Something brown and furry scampered away into the long grass as I approached the front door. I could hear a television playing loudly inside. I knocked and it switched off, and a woman answered. She was rotund and dressed in a pink cotton nightie sprinkled with little black flowers. She observed me for a few seconds without speaking, tugging at the already stretched collar, exposing her fleshy upper chest.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I looked at her bare feet. “I seem to have caught you at a bad time.”

“No you haven’t.” She smiled, exposing yellowed teeth. “Come in.”

I paused, seeming to have lost my grip on the situation, the order of things. I glanced toward the road.

“I’m, uh. I’m Ted Collins. I’m here with the investigation into—”

“Come inside! I’ll get you a drink!”

One witness who couldn’t ignore who I was. One witness who didn’t seem to care at all who I was. I was in a fairy tale, the wolf going door to door, threatening and friendly in turns, uncovering secrets and trying to decipher riddles.

I entered the house, skirted a heap of damp newspapers in the hall, walked cautiously into the cluttered living room. There was no telling which television had been blaring the show, as four old-fashioned ones in wood-veneer boxes had been stacked in a tall tower before a window covered with a sheepskin comforter. On a low table before an armchair covered in quilts, an army of ants was slowly dismantling a pile of yellow corn chips. I was sweating profusely within seconds, the blankets over all the windows creating a bubble of heat expanding beneath the ceiling.

The woman walked to the fridge and poured me a glass of chocolate milk in a scratched plastic glass. I held it thankfully, not willing to do much more. As she turned and went back to her armchair, I stood rigid in the doorway. There seemed to be nowhere for a guest to sit unless they were willing to brush stuffed toy animals off the many low side tables or perch on the top of a stack of sewing magazines.

“I was wondering if—”

“You can sit down if you want,” she said. She gestured to the carpet at my feet. I glanced down the short hall to the front door, trying to decide how best to get out of the quicksand of a situation I found myself in.

“Do you know anything about the murders at the bar behind this property?” I asked. “A couple of nights ago, there were some shootings. I believe police have come and chatted with you, but from what I’ve been told you haven’t really, uh. You haven’t been willing to say much.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” the woman asked. Avoiding eye contact, I noticed a stack of envelopes on the floor in the corner. They were addressed to Ms. Mona Wallgreen.

“You’re Ms. Wallgreen, is that right?” I asked. “Were you home on the night of the shootings?”