Invasion of Privacy

hair was still sandy, but it didn’t change my impression of his age at the door. He wore a chamois shirt, faded and patched, over corduroy pants and old hiking boots. His wiry body gave off that faint, musty odor of a man who doesn’t have a woman reminding him to change his shirt every day. The dog by his side was a mutt, the German shepherd in him trying hard to push past three or four other bloodlines.
    Whitt said, “Beer?”
    “Please.”
    The living room was small and fitted with a woodstove that took some kind of pellets stored in a nearby aluminum feed bin, a big scoop stuck in the center of the pellet mound. The furniture was sturdy but old, wedding photos from the same vintage on top of the television and copycat Remington prints covering the walls. The prints depicted cavalry mounted on chestnuts and roans being ambushed by war-painted Indians on Appaloosa horses.
    Whitt came back with two cans of Hamm’s beer, the dog trailing closely. Giving me one of the cans, my host sat in the opposite chair, the dog now slumping over the front of his boots.
    “Thanks, Mr. Whitt.”
    “Vern, please. We’re both well past being young.”
    “Then John, too.”
    “All right, John, what brings you after the Stepanians?”
    Whitt might be warming up, but the sharp features discouraged lying. “I’m looking into a disappearance in Boston . I thought talking to the Stepanians might help.”
    “ Boston .” Another slow, sad shake. “I’m afraid you’ve come a long way for naught.”
    “How do you mean, Vern?”
    He sipped his beer. “Nibur and Ellen, they’re gone to glory.”
    I stopped with the Hamm’s halfway to my mouth.
    “Dead?”
    “Killed by the fire that destroyed their place.” Whitt gestured with his can toward the empty lot. “Next door.”
    “When?”
    “When. Let’s see, it was about seven—no, my Katie was still alive,” the beer toward the wedding photos, “so it’s at least ten years ago, maybe eleven. Yes, eleven.” He looked at me. “I lost Katie to a heart attack.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    Whitt nudged his dog with the toe of a boot. “We got Chief Joseph here the year before she died. Katie named him after the Nez Perce chief who stood off all those cavalry so long.” He gestured toward the prints this time. “Admired that Indian, Katie did—she always liked it when I said that. ‘Katie did,’ made her think of a cricket sound, summer things.” He coughed. “Anyway, Katie named the pup after Chief Joseph, and when she died, he just followed me around everywhere, like he’d lost track of her and didn’t want the same to happen with me.” Whitt looked toward the wedding shots again. “Don’t think I’m going senile, but somehow the years since she’s been gone kind of, I don’t know, run together.”
    I took a little beer. “You said the fire was eleven years ago?”
    Back to me. “What? Oh, right. Tragedy. Katie was better friends with Nibur and Ellen than I was, being off working all the time. But they were fine people, and when the flames took them, well, we had some money set aside, and Katie said, ‘Wouldn’t it make sense to buy their lot rather than see somebody else build on it?’ So we did.” The slow, sad shake. “Hit the daughter real hard, especially after what happened to her roommate up at the university.”
    “The daughter?”
    “Yes. She wasn’t up there a year I don’t believe, when her roommate died.”
    I leaned forward. “Died how, Vern?”
    “In a fall. Terrible thing. Broken neck, I think it was.”
    “Do you remember the roommate’s name?”
    “No. No, I don’t, but it was the brother who found her.”
    “The roommate’s brother?”
    “No. Lana’s. Steven was up there too. His senior year, if I’m remembering the spread right.”
    I stared at Whitt. “Steven Stepanian is Lana’s brother?”
    “And devoted to her, he was. Always taking her places, even when they were in their early teens, then him coming home from the university when he was up there and she was still in high school down here. A nicer pair of youngsters you couldn’t have wanted. Katie and me weren’t able to have kids, but I’ll tell you something. I can’t imagine being prouder of my own than I was of them, handling all that tragedy piled one on top of the other.”
    My voice sounded hollow to me as I said, “Handled it how, Vern?”
    “Well, at Nibur and Ellen’s funeral, big brother looked crushed every time he was alone, but by his