There was an Old Woman by Howard Engel Page B

of his own. You guys!”
    â€œChris is on a heavy murder, Benny. The sort of thing you used to be interested in in the old days.”
    â€œOkay! Okay!” I shouted. “I confess! I confess!” Doorways opened up all along the corridor and heads looked out. Pete turned pink and retreated behind his own shut door. Nobody appeared to take a statement, but after about five minutes Pete came back with some drinkable coffee.

THIRTEEN
    The heavy murder that was occupying the attention of Chris Savas that Tuesday night turned out to be that of Clarence Temperley, whose dead body was found in an open grave in Victoria Lawn Cemetery. According to the Beacon, which printed the story for the first time on Wednesday, Detective-Sergeant Savas said that they were treating the death of the bank manager as a homicide. Pete Staziak told me that the post-mortem finding of two bullet holes in Temperley’s heart led them to this view.
    The paper said that the body had been found on Tuesday morning under some loose earth when the grounds crew were arranging the lowering mechanism for a funeral scheduled for that afternoon. James Balham, who was in charge of the grounds crew, said that it was only by chance that the body was discovered under the freshly excavated clay. The investigation is continuing, the paper stated at the end of the article.
    The word on the street about Temperley was mixed. He was a likeable little fellow; he was a tight-fisted son of a bitch. The nicest, most endearing fact I learned was that he and his wife were veteran bird-watchers, who took a few weeks every year to spy on the mating habits oftheir feathered friends. I recognized the face on the front page of the Beacon. I’d seen it sitting behind his desk at the bank and also in the Di at lunch-time, often eating alone. Of course, everyone expressed his shock and disbelief that Temperley, who had no known enemies— apart from those whose loans he had refused to approve—should have been so cruelly murdered in the autumn flowering of his life.
    While I found this diverting to read, and enjoyed Pete’s gloss on the newspaper account, I couldn’t see how I could turn it into rent money. I’d been talking to Pete on the phone about the fate of my dear friend Kogan, the well-known buff-artist. Naturally, Pete took this as another opportunity to kid me about the company I was keeping, but in the end he had to admit that as far as he knew, Kogan had been turned loose some time Tuesday night.
    â€œSo they didn’t book him?” I asked.
    â€œDoesn’t look that way, Benny, but what do you expect a humble cop from Homicide to know of these weighty matters. Hasn’t he turned up at your office?”
    â€œHis not turning up doesn’t mean anything. You can never find Kogan when you want him.”
    â€œLet’s hope he finds some clothes soon. It’s going to be a long, hard winter.”
    During the middle of the week, I kept myself busy with the case I was working on. I had to collect data for Julian Newby, or he would find another PI to do his legwork. Wednesday and Thursday, I followed CatherineBracken from her job at CXAN to either her house in Papertown or to McStu’s house on St. Patrick Street. McStu spent a few hours a day up at Secord University, while Bracken did shopping in the malls along the Lakeshore Road, which was a little off the beaten path for her. When I checked it out, I found that she used to live in the North End, near the lake.
    Although it was good to be in work, Bracken wasn’t the most exciting character I ever followed. Her movements were regular and predictable. As far as I could see, she was an outstanding citizen. She checked out her library books and returned them on lime. She recycled her newspapers and plastic and metal containers. She bought miles of dental floss every time she went into a drugstore. She bought books, liked peppermints, didn’t buy products that