Why?

NINETEEN

The obvious answer—Azalea was protecting someone.

Or maybe she saw something and wasn’t certain what to think, how to interpret it.

I decided to take a slightly different tack.

“Could the person who pushed Vera have seen you?”

Azalea shook her head. “Don’t think so. It was dark down where I was, and I scrunched up against that door. Didn’t want nobody to know I be there.”

No hesitation there. Good. “After you heard Vera fall, what did you do? Take me through it again.”

She frowned at me. I thought she was going to protest, but she complied after a brief hesitation. “Like I done said, I went up to her to see if they’s anything I could do, but she was dead.”

“Did you look up at the top of the stairs at all?”

She nodded. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.

“When did you look? Before you went to check on her?”

“I don’t rightly remember,” Azalea said slowly. She glanced away.

Again it didn’t feel right. I pressed her. “Was the door at the top of the stairs open or closed when you looked?”

“Closed.”

“So whoever it was got out of the stairwell before you looked up?” I felt like I was leading the witness, so to speak, but I had to wring whatever information I could from her.

“Reckon so.” Suddenly she pushed back in her chair and stood. “Ain’t nothing more I can tell you, Mr. Charlie. I need to get back to finishing my dusting.”

“Okay, Azalea. You go on ahead.” There was no point in my insisting that she stay. Frankly I was surprised I’d managed to keep her talking this long.

Diesel butted my leg with his head again. Evidently he had gone too long without attention, and he was letting me know. My mind remained elsewhere as I rubbed his head and down his spine.

Despite what Azalea had told me—that the upper door was closed when she looked—I was convinced she was holding something back. She must have seen something. But what? Or whom?

Then again, maybe I had simply misread her body language. Was I too anxious for a simple solution to this mess?

A simple solution would be that Morty Cassity pushed Vera down the stairs, angry because she refused to divorce him.

I needed a drink. My throat felt dry after my interrogation of Azalea, so I got up and poured myself a glass of water and downed it.

That was better. I leaned against the counter and stared down at Diesel. He sat at my feet and stared up at me as if to ask, “Okay, what now?”

“I’m not sure, boy.”

He meowed and thrust out a paw to touch my leg. I had to smile. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to convey, but the fact that he always seemed to respond when I talked to him made me feel like we were having a conversation.