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“We’re checking everybody who was in this neighborhood last week. It’s really important, Mr. Parsons. Try hard to remember.”

“So it is about the murder. You haven’t arrested anybody yet, have you?”

“No.”

“I watched the street last night, and fifteen minutes went by without a single squad car passing. It was horrible, what happened to the Leedses. My wife has been beside herself. I wonder who’ll buy their house. I saw some Negroes looking at it the other day. You know, I had to speak to Leeds a few times about his children, but they were all right. Of course, he wouldn’t do anything I suggested about his lawn. The Department of Agriculture has some excellent pamphlets on the control of nuisance grasses. Finally I just put them in his mailbox. Honestly, when he mowed the wild onions were suffocating.”

“Mr. Parsons, exactly when did you see this fellow in the alley?” Springfield asked.

“I’m not sure, I was trying to think.”

“Do you recall the time of day? Morning? Noon? Afternoon?”

“I know the times

of day, you don’t have to name them. Afternoon, maybe. I don’t remember.”

Springfield rubbed the back of his neck. “Excuse me, Mr. Parsons, but I have to get this just right. Could we go in your kitchen and you show us just where you saw him from?”

“Let me see your credentials. Both of you.”

In the house, silence, shiny surfaces, and dead air. Neat. Neat. The desperate order of an aging couple who see their lives begin to blur.

Graham wished he had stayed outside. He was sure the drawers held polished silver with egg between the tines.

Stop it and let’s pump the old fart.

The window over the kitchen sink gave a good view of the backyard.

“There. Are you satisfied?” Parsons asked. “You can see out there from here. I never talked to him, I don’t remember what he looked like. If that’s all, I have a lot to do.”

Graham spoke for the first time. “You said you went to get your robe, and when you came back he was gone. You weren’t dressed, then?”

“No.”

“In the middle of the afternoon? Were you not feeling well, Mr. Parsons?”

“What I do in my own house is my business. I can wear a kangaroo suit in here if I want to. Why aren’t you out looking for the killer? Probably because it’s cool in here.”

“I understand you’re retired, Mr. Parsons, so I guess it doesn’t matter if you put on your clothes every day or not. A lot of days you just don’t get dressed at all, am I right?”

Veins stood out in Parsons’s temples. “Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I don’t put my clothes on and get busy every day. I just got hot and I came in and took a shower. I was working. I was mulching, and I had done a day’s work by afternoon, which is more than you’ll do today.”

“You were what?”

“Mulching.”

“What day did you mulch?”

“Friday. It was last Friday. They delivered it in the morning, a big load, and I had . . . I had it all spread by afternoon. You can ask at the Garden Center how much it was.”

“And you got hot and came in and took a shower. What were you doing in the kitchen?”

“Fixing a glass of iced tea.”

“And you got out some ice? But the refrigerator is over there, away from the window.”

Parsons looked from the window to the refrigerator, lost and confused. His eyes were dull, like the eyes of a fish in the market toward the end of the day. Then they brightened in triumph. He went to the cabinet by the sink.