thing,” his father said.
“Is that Rachel’s car in the driveway?” Shoe asked.
Shoe’s father nodded. “She’s out jogging,” he said. “Gotta be nuts, in this heat, especially with the pollution in the air.”
Constable Smith grunted softly in agreement.
“Would you like something, son?” Shoe’s father asked. “Coffee? All we’ve got is instant, I’m afraid.”
“I brought my own,” Shoe said, taking a vacuum bag of dark roast coffee and a box of cone filters from his carry-on. He took a six-cup Braun automatic coffee maker out of the back of the cupboard over the fridge. It probably hadn’t been used since his previous visit. He inserted a paper cone filter into the basket, then broke the seal on the bag of coffee, and scooped coffee into the filter.
“That smells good,” Howard Schumacher said. “Maybe I’ll have a cup after all.”
“And be up all night,” his wife said.
“Half a cup then. With lots of milk.”
“Would you like some coffee while you wait for the detectives?” Shoe asked Constable Smith.
“No, thank you,” the officer said.
Shoe added another scoop of coffee to the filter, then filled the reservoir, and turned the coffee maker on. He took a carton of milk from the fridge, poured some into a mug, and placed the mug into the microwave, but did not start it.
“Do you have any idea what Mr. Cartwright was doing out there in the woods at night?” Constable Smith asked.
“He spent a lot of time in those woods when he lived here,” Shoe’s father said. “He was a birdwatcher. Don’t guess he was watching birds at night, though.”
“Any idea why he came back to the neighbourhood after so long?”
“Nope,” Shoe’s father said. “Sorry.”
“Howard, maybe he came for the homecoming festival,” Shoe’s mother said.
“I forgot about that,” Shoe’s father said. “We’ve had a neighbourhood Sunday-in-the-park every August civic holiday weekend for thirty years,” he explained to the constable. “Before that we all got together in someone’s backyard. This year they’re having a homecoming festival for people who used to live here. Our daughter is on the organizing committee. I suppose she could tell you if Mr. Cartwright was on the list of people who registered.”
The front doorbell rang, the classic ding-dong of the old “Avon calling” cosmetics commercials.
“That’ll be the detectives,” Constable Smith said.
Shoe went to the front door. A man and a woman stood on the steps, Constable Pappas behind them. The detectives both wore dark glasses, and suit jackets despite the heat and humidity. The man was in his thirties, doughy and overweight and beginning to lose his hair. He smelled of cigarettes. The woman was older, in her early forties, slightly taller than her companion, slim and long-legged. Her cropped dark hair had a reddish hue in the sunshine. Shoe had the feeling he knew her, but that didn’t seem likely. Perhaps she reminded him of someone he’d once known.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Hannah Lewis,” she said, showing Shoe her badge.
She put her badge away, then took off her dark glasses. She had the sharpest cheekbones Shoe had ever seen, which gave her a slightly fox-like appearance, but it was when he saw her eyes, oblique and a deep violet, that he knew who she was, and when he had last seen her. Her name hadn’t been Lewis then. It had been Mackie.
“This is Detective Constable Paul Timmons,” she said. Her violet eyes connected with Shoe’s and held them for a moment. “Are you Mr. Schumacher?” she asked.
“One of them,” Shoe replied. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that she didn’t appear to recognize him. “Come in.”
The detectives followed him into the kitchen. Lewis nodded to Constable Smith. To Shoe and his parents, she said, “Would you mind waiting in here for a minute while I talk to the officers?” Without waiting for an answer, she went into the living room. Constable Smith followed. While Lewis and the uniformed officers conferred in low voices, and Timmons stood silently in the doorway, Shoe pressed the start button on the microwave and heated the milk for his father’s coffee. He heard the front door open and close as Lewis came back into the kitchen.
Shoe poured his father’s coffee, then held up the pot. Lewis shook her head. Her partner said, “No, thanks.” Shoe filled a mug for himself.
“What can you tell us about Marvin Cartwright?” Lewis asked, addressing Shoe and his parents.
“What was that, miss?” Shoe’s father said, turning his head. “You’ll have to speak up.”
“Sorry,” Lewis said. She repeated the question while Howard Schumacher carefully sipped his coffee.
“Not much,” Shoe’s father said. “He moved away thirty-five years ago, after his mother died. No idea where to. Lived where the Tans live now. They’ve lived there for fifteen years or so. Before the Tans it was the Gagliardis and before them it was the Bronsteins. He bought the house new, around the same time we did, when the street was a dead end and there were farm fields where the junior high school is now. Joe found an Indian arrowhead. And a musket ball. Remember, Joe? Anyway, you wouldn’t know the place. The woods haven’t changed much, I guess, except they’re a bit wilder now. City’s let the park go to hell, if you ask me, especially along the creek.”
“How long have you lived here?” Lewis asked.
“Just a few months shy of fifty years,” Shoe’s father said.
“That means Marvin Cartwright was your neighbour for fifteen years,” Lewis said. “You must’ve come to know him pretty well in that time.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But he pretty much kept himself to himself, as they say. Not that he wasn’t friendly, mind you. He just didn’t mix much. He was a bit different. The odd man out, you might say. He wasn’t married, for one thing, and he didn’t have a nine-to-five job like everyone else in the neighbourhood. Not sure what he did for a living, actually, but if he worked, it was at home. Or maybe he just looked after his mother full-time. She was an invalid. Bedridden. A truck would deliver oxygen once a month or so, and every so often an ambulance would come, take her away to the hospital, I suppose, and bring her back a few days later. Only time anyone ever saw her was when they were moving her back and forth from the ambulance. Kids called him Marvin the Martian. You know? After the old cartoon character? Some of the older boys used to play practical jokes on him.”
“What sort of jokes?” Lewis asked.
“Kid stuff mostly. Leaving flaming paper bags of dog poop on his front porch and ringing the doorbell, hoping he’d stomp out the flames. Letting the air out of his car tires. Wrapping his shrubs in toilet paper. Not Joe, though,” Shoe’s father added, smiling at Shoe. “You used to do yard work for him, didn’t you?”
Shoe shook his head. “That was Hal,” he said.
“Did you know him?” Lewis asked.
“Not really,” Shoe replied. He’d been fifteen the summer Marvin Cartwright had moved away. He remembered a sturdy, sun-browned man, always friendly, but who didn’t smile much. To Shoe, Cartwright had had an aura of mystery about him, but that had likely been a product of his standoffishness and a teenager’s active imagination. Shoe had never spoken to him that he could recall, except to say hello. He hadn’t played jokes on him, as Hal had, until he’d grown out of it, not long before Cartwright had moved away.
“The littler kids liked him,” Howard Schumacher said.
Lewis raised her eyebrows.
“The city used to set up an outdoor skating rink in the