Mindy looks up briefly and waves. I wave back and return to my car.
Seven
I’m going through the motions like a sleepwalker. I’ll wake up and find that none of this has happened. Monique will be in Tacoma and I’ll be in bed after having drunk too much wine. Or Scotch. But the pain I feel in the center of my chest tells me I’m awake. I’m here, on the road, doing the legwork.
First step, check with all the neighbors. Get names, vehicles, descriptions, anything and everything that can help me identify who was where and when they were there. This is a nice neighborhood, but the yards are too perfectly kept. Too big. I don’t imagine any of the owners do their own landscaping. I doubt the killer was here during the day to do their dirty work, so the landscapers would have seen nothing.
Plus, our coroner, Jerry Larsen, was getting into his van as I was leaving and told me he couldn’t give me any kind of accurate time or date of death. But his guess was two days, because that was the last time the neighbor walking her dog said she’d seen her. The coagulation of the blood supports that. I remember Tony saying what the woman actually said was that she’d had tea with her. I wonder when that was.
I had the neighbor’s name and address: 123 Julianne Lane, Mrs. Perkins. I drive past the house and for another ten minutes I drive around the neighborhood to get a feel for it. I’ve lived in Port Townsend a couple of years and have never been to this area. The extent of my exploring has been driving to Port Hadlock and Chimacum and back home. Maybe a little downtown to one of five eating establishments and/or bars. Outside of investigations, I don’t go anywhere. My last case took me to several islands, but I wasn’t sightseeing.
I pull into the driveway at 123. Mrs. Perkins is standing behind the storm door. She is a delicate-looking woman with wispy blue-white hair. She adjusts her large, black plastic-framed glasses and squints at me. The house where Monique was murdered is three long blocks away. There’s no possibility this woman saw anything from her house. To be honest, I can’t see her walking that far just to take her dog for morning business.
I knock on the door and hold my badge up and identify myself. Mrs. Perkins comes to the door, cocks her head and her glasses slide down. I could burn ants with the lenses. She pushes them back up the bridge of her small nose.
“I’m Detective Carpenter,” I say loudly, in case she has problems hearing as well as seeing. “Sheriff’s Office.”
She doesn’t move.
“You just talked to my boss, Sheriff Gray. I’m here to talk about your friend, Monique Delmont.” I don’t tell her I’m there to ask questions, because I think she’ll pull her head all the way into her shell and scuttle out of sight and back into the surf.
“She wasn’t really my friend per se.”
Mrs. Perkins says this loudly like I’m the person with hearing impairment. This is going to be fun.
She unlatches the door.
“Come in. I’ll put coffee on. I drink tea myself, but I make a good pot of coffee. I roast my own beans. That’s the secret.”
I walk behind her to her living room. She lives in a nice area, but the houses are much closer together than where I just came from. They are also directly across the street from each other. Out of the window I have a clear view of the living room of the neighbor across the way. A woman is standing there, window watching me. She looks a good deal like Mrs. Perkins. Both are in their late eighties, short, white permed hair tinged light blue. Her glasses are horn-rimmed and attached to a silver chain worn around her neck. Both women are wearing what my aunt Ginger called a housedress: a shapeless, one-piece dress with short sleeves. The dress across the way is red with big white flowers. Mrs. Perkins’s frock is white with red flowers. I imagine they call each other every morning and come up with the dress code.
Mrs. Perkins catches me looking across the street. “That’s Mrs. Guidry. Leona’s a widow like me. She’s so nosy.”
“Did Mrs. Guidry know Monique—Mrs. Delmont?”
“Have a seat,” she says. “The couch is very comfortable. My son sent it as a Christmas present. Shipped it from Arizona, where he and his wife and three children live. He works for Amazon. Never comes home much since his dad died.”
She didn’t answer my question, but I’ve learned that with some older folks you don’t push. They come from a different era when people still visited and talked and got to know each other before they got down to the nitty-gritty. My mom said she remembered her parents and their neighbors or friends actually sitting in each other’s kitchens and playing games, drinking coffee or something stronger. I look up again and there is Mrs. Guidry, still glued to her window like a tree frog.
“Nosy thing,” Mrs. Perkins says, and makes a dismissive motion with her hand. “Don’t pay her any mind. She’s like a cat. If you give her the slightest provocation, she’ll follow you around. Would you like tea, Detective?”
What I’d like is an answer, but I’ll have to play along.
“Yes, please. Can we sit in your kitchen? I find it much more pleasant and less formal.” I sounded a little like Betty Crocker just then, but it works. She smiles and crooks a twig-like finger at me to follow.
The kitchen table is made of some dark hardwood and there’s a half-finished monstrous puzzle on top. The picture on the puzzle box is that of a fireman wearing only heavy cotton pants and a red fire hat. He is holding a hose, and what she’d completed showed a heavily muscled chest and part of a six-pack. A four-pack, to be exact. There are words at the bottom of the puzzle:
LET ME PUT OUT YOUR FIRE
I suspect Mrs. Perkins keeps herself entertained, although I’m not sure how she sees well enough to do a puzzle.
She smiles and fills a kettle, turns on the burner and comes back to the table. We both sit.
“Maybe you can help me with this puzzle. I’ve done the darn thing three times and I always get the fireman done first, but this time I can’t seem to find some pieces.”
Maybe she ate them. I look at the floor. Several flesh-colored puzzle pieces are under my chair. I retrieve them and fit them into place.
“There he is,” she says with a huge grin. “Isn’t he adorable? I could just eat him with a spoon.” She blushes, and her hand goes to her face. “I’m sorry.” Then she starts to cry.
I wait her out.
“You must think I’m a silly, dirty old woman.”
It passes through my mind, but I want to get on with this. I say, “No. I don’t think that at all.”
She dabs at her eyes with the tip of a napkin. The teakettle screams like a train whistle. She gets up and takes down what I believe are her best china cups. The handles on the teacups are so small and fragile, I have to pinch them between my thumb and forefinger, and that puts my pinky finger in the air. My mother called that hoity-toity. Pretentious. Lifestyles of the rich and clueless. It is, however, the only way I can hold the damn cup.
I put several teaspoons of sugar in my tea and stir carefully, afraid I’ll break the china or spill it. Mrs. Perkins opens a cabinet above the stove and takes down a bottle of Johnnie Walker. She pours several capfuls in her tea and offers the bottle to me. I decline. I’m on duty. And I’ve spoiled it with sugar already.