The only good Lawyer

left the Prelude at the curb and used the cement path to approach the front door. Light shone through curtains, and when I pressed the doorbell, a hand was opening locks before the chimes had died away.
    “Why you can’t keep your house keys with— uh-uh?”
    The African-American woman in front of me ended her sentence with a hiccuping sound as she saw who I was. Or wasn’t. In her early fifties, with hair fashioned into silver-and-black kinks half an inch long, she wore a robin’s-egg blue blouse over a plaid skirt and opaque hosiery, a commuter’s tennis sneakers on her feet. The woman was only about five-two, but the set of both her eyes and her lips suggested she’d recovered enough to take charge of the situation.
    “Who are you?”
    “John Cuddy. Helen Gant?”
    A cautious, “Yes?”
    “Mrs. Gant, I’m a private investigator.” I took out my ID and held it to her.
    She read the printing quickly. “What’s this about?”
    “I’m looking into your son’s death, and I was hoping you could spare a little time.”
    Hiccup. “Your company called me today, said they’d send somebody by my office tomorrow morning.”
    “I’m not here about the insurance, Mrs. Gant. I was hired by Alan Spaeth’s attorney.”
    Her eyes went cold. “Then why should I talk to you?”
    “Because from some things I’ve found out so far, I think the police might have arrested the wrong man.” Gant blinked twice, then put a hand to her eyes, more to cover them than to block tears, I thought. Then she took the hand away. “Those same police said I don’t have to talk with anybody from that... man’s side of the case.”
    “No, ma’am, you don’t. But you should.”
    Gant moved her tongue against the inside of her cheek, then opened the door wider. “Fifteen minutes.”
    “Thank you.”
    I passed her, and she locked the door behind us. In front of me was a staircase with natural-oak balustrades just different enough that they had to have been hand-carved. Similar spokes rose vertically between the sills and tops of false windows on either side of the double-wide, interior doorway to the right. Beyond the doorway was a living room furnished with leather sofa, oak coffee table, and two barrel chairs arranged on an oriental rug.
    The fireplace—also oak—dominated one wall, some family portrait photos on the mantel. I tried not to look at them, but Helen Gant must have caught me.
    “I have a friend at the office who told me in her religion, when somebody dies, they lie the photos of that person facedown for a year. I couldn’t bear to do that.” The hiccuping noise again. “Please, take one of the chairs.”
    I did, and Gant sat at the end of the couch closest to me, leaving about five feet between us.
    I said, “Where do you work?”
    She composed herself with knees together, hands clasped on top of them. “Social welfare, Mr. Cuddy. I do mostly outreach and tracking programs.”
    “Meaning visiting recipients in their homes?”
    “Some days. Pm a ‘mandated reporter’ under the state statute, so if I see evidence of abuse during my visit, I have to file a 51A with the DSS—the Department of Social Services? Then the department investigates, either to screen the incident out or...” The hiccup again, but now a different look. “You’re doing what I do.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “You’re using the same technique I use for interviewing a family. Get them talking about themselves to see how they’re functioning as a unit.”
    “Mrs. Gant—”
    “By the way, it’s Ms. Gant.”
    “Sorry again.”
    A level stare. “No need to be. I dropped out of high school to have Woodrow when I was fifteen, and stayed out for Grover two years later. Thought giving them the names of presidents might help them get past their fathers, neither of which being what you’d call a prizewinner.” Another hiccup, and Helen Gant lifted her chin. “I lived with my mother, went to work as a housekeeper in a hotel downtown. Started at six a.m. in the laundry, washing and folding, then on to the rooms, scrubbing on my hands and knees in bathrooms, keep the mildew from getting a foothold. I’d be finished by four in the afternoon, five pounds lighter than I was getting there in the morning.” Hiccup. “But I went right from work to school for my G.E.D., and then on to UMass/Boston for college. Got the degree, got the job at Welfare, got this house. And never looked back until your client killed my Woodrow. Now, what