Free This Old Homicide by Kate Carlisle

out that Mrs. Higgins wasn’t the only one who’d heard a driver gunning a car engine. Several neighbors reported hearing the sound of tires screeching down the street around two in the morning the night before. But when I asked my neighbor Hester, who lived four doors down on the corner, if she’d heard the same noise, she smiled ruefully. “Yeah, sorry about that. Lisa has a new boyfriend and his car makes an awful racket. It woke me and Joe up, too, so we’ve both warned him to either get a new muffler or stop seeing Lisa.”
    I laughed. “Does Lisa know you told him that?”
    Hester confessed that she’d rather have the guy dump her daughter than keep coming around. “He’s from San Francisco and I’m scared to death she’ll move away with him.”
    “I thought she wanted to go to Cove College.”
    “She does,” Hester said, shaking her head. “But he’s got those sexy eyes that reel a girl in and make her forget her goals and dreams.”
    So that answered the puzzle about the loud car in the night. Nobody else had heard the pounding that Mrs. Higgins had mentioned, but perhaps the sound had carried directly from Jesse’s house to hers. Or maybe she had imagined it.
    But Eric hadn’t imagined the hole in the wall in Jesse’s bedroom.
    By the time I got back home, the only thing I knew for sure was that my innocent questions would send the gossip levels soaring over the next few days. That wasn’t such a bad outcome.
    “My work here is done,” I murmured, smiling inwardly. But before I could make it down my driveway and escape into my backyard, Mrs. Higgins flagged me down. “Yoo-hoo! Shannon, dear! Can you come here, please?”
    “Hi, Mrs. Higgins.” I crossed the street to the picket fence, where she was watering her roses. Today she wore a bright green housedress covered in purple plumeria. “How are you doing?”
    “Oh, there’s just so much to think about and do in any given day.”
    “There sure is,” I said amiably.
    “But weighing most heavily on my mind is the fact that my birdbath is leaking.”
    For two longs seconds, I was befuddled. Then I remembered who I was talking to.
    “That’s too bad, Mrs. Higgins,” I said, gritting my teeth. I’d installed a birdbath last year to replace the leaking one I’d installed the year before that. The woman just wanted a new birdbath every year, and if she could blame the leak on my handiwork, she could wangle a new one and not get charged for my labor.
    Not that I would’ve charged her. It wasn’t a lot of work and it made her happy. My father had been replacing Mrs. Higgins’s birdbaths for years before I inherited the duty.
    “And boy howdy! I’ve got a beauty picked out this time. Wait right here.” She toddled up the walkway and disappeared inside her house. A minute later, she was back, waving a mail-order catalog. “I ordered it just this morning. Isn’t it glorious?”
    “Oh my.” My eyes boggled at the fountain she wanted installed in her backyard. It was a hideous statue consisting of children and dolphins and fish and birds and a puppy. Water cascaded over everything and ended up in a small pool at the base. There were even angels. Big ones, with wings.
    The children were actually two naked boys dancing on the backs of two dolphins. The dolphins cavorted in the waves with a school of fish swimming beneath them. A bird perched on a puppy’s lifted paw, and other birds flitted over its head. A throng of overgrown cherubim frolicked above them all.
    Water spewed from every conceivable orifice.
    I tried to catch my breath. That thing would scare away any bird that came near it.
    “My goodness,” I managed, “that’s quite a birdbath.”
    “I know.” She smiled at the catalog. “There’s space at the base of the fountain and I plan to add a plaque, dedicating it to Jesse.”
    Now I felt like an idiot. “That’s very thoughtful, Mrs. Higgins. I’ll be happy to install it as soon as it arrives.”
    “Thank you, dear.