But nothing like that happened. The housecoat lady watered her driveway. The BMW, driven by a man in khakis and a sports jacket, his eyes shielded by sunglasses, backed out of Trixie’s driveway. A kid, a rare sight in the day in this neighborhood, actually rode by on a bicycle. Earl came out, got in his pickup, and drove off.

And I stood in the window, peering through the blinds, spying on the neighbors, and wondered what kind of a person I was turning into.

Chapter 9

9

sarah’s paper never did run much more than a digest item on the death of Samuel Spender. As she’d predicted, her editors didn’t much care about a death, even a murder, in the suburbs. To get attention out here, you had to be an actress or a former model. You could be eighty years old with a walker, die in a brutal purse snatching, and if, some six decades earlier, you’d posed before the cameras, the papers would run headlines along the lines of “Ex-Model Slain in Purse Grab!” And they would find a glamour shot from sixty years ago, and run it with a caption that said, “In happier times.”

The Suburban, to its credit, ran a respectable news-story-slash-obit on Spender in the edition that came out two days after his death. Under the headline “Outspoken Naturalist Found Slain in Creek,” the story read:

Samuel Spender, a naturalist and conservationist noted for his relentless defense of wilderness areas, as well as his spirited tangles with the Oakwood Town Council, died violently Wednesday in Willow Creek.

Police said Spender, 54, an Oakwood resident since 1965, was hiking through one of his favorite spots when he was confronted by his assailant.

His head was struck with a blunt object, and his body left in the shallow waters of the creek. A nearby resident who was out for a stroll found the body and phoned police from a cell phone.

Oakwood Police Detective Edward Flint said police are pursuing a variety of leads in the investigation, but would not say whether they were expecting to make an arrest shortly.

Ironically, Spender, president and founder of the Willow Creek Preservation Society, died in the very area he had fought for several years to protect. When Valley Forest Estates unveiled plans to build a subdivision in the former government lands near Willow Creek, Spender sought the help of environmental experts who found that houses encroaching on the creek could adversely affect the creek, a natural habitat for several species.

Experts working on behalf of the development were able to persuade the council, however, that a subdivision would have a negligible effect, and the subdivision’s initial phases were approved. Spender, who worked for an Oakwood engineering firm, was still fighting, however, to halt the development’s final stage, which would see houses erected right up to the edge of the creek.