I Is for Innocent

Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Rest Homes, and Sanitariums, most of which simply cross-referenced each other. Finally, under Nursing Homes, I found a comprehensive list. There was only one such facility in the vicinity of the accident. I made a note of the address and then turned the lights out and went back up to bed. If I could link that pickup to the one Tippy's father owned, it might go a long way toward explaining why she was reluctant to admit she was out. It would also verify every word David Barney'd said.
    In the morning, after my usual three-mile run, a shower, breakfast, and a quick call to the office, I drove out to the South Rockingham neighborhood where the old man had been killed. At the turn of the century, South Rockingham was all ranchland, flat fields planted to beans and walnuts, harvested by itinerant crews who traveled with steam engines, cookhouses, and bedroll wagons. An early photograph shows some thirty hands lined up in front of their cumbersome, clanking machinery. Most of the men are mustachioed and glum, wearing bandannas, long-sleeved shirts, overalls, and felt hats. Staunchly they lean on their pitchforks while a dusty noon sun beats down. The land in such pictures always looks pitiless and flat. There are few trees and the grass, if it grows at all, seems patchy and sparse. Later aerial photos show the streets radiating from a round hub of land, like the spokes of a wagon wheel. Beyond the outermost rim, the squares of young citrus groves are pieced together like a quilt. Now South Rockingham is a middle-class neighborhood of modest custom-built homes, half of which went up before 1940. The balance were constructed during a miniboom in the ten years between 1955 and 1965. Every parcel is dense with vegetation, houses crowded onto every available lot. Still, the area is considered desirable because it's quiet, self-contained, attractive, and well kept.
    I located the convalescent hospital, a one-story stucco structure flanked on three sides by parking lots. From the outside, the fifty-bed facility looked plain and clean, probably expensive. I parked at the curb and climbed four concrete steps to the sloping front walk. The grass on either side was in its dormant stage, clipped short, a mottled yellow. An American flag hung limply from a pole near the entrance.
    I pushed through a wide door into a comfortably furnished reception area, decorated in the style of one of the better motel chains. Christmas hadn't surfaced yet. The color scheme was pleasant: blues and greens in soothing, noninflammatory shades. There was a couch covered in chintz and four matching upholstered chairs arranged so as to suggest intimate lobby chats. The magazines on the end tables were neatly fanned out in an arc of overlapping titles, Modern Maturity being foremost. There were two ficus trees, which on closer inspection turned out to be artificial. Both might have used a dusting, but at least they weren't subject to whitefly and blight.
    At the desk, I asked to see the nursing home director and was directed to the office of a Mr. Hugo, halfway down the corridor to my left. This wing of the building was strictly administrative. There were no patients in evidence, no wheelchairs, gurneys, or medical paraphernalia. The very air was stripped of institutional odors. I explained my business briefly, and after a five-minute wait Mr. Hugo's personal secretary ushered me into his office. Nursing home directors must have a lot of holes to fill in their appointment books.
    Edward Hugo was a black man in his midsixties with a curly mix of gray and white hair and a wide white mustache. His complexion was glossy brown, the color of caramel. The lines in his face suggested an origami paper folded once, then flattened out again. He was conventionally dressed, but something in his manner hinted at obligatory black-tie appearances for local charity events. He shook my hand across his desk and then took his seat again while I took mine. He folded his hands in front of him on the desk. "What can I help you with?"
    "I'm trying to learn the name of a former patient of yours, an old gentleman who was killed in a hit-and-run accident six years ago at Christmas."
    He nodded. "I know the man you're referring to. Can you explain your interest?"
    "I'm trying to verify an alibi in another criminal matter. It would help if I could find out if the driver was ever found."
    "I don't believe so. Not to my knowledge, at any rate. To tell you the