It had to be You

very much for your time. And that’s such a pretty baby you have.”
    As the woman went back inside by the back door and they walked along the side yard, Howard stopped and said, “You did that very well, Parker. You started out polite, and not threatening. You asked good questions. You ended the conversation right. You’re on the right track, young man.“
    “Oh—thank you, sir. Thank you so much.”
    For fear that Deputy Parker would go overboard and cry or try to shake his hand, Walker quickly walked around the car and started the engine. They hadn’t found out anything of use. But he’d given Parker some confidence, returning the favor his first superior officer had bestowed on him so many years ago.
    Chapter 14
    As Chief Walker and Deputy Parker drove around hunting another house that might overlook the lake, Walker pulled over at a wide place in the road.
    “Deputy Parker, I have a feeling that Chief Simpson wasn’t comfortable telling me as much as he knew about this body being found. I don’t want to suggest that you tell tales out of school, but I must. Do you know why he was so vague?“
    “I wouldn’t have known anything more than what he said to you, except that I ran into another deputy I went to school with, who was at the dotty old woman’s house twice. I met him a day after I got this job.“
    “So who found the body when it floated up recently? Kincade’s son saw it but wasn’t believed. Someone must have spotted it from close enough to see that it was human.“
    “It was the same old woman, sir. She fishes there in the summer. She’s closer to the lake than anyone else.“
    “She lives close to that smell and it was the first time she noticed?“
    “She really is dotty, sir, my school friend said. Maybe it’s the stink that made her that way. Her story last winter was that she was watching a peculiar-looking hiker climbing around on a hill above her house. She kept her binoculars on him. He suddenly started running toward her, falling down several times and cursing loudly. Must have scared her clean out of whatever wits she still might have had. She locked her door and covered the windows before he reached her house. He banged on her door, she told Chief Simpson and his former deputy. He shouted at her to call the police because there was a body in the lake.“
    “Does a woman like that have a phone? You wouldn’t think anyone would run a phone line down there.“
    “Yes, sir. She does. I heard that the men who go to fish there got together and paid for a phone line for her so they could make calls telling their wives or sweethearts when they might be home. She uses it a lot.“
    “So she called the police, I assume. What happened next?“
    “She says she went to a window, opened it an inch or two, and shouted that she’d made the call. The police would be there soon. Nobody replied, she said. So she went from window to window, peeking out and looking for where the man had gone. She’s got windows all around the house.“
    “Did the police spot the body when she called again a few days ago?“
    “Yes, sir. They first called for help from a few other nearby towns to drag the body out. Chief Simpson told me two of them threw up before they could haul the body away. It was quite a while later that they questioned her about how she found out about the body. There was a little rise that would have obscured her view, you see. By the time they spoke to her, she’d had plenty of time to make up a story. The one I just told you, sir.“
    “You didn’t believe it was the truth?“
    “I wasn’t here yet, sir. But nobody who was believed her. Before that, her last call to the police was to complain about the bear who destroyed her shed and took away the wood to make a place in the woods to live in himself.”
    Walker smiled. “Go on.“
    “It seems the bear left behind his pry bar, sir. And a frayed piece of rope.“ Even Deputy Parker thought this was funny. So did Howard, who chuckled.
    “So how did she describe this man she’d been watching with her binoculars back in December?“ Howard asked.
    “He was a Commie. She could tell by the way he dressed. He carried a big old stick and had long dirty black hair, slanted eyes, and wore a red beret. He was coming to kidnap her and take her to Russia, she feared, sir.”
    Walker put his head close to the steering wheel and pretended to be banging his forehead on it. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. No, maybe