“I went down to Palfry yesterday, to the house where your daughter has been living. I didn’t find Judy, but the house had been torn apart and I’m sorry to say that I came on the murdered body of a man who’d been living there. I think this time your daughter may have—”
“A murdered man?” Kitty interrupted me in turn, her voice rising in fear. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know; I couldn’t find any ID on him.” I didn’t want to say I hadn’t looked for any ID with the crows descending on me, claws and caws ordering me away from their feast.
“Come at noon.” And she’d hung up.
Here it was, noon, which I’d managed only by rearranging a couple of client visits. Instead of letting me in, Ms. Binder demanded proof that I was V. I. Warshawski. I didn’t argue with her, just showed her my various licenses to drive cars, shoot firearms, investigate crimes.
She finally undid the chain bolt. As soon as I was inside, she did up all the bolts again. The house smelled of unopened windows, overlaid with the scent of the face powder Kitty Binder was wearing. The only light in the entryway came through a dirt-crusted transom above the front door. I had trouble making out Ms. Binder, but I could tell she was short, with close-cropped white hair. Despite the hot day, she had on a thick cardigan.
Instead of inviting me all the way in, she startled me by demanding to know if anyone had followed me to the house.
“Not that I know of. Who were you expecting?”
“If you’re really a detective you would have kept an eye out for tails.”
“If you were really Kitty Binder, you’d want to know about your daughter. You wouldn’t be lecturing me on the fine points of detection.”
“Of course I’m Kitty Binder!” It was hard to make out her expression, but her voice was indignant. “You’re violating my privacy, coming into my home, asking impertinent questions. I have a right to expect you to be professional.”
Everyone in America is watching way too many crime shows these days. Juries expect expensive forensic work on routine crimes; clients expect you to treat their affairs as if they worked for the CIA. Not that Kitty Binder was a client yet.
“Is it the DEA you’re worried about?” I asked. “If they’re looking for your daughter they’ll already have a wiretap in place, so they don’t need to follow someone like me around.”
I thought Ms. Binder’s eyes grew round with alarm. “Are you saying that my phone is being tapped?”
“No, ma’am.” I was beginning to feel that I’d gotten lost in a conversational thicket the size of yesterday’s cornfield. “I’m just saying that we should talk about the murdered man I found yesterday. Who do you think he was?”
“You’re the one who found him,” she said. “You tell me.”
“He either was living in the house with your daughter, or he was one of the invaders. But you know or think you know who it was, because it was only after I mentioned him that you agreed to talk to me.”
“Charlotte sent you here to spy on me, didn’t she?” Her voice quavered, as if she were trying to whip up anger as a cover to whatever she was afraid of facing.
“Ma’am, could we sit down? If someone’s been bothering you, following you, or threatening you, I can help.”
“If you’re a friend of Charlotte Herschel’s, you’ll go back to her and tell her what I said so the two of you can have a laugh at my expense.”
“No, ma’am, I can promise that if you tell me something in confidence, I will keep it confidential.”
Lotty’s last words to me came into my mind: the baby Judy had carried to term, she’d given him to Len and Kitty. Could he possibly be the man I’d found in the field? I wondered how old the grandson was by now.
Kitty was biting her lip, unable to make up her mind whether to talk to me or not. I moved past her into the house and stopped at the door to a living room. The blinds were drawn so tightly that I could only make out ghostly shapes of chairs and a couch, the gleam of a TV screen. I could smell the dust.
“Where are you most comfortable, Ms. Binder? In here? Or should we go to the kitchen?”
Ms. Binder pushed past me into the living room. A pity: she might have unbent more in the kitchen. She turned on a table lamp and gestured toward an armchair whose arms and back were covered with lace doilies. Lace dripped over most of the other furniture, including a side table that held a series of photos, some formal, in frames, but most old snapshots. The room was tidy, if crowded, but a layer of dust had settled over the table and television.
“Did you make these yourself?” I fingered the lace covering the arms of my chair.
“Oh, yes. I wasn’t a pampered house pet like Charlotte Herschel. We worked in our home. My grandmother made sure I could knit and make lace before I turned five. It’s not a skill you forget, not when you’re taught it that young. Even my own mother—”
Kitty bit the sentence off, as if it were a thread she was snapping in her teeth. I waited, hoping she might add something.