate the hot night air. She had seen his headlights and was at the front door, craning her head against the screen to see what was happening now.
“Mrs. Spiegler?” Haydon said as he approached the door. He heard her snap the latch on the screen.
“Yes,” she said. She was holding a sweaty can of Pabst beer. A radio was playing somewhere in the living room behind her.
He introduced himself, said he had been there earlier but hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to her, and would she mind if he took a few minutes of her time. She looked at him, looked at the shield he held in front of her.
“Can’t you come back in the daytime? This’s not exactly a prime business hour. Can’t it wait?”
“If you could give me just a few minutes. It would be best if I could talk to you tonight.”
She had on a pair of green-and-white striped pants that ended just below her knees in little cuffs, and a short sleeved boat-neck cotton blouse that hung over the pants. The hand that held the Pabst wore a plastic digital wristwatch with a piece of tissue tucked under the strap. Her face was incredibly wrinkled, and she had bags under her eyes. Her lower lip tended to sag away from her gums.
“About Alice,” she said, almost reverently and with unexpected tenderness.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“God, that poor little girl.” Her eyes drifted toward the Parnas house. Suddenly she looked at Haydon, her eyes round and startled. “Was she Catholic? I never knew. Her folks wasn’t, but you know kids veer off. If she was Catholic, where d’you suppose they’ll bury her? Pope won’t let her in, you know. They’re funny about”—she tilted her head toward the Parnas house—”that.”
“I don’t really know,” Haydon said. “Do you mind if I come in?” She looked at him. “Do I have to sign anything?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good,” she said as she snapped open the latch, “‘cause I won’t do it.”
She pushed open the screen and Haydon followed her into the room. The house had the same layout as the Parnases’ though Mrs. Spiegler had put her sofa on the opposite wall and her armchair on the opposite side of the room. The radio was loud, and she walked over to a little bookshelf and switched it off. Haydon noticed that she was bowlegged and walked in the self-assured manner of a woman who was used to looking after herself.
“I wasn’t looking at the TV,” she said. “Wasn’t in the mood for a damn situation comedy.”
Haydon sat on the sofa and Mrs. Spiegler in an armchair to his side. Both of them faced the blank television. Haydon had to turn a little to talk to her. An old black rotating fan sat on the floor in front of one of the open windows, humming back and forth. Every time it turned to the left it shimmied, rattling the wire grill around the blade.
“Want a Blue Ribbon?” She hoisted the beer. “No, thanks.”
“What is it you want to ask me?”
“There’s a certain amount of routine paperwork that has to be done following an unattended death. It won’t take long.”
“Shoot,” she said, and took a swig of Pabst.
“Do you know if Miss Parnas had any relatives in New Mexico?”
“No. I mean, no, I don’t know. I don’t think they had any relatives in town, though. I’ve been living next to them for about ten years, and I never heard them talk about relatives in town. Alice’s mom died about five, six years ago. Her dad dwindled away after that and died about two years later. They’re Greek. Looked Greek. Alice doesn’t-didn’t look Greek. I wondered about that, was going to ask her once if she was adopted, but I didn’t because she was such a sensitive thing I thought that might offend her or something. I wouldn’t have done that for the world. The girl was just an angel.”
Mrs. Spiegler’s voice cracked a little, and she took another swig of beer. She sat with her feet flat on the floor, her legs spread out comfortably, her pedal pushers pulled up to her knees for coolness.
“Had Alice been depressed a lot lately?”
“Well, she was sick. She’d been sick about a week, home from the office. Holed up over there.”
“Did she tell you she was sick?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all she told you?”
“Yeah. Why? Should she have said something else?”
“I just wondered if she had explained.”
“She didn’t go into no detail, if that’s what you mean. She wasn’t a hitcher. Wasn’t going to tell me about any female trouble or stuff like that that most women have so much fun telling each other. Not Alice.”
“Did you visit with her much during this week she’s been ill?”
“Nope. When I saw she’d been home a couple of days I went over to check on her. We’ve been neighborly that way for years. Said she was sick. I didn’t pry into it, but I brought her some broth that night. I don’t care what’s wrong with you, hangnail or polio, broth’s good for you. Funny I should say polio. Nobody gets that anymore, do they. Anyway, I’ve looked in on her every day, not in a busybody sort of way, but to let her know I was here if she needed me.”
“Did you go over there today?”
She seemed to droop, her face sad. “No, I didn’t. Wish to God I had. I mean, I found her, you know, but I hadn’t gone over before that.”
“Are you home all day, Mrs. Spiegler?”
“Most of the time.”
“Today?”
“All but about an hour and a half this morning. I went grocery shopping.”
“When was that?”
She squinted. “Nine thirty to ten thirty, or eleven.”
Haydon had been there from roughly ten to eleven.
“Could you tell me, thinking carefully, who you might have seen go to Alice’s house from the time you got home to the time you found her?”
Mrs. Spiegler looked at him. She thought a moment as her eyes stayed on him and she took another swig from the Pabst can.
“Why?”
“State law dictates that anytime a person commits suicide, or the circumstances of death are such that they lead to the suspicion of suicide, the body of that person must undergo a routine autopsy to try to verify that suspicion. By the same token the Houston Police Department likes to accompany the medical investigation with one of our own to make sure the deceased was not involved in anything of a suspicious nature prior to death. It’s quite routine.”
She seemed to think that sounded reasonable. “Anybody?”
“Right: Mailman, delivery boys, other neighbors. Anyone.”
She thought a minute. The old fan vibrated rhythmically, bringing in muggy Heights air heavy with July heat that didn’t begin to lighten at night until well into the early morning hours.
“Mailman about one thirty. That was a little early for him. ‘Member when you used to get your mail in the morning? Salvation Army truck came by and got an old armchair she’d had on her back porch for a month. I guess that was, I don’t know, two, two thirty. Nigra boy came around about that time too, selling magazine subscriptions to go to college on. I never know whether to believe those boys or not, but I subscribed to Field & Stream and Cosmopolitan. Census lady came about three. That’s it, as far as I can remember.”
“The mailman just left the mail and went on?”
“Yeah.”
“How about the Salvation Army men? Did they go inside?”
“No. Went down the driveway, got the chair, and took it around.”
“You saw that?”
Mrs. Spiegler decided not to be embarrassed for snooping.
“Yeah, I saw it,” she said a little defiantly. She finished the Pabst.
“What about the black student?”
“Stood at the door, same as he did here. She bought something too. I saw him writing out one of those tiny receipts they give you. Hardly read the boy’s writing. Takes six months to get the magazines, too.”
“He didn’t go inside?”
“Nope.”
“And the census lady?”
“Sure, she went in. Same as she did here.” Mrs. Spiegler stood and walked into the kitchen. “Sure you don’t want a Blue Ribbon?” she called back.
“No, thanks.”
She returned, folding a paper napkin around the bottom of the can. “Things sweat in this weather. Cans. People. Everything.”
“Did the census woman go to the house on the other side of the Parnas house when she left there?”
“No. She came here.”
“She spoke to Alice Parnas first?”
“Yeah. In fact, she parked in front of her house. I saw her drive up there, get clipboard and things out of the front seat, and go up to the door. Talked to Alice and then went inside.”
“How long did she stay?”
“Nearly an hour.”
“Did she stay that long here?”
“No. She said Alice had a lot of complicated family things to straighten out. I guess she meant her parents’ deaths since the last census. I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Then how did she happen to mention it?”
“She just volunteered it, why she was there so long.”
“How long did she stay here?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes.”
“What kind of car was she driving?”
“Kind of a sporty looking thing. I don’t know.”
“What color was it?”
“White. It was little.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“Cute as a bug. She was a girl, not really a woman. I think of a woman as older. Reddish blond hair. Fair skinned. Not thin, particularly. Dressed real good.”
“What kind of questions did she ask you?”
“Oh, census type questions. Age, people living in house, family stuff.”
“Did she fill out a form as she questioned you?”
“Yeah.”
“You saw it?”
“Well, I saw her writing it all down. I guess it was a form they use. I couldn’t see it exactly.”
“Did she leave a card or anything?”
“No.”
“How did you know she was from the census bureau?”
Mrs. Spiegler studied Haydon for a while, her bottom lip sagging a little more than before.
“That’s a good question,” she said. “I just took her word for it. She seemed . . . okay. She was dressed real good. I just took her word for it. Nothing suspicious about her.”
“You’d recognize her if you saw a picture of her?”
“Sure. She sat right there, and I talked to her fifteen minutes.”
“She continued down the street when she left here?”
“No. She went back to her car and left. I guess she’d filled her quota of households for the day,” Mrs. Spiegler said helpfully. “You know, she was real nice, though. She was . . .. “
Haydon tuned her out, his eyes focusing on the dummy like hinging of her mouth. He imagined, almost against his will, the blood, dark and arterial, snaking out of her nose. It came from her right nostril first and trickled over her long upper lip. He thought he would stop it at that, and just as he was making up his mind to listen to her again, the other nostril began to bleed too. It sought out the wrinkles and crevices around her mouth, and when she took a drink from the can of beer it got on the can too, pinkish where it mixed with the beer that stayed around the rim of the can. It got inside her sagging bottom lip.
“I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me,” he said, standing quickly. “Here’s my card. If you think of anything else, would you give me a call? Anything at all could be of help.”
“Sure,” she said, looking a little surprised at his abruptness, but standing too. “How long do you people keep your end of the investigation open?”
“Usually takes only a few days.” Haydon was aware of feeling a little light headed.
She nodded and looked at the card. “Says ‘Homicide.”‘ He imagined that some of the blood flipped off her bottom lip onto her blouse. She wouldn’t have noticed.
“We all do this in our spare time,” he said.
She nodded again. “It’s going to be odd having her gone, you know. I guess I’ll get new neighbors. Probably Mexicans or Nigras, they’re pretty well taking over out in here now. Minorities. Of course, the Parnases were Greek. Nothing wrong with minorities. It’s just that there’s not as many regular people out here as there used to be.” She raised her can of beer to Haydon as if toasting the idea. “Tempus fugit,” she said, and smiled ruefully.
She followed him to the door, chatted with him as he went outside on the little cement porch. He told her good night and turned to walk down the sidewalk as he heard her snap the screen latch behind him. When he drove by in front of her house, she was standing backlighted in the doorway, a wedge of light coming from between her bowed legs, her arm bent, holding the can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He couldn’t see anything on her face. It was in the dark.