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'I don't understand you.'
She smiled her wan smile. 'I don't understand myself. That's why I'm here. I don't think telling this serves
any practical purpose - Mort's dead, and it's over -but it may help me. It may help me to sleep better.'
'Then tell us, by all means,' Evans said.
'You see, when we went down to clean out the house, we stopped at the little store in town - Bowie's. Ted
filled the gas tank - it's always been self-service at Bowie's - and I went in to get some things. There was a
man in there, Sonny Trotts, who used to work with Tom Greenleaf. Tom was the older of the two
caretakers who were killed. Sonny wanted to tell me how sorry he was about Mort, and he wanted to tell
me something else, too, because he saw Mort the day before Mort died, and meant to tell him. So he said. It
was about Tom Greenleaf - something Tom told Sonny while they were painting the Methodist Parish Hall
together. Sonny saw Mort after that, but didn't think to tell him right away, he said. Then he remembered
that it had something to do with Greg Carstairs
'The other dead man?'
'Yes. So he turned around and called, but Mort didn't hear him. And the next day, Mort was dead.'
'What did Mr Greenleaf tell this guy?'
'That he thought he might have seen a ghost,' Amy said calmly.
They looked at her, not speaking.
'Sonny said Tom had been getting forgetful lately, and that Tom was worried about it. Sonny thought it was
no more than the ordinary sort of forgetfulness that settles in when a person gets a little older, but Tom had
nursed his wife through Alzheimer's disease five or six years before, and he was terrified of getting it
himself and going the same way. According to Sonny, if Tom forgot a paintbrush, he spent half the day
obsessing about it. Tom said that was why, when Greg Carstairs asked him if he recognized the man he'd
seen Mort Rainey talking to the day before, or if he would recognize him if he saw him again, Tom said he
hadn't seen anyone with Mort - that Mort had been alone.'
There was the snap of a match. Ted Milner had decided to light his pipe after all. Evans ignored him. He
was leaning forward in his chair, his gaze fixed intently on Amy Milner.
'Let's get this straight. According to this Sonny Troots
'Trotts.'
'Okay, Trotts. According to him, Tom Greenleaf did see Mort with someone?'
'Not exactly,' Amy said. 'Sonny thought if Tom believed that, believed it for sure, he wouldn't have lied to
Greg. What Tom said was that he didn't know what he'd seen. That he was confused. That it seemed safer
to say nothing about it at all. He didn't want anybody - particularly Greg Carstairs, who was also in the
caretaking business - to know how confused he was, and most of all he didn't want anybody to think that he
might be getting sick the way his late wife had gotten sick.'
'I'm not sure I understand this - I'm sorry.'
'According to Sonny,' she said, 'Tom came down Lake Drive in his Scout and saw Mort, standing by
himself where the lakeside path comes out.'
'Near where the bodies were found?'
'Yes. Very near. Mort waved. Tom waved back. He drove by. Then, according to what Sonny says, Tom
looked in his rear-view mirror and saw another man with Mort, and an old station wagon, although neither
the man nor the car had been there ten seconds before. The man was wearing a black hat. he said ... but you
could see right through him, and the car, too.'
'Oh, Amy,' Ted said softly. 'The man was bullshiting you. Big time.'
She shook her head. 'I don't think Sonny is smart enough to make up such a story. He told me Tom thought
he ought to get in touch with Greg and tell him he might have seen such a man after all; that it would be all
right if he left out the see-through part. But Sonny said the old man was terrified. He was convinced that it
was one of two things: either he was coming down with Alzheimer's disease, or he'd seen a ghost.'
'Well, it's certainly creepy,' Evans said, and it was - the skin on his arms and back had crinkled into
gooseflesh for a moment or two. 'But it's hearsay ... hearsay from a dead man, in fact.'
'Yes ... but there's the other thing.' She set her teacup on the desk, picked up her purse, and began to
rummage in it. 'When I was cleaning out Mort's office, I found that hat - that awful black hat - behind his
desk. It gave me a shock, because I wasn't expecting it. I thought the police must have taken it away as
evidence, or something. I hooked it out from behind there with a stick. It came out upside down, with the
stick inside it. I used the stick to carry it outside and dump it in the trash cabinet. Do you understand?'
Ted clearly didn't; Evans clearly did. 'You didn't want to touch it.'
'That's right. I didn't want to touch it. It landed right side up on one of the green trash bags - I'd swear to
that. Then, about an hour later, I went out with a bag of old medicines and shampoos and things from the
bathroom. When I opened the lid of the garbage cabinet to put it in, the hat was turned over again. And this
was tucked into the sweatband.' She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her purse and offered it to Evans
with a hand that still trembled minutely. 'It wasn't there when the hat came out from behind the desk. I
know that.'
Evans took the folded sheet and just held it for a moment. He didn't like it. It felt too heavy, and the texture
was somehow wrong.
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