“I don’t blame you. Listen, Tillie. Nothing makes me crazier than sixteen unanswered questions in a row. I’m going to see what I can find out about this murder next door. It has to be connected somehow. Have you talked to Leonard Grice recently?”
“Oh, he hasn’t been there since it happened,” she said. “I haven’t seen him at any rate.”
“What about the Snyders on the other side? Do you think they could be of any help?”
“They might. Do you want me to talk to them?”
“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll check with them myself. Just one more thing. Leonard Grice has a nephew… a kid with a pink Mohawk.”
“Mike.”
“Yeah, him. Is there any chance he might have been the person who broke in last night? I just talked to him outside and he’s not a big guy. He might well have looked like a woman in the dark.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, skepticism plain. “I couldn’t swear to it, but I don’t think it was him.”
“Well. Just a thought. I don’t like to make assumptions about gender. It really could have been anyone. I’m going to go next door and see what the Snyders have to say. You take care of yourself.”
The house at 2093 was similar in feeling to the house that burned… the same-size lot, same ill proportions, the same white frame and red brick. The brick itself was roughly textured, a cunning imitation of fired clay. There was a FOR SALE sign out front with a banner pasted across it boasting SOLD! as though an auction had been enacted just before I started up the walk. A large tree shaded the yard down to a chill, and dark ivy choked the trunk, spreading out in all directions in a dense mat that nearly smothered the walk. I went up the porch steps and knocked on the aluminum screen door. The front door had a big glass panel in it, blocked by a sheer white curtain stretched between two rods. After a moment, someone moved the curtain aside and peered out.
“Mr. Snyder?”
The curtain was released and the door opened a crack. The man appeared to be in his seventies, corpulent and benign. Old age had given him back his baby fat and the same look of grave curiosity.
I held out a business card. “My name is Kinsey Millhone. Could I have a few minutes of your time? I’m trying to track down Elaine Boldt, who lives in that big condominium over there, and Tillie Ahlberg suggested I talk to you. Can you help me out?”
Mr. Snyder released the catch on the screen door. “I’ll do what I can. Come on in.” He held the screen door open and I followed him inside. The house was as dark as the inside of a soup can and smelled of cooked celery.
From the rear of the house, a shrill voice called out.
“What’s that? Who all is out there, Orris?”
“Someone Tillie sent!”
“Who?”
“Hold on a minute,” he said to me, “she’s deaf as a yard of grass. Take a seat.”
Mr. Snyder lumbered toward the back. I perched on an upholstered chair with wooden arms. The fabric was a dark maroon plush with a high-low pattern of foliage, some nondescript sort that I’d never seen in real life. The seat was sprung; all hard edges and the smell of dust. There was a matching couch stacked with newspapers and a low mahogany coffee table with an inset of oval glass barely visible for all the paraphernalia on top: dog-eared paperbacks, plastic flowers in a ceramic vase shaped like two mice in an upright embrace, a bronze version of praying hands, six pencils with erasers chewed off, pill bottles, and a tumbler that had apparently held hot milk which had left a lacy pattern on the sides of the glass like baby’s breath. There was also an inexplicable pile of pancakes wrapped in cellophane. I leaned forward, squinting. It was a candle. Mr. Snyder could have moved the entire table outside and called it a yard sale.
From the back end of the house, I could hear his exasperated explanation to his wife. “It’s nobody selling anything,” he snapped. “It’s some woman Tillie sent, says she’s looking for Mrs. Boldt. Boldt!! That widda woman lived upstairs of Tillie, the one played cards with Leonard and Martha now and again.”
There was a feeble interjection and then his voice dropped.
“No, you don’t need to come out! Just keep set. I’ll take care of it.”
He reappeared, shaking his head, his jowls flushed. His chest was sunken into his swollen waistline. He’d had to belt his pants below his big belly and his cuffs drooped at the ankles. He hitched at them irritably, apparently convinced he’d lose them if he didn’t hang on. He wore slippers without socks and all the hair had been worn away from his ankles, which were narrow and white, like soup bones.
“Switch on that light there,” he said to me. “She likes to pinch on util’ties. Half the time, I can’t see a thing.”
I reached over to the floor lamp and pulled the chain. A forty-watt bulb came on, buzzing faintly, not illuminating much. I could hear a steady thump and shuffling in the hall.
Mrs. Snyder appeared, moving a walker in front of her.
She was small and frail and her jaw worked incessantly. She stared intently at the hardwood floor and her feet made a sticky sound as she walked, as though the floor had been shellacked and had never dried properly. She paused, hanging on to her walker with shaking hands. I stood up, projecting my voice.
“Would you like to sit here?” I asked her.
She surveyed the wall with rheumy eyes, trying to discover the source of the sound. Her head was small, like a little pumpkin off the vine too long, looking shrunken from some interior softening. Her eyes were narrow inverted V’s and one tooth protruded from her lower gum like a candle wick. She seemed confused.
“What?” she said, but the question had a hopeless ring to it. I didn’t think anybody answered her these days.
Snyder waved at me impatiently. “She’s fine. Just leave her be. Doctor wants her on her feet more anyway,” he said.
I watched her uncomfortably. She continued to stand there, looking puzzled and dismayed, like a baby who’s learned how to pull itself up on the sides of a crib, but hasn’t figured out how to sit down again.
Mr. Snyder ignored her, settling on the couch with his knees spread. His belly filled the space between his legs like a duffel bag, as cumbersome on him as a clown suit with a false front. He put his hands on his knees, giving me his full attention as though I might be soliciting his entire history for inclusion on “This Is Your Life.”
“We been in this house forty year,” he said. “Bought it back in nineteen and forty-three for four thousand dollar. Bet you never heard of a house that cheap. Now it’s worth one hunnert and fifteen thousand. Just the lot we’re settin’ on. That don’t even count the house. They can knock this place down and build anything they want. Hell, she can’t even get that walker into the commode. Now Leonard, next door, nearly sold his house for a hunnert and thirty-five, had it in escroll and everything and then the deal fell out. That about done him in. He’s the one I feel sorry for. House burnt. Wife dead. You know what the kids these days would say… his carnal was bad.”
He went right on talking while I took mental notes. This was better than I’d hoped. I had thought I’d have to tell a few fibs, leading the conversation around judiciously from Elaine’s whereabouts to the subject of the murder next door, but here sat Orris Snyder giving testimony extemporaneously. I realized he’d stopped. He was looking at me.
“You’ve sold this house? I saw the sign out front.”
“Sold,” he said with satisfaction. “We can move us up to that retirement place when the kids get everything here packed up. We’ve got a regular reservation. We’re on the list and everything. She’s old. She doesn’t even know where she is half the time. Fire broke out in this place, she’d lay there and cook.”
I glanced at his wife, who had apparently locked her knees. I was worried she would pass out, but he didn’t seem to give it much thought. She might as well have been a hall tree.
Snyder went on as though prompted by questions from an unseen audience. “Yessir, I sold it. She like to have a fit, but the house is in my name and I own it free and clear. Paid four thousand dollar. Now I call that a profit, wouldn’t you?”