Free Uncivil Seasons by Michael Malone Page A

did it, Etham.”
    “I told you. Man was careful.”
    We had little more than that to go on. Since Cloris Dollard had never bothered locking her house, we didn’t even know whether her murderer had entered before or after she had come home. Her house was so sheltered by its grounds that no neighbor had seen or heard a thing, even if she’d struggled. And we’d lost nine hours before the Dollard maid’s arrival the next morning. We knew the upstairs phone had been yanked from its cord and that Cloris’s purse had been thrown in the grass by the stone gate, and we had a list of all Senator Dollard thought but wasn’t sure had been taken by whomever had pulled open all the drawers and cabinets in the handsome house and had left in its bedroom a dead woman.
    I said, “Pros don’t kill people.”
    Foster finished looking at a piece of glass taken out of Preston’s boot tread. “Didn’t say pro. Said careful.”
    “Come on, can’t you give us
something
?”
    “Give you a Marlboro butt off the driveway that wasn’t there more than a day, and nobody in the house smoked.”
    “It’s too bad the neighbors and two ambulances and a half-dozen of V.D.’s new patrol cars drove all over the place before they called you.”
    Foster said, “Right,” and would I mind not smoking in his lab, and Cuddy said, “He can’t be a detective without smoke coming out of his nose.” His eyes looked dull blue and angry. “Was Mrs. Dollard taking this guy on a guided tour or what? ‘Well, now you’ve loaded up the silver, and don’t forget that little TV, come on up in the bedroom ’cause I’ve got some jewelry and rare coins I think you’ll like, locked up in a little safe you probably wouldn’t even have noticed all on your own.’”
    “Maybe she thought if she offered him things, he wouldn’t hurt her,” I said. “Maybe he only hit her because she went for the phone or maybe it started ringing and panicked him into hitting her.” I rubbed my hand against the back of my own skull. “Or, let’s try this possibility. He already knew the house, and knew her, and he meant to kill her.”
But who in the world would want to kill Cloris? She had more friends…
    Cuddy said, “How tall was she?”
    “Five nine and a quarter, plus heels.”
    “Preston’s too short.”
    Etham Foster looked back up. “You don’t know she was standing.”
    “And Preston’s not strong enough, either. To pull her up on that bed—and what the crap for?—and shove down a pillow so hard he breaks her nose? I don’t believe Preston could do it, much less, he’s just not that goddamn mean!”
    I was thinking of how Rowell had flicked Sister Resurrection from his sleeve as if she were a gnat, knocking her down on the curb. I said, “Maybe anybody can be that mean.”
    Cuddy slapped his hand loud on the counter. “Oh, don’t start that dorkshit ‘everybody’s rotten under the thin ice’ moralizing again! The only thin ice you ever knew anything about, somebody served you in a whiskey glass!”
    Unhurriedly, Foster walked away from us to open the refrigerator and take out a tube of somebody’s blood. My blush had brought sweat out over my lip. “Get off my back, Mangum, you’ve been picking at me since I got down here. Why are you so pissy?” We stared at each other, until he reached up and pulled on both his ears with his knuckly hands. “I’m scared,” he said, “the powers that be’re gonna railroad Preston because it’s easy. Nothing personal.”
    “Except you think those powers’re all my kinsfolk. You’re a snob.”
    He blew out a sigh, and then he laughed. “Whooee, Doctor D, listen to the white folk spat!” Foster ignored him and smeared the blood on his slide, and Cuddy tossed my overcoat at me and said, “Okay, Preppie, let’s get out of the man’s lab. Don’t you ever go home, Foster?”
    Foster didn’t look up, but said, “Your man had big hands,” and he held up his own, fingers spread the way they