The Accidental Detective

Bible says, about the rich man and the camel and the eye of the needle? It’s true, you know. Not always, but often enough.”
    “Why did your brother burglarize his home? Was that something else he did to supplement his paycheck? Is that something he still does?”
    “My brother,” Miss Harrison said, drawing herself up so she gained yet another inch, “is not a thief.”
    “But—”
    “I don’t like talking to you,” she said abruptly. “I thought you were on our side, but I see now I was foolish. I know what happened. You called the police. You talked about pressing charges. If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened. You’re a terrible person. Forty years, and trouble never came for us, and then you undid everything. You have brought us nothing but grief, which we can ill afford.”
    She stamped her feet, an impressive gesture, small though they were. Stamped her feet and went back inside the house, taking a moment to latch the screen behind her, as if Tess’s manners were so suspect that she might try to follow where she clearly wasn’t wanted.
    T HE SHOESHINE MAN DID WORK at Penn Station, after all, stationed in front of the old-fashioned wooden seats that always made Tess cringe a bit. There was something about one man perched above another that didn’t sit quite right with her, especially when the other man was bent over the enthroned one’s shoes.
    Then again, pedicures probably looked pretty demeaning, too, depending on one’s perspective.
    “I’m really sorry, Mr. Harrison, about the mess I’ve gotten you into.” She had refused to sit in his chair, choosing to lean against the wall instead.
    “Got myself into, truth be told. If I hadn’t thrown that soda can, none of this would have happened. I could have gone another forty years without anyone bothering me.”
    “But you could go to prison.”
    “Looks that way.” He was almost cheerful about it.
    “You should get a lawyer, get that confession thrown out. Without it, they’ve got nothing.”
    “They’ve got a closed case, that’s what they’ve got. A closed case. And maybe I’ll get probation.”
    “It’s not a bad bet, but the stakes are awfully high. Even with a five-year sentence, you might die in prison.”
    “Might not,” he said.
    “Still, your sister seems pretty upset.”
    “Oh, Mattie’s always getting upset about something. Our mother thought she was doing right by her, teaching her those Queen of Sheba manners, but all she did was make her perpetually disappointed. Now if Mattie had been born just a decade later, she might have had a different life. But she wasn’t, and I wasn’t, and that’s that.”
    “She did seem … refined,” Tess said, thinking of the woman’s impeccable appearance and the way she loved to stress big words.
    “She was raised to be a lady. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lady’s job. No shame in washing clothes, but no honor in it either, not for someone like Mattie. She should have stayed in school, become a teacher. But Mattie thought it would be easy to marry a man on the rise. She just didn’t figure that a man on the rise would want a woman on the rise, too, that the manners and the looks wouldn’t be enough. A man on the rise doesn’t want a woman to get out of his bed and then wash his sheets, not unless she’s already his wife. Mattie should never have dropped out of school. It was a shame, what she gave up.”
    “Being a teacher, you mean.”
    “Yeah,” he said, his tone vague and faraway. “Yeah. She could have gone back, even after she dropped out, but she just stomped her feet and threw back that pretty head of hers. Threw back her pretty head and cried.”
    “Threw back her pretty head and cried—why does that sound familiar?”
    “I couldn’t tell you.”
    “Threw back her pretty head … I know that, but I can’t place it.”
    “Couldn’t help you.” He began whistling a tune, “Begin the Beguine.”
    “Mr. Harrison—you didn’t kill that man, did you?”
    “Well, now I say I did, and why would anyone want to argue with me? And I was seen coming from his house that night, sure as anything. That neighbor, Edna Buford, she didn’t miss a trick on that block.”
    “What did you hit him with?”
    “An iron,” he said triumphantly. “An iron!”
    “You didn’t know that two days ago.”
    “I was nervous.”
    “You were anything but, from what I hear.”
    “I’m an old man. I don’t always remember what I