Chapter 5

“How awful. Tut-tut. Just look at the little fellow. How could his father have done such a thing? He’ll rot in hell for his deed.”

Sarah glanced over from her mailbox. Harriet Flynn sounded more dismayed than usual.

“Now, now, Harriet, just because he’s been arrested doesn’t mean he actually did it.” Frances Noonan leaned in to see the newspaper, squinting without her reading glasses.

“Of course he did it. Look at him,” Enid Carmichael chimed in, tapping the paper with a long, crooked finger. “He’s a killer if ever I saw one.”

“Oh, I don’t agree,” Frances Noonan said. “I think he looks confused. Sarah, what do you think?”

Sarah closed her mailbox and put her mail in her bag. The three older women stood in the lobby of her apartment building, peering intently at a newspaper open on the table. The old wooden table was dark mahogany wood, well-oiled, and stood on a gleaming slate floor. The building was built in the 1920s. The room was large, with glass doors leading out to the street, an elevator with a shiny brass grate, and a stairway with deep red carpeting.

The ladies made quite a sight, Sarah thought, three older women of such disparate heights. Enid Carmichael towered over the other two, six feet tall and wearing high heels, as she often did. Sarah was amazed she’d never fallen, especially the way she charged around. Mrs. Carmichael had a large frame and dyed red hair, today an odd hue of orange. From this distance she didn’t look older than the other ladies, but close up her smoker’s skin and rheumy eyes confirmed every one of her eighty years.

Harriet Flynn was skinny and short. She didn’t have to bend to see the paper. She seldom smiled and was definitely not smiling now. She wore a drab gray sweater that matched her drab gray hair. As if I’m any better at grooming, Sarah thought, with my hair hanging listlessly and without a proper haircut in months.

Frances Noonan was younger than the two other women, about seventy-five, and she was Sarah’s favorite tenant in the building. She and Sarah were the same height, five feet eight inches, though Sarah had never realized this because Mrs. Noonan had always favored one leg by leaning or sitting. Since a recent hip replacement, Mrs. Noonan stood as tall and straight as Sarah herself, her carriage finally matching her level of energy.

Sarah had grown to know these women and the other people in her building well over the past year. She remembered her initial disappointment over her apartment. Her hospital provided housing for its medical residents, and Sarah hoped for one of the buildings close to the hospital where most of the residents lived. She imagined lots of camaraderie, with everyone working the same long hours and dealing with the same stressful situations.

Once she saw her Pacific Heights building, with its elegant lobby and breathtaking rooftop views, she quickly realized she had a choice apartment. And the diversity of tenants gave her a respite from work she wouldn’t have living with her colleagues.

The front door opened and Alma Gordon came in, one-year-old Baby Owen perched on her hip, her lilac bubble bath smell wafting in with her. She was in her seventies, yet she moved remarkably well. Olivia Honeycut followed with her walker, a grocery bag balanced in its shallow basket.

“I don’t know how you would have managed if you hadn’t bumped into me,” Olivia Honeycut said in her low, gravelly voice. “These diapers are bulky. Good thing the heat wave is over.”

“I never could have gone out yesterday,” Alma Gordon replied. “It was close to one hundred degrees. In San Francisco in June! Give me this lovely fog any day. But I do okay. It’s all a matter of balance. That yoga class has done me a world of good.”

“Yoga, schmoga. Age will get you in the end. You’ll end up with one of these. It’s inevitable.” Olivia Honeycut gestured to her walker.

These five ladies were the Fog Ladies, a group of women Sarah had come to love. Sarah gave the group their name because Frances Noonan told her that you could count on them like you could count on early morning fog. Every morning Sarah heard the weather report on the radio and every morning it was the same—early morning fog burning off by midday. San Francisco weather was a constant you could count on and so were the Fog Ladies.

Sarah was a Fog Lady now, too, invited in as they all grew closer over the year.

Enid Carmichael waved her large hand. “I have no patience for yoga. All that New Age-y music and whispery talk. Give me a good brisk walk any day.”

“Yoga suits me just fine. Thank goodness they have childcare. Sometimes I do fall asleep during meditation time, though, and once they told me I snorted. Broke their mood. I blamed Baby Owen, said he was keeping me up nights.”

Sarah had recommended the yoga class to Alma Gordon, and she was happy to hear she was going. Alma Gordon was short, the same height as Harriet Flynn, but the two were otherwise completely different. Mrs. Gordon was round, and Mrs. Flynn was all angles. Mrs. Gordon’s hair was fluffy and white, Mrs. Flynn’s bristly and steel gray. Mrs. Gordon was taking care of an abandoned baby, left over from one of the Fog Ladies’ charity activities, waiting for his mother to return. Mrs. Flynn didn’t believe in having children out of wedlock and had trouble speaking civilly to the teen mother when she was around.

Alma Gordon had told Sarah the baby made her feel creaky, and Sarah had told her she thought yoga could help. As Mrs. Gordon deftly shifted the baby to the other hip, Sarah was amazed at how agile she seemed. Looking again, Sarah saw a dreamy look in her eyes. And she was humming softly. Meek, nervous Mrs. Gordon—humming. This was more than yoga.

Sarah didn’t have to wonder long. The elevator door opened, and Mr. Glenn stepped out. Mrs. Gordon stopped humming and turned toward him, her face crinkling into a smile. Baby Owen laughed and clapped his hands.

Mr. Glenn was stooped and bald and wore thick glasses. But as he held out his finger for Baby Owen to grab, he seemed taller and more animated than Sarah had ever seen him. His wife, Bessie, died before Sarah moved into the apartment building, and as long as Sarah had known him, Mr. Glenn seemed serious and sad. But not today.

“I was just telling them about my snorting during yoga,” Alma Gordon said.

“Those young whippersnappers don’t know how easy it is to nod off when you’re our age.” Mr. Glenn patted his ample stomach and yawned. “Maybe I should come to your class and show them some true snoring.”

“Oh, that would be a sight,” Olivia Honeycut said. “A man at yoga class.”

“There are lots of men, Olivia. Almost half the class,” Alma Gordon said.

“Why on earth would a man want to go to yoga class?” Enid Carmichael said. “In my day, men went to men’s clubs and used medicine balls and lifted weights.”

“Like Jack LaLanne. Now there was a fine specimen,” Olivia Honeycut said.

“One shouldn’t flaunt one’s body,” Harriet Flynn said. “That skimpy outfit. Unseemly.”

“The man in the newspaper goes to yoga,” Frances Noonan said.

“What man?” Alma Gordon asked.

“The man who killed his wife,” Enid Carmichael said.

“We don’t know for sure that he did it,” Mrs. Noonan said.

“Stabbed her with the kitchen shears. He’ll rot in hell,” Mrs. Flynn said.

“Murder? Are you talking about murder?” Mrs. Honeycut’s raspy voice accentuated the word.

“Yes, indeed. Murder. It’s all right here.” Mrs. Carmichael picked up the paper. She pulled a pair of glasses from her pocket and squinted at the print. “‘San Francisco police have arrested a thirty-one-year-old man in connection with the slaying of his wife. Paul Blackwell was jailed last night after police received a nine-one-one call from a neighbor who heard screams. Police found Andrea Blackwell, thirty-two, in the kitchen of the couple’s Marina home. She had been stabbed with a pair of scissors. The couple’s child was sleeping and unharmed and has been taken in by Child Protective Services. Blackwell states that he had been at YOGA’”—Mrs. Carmichael emphasized the word— “‘which he did every Tuesday night. However, a police spokesman said the yoga class had been canceled due to a faulty air conditioner, and that Mr. Blackwell was covered with blood when police arrived.’”

Mrs. Carmichael stopped reading and put the paper down. “There,” she said with satisfaction, “it’s an open and shut case.”

“The poor child,” Mrs. Noonan said. “Look at those eyes.”

Sarah set her bag on the slate floor and joined the ladies at the table. She bent to see the photograph. Staring at her in black and white was the family from the ocean resort, the handsome man with the small, round glasses, his unsmiling wife, and the little boy with the piercing eyes.