No furniture, no carpets, no pictures on the walls.No beds and no bedding.When I yanked open one of the kitchen cabinets, there were no dishes or glasses.No food in the pantry.
“No one lives here,” Mendoza said.
“I can see that.Unless...You don’t think there’s any chance that they moved out overnight, do you?”
“Someone would have noticed that,” Mendoza said.
“Maybe not.Nobody noticed the neighbor getting shot.”
“It probably took all of three minutes to shoot Mrs.Grimshaw, including the time it took the shooter to walk from his car to the house and back.But you don’t empty a whole house of furniture in a couple of minutes.If someone pulled a moving van into the driveway and started carrying out furniture, someone would have noticed.And they couldn’t have done it in the dark.If it was dark, they would have needed flood lights to see what they were doing.”
All good points.
“Maybe Mrs.Grimshaw noticed,” I said.“And that’s why they shot her.”
Mendoza didn’t answer.I looked around again.“The girl was here yesterday.So was Steven.For more than an hour.And there isn’t even a bed in here!”
Mendoza’s mouth quirked.“There are other ways, you know.Ways that don’t require a bed.”
I’m sure there were.“For more than an hour, though?That can’t be comfortable.And Steven must be close to David’s age, wouldn’t you say?Fifty, at least.”
Well past the age of picking anyone up, propping her against the wall, and proceeding to have his way with her.Or so one would think.
“Nothing to sit on here,” Mendoza said with a look around.“No bed.No sofa.Not even a table.”
There was the kitchen counter.But that was hard to imagine too, frankly.
“So what were they doing for more than an hour?”I asked.
“Maybe she was a real estate agent,” Mendoza suggested, “and she was showing him the house.”
It made as much sense as anything else.None, in other words.“Hard to see how anyone would spend an hour and a half looking at half a dozen empty rooms.And there’s no sign in the yard.”
“Maybe it’s for rent and not for sale,” Mendoza said.“Or maybe they sat on the floor and pretended to have a picnic.”
Maybe.At this point, I’d accept almost any explanation.“At least no one’s dead in here.”
Mendoza shook his head.“And nobody’s likely to complain that we took a look, either.We didn’t invade anyone’s privacy.Time to go.”
He gestured to the back door.I headed in that direction, and waited for him to close and lock the door behind us.“You don’t think Steven had anything to do with what happened to Mrs.Grimshaw, do you?”
Mendoza gave me a look out of the corner of his eye.“Do you?”
“I don’t know him well.Although I wouldn’t think so.He’s a normal person.A university professor.Married to a lawyer.Not the kind of person who’d go around shooting someone for no reason.”
“I’m sure he had a reason,” Mendoza said, “whoever he was.”
“Or she.”
He nodded.“Tell me more about the girl who was in the house last night.”
I couldn’t tell him anything beyond what I’d already told him, and said so.“You’d have to talk to Zachary about her.He was the one who took the pizza up to the door and actually spoke to her.I was waiting in the car, and the angle was wrong.I didn’t get a good look.All I know is that she had long, blond hair.Zachary said she was very pretty, and maybe a couple of years older than him.But he capitalized her pronoun when he came back to the car, so I’m sure he’d be able to give you a good description.”
Mendoza’s eyebrows had elevated.“Excuse me?”
“She,” I said.“When he said ‘she,’ it sounded like it had a capital S.She obviously made an impression on him.”
“Ah.”Mendoza’s lips quirked.I kept amusing him, it seemed.I tried to tell myself that it was a good thing, but honestly, I wasn’t sure.He might be laughingatme instead ofwithme.
