did?” My sudden movement startled the black cat, who leaped down from the windowsill. “You’re sure? Hazel eyes? Kind of a small mouth?”
“Did I tell her to stand still so that I can draw her picture? Three, maybe four times I noticed a visitor who was not the bum. She was a tall woman with dark hair. I don’t know from the mouth.”
Lady X.
“You didn’t happen to catch her name did you?” I asked. Mr. Castlebaum sipped at his tea. He made a face.
“This tea is sour. I apologize.”
“Her name?”
He sat back on the couch and looked at me with a tiny smile on his face. Great. He had definitely spent too much time with these cats. Now he was going to toy with me.
“You are interested in this woman?”
I nodded.
“So you are not interested in my neighbor?”
“Your neighbor is dead,” I reminded him.
“You buried her,” he reminded me right back.
I pressed. “This woman. Can you tell me anything at all about her? Was she ever here at the same time as Guy Fellows?”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I am not looking out my peephole twenty-four hours a day if that’s what you are saying.”
“Not at all.”
A cross-eyed calico cat leaped up onto the couch next to Mr. Castlebaum and gave off a horrifying cry.The old man encased the cat’s face in his bony hand and the animal collapsed in silence.
“There is one time,” he said, “that I almost saw them together. This is maybe a week or so before they discovered the poor girl in her car out there.”
“You
almost
saw them together?”
“I am passing my door and I can hear the bum over there. He is yelling. I hear something breaking. What? A lamp? I don’t know. Something hard hits the wall. The bum is still yelling. So something tells me to look through the peephole. Someone is there, but all I see is the person’s back. They’re standing in front of the door. And then the back disappears and the apartment door opens. It’s the bum. He looks angry, but what’s new? You might as well say the pope looks Catholic. And then off he goes. You see what I am saying? In and out of the place like he owns it. He slams the door. So he goes. And I open my door and step into the hall. And over there by the stairs, in the shadows, there is the woman.”
“With the dark hair?”
“Yes, yes, that woman. The mouth, the eyes. She is hiding. That’s obvious to me. She ran into the shadows so that the bum wouldn’t see her.”
“Did she say anything?”
“I did. I said, ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’ A person has to watch out these days.”
“And?”
“And nothing. She comes over and knocks on the door. I can see the young woman just a little bit when the door opens. She is crying, the young woman. There is blood on her face. Before I can say anything else, this other one is inside and the door is closed.”
“And you got the definite impression that she was hiding from Guy Fellows.”
“I tell you what I saw. Am I a mind reader?”
I was thinking he was an exhausting old man who ought to let some fresh air into his apartment. He slapped his hands down on his bony knees. End of story. It wasn’t much. I thanked him for the tea and for his time. He waved his arms impatiently.
“Forget the tea. It was lousy.”
At the door, he hesitated. “There is one more thing I can tell you. When this young woman dies. She is found in her car in the garage. The police come by and they ask me who is the landlord so that they can inform him. Well, I am the landlord. I own this palace. I get the key and I let them into the apartment. It was a mess. But I don’t mean she is a messy person, this poor dead girl. I mean a tornado has come through, Drawers are hanging open. Pillows and clothes are on the floor. Books. Dishes. A lamp is broken. It is a mess.”
“Like someone was looking for something? That kind of a mess?”
He nodded. “It could be.”
“Are her belongings still in there?” I asked.
“No. The bum came by the next