bother them much if they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, it might shake them up to know they were being investigated. Shake up people with something to hide and it can lead to mistakes and answers.
House canvassing is not one of my favorite tasks. Most city residents are leery of strangers these days, no matter how well dressed, polite, and nonthreatening, and if I have to flash my ID, it turns some hostile and makes others close up like cactus flowers at sundown. These were the reactions I got from the first five neighbors who were home and took the trouble to answer their doorbells. Only two deigned to look at Virden’s photo and none of the five could or would own up to seeing him or his Porsche in the neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.
The sixth person I talked to, a woman in one of the houses on Minnesota Street catercorner to the McManus place, was the only one who had anything to tell me-of a sort. And not without some initial confusion and difficulty.
She was in her late sixties, the owner of a pile of frizzy gray hair, a pair of beadily alert gray eyes, plump cheeks red stained with broken capillaries, and a set of false teeth that had been improperly fitted and gave her something of an overbite. She took one look at me and said in disgusted tones, “Oh, God, a new one.”
“No, ma’am, I’m not selling-”
“You’re pretty old, aren’t you?”
“Old?”
“To be chasing after young women. Laurie’s not even forty yet.”
“I’m afraid you have me-”
“Have you? Not me, mister. You or any other man, now that my husband’s gone to his reward.” She spoke with a slight lisp, the false teeth clicking now and then like little finger snaps. “My daughter’s got no morals, same like her father. Not much taste, either, I must say. You’re old enough to be her father… and married, too.”
“I am, yes, but-”
“Not even trying to hide it, wedding ring right there on your finger. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“You don’t understand-”
“The devil I don’t understand. I know all about men like you, I was married to a cheating old goat myself for thirty-seven years. Go away; go back to your wife. Laurie’s not here.”
She started to close the door. I got a foot in the way, the photograph up between her face and mine, and said fast so she couldn’t interrupt, “I don’t know any woman named Laurie. I’m looking for a missing person, the man in this photo, he was in this neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.”
She batted her eyes, clicked her teeth, flushed a little, and said, “Oh my God,” in a subdued and mortified tone. “I thought you were screwing my daughter.”
“So I gathered.”
“I’m sorry. You must think I’m awful, talking to you the way I did…”
“No, ma’am,” I lied. I eased the photo a little closer. “Do you recognize this man?”
She squinted, clicked, and lisped, “No. Never saw anybody looks like that.”
“He was driving a new black Porsche.”
“I don’t know anything about cars. I wouldn’t know a Porsche from a petunia.”
“Sports car. Pretty distinctive.”
“Never saw it. The man’s missing, you say? He live around here?”
“No. Visiting R. L. McManus.”
“Oh, the dog woman. New boarder over there?”
“No. He was there on a personal matter.”
“Gate sign’s down, so she’s got a new one. That’s why I asked. Steady string in and out of there, you’d think some of them would stay longer than they do. Must be the damn dogs barking all the time that drives them away.”
“How well do you know her, Mrs.-?”
“Hightower, Selma Hightower. Just to talk to, that’s all. Standoffish. Keeps to herself.”
“Jane Carson?”
“Hah. No, and I keep my distance when I see her.”
“Why is that?”
“Always has that big black dog with her. Dogs like that make me nervous. Supposed to be well trained, but the way they look at you…” She shivered, double-clicked. “Brrrr.”
“Can you tell me what their relationship is?”
“Whose relationship? Her and that dog?”
“The two women. Does Ms. Carson, who works for Ms. McManus, live on the premises?”
“Lives there. Moved in together six or seven years ago. What they do is none of my business.” A valid enough comment, which she spoiled by adding, “Couple of lesbians, if you ask me. Hardly ever see a man around the place, except when one shows up with a dog to be boarded.”
“All the boarders are ladies, then?”
“How should I know? You think I go peeking under their tails?”
I said, as patiently as I could, “I meant the people who rent a room there.”
“Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so? Almost all women, that’s right. One old man early last year, must’ve been eighty-he’s the only one I remember.”
“One room for rent or more than one?”
“Just one. That’s what Rose told me.”
“Rose?”
“She lived over there for a few months a while back. Nice person, my age, widow like me only she didn’t have any kids, lucky her. We had a lot in common. Bingo, All My Children, a toddy now and then. She liked her toddies, Rose did. That’s how she met the dog woman. Not McManus, the other one. Carson.”
“… I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
She gave me a well-then-you-must-be-dense look. “In a cocktail lounge. Both of them having toddies and they got to talking and that’s how Rose ended up here. She couldn’t afford the rents down there anymore.”
“Down where?”
“What they call SoMa now. That’s where Rose and the dog woman were having their toddies.”
“Do you remember the name of the cocktail lounge?”
“Rose never said. Why do you care what cocktail lounge?”
“Curiosity. What was Rose’s last name?”
“O’Day. Rose O’Day. Pretty name.”
“Yes. When did-”
“Irish,” Mrs. Hightower said.
“… Pardon?”
“Rose. She was Irish.”
“When did she move out?”
“Well, let’s see. Must’ve been more than three years now. That’s right, three years in February.” Click, frown, double-click. “Kind of funny,” she said.
“How so?”
“Never said good-bye. Just up and left. And us with a date to play bingo over at the church. I saw the dog woman, McManus, down at the market a few days afterward and asked her how come Rose left so sudden. Said she went back to Michigan-that’s where she’s from, Saginaw, Michigan, like in the song. Moved back to Saginaw, Michigan, to live with her brother.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t,” Selma Hightower said, “and neither do I. Rose told me she was an only child.”
“Well, people sometimes say that if they’re estranged from a relative-”
“Hah. Rose didn’t have anybody to be estranged from. She didn’t have anybody, period. Alone in the world after her husband went to his reward. All her family dead and gone and her all alone in the world.”
Half an hour after I left Mrs. Hightower, I finally located somebody who’d seen David Virden on Tuesday. Two somebodies, in fact. Both of them in the same place-a watering hole on Third just around the corner from 20th
