Yesterday's News

very clever one?”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “Are you honestly interested in Jane and honoring your contract with her, or are you just using that old-fashioned notion to get on the good side of an old lady you need to pump?”
    I laughed.
    She said, “Well, leastways you laugh honest.”
    “Mrs. O’Day, Jane asked me to look into something. Then she turns up dead that night, supposedly a suicide. That just doesn’t ring true to me.”
    “Don’t know much about suicide. Against the Church’s preaching, which makes it kind of hard to understand it. But I can tell you this, she was a mighty troubled young woman.”
    “Can you tell me what happened last night?”
    “Best I can. I was home here, up pretty late planning.”
    “Planning?”
    “Budget planning. I get $473.50 a month social security as sole survivor of the husband, God rest his soul. I never did work outside, so I don’t have any account of my own. Rent from downstairs covers the house costs and all, but still got to computate in advance where all of it should go. Today was Store Day.”
    “Store Day?”
    “Yes. The Church, Lord bless it, has a volunteer van, comes to pick up those like me what can’t get out on our own. Takes us around to the grocery, the drugstore, laundry, that kind of thing. Regular schedule. Feel mighty sorry for the others.”
    “What others?”
    “Those outside the Church. They’re the ones people like you never see, because they ride the buses from ten to two when you’re in working. That’s the only time the buses aren’t so crowded you can get a seat. When’s the last time you ever saw a man or child stand so an older person could sit down? Then there’s the hoodlums, too. Leastways most of them are still in school of some kind, probably reform school, till two o’clock, so your purses and wallets are safe from them if you’re back in and locked up by two. Your generation thinks it’s all set, you wait till you get older, sonny. Back in thirty-three, when my daddy started paying into social security, there were sixteen workers for every retired person. Read that in Reader’s Digest, I did. Sixteen to one. Now there’s only about three and a half to one, and by the time you’re into your sixties, never mind seventies or eighties, there’s only going to be maybe one and a half workers for every retired person. I thank the Lord every night he won’t be keeping me down here so long to see that day come, I’ll tell you.”
    “About last night, you were up late?”
    “Planning.”
    “Planning. Did you see or hear anything unusual?”
    “See? Not rightly. I’ve got bad eyesight, need the two different kind of glasses to see straight, but never could stand having them on those neck strings, you know? So I’m forever putting the distance ones down when I put the close-up ones on, then forgetting where they are.”
    “Well then, was there something you didn’t see but heard?”
    “Heard a lot of things. Nothing wrong with the hearing, leastways not yet. Heard Jane coming in all the time. That’s the reason I gave the tenant the downstairs floor to start with. I didn’t have any use for the backyard myself, and I figured with me on the second floor, I wouldn’t be disturbed so much by the coming and going. But this time of year, I keep the windows open, which means I can hear the car doors or the damned, pardon my French, motorcycles or feel the downstairs door close. ‘Course, that’s more vibration than sound, I guess.”
    This was going to take a while. “Did you hear somebody arrive last night?”
    “Well, yes, of course I did. Heard Jane first. She usually got home from work by six. Ofttimes she’d go out later. Jane was renting from me for nigh unto two years, her car door made a certain noise account of she had something loose there in the door panel or something, rattled every time after the sound of the door closing itself. Think she’d have that fixed, drive you crazy after a while, but she never did.”
    “You heard somebody else, too?”
    “Sure did. Jane seemed to be home to stay last night. Heard her drive in, car door, and downstairs. She’d been in the dumps lately, don’t know why, just real troubled, like I said. Well, I hear her come in, put on her victrola. Didn’t play it loud or anything, real considerate girl that way. Then I heard another car come up. Somebody got out, come up to the door and knocked, then Jane let them in.”
    “Them?”
    “Him or her.