“Huh,” the woman said. “Anyway, I’m afraid I can’t tell you a thing. I was busy painting, and my studio faces the back. I get in the creative zone and I don’t even hear voices, doorbells, nothing. You’re lucky I was fixing coffee just now or I wouldn’t have known you were here.”
“I see. Well, thank you. Enjoy your art making.”
She grinned. “You can count on it. I could no more not paint than not breathe.” The door clicked shut. I looked to either side. Was it worth knocking on neighbors’ doors? To the right was a screen of high, thorny pyracantha shrubs between the houses, the bushes covered in the bright red berries that gave the plant its common name of firethorn. To the left every blind and drapery was drawn tight and the house had an unoccupied look to it. Strike two. I supposed I could ask across the street.
I trudged down the steps onto the front walk and was halfway to the road when I glanced to my left. A woman walked briskly toward me on the sidewalk carrying two heavily laden cloth bags. One had a baguette poking out the top and the other a dark green bunch of frilly kale. She wore tennies with calf-length yoga pants and moved with the easy grace of an athlete. I paused when she turned up the walk. Was she Paul’s housemate? Would she speak to me? Or maybe she was visiting one of the other apartments and had nothing to do with Paul.
“Grace?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose, pushing black-rimmed glasses up the bridge. “Yes. Do I know you?” She had a Japanese surname, but her Asian ancestry looked a couple of generations removed.
“I’m Robbie Jordan. I’m looking into Paul’s death and wondered if we could talk for a moment.”
The color drained from her face. She glanced away, then back at me. “What do you mean, you’re looking into it?”
“Could we sit for a little bit? I can explain.” I pointed to the two rockers and the hanging swing on the porch.
She nodded and I followed her up there. She set down the bags and plopped heavily into the farther rocking chair. I perched on the swing at the end at right angles to her.
I cleared my throat. “I met Paul on Sunday. My mother, who died two years ago, used to be in the same group as him.”
“The anti-agrochemical group.” She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them.
“Yes. Paul said he thought maybe Mom was killed because of her activism. I live in Indiana now, but I’m out here for a visit. What he said shocked me, of course, and I’ve been trying to get at the truth.”
“Have you learned anything?” She tilted her head, looking more normal again.
“Not yet. The pathologist in the coroner’s office is trying to find my mom’s autopsy report. At the time they said she died of a ruptured aneurysm.”
“What does her cause of death have to do with Paul?”
“May I ask, were you more than roommates?”
“We were good friends,” Grace said. “And I . . . I was the one who found him. I called 911, of course, but it was too late.” She swiped at her eye.
“I’m so sorry. Nobody should have to die alone. My mom did, too.”
“He was just lying there. Cold. It was awful.” She shuddered.
“It must have been.” I shook my head and reached over to pat her knee. “Did the police come?”
She studied her hands. A bird rustled in the middle of the long, narrow leaves of the oleander bush beyond the porch. It was a lethally poisonous plant, despite its beauty when in bloom. A lawn mower engine roared to life somewhere on the block.
Grace looked up at me. “They did, with their blue gloves and their evidence bags. I kept asking what they were looking for, but they told me to wait here on the porch. A detective came out and asked me a million questions. I’d been teaching yoga in Goleta all morning. I didn’t see anybody or hear a thing before I left. I don’t think I helped the dude at all.”
“Where do you teach?”
“Pause Yoga. It’s my studio.” She frowned. “I didn’t know when Paul had come home, what he’d eaten, anything. Of course I told them about his environmental activism and his complete hatred for Agrosafe.”
“Of course. Did you see what they took out of the apartment?”
“His laptop. His pack. And his lunch container. That part seemed odd.”
“A takeout box?”
“Sort of. It was like one of those divided Styrofoam takeout boxes except it was glass, with a tight-fitting lid. He refused to have anything to do with containers that weren’t reusable, even though it was heavy to carry on his bike. His arrangement with the Green Artichoke was he could always take home a meal when he left work. I guess they thought it made up for his low pay.”
And the police wanted to check the container for poison residue. Good.
“They took some of the oleander leaves, too.” She pointed to the big shrub at the end of the porch.
I knew how toxic oleander was. When I was in high school a child had chewed on one of the long, pointed leaves while playing alone and had died of the poison. The detective must be trying to cover all his bases.
Grace gave me an intent look. “Robbie, do you think someone killed him? There was no blood or wound or anything. It looked like he’d had a heart attack or something and fell down dead.”
Exactly like Mom. “I don’t know. I do have an old friend who works in the police department. I can see if he knows anything.”
“Will you let me know if you hear?” she asked. “Tell me your number. I’ll text you so you’ll have mine.”
I read off my number to her. She tapped
