Half an hour later, they reached Tiny Tim’s, a rambling board-and-batten building stained a reddish-brown color, the windows lit from inside with Corona and Budweiser beer signs in glowing green, yellow, and blue neon. There were some scraggly laurel bushes at the front entry that could have taken over if they weren’t so starved for water, their leaves dry and sunburned. September supposed the place would look more inviting in the evening. On a hot Friday afternoon it looked dusty and neglected, and the country western music peeling out was of the sorrowful, wailing sort.
As it turned out, there were a lot of people standing on the rough-hewn wood floor, hovering around the bar and pool tables, starting the weekend early. September had a rough idea of Tynan’s age and Hannah had said he worked construction.
There were two fiftyish men sitting at the bar, one in a business suit and one in a pair of jeans and a gray work shirt. The group of pool players were millennials, and there were three other Tynan possibilities scattered around the tables, two with baseballs caps atop their silver-haired heads.
September zeroed in on the man at the bar. He was alone, and the other men seemed to be hanging with buddies. She knew next to nothing about Tynan Myles, but something about the way his daughter-in-law talked about him made September feel like he might be a bit antisocial.
“Mr. Myles?” she asked, standing to his right side.
He was hunched over a beer and flicked her a look. “Who wants to know?”
“Laurelton PD,” Gretchen answered in a cool voice.
He straightened and swiveled around to give them each a hard look. “My, my. You two sure do credit to the department.”
“We’ve been trying to connect with you,” September said.
“Hannah tell you were I was?” He picked up his beer and took a long drink.
“She said she’d told you we wanted to talk to you?”
“Little rat fink. I told her to keep her nose outta my business, but here you are.” He swept a hand expansively in their direction.
“We just want to talk to you about Phillip and Jan Singleton.”
“Who?”
September suspected he knew exactly who she was talking about but would have played along if Gretchen hadn’t growled, “Are we gonna play this game? That’s what you want to do? That’s your choice?”
“Hey, missy. Don’t get your knickers in a knot.”
September put a shoulder between them, completely aware that to Gretchen, them’s was fightin’ words. “You knew the Singletons. They lived right across the street from you.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re talkin’ about the old people who offed themselves. Pretty crazy.”
“You know exactly who we’re talking about,” Gretchen said through her teeth.
September hurriedly put in, “That’s correct. And Jan Singleton’s brother, Harold Jenkins, died at the house earlier.”
“Yeah, he lived there a while. We just didn’t see him no more.”
This was far more than she’d expected. Encouraged, September swept on before Gretchen could say anything, “That’s what we understand. There’s an ongoing investigation, but the piece we’re concentrating on is the discovery of an approximately eighteen-year-old male’s bones. We have no identification on him, so we’re talking to anyone who might remember someone of that age around the Singleton home about ten, twelve years ago.”
“There’s that granddaughter.”
“It’s a male,” Gretchen said with forced restraint.
“I heared you all right. That girl ain’t no thirty years old or so neither. Just thought she’s closer to the dead guy’s age than I am, that’s for sure.”
“Frances didn’t live at the house until her grandparents died,” September told him.
“Caleb didn’t live with me neither, so I guess he’s no help, huh?”
“None at all,” Gretchen said.
“That’s why we’re talking to you,” September reiterated.
Now that he’d gotten over trying to stay out of their way, Tynan Myles seemed to think it all a great lark that they were talking about his “crazy” neighbors. He launched into a long-winded account of some past Fourth of July when Phillip Singleton had suffered third degree burns on his hands from holding a firecracker too long. “Stupid dumbo,” Tynan cackled. “Lucky he didn’t lose any fingers. His thumb was like raw meat there for a while. I remember that.”
“Did you know Nathan Singleton, their son?”
“Nathan . . . yeah, I knew him.” Tynan’s mood darkened. “He was in love with that stupid dumbo wife of his, what the hell was her name?”
“Davinia,” Gretchen supplied.
“That’s right. Davinia. She was screwy as a three-dollar bill, I’ll tell ya, but he just wanted her like a drunk wants a drink. Always rubbing her arm whenever they were around, and you just knew he wanted to be rubbing something else. She always looked kinda bored. Never understood why they got married in the first place, except Nathan just wanted her, and maybe she thought he had some money.”
“Why was she screwy as a three-dollar bill?” September asked, and Gretchen turned to give her a what-the-hell look. She clearly thought September was going off point, which she was, but she was curious about Tynan’s thoughts.