to meet you.â Casey watched his gaze slip to her breasts. âListen, the cops wonât tell me much and I was wondering if you heard anything the night my dad was killed. I was told it happened on Sunday between 8:00 and 10:00 PM .â
âIâI, uh.â He tried for her face again, âI told them I heard a car pull into his driveway a little before eight.â
Interesting. âDid you see the car?â
âNo.â He wiped his hand on his shirt. âJust a lady in the house.â
âWhat lady?â Rhonda asked.
âAnd where in the house?â Casey added.
âIn a room with a lot of books,â Gil replied. âItâs on the ground floor, next to our fence.â
âSo, you can see into the room?â Casey asked.
âA little bit of it, when Iâm in the garden, like I was then.â Gil lowered his voice. âSaw her through the knothole. Itâs opposite a door with a window in the upper half.â
Must be a good-sized knothole, Casey thought. How much time had he spent looking through it? âDo you often garden at night, Gil?â
âNo, but my parents will be back from Arizona soon. Iâm supposed to have all the gardens ready for planting and the lawn mowed by then, and Iâve kind of put it off.â He shrugged.
Gil zeroed in on her boobs again, but Casey didnât mind. It was a small price to pay for crucial information. If heâd witnessed the murder, sheâd toss him her bra and throw in a belly dance.
âGil, did the woman look in her seventies?â Rhonda asked.
âI only saw the back of her, but she didnât dress old. She was in some sort of blue sparkly outfit with a matching hat.â
Rhondaâs eyes narrowed. âWhat was the woman doing? Did you see her hair color?â
âShe was standing and talking, and her hair was either really short or pushed up under the hat âcause I didnât see it.â
Casey knew what Rhonda was thinking: the woman could have been a lover. She wanted to ask Gil if heâd seen them embrace, but Rhonda was developing a pout.
âToo bad you didnât see the womanâs car,â Casey said.
âI can only see his driveway from my bedroom upstairs. Anyway, I gave up on the stupid garden pretty quick, then went inside and cranked up the music. Crashed about eleven-thirty.â He glanced at Caseyâs breasts again. âI did look out the window once, but the car was gone. Mustâve left while I had the music on. Didnât hear an engine start.â
âCan you see into the room with the books from your bedroom window?â Casey asked.
âAngleâs too sharp, but when I closed my drapes I saw that the lights were out. Didnât think in a million years anyone was dead in there.â He tucked strands of hair behind his ears.
Rhonda fidgeted. âHad you seen the woman before?â
âNah. Didnât see him around much either. No parties, loud music, not even a barbecue.â
âDid you tell the police about the woman?â
âUh-huh. They came in and looked out the window, tracked freakinâ dirt all over the carpets.â
Casey sighed. What else had Lalonde not bothered to tell her?
Five
CASEY STEPPED OUT of her Tercel and glanced at the back of Mainland Public Transportâs admin building. The drab gray paint and two floors of narrow, paned windows always reminded her of a warehouse rather than an office building.
On her way to the entrance, she heard three-hundred horsepower engines starting up in the yard behind her. Most people couldnât bear the smell of diesel fuel, but to Casey it meant paychecks, friendships, and busy-ness. In summer, when the windows were open, the yard was noisy, but she didnât mind. The atmosphere was more informal than downtownâs tinted-glass towers with talking elevators. Here, people used the stairs and talked to one another.
Sheâd