The Affair

The next question was tactically difficult, so Deveraux left it to me. I asked, "Were there intervals when something could have happened that you didn’t see?" In other words: Just exactly how nosy are you? Were there moments when you weren’t staring at your neighbor?

Both ladies saw the implication, of course, and they clucked and pursed and fussed for a minute, but the gravity of the situation meant more to them than their wounded feelings, and they came out and admitted that no, they had the situation pretty much sewn up around the clock. Both liked to sit on their porches when they weren’t otherwise occupied, and they tended to be otherwise occupied at different times. Both had bedrooms at the front of their houses, and neither tried to sleep until the midnight train had passed, and then afterward both were light sleepers anyway, so not much escaped them at night, either.

I asked, "Was there usually much coming and going over there?"

The ladies conferred and launched a long, complicated narrative that threatened to go all the way back to the American Revolution. I started to tune it out until I realized they were describing a fairly active social calendar that about half a year ago had settled into a month-on, month-off pattern, first of social frenzy, and then of complete inactivity. Feast or famine. Chapman was either never out, or always out, first four or five weeks in one condition, and then four or five weeks in the other.

Bravo Company, in Kosovo.

Bravo Company, at home.

Not good.

I asked, "Did she have a boyfriend?"

She had several, they said, with prim delight. Sometimes all at once. Practically a parade. They listed sequential glimpsed sightings, all of polite young men with short hair, all in what they called dungaree pants, all in what they called undershirts, some in what they called motorcycle coats.

Jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets.

Soldiers, obviously, off duty.

Not good.

I asked, "Was there anyone in particular? Anyone special?"

They conferred again and agreed a period of relative stability had commenced three or perhaps four months earlier. The parade of suitors had slowed, first to a trickle, and then it had stopped altogether and been replaced by the attentions of a lone man, once again described as polite, young, short-haired, but always inappropriately dressed on the many occasions they had seen him. Jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets. In their day, a gentleman called on his belle in a suit and a tie.

I asked, "What did they do together?"

They went out, the ladies said. Sometimes in the afternoons, but most often in the evenings. Probably to bars. There was very little in the way of alternative entertainment in that corner of the state. The nearest picture house was in a town called Corinth. There had been a vaudeville theater in Tupelo, but it had closed many years ago. The couple tended to come back late, sometimes after midnight, after the train had passed. Sometimes the suitor would stay an hour or two, but to their certain knowledge he had never spent the night.

I asked, "When was the last time you saw her?"

The day before she died, they said. She had left her house at seven o’clock in the evening. The same suitor had come calling for her, right at the top of the hour, quite formally.

"What was Janice wearing that night?" I asked.

A yellow dress, they said, knee length but low cut.

"Did her friend show up in his own car?" I asked.

Yes, they said, he did.

"What kind of a car was it?"

It was a blue car, they said.

36

We left both ladies on one porch and crossed the street to take a closer look at Chapman’s house. It was very much the same as the neighbors’ places. It was classic tract housing, built fast in uniform batches for returning military and their new baby boom families right after the end of World War Two. Then each individual example had grown slightly different from all the others over the passing years, the same way identical triplets might evolve differently with age. Chapman’s choice had ended up modest and unassuming, but pleasant. Someone had put neat gingerbread trim all over it, and the front door had been replaced.

We stood on the porch and I looked in a window and saw a small square living room, full of furniture that looked pretty new. There was a loveseat and an armchair and a small television set on a low chest of drawers. There was a VHS player and some tapes next to it. The living room door was open and I could see part of a narrow hallway beyond. I shifted position and craned my neck for a better look.

"Go inside if you want," Deveraux said, behind me.

"Really?"

"The door is unlocked. It was unlocked when we got here."

"Is that usual?"

"Not unusual. We never found her key."

"Not in her pocketbook?"

"She didn’t have a pocketbook with her. She seems to have left it in the kitchen."

"Is that usual?"

"She didn’t smoke," Deveraux said. "She certainly didn’t pay for drinks. Why would she need a pocketbook?"

"Makeup?" I said.

"Twenty-seven-year-olds don’t powder their noses halfway through the evening. Not like they used to. Not anymore."

I opened the front door and stepped inside the house. It was neat and clean, but the air was still and heavy. The floors and the rugs and the paint and the furniture was all fresh, but not brand new. There was an eat-in kitchen across the hall from the living room, with two bedrooms behind, and presumably a bathroom.

"Nice place," I said. "You could buy it. It would be better than the Toussaint’s hotel."

Deveraux said, "With those old biddies across the street, watching me all the time? I’d go crazy inside a week."

I smiled. She had a point.

She said, "I wouldn’t buy it even without the biddies. I wouldn’t want to live like this. Not at all what I’m used to."

I nodded. Said nothing.

Then she said, "Actually I couldn’t buy it even if I wanted to. We don’t know who the next of kin is. I wouldn’t know who to talk to."

"No will?"

"She was twenty-seven years old."

"No paperwork anywhere?"

"We haven’t found any so far."

"No mortgage?"

"Nothing on record with the county."

"No family?"

"No one recalls her mentioning any."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don’t know."

I moved on down the hallway.

"Look around," Deveraux called after me. "Feel free. Make yourself at home. But tell me if you find something I should see."

I walked from room to room, feeling the kind of trespass feelings I get every time I walk through a dead person’s house. There were minor examples of disarray here and there, the kind of things that would have been cleaned up and tidied away before an expected guest’s arrival. They humanized the place a little, but on the whole it was a bland and soulless home. There was too much uniformity. All the furniture matched. It looked like it had been selected from the same range from the same manufacturer, all at the same time. All the rugs went well together. All the paint was the same color. There were no pictures on the walls, no photographs on the shelves. No books. No souvenirs, no prized possessions.

The bathroom was clean. The tub and the towels were dry. The medicine cabinet above the sink had a mirrored door, and behind it were over-the-counter analgesics, and toothpaste, and tampons, and dental floss, and spare soap and shampoo. The main bedroom had nothing of interest in it except a bed, which was made, but not well. The second bedroom had a narrower bed that looked like it had never been used.