Camouflage (Nameless Detective Mysteries) by Bill Pronzini Page A

area; in fact, I parked across the street from Canine Customers and took my time walking around. If Carson was paying attention, I wanted her to see me and relay the information to McManus. It wouldn’t bother them much if they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, it might shake them up to know they were being investigated. Shake up people with something to hide and it can lead to mistakes and answers.
    House canvassing is not one of my favorite tasks. Most city residents are leery of strangers these days, no matter how well dressed, polite, and nonthreatening, and if I have to flash my ID, it turns some hostile and makes others close up like cactus flowers at sundown. These were the reactions I got from the first five neighbors who were home and took the trouble to answer their doorbells. Only two deigned to look at Virden’s photo and none of the five could or would own up to seeing him or his Porsche in the neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.
    The sixth person I talked to, a woman in one of the houses on Minnesota Street catercorner to the McManus place, was the only one who had anything to tell me—of a sort. And not without some initial confusion and difficulty.
    She was in her late sixties, the owner of a pile of frizzy gray hair, a pair of beadily alert gray eyes, plump cheeks red stained with broken capillaries, and a set of false teeth that had been improperly fitted and gave her something of an overbite. She took one look at me and said in disgusted tones, “Oh, God, a new one.”
    “No, ma’am, I’m not selling—”
    “You’re pretty old, aren’t you?”
    “Old?”
    “To be chasing after young women. Laurie’s not even forty yet.”
    “I’m afraid you have me—”
    “Have you? Not me, mister. You or any other man, now that my husband’s gone to his reward.” She spoke with a slight lisp, the false teeth clicking now and then like little finger snaps. “My daughter’s got no morals, same like her father. Not much taste, either, I must say. You’re old enough to be her father … and married, too.”
    “I am, yes, but—”
    “Not even trying to hide it, wedding ring right there on your finger. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
    “You don’t understand—”
    “The devil I don’t understand. I know all about men like you, I was married to a cheating old goat myself for thirty-seven years. Go away; go back to your wife. Laurie’s not here.”
    She started to close the door. I got a foot in the way, the photograph up between her face and mine, and said fast so she couldn’t interrupt, “I don’t know any woman named Laurie. I’m looking for a missing person, the man in this photo, he was in this neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.”
    She batted her eyes, clicked her teeth, flushed a little, and said, “Oh my God,” in a subdued and mortified tone. “I thought you were screwing my daughter.”
    “So I gathered.”
    “I’m sorry. You must think I’m awful, talking to you the way I did.…”
    “No, ma’am,” I lied. I eased the photo a little closer. “Do you recognize this man?”
    She squinted, clicked, and lisped, “No. Never saw anybody looks like that.”
    “He was driving a new black Porsche.”
    “I don’t know anything about cars. I wouldn’t know a Porsche from a petunia.”
    “Sports car. Pretty distinctive.”
    “Never saw it. The man’s missing, you say? He live around here?”
    “No. Visiting R. L. McManus.”
    “Oh, the dog woman. New boarder over there?”
    “No. He was there on a personal matter.”
    “Gate sign’s down, so she’s got a new one. That’s why I asked. Steady string in and out of there, you’d think some of them would stay longer than they do. Must be the damn dogs barking all the time that drives them away.”
    “How well do you know her, Mrs.—?”
    “Hightower, Selma Hightower. Just to talk to, that’s all. Standoffish. Keeps to herself.”
    “Jane Carson?”
    “Hah. No, and I keep my distance when I see