Parker drove down to the end, where no work was being done on the half-completed house. He made a U-turn there, parked the Buick, and got out to walk over and look at what was done of the house.
There was no one working here today at all. Some clapboard siding had been put on, but mostly the exterior and interior walls of the house rose only as widely spaced studs of clean, new wood. This would be a Cape Cod when it was done; at the moment a ladder led to the upper floor in place of the staircase that hadn’t yet been built.
Parker climbed up the ladder and looked around. This would be the attic. No internal partitions had been erected at all, but a full plywood flooring had been put down.
Sitting on a sawhorse over by the edge of the building, Parker could look down along the two blocks intervening and see Detective Dougherty’s house and garage and driveway.
Parker lit a cigarette and waited.
Four
It was a DeSoto, six or seven years old, that finally made the turn into the driveway of 719 Laurel Road. It rolled on into the garage, and Parker got to his feet and stretched.
It had been a longer wait than he’d figured. If Dougherty was running the murder investigation, he’d been on duty since at least midnight last night, but here it was almost four o’clock in the afternoon before he got home.
Driving a DeSoto. In a year or two, if he kept saving his pennies, he could trade up to an Edsel. And after that a Studebaker.
The sun was turning red off to Parker’s right. Shadows were long, and yards and walks were deserted. Half an hour ago there’d been a flurry of homecoming schoolchildren, and in about an hour there’d be another flurry of homecoming fathers, but for now Laurel Road was empty.
Parker climbed back down out of the half-house and across the planks and dirt to the street. He left the Buick where it was and walked down the two curving blocks to 719. He went up the walk and rang the front doorbell. The lawn here was in bad shape, and the aluminium storm door had an aluminum D in the middle of it. Detective Dougherty’s wife opened the front door. Parker knew it was the wife because Dougherty surely couldn’t afford a maid. She looked at him, faintly worried, faintly apologetic, faintly distracted, faintly present: the manner of the little housewife to the stranger at the door.
Parker said, ‘I want to talk to Detective Dougherty.’ Now she was more worried, more apologetic. ‘I don’t think -‘
He knew she wanted to get across the facts that her husband was sitting down to warmed-over roast and planned to go straight to bed after that, but she didn’t know how to say it all in the blank polite bloodless phrases to which the circumstances had her limited. He broke in while she was hunting around for more words, and told her, ‘It’s about the case he’s on, the Ellen Canaday case. You tell him that.’
Now she had something specific to do, she was obviously relieved. She said, ‘Wait here, please,’ and shut the storm door. But she was afraid of offending him somehow, so she left the inner door open, and Parker could look- directly into a small living room bulging with sofa and littered with copies of The Saturday Evening Post.
He waited a couple of minutes, and then Detective Dougherty himself came to the door. He was no more than thirty, but he had all the style of fifty; dressed in his undershirt and trousers and a pair of brown slippers, carrying a rolled napkin in his left hand, walking with the male approximation of a woman in late pregnancy. He wasn’t stout at all, but he gave an impression of soft overweight. His round face was gray with lack of sleep and the need of a shave, and his dry brown hair had already receded from his forehead.
But it was all crap. His eyes were slate gray, and all they did was watch. The way he held his right hand, his revolver was still on his hip somewhere.
Parker stood loose, hands at his sides with the palms showing. When Dougherty pushed open the storm door, Parker said, ‘I’m glad I caught you home.’
Dougherty said, ‘That’s your car up the street, isn’t it? The Buick?’
Parker shrugged. ‘It’s mine.’
‘Come around to the side door.’ Dougherty pointed with the hand that held the napkin. ‘Around to the right there. It’s okay to cut across the lawn.’
Parker went around to the right, where there was a narrow space between garage and house. When he’d first driven by, he’d thought the garage was attached, but not quite. The roof overhang from both sides nearly met in the middle overhead, and a side door in the garage wall faced a side door in the house wall, but the two were separate buildings.
Parker moved down this cramped alley to the side door, and a minute later the door was opened by Dougherty.
Four steps led up to a closed door. Going to the left instead, a flight of stairs led down to the basement. Dougherty, standing up on the steps in front of the closed door in order to leave room for Parker to come inside, motioned toward the basement and said, ‘We can talk down there.’
Parker went first. Dougherty shut the side door and went down alter him.
The basement had been half converted to a game room or family room or some such thing. Vertical wood paneling covered the walls and formed a partition separating this part of the basement from the part with the utilities in it. Nothing had been done to make a ceiling yet, but over in a corner a few squares of vinyl flooring had been put in place over the original cement. For furniture, there was a pingpong table, plus a bulging sagging scratchy-looking sofa and a card table and some folding chairs.
Dougherty said, ‘The sofa’s too uncomfortable. Let’s sit at the card table. Take off your coat, why don’t you?’
‘I won’t be staying long.’
Dougherty shrugged and said, ‘Well, sit down a minute anyway.’
They sat across from one another at the card table. Parker sat leaning back, his hands at rest in his lap. Dougherty leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
