“No, ma’am. That someone was a man who knocked me to the ground when I went in to investigate. White, maybe forty, lots of hair-I didn’t get much of a look.”

“Okay,” she sighed again. “We’ll send someone over.”

“And, Deputy-Marc Whitby visited Olin Taverner last Thursday night. I don’t know if Whitby came back here on Sunday before he diedbut it seems worth exploring. And Taverner had an anonymous visitor on Monday, someone who washed out Taverner’s whisky glass. Just thought you’d like to know.”

CHAPTER 21

Jigsaw Puzzle

It wasn’t until I was back in my own home that I remembered the wheel tracks going into the culvert. I was bone tired, too tired to think about it further, let alone try to decide whether I should do something about the tracks. I soaked in the tub for half an hour and ate a bowl of canned chicken soup. It wasn’t anything like as good as Mrs. Aguilar’s, but it was what I had.

I was drifting off to an early sleep when Deputy Protheroe called me back. I tried to rise to her level of energy as she explained what she’d done. The guard at the entrance to Anodyne Park couldn’t possibly identify my intruder: too many people came in all day, either making deliveries or visiting families, for him to recognize anyone from my vague description.

She added, almost casually, “You didn’t bust the lock on that desk, did you, during your look-around?”

“Deputy, if I’d gone into that desk, you wouldn’t know about it. You got a crime scene team doing prints and so on?”

“The Anodyne management doesn’t like a big police presence-it lowers morale and leads to lawsuits.” She gave a dry laugh. “But just to keep you from calling six times an hour, I did take the glass into our lab.”

“And you’ll let me know what they tell you? Just to keep me from calling you six times an hour?”

“You never know: I might even do that.”

When she’d hung up, I went back to bed, but I’d woken up too much and couldn’t relax. It was still early, only nine. I phoned Amy Blount to see if she’d had any luck either at T-Square, or from Mare’s other neighbors. Unfortunately, the nursing mother was the only person who’d been up in the middle of the night, or at least the only one who’d seen any sign of activity at Mare’s house.

“When I asked who used to visit him, the kids thought I was some jealous girlfriend trying to stake him out-they could remember seeing me come out of Mare’s house, but not anyone else. They began creating a scenario where I had murdered him. It made me laugh, and then it made me cry-I can’t believe how lonely he must have felt, and I can’t believe he’s dead.”

“Yeah. Investigation sometimes feels like a game, until you remember a person died who was important to their friends and family … What about Mare’s editor-Simon Hendricks?”