S Is for Silence

wisdom. Alone with a guy like him in this big empty church. Daisy was the only one who knew where I was. We descended one flight of stairs to the basement level, which was dry and well maintained. Foley opened the door to what I first mistook for a large storage closet.
    “This is my apartment. Help yourself to a chair.”
    The room he’d shown me into was maybe ten feet by ten, white walls, gleaming beige linoleum tile floor. In the center was a small wooden kitchen table with four matching chairs. He had a hot plate and a small refrigerator tucked into a counter along the wall, a sofa, one upholstered chair, and a small television set. Through a doorway I could see a smaller room with the suggestion of a roll-away bed poking into view. I was guessing at the presence of a bathroom beyond that.
    I sat down at the table. In the center was a bowl of unshelled peanuts. He sat in apparent relaxation. The gaze he rested on mine was direct but curiously empty. He indicated the nuts. “Have some if you want.”
    “Thanks. I’m fine.”
    He picked up an unshelled peanut, broke open one end, and tilted the kernel into his mouth. He opened the second half of the nut and ate that kernel, too. The sound reminded me of a horse crunching on its bit. He held on to the empty shell. I could see him feeling the waffled surface, the tips of his fingers moving across the edges where the fibers extended from the shell. I’ve been known to eat peanuts shell and all to eliminate the mess.
    He took a fresh one from the bowl and rolled it, pressing slightly, measuring its give. His fingers might have been moving with a will of their own. Rolling, pinching. “You’re a private detective. Where from?”
    “Santa Teresa. I’ve been in business ten years. Before that, I was a cop.”
    Foley shook his head. “Why’s Daisy doing this?”
    “You’ll have to ask her.”
    “But what’d she say when she hired you on?”
    “She’s upset. She says she’s never made peace with her mother’s leaving her.”
    “None of us made peace with that,” he said. He looked away from me and then shrugged, as if in response to some inner debate. “All right. I guess we best get it over with. You can ask anything you like, but I want to say this first: Pastor of this church is the only man in town with any charity in his heart. After Violet left, I got laid off and I couldn’t get work. I did construction before, but suddenly no one would hire me to do anything. Based on what? I was never arrested. I was never charged. I never spent a day in jail in regard to her. The woman ran off. I don’t know how many times I have to say that.”
    “You hired an attorney?”
    “I had to. I needed to protect myself. Everybody thought I killed her, and what was I supposed to do? I had Daisy to support and I couldn’t get a paying job to save my soul. How can you prove you didn’t do a thing when the whole town believes you did?”
    “How’d you earn a living?”
    “I couldn’t. I had to go on welfare. I was ashamed of myself, but I had no choice. All the time we were married, Violet wouldn’t take a job. She wanted to stay home with Daisy and that was fine with me, though I could have used the help. Some months, I couldn’t pull in the money we needed to cover the bills. That was hard. There’s people who seem to think I didn’t care if I was behind on my bills, but that’s just not true. I did what I could, but once she was gone, I didn’t know where to turn. If I left Daisy for a single minute, she’d come unglued. She had to have me in her sights. She had to know where I was. She had to hang on my pant leg for fear I’d up and disappear. That’s how it was. Violet did what suited her, regardless of us. She was a self-centered woman, and mothering wasn’t something she did all that well.”
    “What was?”
    “Come again?”
    “What did she do well? I’m asking because I’d like to get a sense of her…not just how she behaved, but who she was.”
    “She was a party girl. She stayed out late and drank. Sometimes she danced.”
    “What about you? Did you go dancing as well?” I asked, wondering if he was using the word as a metaphor.
    “Not often enough to suit her.”
    He replaced the unshelled peanut in the bowl and put his big hands in his lap under the table. I could hear a popping sound and I knew he was systematically cracking his knuckles.
    “Did she have hobbies or interests?”
    “Like what, did she do macramé?” he