Killing Cassidy

by Jeanne M. Dams

  The trailer itself, however, was not quite what one would expect. The concrete blocks for a doorstep, the sagging door, the torn screen, yes. But the body of the trailer—

  “Surprised you, huh? The professor give me the paint. Nice ’n’ bright, ain’t it?”

  It was. Jerry’s home was painted a vivid glow-in-the-dark orange.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said with the utmost sincerity.

  “It ain’t the right kind of paint, the professor said. It’ll wear off pretty soon. But he give me plenty, so’s I can keep fixin’ it. Kind of a memorial to him, like. Well, come on in.”

  I took a deep breath of what was likely to be the last fresh air I’d get for a while and followed the giant into his den, Alan behind me.

  “You gotta bang the door.” Jerry turned back and did just that. “It don’t shut good. Got to fix that one of these days.”

  I wished he’d left it open. It was as dirty inside as I’d feared, and as odorous. The smell of stale food and unwashed human was no match for the pervasive smell of cat. The couch was covered with a fine collection of clothes, jumbled together with several weeks’ worth of TV Guides and the crumbs of a good many meals. Jerry scooped it all off and dumped it on the floor on top of a pizza box with a couple of dead slices still in it.

  “Take a load off your feet. Want a beer?”

  It still lacked an hour or so till noon. I shook my head, but Alan said, “Yes, thank you very much. My throat’s quite dry. Dorothy will have one, too. She was only being polite.”

  “Alan!” I said in an undertone as Jerry rummaged in his refrigerator.

  “I know, and you don’t actually have to drink it, but I think we must accept his hospitality. If we refused beer he might offer something else, and at least beer comes in clean cans or bottles.”

  Jerry gave us our beers, took a long pull of his own, and sat himself down in a battered recliner.

  “Where are the cats?” I asked brightly, as I inhaled a strong reminder of their presence.

  “Around. They don’t cotton to strangers much. Prob’ly under the bed, if they’re not outside huntin’ theirselves a snack. Say, that reminds me. I shot a couple of rabbits last night and made me some stew. You want some? It’s right good. I’m an okay cook, doin’ for myself all these years.”

  I was suddenly, unwillingly, touched with sympathy. There was something in that last remark, a wistfulness, a shy pride—but I still wasn’t prepared to risk ptomaine. “I’ll bet it’s delicious, but Alan and I are still not quite up to eating much. Jet lag?”

  Surely even he had heard of jet lag. He did have a television, after all.

  “Man, I know all about that. When I come back from ’Nam, I wasn’t up to nothin’ for a week. Long ways back, that was, but I still recollect how sick I was. ’Course, I hadn’t had no good food for a long time in that cage they put me in.” He finished his beer, belched, and crumpled the can in one huge fist. “Okay. So you want to hear about the professor. What you want to know?”

  “Anything you can tell us, Jerry. You said he didn’t have many visitors. That surprises me a little. He had so many friends.”

  “Yeah, but you know how it is. People get busy, they move away, they figger somebody else is goin’ to keep the old man company. They got their own lives. Just like you.”

  The guilt that I had tried to lull to sleep stirred and stretched itself. Alan’s hand closed over mine, and he took up the conversation.

  “I trust, at least, that someone looked in on him regularly. At his age, almost anything could have happened.”

  “Oh, they was a few people now and then. But as for reg’lar, that was me. I’d go see him every day. He didn’t get out much anymore, only to the store for food and that. So mostly I’d find him in that workshop of his.”

  “Workshop?” I frowned.

  “Yeah, the glass. You know.”

  “No. What was he doing with glass?”

  “Gee, maybe he took that up after you left. How long ago’d you say that was?”

  “Over three years ago, now.”

  “Yeah, I guess maybe it was after that. He was gettin’ restless, see. He didn’t go to work in the lab no more, said he couldn’t see good enough.”

  “Yes, he’d given that up even before Frank died. It was hard on him, but he was very firm about it. He said he wasn’t going to be one of those old bores who got in the way of the young people and messed up their experiments. As if he would!”

  “Yeah, well, when he quit, it left him with nothin’ much to do with his time. And I guess he went to one of them art fairs, up in Brown County or somewheres, and he got interested in that stuff they do with colored glass. So he built hisself a workshop out back and took it up.”

  “He started working in stained glass? At—what—ninety-three, ninety-four?”

  “Yep. Pretty good at it, too. People come and give him stuff to do for them, whaddaya call it—”

  “Commissions?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. He was real proud of that. Did right pretty stuff. Give me one last Christmas.” He gestured toward a dirty window where a sun-catcher hung crookedly from a rusty wire.

  I had missed it when I first came in, overlooked it in the general clutter. Now I couldn’t take my eyes off it. A swirl of abstract color, it glowed like a costly jewel in a pinchbeck setting.

  “Don’t know what it’s supposed to be, but I kinda like it,” said Jerry.

  My throat was too tight to answer. Once more Alan stepped into the breach.

  “It’s a beautiful thing, Jerry. Do you remember who came to give Professor Cassidy commissions? We’d like to see more of his work.”

  “Lots of it in the workshop. I could take you over and see it.”

  “That would be very kind of you, and we’d like to do that. But we—my wife—would also like to talk to the people who saw the professor close to his death, if you remember who any of them are.”

  I marveled at Alan’s patience. I was longing to get out of the smelly trailer, see Kevin’s workshop, learn something—anything—that might be of use. My husband the policeman was able to set aside impatience, prod gently, get anything Jerry might be able to give us.

  It worked, too, at last. “Sure I remember! Didn’t I tell you I seen everything went on over there? Lemme see, now. The last week or two before he went to the hospital, you mean?”

  “Or even before that.”

  “Don’t know how far back I can recollect. But them last few days, sure, ’cause seemed like they was a lot of ’em.”

  I held my breath while Jerry searched his trauma-addled brain.

  “They was the doctor, for one. Not his real doctor, but another one. I reckon he sent for him, on account of his real doctor was out of town. Got no business goin’ away, doctors, if you ask me.”

  “You mean a doctor actually came to see him?” I spoke up. “A house call?”

  Alan looked puzzled and opened his mouth, but now was not the time to explain that American doctors, unlike their English counterparts, stopped making house calls years ago. I frowned at my husband, and he closed his mouth again.

  “Yeah, I thought it was kind of funny, too, but I guess, the prof bein’ so old and all—”

  “Probably. That was just before he went to the hospital, then?”

  “Yeah. And before that—well, they was the lady lives next door. She wanted him to make her some glass, I reckon, ’cause she went out to the workshop. You might go to her house, if you want, but you won’t see nothin’, ’cause he never had time to finish whatever he was doin’ for her. Then they was the cop.”

  I swear our ears pricked up like a cat’s.

  “A policeman? What was he doing there?”

  “Not just a cop, the cop. Chief of po-lice.” The accent was on the first syllable, and the tone was one of infinite contempt. I was extremely glad I hadn’t mentioned Alan’s profession.

  “Come there for the same thing as everybody else, I reckon�
��wanted the prof to make him some glass. Don’t know what no cop wants with somethin’ nice like that.”

  I didn’t speculate, but willed Jerry to continue.

  He scratched his head. “Oh, then they was the preacher. He come round ’bout once a month, tryin’ to sell the prof religion.”

  “What preacher was that? A priest, was it? Kevin was a good Catholic.”

  “Naah. Wasn’t no priest, didn’t wear no round collar or nothin’. Just the preacher from down the road. He was always preachin’ hellfire and damnation and sayin’ Catholics was idol-worshipers and that. I could hear him, summers when the windows was open, all the way over here. The prof never paid him no never mind, but he never throw him out, neither. He’d just listen, polite-like, and after a while the preacher’d run down and leave.” Jerry guffawed, an alarming noise. “The prof told me onc’t, he said he just turned off his hearin’ aid till the preacher give up.”

  Alan chuckled. “That’s one way to deal with a pest. When my hearing gets a little worse, I’ll have to remember that. Jerry, did none of his family come to call?”

  “He don’t—didn’t have much family in these parts. Just a niece or somethin’. Yeah, she come once or twice. Come for a handout, I reckon. Way I hear it, her husband’s just run off with some broad, and she don’t got much money.

  “And that’s about it, near as I can recollect, ’cept for the lady lawyer. She come once. Kept a close eye on her, you can bet. Don’t reckon a woman got no business bein’ a lawyer. Didn’t trust her. ’Sides—she ain’t bad to look at in them short skirts she wears, y’know?”

  He gave Alan a sly look; Alan winked. Well, really! I’d deal with him later!

  Alan continued his gentle probing for a few minutes more, but Jerry had evidently given us all the information he could remember. When he repeated, for the third time, his invitation to share rabbit stew, we decided it was time to leave.

  “Don’t you want to see the workshop?” He sounded just a little forlorn.

  “We do, very much, but I have an appointment in a few minutes. Can we come back another time?”

  “Any time you want. I’m always here, almost. Next time come for supper.”

  “We’ll take you up on that, Jerry,” promised my husband, to my dismay. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Same here. You want to know anything about the prof, you just come and ask me!”

  6

  DO you really propose to eat something he’s cooked?” I demanded when we were out of earshot. “And what about that wink and leer you two exchanged?”

  “Cementing diplomatic relations, my dear,” said Alan blandly. “Not to mention the fact that it isn’t wise to offend murder suspects.”

  “Murder suspect? Jerry? He’s a little strange, I know, but he was obviously devoted to Kevin.”

  “He was also a prisoner of war in Vietnam—did you catch that?”

  “Of course,” I said loftily.

  “Of course. Well, that was an experience that left a good many men with some peculiar ideas. And he’s a crack shot with that rifle of his.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He shot two rabbits last night. One rabbit isn’t too hard to bag, but the first shot scares any others around. They’ll freeze for a second or two and then hare off, if you’ll excuse the expression. He’d have to reload the gun, sight, and hit a small running target. That takes skill.”

  It’s amazing, the things I don’t know. “Okay. Point taken. But Kevin wasn’t shot, and I think Jerry was Kevin’s faithful dog.”

  “Dogs can turn vicious. I’m keeping an open mind, and I’m keeping relations with Jerry very, very friendly. Now, do you want to call on that neighbor, investigate Kevin’s house, or get some lunch?”

  “Hah! You, my dear, are the most excellent and civilized of men, and you know all about hunting rabbits. But even you don’t know everything. Any woman knows you don’t go knocking on somebody’s door at lunchtime. And we can’t get near Kevin’s house while Jerry’s on guard. We eat lunch.”

  “Right. What sort of food did you have in mind?”

  “Anything but rabbit.”

  I’d intended a quick salad at my favorite little café on the edge of town. Scratch that idea. The café was now a used bookstore next to a mini-mall I’d never seen before. I drove around the outskirts of town, getting more frustrated by the moment. The streets kept turning out wrong. Almost all the old landmarks were gone; in their place were housing developments and condominiums and chain stores and fast-food joints.

  “Three years, Alan! Only three years! How could it change so much in that time?”

  “I imagine it’s the outlying areas. The city center and the residential areas probably haven’t changed much.”

  I shut up. I was absolutely not ready even to talk about the residential areas. I might, before we left Hillsburg, get up the courage to drive past my old house, but not yet. Not yet. If they’d torn that down, or cut down my beloved trees, or—no.

  Failing to find any reasonable place to eat, in the end we settled for a fast-food hamburger and climbed back into the car feeling full, greasy, and unsatisfied. And I, for one, was in no sweet temper.

  “For two cents I’d go back to the hotel and pull the covers over my head.”

  The only response to a remark like that is to ignore it. Alan said, “The neighbor first, do you think? Or one of the others?”

  I turned the key in the ignition. “We might as well try her. It’s Saturday. With any luck she’ll be home. Most of the others we can beard in their offices next week, but we don’t know where she works. Or if she works outside the home.”

  “Right. And by that reasoning, tomorrow we’ll take on the preacher. Yes?”

  I sighed and made a risky left turn out of the parking lot. “I was,” I said when we were safely in the traffic lanes again, “looking forward to my old church tomorrow. But I suppose duty calls.”

  We were approaching Kevin’s neighborhood by a different route than the one I had taken earlier, and when we got near, I stopped the car in utter dismay. The neat little farmhouses that used to dot the road were gone. In their place were a huge plot of bulldozed earth and a sign indicating that a new superstore was to be built on the site.

  “Look at that! People uprooted! The countryside ruined! How can they do that?”

  Alan quieted my fulminations, and I turned in the direction of the only house now close enough to Kevin’s to be considered “next door.” A country “next door,” for sure: about a quarter of a mile along a narrow back road.

  “This’ll be gone soon, too, I suppose!”

  “Perhaps not. It’s a pleasant house, certainly.”

  I like to think I can tell something about people by the houses they live in. This one was an old farmhouse, white and rambling. The front porch sagged a bit, but it, like the rest of the house, was bright with fresh paint. A big pot of red geraniums blazed in a patch of sunlight by the front steps.

  The woman who answered the door did fit the house. She was dressed in blue jeans that were clean and well fitting, but not chic. Her white shirt probably belonged to her husband, and her short gray hair was in wild disarray. Her face, shiny with soap, didn’t need makeup. She was quite beautiful.

  “Yes? If you’re with Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons, I’m sorry, but I’m very busy.”

  I wished I dared laugh at the expression on my husband’s face. “No,” I said hastily. “We’re not trying to convert you or sell you anything. I apologize for not calling ahead, but we didn’t know your name.”

  The woman looked puzzled. She also looked ready to close the door.

  “All we knew,” I said quickly, “was that you were a neighbor of Kevin Cassidy’s. I don’t think we’ve ever met, but I was a good friend of Kevin’s in years past, and if you have a moment or two, I’d really like to talk to you about him.”

  “Oh. Sure, come on in. I’m sort of in the middle of something, but I’d
be glad to talk about Kevin. A real shame about him, wasn’t it?”

  She showed us into a small living room that looked just like her. It was clean and reasonably tidy except for piles of papers tumbled over the coffee table. It was comfortable, but not fashionable. The quilted cushions scattered here and there looked as if love had gone into them; the pictures were mostly family photographs. I felt immediately at home.

  We introduced ourselves and sat down. Her name was Hannah Schneider.

  “That’s one of Kevin’s pieces, isn’t it?” I gestured to a small window by the fireplace. Its original glass had been replaced by a glowing piece of art, abstract but charged with life.

  “Yes, isn’t it gorgeous? We were all just blown away when he suddenly revealed all that talent. He was a genius in glass, really.”

  “A genius, period. I knew him mostly as a scientist—and a friend, of course.”

  “He was a good friend to me,” said Hannah with a sad smile. “He even—well, I was one of his students, of course. I think—were you related to Frank Martin?”

  “He was my first husband. He died several years ago.”

  “Oh yes, I’d heard. I was his student, too, for a year of botany. And then when I went on to pharmacy school, I gave those two men most of the credit for my grades. They gave me such a thorough grounding in scientific method, I got through pharmacy school with no sweat.”

  “You’re a pharmacist, then?”

  “Part-time. I didn’t work at all while I was raising my kids, but now that they’re grown up and on their own, it helps pass the time. I may give it up again, though. I’ve gotten involved in community work.” She gestured to the card table full of papers.

  “Is that what you were in the middle of? It looks like a lot of work.”

  “Massive, but worth it—if we can only win!”

  Hannah sat forward on her chair, her eyes alight. She began to talk eagerly, her hands making rapid gestures and now and then running through her hair, making it stand straight up.