Dust to Dust

But, then again, Diane was probably overanalyzing.
    “These are not real estate people and I’m not renting out Stacy’s apartment. You can go back home now, Mrs. Pate.”
    As irritating as Mrs. Pate was, she was a gem for investigators—a person who was always on the lookout.
    “Mrs. Pate,” said Diane, “I’m Diane Fallon. May I ask you a few questions about the day Stacy died?”
    The woman suddenly looked startled, as if a loud noise had gone off beside her. Her paranoia had focused on the possibility of new neighbors, not an investigation.
    “What kind of questions?” she said, her hands suddenly clasped against her stomach.
    “Where I live, in Rosewood, we have a Neighborhood Watch. Do you have one here?” asked Diane. She wanted to start out by making sure Mrs. Pate knew she was going to be judged well on her nosiness.
    “Police ain’t much good here,” she said. “No use getting them to put up signs. We have to keep an eye out ourselves.”
    “Did you see any suspicious people here that day?” said Diane.
    “You people here to investigate her death?” Mrs. Pate darted a look at Mr. Dance. “I thought it was something else that killed her.”
    “Did you see anything that made you uneasy?” asked Diane.
    “That was a month ago. . . .”
    “Mrs. Pate,” said Harmon Dance, his voice raspy, “Stacy was good to you. She was good to everybody here in the neighborhood.”
    “Yes, she was,” said Mrs. Pate. “You think somebody kilt her?”
    “We’re looking into the possibility,” said Kingsley.
    The woman was quiet for several moments. Diane thought she was trying to remember. Mrs. Pate scratched the back of her hand and put a palm on her cheek.
    “Not that day, but one or two days before, there was a car, an SUV kind of car. I noticed it ’cause it circled the block a couple of times”—she gestured with her hand, moving it in a circle—“and slowed down here when it went by. It stopped for a time—maybe a few minutes—on the cross street there above your house,” she said, nodding to Dance. “The windows were dark and I couldn’t see inside. It was a black car. No good comes from a black car with dark windows like that.”
    “Did you see a license plate or a window sticker?” asked Diane. “Anything that might help to track down the vehicle?”
    “No. I tried to get a fix on the license, but couldn’t. You think it was them? Somebody in that car did something to poor Stacy?”
    She looked alarmed. Diane guessed that the thought of perhaps having laid eyes on a murderer—or his vehicle—was frightening to her.
    “Have you seen it since?” asked Diane.
    She shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”
    “Why didn’t you tell the police?” said Dance.
    “They never come talk to me, did they?” she said.
    “Thank you, Mrs. Pate,” said Kingsley. He handed her a card. “Please call me if you remember anything more.”
    She studied the card a moment and looked up at him. She put the card in the pocket of her dress and nodded her head sharply. “Glad you ain’t renting to that Chinese guy.”
    They watched her cross the street and go back into her house.
    Dance invited them inside. His home was sparse, neat, and smelled like vegetable soup. Diane sat down on a blue corduroy sofa. Kingsley sat beside her. Harmon Dance sat in a mission-style rocking chair with matching blue cushions opposite them. It creaked with his weight as he rocked.
    “So you think my little girl was murdered by somebody?” he asked.
    “We don’t know,” said Kingsley. “But Dr. Fallon has examined the photographs and thinks it may be a possibility.”
    Dance nodded his head up and down and seemed to shiver. “I told the detective. He had this idiotic idea that because Stacy wasn’t a beauty queen, nobody would fool with killing her, or some such notion. I’m not sure what he thought; he kept changing his mind. He said she did this shameful thing to herself. Well, Stacy may not have been Miss Georgia, but she was a good girl and lots of people liked her. You could go up and down this street and find a lot of older folks who liked her. She was good to them. Took them shopping if they needed to go. Stacy was a decent girl, not what he tried to make her out to be.”
    “Mr. Dance,” said Kingsley, “we would like your permission to have her exhumed. I know that’s painful to think about, but we need to have someone else look at her.”
    Dance was nodding his head as Ross spoke. “You