Invasion of Privacy

kind of time.” Elmendorf squinted at me. “What’s the matter, you didn’t find out what your people needed from what we told you before?”
    “Some, but not enough. I never got the chance to talk with Andrew Dees.”
    “ Dees ? Huh.” The expression came out as a laugh. “I think he’s got lady trouble.”
    I stopped. “I thought you told me on Wednesday that you barely knew him?”
    “That’s right. But he had his back door—the sliding-glass thing?—or something open last night, because I could hear him and her going at it through my bedroom window, even with the Robinettes’ unit in between us.”
    “An argument?”
    “Yeah. Dees yelling and her half-apologizing and half-yelling back. It was a doozy, whatever the hell they were getting into.”
    “What time was this?”
    “I don’t know. Around eight, maybe?”
    Pretty much what the Stepanians had said. “Could you tell what they were fighting about?”
    “Not really. Just caught a couple of things, like Dees saying, ‘I can’t believe you hired him,’ and her saying, ‘What was I supposed to do?’ ”
    “Anything else?”
    “Not that comes to mind. I was kind of trying to figure them out, when all of a sudden it stopped, like they quit, or at least closed the door.”
    “The glass one.”
    “Or a window. Whatever I was hearing them through. But it sounded to me in my bedroom like they were on the first floor of his place.”
    “You didn’t happen to see an orange Porsche parked outside here, did you?”
    “What, last night?”
    “Yes.”
    “No, no, I didn’t. But to be honest, I wasn’t downstairs at all yesterday.” Then Elmendorf squinted at me again. “What the hell does an orange Porsche have to do with anything?”
    “Just a thought.”

    When the door to the Robinette unit opened, I could hear the soft strains of an R&B ballad in the background, a male vocalist whose voice I recognized but whose name I couldn’t recall. James Robinette wore just baggy basketball shorts, no socks, shoes, or even a shirt. His upper body had that drawn and quartered look of the undeveloped athlete. Frowning, he said, “What do you want?”
    Cooler than the greeting Pd gotten my first time. “I wonder if we could talk a minute?”
    “Mom’s not here.”
    “That’s okay. Maybe you can help me.”
    “Can’t.” Robinette inclined his head toward the living room behind him. “Busy.”
    “Won’t take long.”
    “It’s taken long enough, man.”
    He started to close the door on me. I put my foot against it, which stopped both the door and him.
    Robinette said, “Yo, man, why you hassling with me?”
    Less of the preppy, more of the street. “I’m not. I just need the answers to a few questions about last night.”
    “Last night?”
    “Yes. Were you here?”
    “No way. Had a band thing. ‘Fall Concert,’ over at Tabor.”
    “What time did you leave Plymouth Willows for the school?”
    “I don’t know. Had to be there by eight, so maybe a little after seven.”
    “And when did you get home?”
    “Why you want to know all this, man?”
    “What harm can it do to tell me?”
    Robinette held up his hands. “Oh, who cares? Maybe eleven, eleven-thirty?”
    “Kind of late for a band concert.”
    A roll of the eyes. “Yo, man, we went out with some of the other kids and their folks afterwards, all right?”
    “We?”
    “My mom and me. What difference does it make?”
    “You happen to see an orange Porsche parked outside?” Robinette stopped, grew determined. “No.”
    “You know who it belongs to?”
    “I didn’t see the car, man, how am I supposed to know who owns it?”
    “Thought maybe you might have seen it before.”
    “Well, you thought wrong. You want to leave now?”
    I nodded slowly. “Yeah. I think I have someplace else to go.”

    In the gathering dark, I went back to the Prelude and drove toward the tennis courts. No Paulie Fogerty, but then I noticed that the door to his little prefab house seemed to be open.
    Getting out of my car, I was almost to the doorway when Fogerty came through it. He blinked, trembling a bit, first from surprise, then maybe from trying to place me.
    “Hi, Paulie.”
    “Hi.” The hang-jaw smile. “Did you see Mr. Eh-men-dor?”
    “Yes.”
    “He show you how to use your camera right?”
    “We talked about it. Can I talk to you?”
    A blink. “We are talking.”
    “Right. Can we go inside?”
    Another blink with the nod. Then he turned and I followed him into the