“Yes, I think I am. I need moral support. What time’s he coming?” I asked. I hoped he’d cancel.
“Nine o’clock. I got the coffee made.” She made no move to do her errands.
Buck Conroy arrived fifteen minutes late. He sat in the chair by my desk, without apology for his tardiness, and I caught a strong whiff of stale cigarettes. His belly hung over his trousers, and his tie could have used a trip to the cleaners. Joanie didn’t have a huge effect on him apparently.
I said hello and asked about Joanie and the baby. “Doing great,” he said. “McKenzie is four months old now and cute as a button. Joanie’s a good mom, and I’m a happy man. But I’m not here to talk about them. I’m here about Florence Dodson’s murder.”
“I know.” I sat straight and tried to be cool and professional.
“Well, you’ve taken in a woman accused of attempted murder.’
How did he know about Claire? I didn’t like this man. Keisha stopped even pretending to work and watched and listened. “Assault with a deadly weapon,” I countered.
He shrugged. “Close to the same thing. Guess taking her in isn’t a crime, but it sure does look peculiar. And then I hope it’s just a coincidence that a neighbor you and Ms. Guthrie both quarreled with was murdered.”
So much for cool and professional. I snorted! “I had nothing to do with that. I wouldn’t murder an old woman because she thought my girls were picking her flowers.”
“When a case begins, I don’t know nothin’. Got to investigate every possibility—that means you and Mrs. Guthrie. Who knows? I know she hated the old woman, and she could have gone on a spree that night. Maybe she quarreled with the old lady too.”
He’d obviously talked to Mike, but I played innocent. “You’re fishing. I never quarreled with Mrs. Dodson. I just listened to her complain. And I don’t know about Claire. You’ll have to ask her.” I paused a minute, thinking about Claire’s comments about Florence Dodson, but I kept the thought to myself. “What about the sleeping bag you found that indicated a homeless person lived in her carport?”
“You know about that? Shandy must have told you. I’m keeping that quiet, got some feelers out in the homeless community.”
“You could look for whoever doesn’t have a sleeping bag. I would have thought he would have taken it with him.”
He shrugged. “In summer, what would it matter? Back to Mrs. Guthrie. I do intend to question her. Already heard that the Guthries had some pretty loud quarrels. And Mrs. Dodson complained about the noise.”
Loud quarrels? Ralph Hoskins said the same thing. Were they shouting, fighting on the front lawn, throwing china? I didn’t know what to think, but I wondered if I should mention Ralph Hoskins and the barking dog issue, if nothing else to distract Conroy. Still Hoskins was too meek and mild to be a suspect. Let Buck Conroy find that out for himself.
“Where were you two nights ago about seven, seven-thirty?”
“Home with my daughters.”
And so it went. He asked the usual questions, I gave him honest answers, and he concluded I had no alibi. The girls would lie for me, he said, and I thought it was great he made my daughters accessories to murder.
“Actually,” he said, with maybe a half grin, a smirking kind of grin, “I’m also working on the idea that it was a gang deal.”
“Gang deal?” I was astounded. Why would gang members target an old lady who pretty much kept to herself, had no money, and whose house wasn’t broken into?
“I’m just a realist,” he said. “The truth is gangs roam your neighborhood, and that’s a good possibility.”
I shook my head. Seemed to me he had some leads to follow—the homeless guy, or woman, a gang member, and Claire, though I blanched at the thought of that.
“Some guy that lived across the alley—name of Hoskins—is leading a neighborhood task force to go door to door and ask what people saw. He’s looking for suspicious cars in the neighborhood, that kind of thing.” He sighed. “Just what we need—a bunch of concerned citizens meddling in our business.”
“Ralph Hoskins. I met him. He think of this by himself?”
He shook his head. “Naw, you got an active neighborhood association. Sometimes a good thing, but I don’t think so in this case. They came up with the idea, and Hoskins volunteered.” He paused a minute. “You mean you don’t know Hoskins but just met him. Mind telling me the circumstances?”
I flushed with anger. “I went to Mrs. Dodson’s back yard. In the alley behind the police tape.” Okay, so that stretched the truth like a taut rubber band. “I just wanted to look at the stairs—I didn’t think she fell. And I met Mr. Hoskins then.”
“You went to the crime scene.” It wasn’t a question. “You thought you’d see something that police didn’t?” That was a question.
“Did you notice that the flower pots on the stairs weren’t broken? She didn’t trip over those. And what about fingerprints? Did you check the railing? The broken pots?’
He stared at me. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. How does Shandy put up with you?”
I blushed. I didn’t think my personal life belonged in this conversation.
“No fingerprints. We checked.” He stared at the floor for a long while, and then raised his eyes to me. “Stay out of this, Ms. O’Connell. I don’t need or want your help.”
I was left with the feeling that almost any minute any more sensational crime would sweep away the death of one old lady, without family, unless Buck Conroy could pin it on someone handy real quick. Like Joe Montez. Joe was the former gang member Conroy blamed for the vandalism at my last house—and he was right about that. But Joe married Theresa and turned his life around—and he valued the life he had now. There was no way he would jeopardize his future by killing Florence Dodson. And what motive would he have had? Blaming things on gang activity was an easy cop-out—Mike would have resented it if I said that and pointed out it was a bad play on words.
Almost as if she read my thoughts, Theresa called to say that Buck Conroy came to their apartment. It was her day off, and she was home, but Joe was at his GED cram class. “I don’t think Detective Conroy thinks Joe’s involved,” she said, “but he made me promise Joe wouldn’t leave town, and he’d be back to talk to him. I guess they always say that.”
I agreed that they did. “Although Joe’s his own person, and you’re not responsible for him. No sense pointing that out to Conroy, and I know Joe listens to you.” I ended with, “Come see us. The girls miss you both, and I want to ask Joe what his hunch is about gang involvement in Mrs. Dodson’s death.”
“I can tell you that. He says it’s not their style. But we’d love to come see you. Maybe tonight, if that’s okay.”
So much for the day of dealing with paperwork. I doodled, and I fiddled. I ran Keisha’s errands—to get copy paper, to drop off a lease agreement, and to buy stamps. I brought lunch to us—a chicken Caesar for her and a cheeseburger for me. I needed to indulge.
I fielded a few phone calls—Mrs. Oatman was indignant that her over-priced house didn’t sell but refused to consider my suggestions that she lower the price and that maybe the house had been on the market too long and she should take it off for a while. “You can rent it,” I said, but she refused that idea. A new client called wanting rental property for her college-bound son and his roommates, and I promised to be on the lookout for a rambling, two-story, multi-bedroom and multi-bath property in good condition (“The boys will be studying and can’t take on maintenance…and the yard care will have to be covered in the agreement.”)—as if such a property existed in Fairmount, where half the houses suffered from “deferred maintenance” and about as many lawns were brown as green. I suspected this anxious mother heard that Fairmount was less expensive than areas close to the university but I thought she ought to come investigate in person before she reeled off unrealistic requirements.
About three when the phone rang, Keisha said, “For you,” and I answered with “Kelly O’Connell.”
“Ms. O’Connell?’ The voice was timid, weak…and, yes, frightened.
I tried to be encouraging. “Yes, this is Kelly O’Connell.”
“Ms. O’Connell, this is Mrs. William Glenn on Fairmount Avenue. You came by to talk with me last year ….”
The little old lady down the street from my skeleton house. I’d met her one day when I tried to get a sidewalk assessment of the house and then walked the block to look at the other houses. She was out sweeping her sidewalk—who does that anymore?—and I stopped to talk. I remembered Mrs. Glenn as very proper, but I also remembered offering to help her. I could picture her now in a loose cotton dress with a baggy sweater over it, no matter that the temperature was in the nineties.
“Yes, Mrs. Glenn. I remember. Can I help you in some way?”
“Well,” she drew it out, “I’m not sure. It’s just…to tell the truth, I’m scared. Is it true that there’s a killer in the neighborhood looking for, ah, older ladies?”
“No, ma’am, it’s not true. There was one murder, but we have no idea about the circumstances. I think you should take ordinary precautions but you shouldn’t be afraid to go to sleep at night.” I hoped I sounded reassuring.
We talked a few minutes, and then she said, “I hope you’re right, my dear. Thank you for talking to me.”
As I hung up I wondered how many other old ladies in Fairmount were frightened, or, as Mike said, in the whole south side of the city.
I sat and thought about it. The only solid ideas anyone had was that it was a gang member or a homeless person. That didn’t make sense to me. There was no theft at all. Mike told me her purse was on the table, the door unlocked but nothing disturbed. She probably didn’t have huge wads of cash in that overcrowded house, and it sure didn’t seem that anyone went through it. The idea that a ganger fulfilling his initiation requirements he (or she?) kill to show they could do it was so far-fetched I discarded it.
Maybe the neighborhood association would come up with something. I was tempted to call Ralph Hoskins and suggest he also watch neighbors’ reactions carefully when he canvassed the street. If I disliked Florence Dodson, maybe some of my former neighbors indeed disliked her enough to kill. Of course, that put Claire back into play as a suspect.
“You get anything done today?” Keisha asked. “It’s goin’ on four o’clock.”
“Oh, I got a new client and a couple of other things,” I said, stretching the truth. My fingers drummed on the wooden desk top.
“You call your mama yet?”
Would the woman never stop? “No,” I said. “It’s next on my list.”
“Right, just as soon as you finish doodling on that same piece of paper you been worryin’ to death all day.”
I gave her a dirty look and dialed the phone. “Mom?”
“Kelly! How wonderful to hear your voice. Of course, you call so seldom I’m not sure I’ll recognize it….”
There we went with Guilt Trip Number One. “Mom? I have some bad news.”
“Bad news? The girls…are they all right?”
“Yes, Mom, they’re fine. It’s Mrs. Dodson, your friend down the street from my old house.”
“The lady with the tiny dog? The one who used to call me when she thought you weren’t taking enough care? She was so concerned about you, Kelly dear.”
Now was not the time to say Mrs. Dodson was bored, lonely, and nosey. “Yes, Mom. The old lady who thought the girls were picking her flowers. I know she cared about us,” or told you she did, I added silently.
“Well, what about her?”
“She’s dead. Somebody pushed her down her steps and hit her in the head with a flower pot.”
Okay, Kelly, you don’t know that whole scenario—that’s just how it makes sense to you.
A long pause from Mom. “Kelly, that’s just terrible. I do so worry about that neighborhood you live in.”
I could picture her on the other end, her once-pretty face screwed in concern and calculating some way to get me and the girls back to Chicago, the safest place in the world—right? Mom would be like Florence in ten or fifteen years I thought if she didn’t learn to get out in the world instead of staying home and worrying.
While I thought about all this, Mom went on, “Just when I thought I’d talk to you about moving to Texas!”
“What?” I yelped so loud Keisha jumped and nearly fell off her chair.
“Well,” she said her voice almost in the whine that Maggie sometimes got, “I have only a few friends up here, and…I’d like to be near you and the girls.”
“I know you would, Mom, and we’d like to have you.” I’m a realist—and an only child. I’d always known that as Mom got older, it would be better for her to live close to me rather than to have me flying across the country every time she got sick or something. But she wasn’t ready—she’s sixty-three for Pete’s sake, not eighty-three!—and I needed a few years to sort out my relationship, my new business, in short, my life. Where was my life going these days, other than drifting from one day to the next? No, Mom wouldn’t help me find myself, as they say.
