The Axeman's Jazz

first.
    At 8:15 A.M. , as soon as Alex had roared away on his hog, Skip marched up to his door with a clipboard, rang the doorbell, and awaited her first glimpse of the long-suffering Mrs. Bignell. Instead, a dried-out old coot answered the door, so shockingly indicative of what Alex’s rough handsomeness would shrink down to that she drew in her breath.
    Wearing khakis and a salmon-colored shirt with an alligator on it, he was a dapper old thing even at this time of day. She spoke to him in the ingratiating interrogatives of the true Southern girl (if not woman).
    “Mr. Bignell? I’m Margaret, from the planning department? I wonder if we could talk a little?”
    “Sure, sure. Good mornin’, good mornin’.” His manner was hearty. “Come in, won’t you? Would you like some coffee?”
    She said she would and was led into a bachelor kitchen, more redolent with the smell of yesterday’s coffee grounds than with the new brew. He seated her across from him at a yellow Formica table and, while he got her coffee, kept up a running commentary on the weather.
    “You ever seen anything this hot? I mean, it’s been hot before, but not like this. I’m tellin’ you we got to get those rocks back on the moon.”
    Finally, he sat down and asked what he could do her for. She gave him a spiel about possible plans for developing the neighborhood and how “the department” wanted the neighbors’ opinions first.
    “Development!” He made the word a sneer. “You mean high-rises. Forget that crap.”
    “I can see you’re not the one Carol Meier talked to. Whoever that was seemed to take a different attitude.”
    “Elec!”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “My worthless son.”
    “I didn’t quite catch the name.”
    “Elec. Short for Alexander.”
    She had heard it lots of times as a child, had never known it came from Alexander. Hearing it now, she felt the twinge of inadequacy she always did when confronted with things Southern that she didn’t get. Was this simply a mispronunciation of Alex or another nickname?
    “Could be.” She flipped through pages, finally saying, “August ninth. A Thursday.” Since Linda Lee had missed work on Friday, the presumption was that she’d died Thursday night.
    “Nope. I was home. I always watch ‘Cheers,’ don’t miss it for any reason.”
    “Could Carol have talked to you, then?”
    “Is she good-looking?”
    “Mr. Bignell!”
    “Now, you call me Lamar, you hear? I asked because if she was good-looking—looked anything like you, for instance—I’d have remembered.”
    “Must have been someone else.”
    “Nope. My son’s never been here after seven o’clock— not once the whole three months he’s been here.”
    “Oh, well, that explains it, then. We sent someone around another night—the Tuessday after, I think the fourteenth, and nobody was home at all.” Tom Mabus had been killed the day before his body was found.
    “Well, Elec wasn’t, you can bet on that. I bet I was, though. Prob’ly answerin’ a call of nature. Sometimes…”
    She changed the subject quickly. “I wonder if I could ask how many residents live here?”
    “Just two—me and ol’ Elec.”
    She smiled encouragement, knowing her smile was watts and watts away from belle quality, but hoping that at his age he was too blind to notice.
    “Just the two of us now,” he said. “Wife died six months ago. Boy come to help me. Ha! Lotta help he is.”
    “Oh?”
    “How’d I get a boy like that? Just answer me that one. Other people’s boys are doctors, lawyers, mechanics, plumbers. You know what mine is? He’s a psychologist.”
    “I always thought that was a pretty respectable profession.”
    “Well, that ain’t the whole story. Ain’t the whole story by a long shot. That’s what he was trained to do, and if he did it, wouldn’t be the best thing, but wouldn’t be the worst either. Kind of sissy profession—silly too, ’specially when you think of Elec in it. Things that boy doesn’t know about how people’s minds work’d fill a whole library. But that’s the worst you can say. It’s a job, anyway. I wouldn’t call it a profession. Only trouble is, he doesn’t do it. Now he’s got up on his hind legs, rared back, and said the whole thing’s a crock. And him with a Ph.D.!”
    “Umm. Umm.” (This was one of the few Southernisms Skip knew. It was something she’d heard black people say when white people went raving on about something or other.)
    “Boy’s fresh out of