Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

enough dust for a desert
khamsin
. Yet, as my eyes became adjusted to the dark, I could see vestiges of Mrs. Pritchett’s tidy side. A religious statue of a madonna and child stood on a starched doily, the colors of the statue glowing unnaturally in that room, unencumbered by the gunk of the bottles and vials. While a filthy pink bedspread had been thrown over the sofa—apparently to improve it—Mrs. Pritchett’s chair had pinned to it three old-fashioned antimacassars, only one of which was slightly stained and none of which had the grayish look of months or years without laundering.
    I sat on the very edge of the sofa, hoping she wouldn’t notice and be offended. “You know both Les and Miranda, I gather.” As I said it, I had the unpleasant notion that they might live in the building—might even be there right now. I began to think I shouldn’t have come alone.
    “They used to live here.”
    I breathed easier. “Together?”
    “Separate floors. Though she spent a lot of time in his room, if you know what I mean. But it didn’t mean no more than a hill o’ beans to him.”
    “What didn’t?”
    “She didn’t. Her bein’ there. Now she—she was in love with him. If a woman who spends three quarters of her time staggerin’ from drink can love anybody.”
    “But he didn’t reciprocate.”
    “If that means did he have any feelin’ for her, I guess not. Not too much, anyway. Had a pet name for her, though.”
    “He did?”
    “Miranda Warning. And she called him Les Ismore.”
    “Izzmore?”
    She chuckled. “I didn’t get it either at first. Meant Les is more—kind of cute, huh?”
    I would have been touched at the thought of two derelicts who still had enough spark to make puns if one of them hadn’t been a multiple murderer. “It sounds like they were pretty tight.”
    “Uh-uh. Not so long as one of ’em was him. He wasn’t tight with nobody.”
    “A loner?”
    “That ain’t the half of it. Mean bastard.”
    “Mean how?”
    “Oh—just sullen. He’d as soon snap at you as say hello. Sometimes wouldn’t speak at all.” She shifted in her chair, grimaced, and bent down to rub her leg. “Ow. Hope it ain’t the phlebitis comin’ back.”
    “Did you ever think he might be homosexual?”
    “Him?” She hooted. “Not likely. Why’d you ask?”
    I’d asked because if he were the Trapper, Miranda had followed him to the Yellow Parrot, but really the question was just for form’s sake. I thought he’d picked a gay man as a victim because he’d make an easy first target—drinking, maybe drunk, and eager to trust. “I just wondered,” I said. “Because he didn’t respond to Miranda, I guess.”
    She gave another little hoot. “You ever seen Miranda? I ain’t sayin’ she wouldn’t be right pretty if she’d fix herself up, but she was usually too drunk to comb her hair. That ain’t all, though. He just didn’t have it in him. Real grim—seemed kind of preoccupied, like he was some executive instead of an unemployed laborer.”
    “Like he had work to do?”
    “Yep. Didn’t, though. Took odd jobs, but spent most of his time in his room—or sometimes Miranda’s. But mostly his.”
    “Did they move out together?”
    “That’s what I don’t know. Both of ’em just disappeared. Didn’t say they were going, just left. That’s why I have to collect the rent in advance. If I didn’t, see, half the bums in the place’d stick me for it.
    “This building was my Daddy’s. It ain’t much, but it’s all he left me. He left home when I was eight or nine, didn’t hear a word out of him till one day some lawyer called—forty years later it was—said my daddy’d left me a buildin’ in San Francisco. I come all the way from North Ca’lina for this.” She looked disgusted.
    “We was always dirt poor, so at least it was somethin’. He owned other buildin’s, though, the old buzzard. But he got married again, left ’em to his second family.”
    I was gettin’ interested in spite of myself: “He was a bigamist?”
    “Damn sure was.”
    “You didn’t contest the will?”
    She shrugged. “Didn’t know how.”
    With an effort, I got back to the matter at hand. “When did Les and Miranda leave?”
    “Don’t know exactly. Could have been gone for a week or so, maybe more, by the time I realized nobody was livin’ in Les’s. So I checked Miranda’s—she was gone, too. That’s how come I don’t know if they left together. Maybe he left first and she