The Axeman's Jazz

depressed person, someone with barely enough energy to go to work, come home, turn on the TV. Or maybe an alcoholic. No one very happy.
    Derek Brown, sweating and mopping his face every few seconds, was ten or twenty years Tom’s junior, with thinning blond hair and a narrow strip of mustache. His breath was coming in gulps and he was pale.
    “You need air,” said Skip. “Want to come out and talk to me?”
    He shook his head. “I need to sit down.”
    “I’ll get you a chair.” She went inside and brought out two straight-backed dining room chairs. “You can’t stay in there. It’s like a sauna.”
    It wasn’t unlike a sauna in the evening air. Brown’s light blue suit was damp and limp. “I should have got somebody to come with me,” he said. “I knew when Tom didn’t answer the phone it was bad. Real bad. I’m not saying I didn’t half-expect to find him dead, but not like this.” He shook his head, willing away the grisly spectacle.
    “Had he been ill?”
    “It’s not that. It’s that he never misses work.”
    “What can you tell me about him?”
    “Tom? There’s not much to tell, I guess.” Again, he shook his head. “He was a sports fan.”
    “That’s what he talked about? Sports?”
    “Yeah. Loved to keep up.”
    “What about his personal life?”
    “He lived alone, we all knew that. Last year when he got the flu, we were all worried about him, I remember that.” He brightened. “But he had a daughter. She came and took care of him.”
    “Do you know her name?”
    “Yeah. Just can’t call it to mind, that’s all. Give me a minute.”
    “Okay. Do you know who his friends were? Did he belong to any social groups? Church?”
    He shook his head. “Edna! That’s his daughter. Edna. I know it because it’s the only name he ever mentioned. He talked about her a little, but nobody else.”
    “Grandchildren?”
    Brown looked puzzled. “I don’t know. Seems like he would have said if he had any. Shown pictures and all.”
    “He didn’t?”
    “Did you notice the teddy bear in there?”
    “Yeah. What do you think that’s about?”
    “That’s what I was going to ask you.”
    “Do you know if he knew a woman named Linda Lee Strickland? Young woman, pretty. Blond. Did you ever see him with anyone like that?”
    “Are you kidding? Tom Mabus?”
    Later, she found the neighbors were pretty much of the same mind—Tom Mabus was the last person in the world anyone would want to know, much less murder. He offended no one and apparently interested no one. He was a nice man, a quiet man, never had friends over, didn’t go out much, watched television a lot. No one had seen anyone with him the day before—or ever—except for his daughter.
    There was an Edna Purcell in his address book who lived on the West Bank, in Marrero.
    It was a modest neighborhood, a modest house, but still better than the one she’d grown up in if she’d been raised in Tom Mabus’s.
    She was overweight, plain, tired-looking. She had on no makeup and wore a pink quilted robe, though the suffocating mugginess still hung in the air.
    Inside, a massive man with heavy eyebrows sat in front of a TV, a Dixie beer in his hand. True to stereotype, he wore a T-shirt stretched over his belly, thick chest hair escaping at the top. His forehead protruded.
    The house was like a refrigerator; Skip marveled to think of the Purcells’ electric bills.
    “Darryl, Daddy’s dead.” Her face was a mask; she hadn’t taken it in yet.
    Her husband looked at her with such sudden and unexpected tenderness it tore at Skip’s heart. “Oh, honey.”
    The look on her husband’s face was enough; Edna got it, and fell into his outstretched arms, belated sobs escaping her. Skip stood awkwardly in the background.
    Finally, Darryl Purcell said, “Edna, I think this lady wants to talk to you,” and the Southerner in Edna, the perfect-hostess-in-any-circumstances, dried her eyes and turned to her guest.
    “I’m sorry. Won’t you sit down?” She introduced her husband. “Can I get you anything?”
    Skip shook her head, sitting on the edge of the beige velour sofa. She had told Edna only that her father had been murdered, and now she gave the details.
    Darryl’s face turned dark. “What kind of animal would do a thing like that? Tom Mabus never hurt one soul in his entire life, never did a thing except go to work and come home.”
    “I wonder if it could have been someone he knew.”
    Darryl said, “He didn’t know