To Live and Die In Dixie by Kathy Hogan Trocheck

agreed.
    â€œSounds like you’ve had some experiences yourself,” I said. “If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do for a living?”
    â€œI’m an architect,” he said.
    I turned around for a closer look at his house, surprised that a contemporary architect would choose such an old relic for a home.
    He caught my look. “Oh, I don’t do residential,” he said. “It’s all commercial, mostly government work. County courthouses, hospitals, that kind of thing.”
    An uneasy silence fell over us. I glanced down at my watch. It was after six.
    â€œI better get going,” I said reluctantly. “I want to talk to some of the other neighbors before dark. See if anybody saw anything Saturday evening.”
    â€œLike what?” he said. The belligerent tone had crept back into his voice.
    â€œStrange cars, strange faces, noises. Anybody walking around who doesn’t belong.”
    â€œAre you kidding?” he said. “Yesterday was the preview of the tour of homes. Tour buses loaded down with old ladies from as far away as Alpharetta and Covington, cops, trucks making deliveries, workers finishing up stuff on the houses that are on tour. All kinds of people were coming and going, all over the neighborhood.”
    â€œThat’s right,” I said. “I’d forgotten. And you didn’t hear or see anything unusual either?”
    He shook his head. “I shut myself in my office and worked on a proposal for a new municipal building for the city of Valdosta most of the afternoon. All I saw was the four walls of that room. Then last night I treated myself to dinner out with friends. When I got home, the police were swarming the neighborhood.”
    I scanned the block while Dahlberg spoke. The lawn mower had quit buzzing. “Is there a resident busybody on the block who might have seen something?”
    He grinned and jerked his head to the right, gesturing toward a tiny, dark green bungalow next to his.
    â€œThat’d be Mr. Szabo. If he was home, he’d have been right on the front porch, sitting in that glider there. His house doesn’t have any air-conditioning. You could try talking to him. Tell him I sent you.”
    â€œThanks.” I stroked one of the rose petals with my finger. It made velvet feel like burlap. “And thanks for the flower.”
    I was cutting through the side yard over to the neighbor’s house when Dahlberg called after me.
    â€œI forgot,” he said. “It’s Sunday. A church bus picks him up in the morning and he spends the day fellow-shipping and dodging the advances of horny widow ladies. He usually gets home around nine.”
    â€œI’ll try some of the others,” I said. “There’s always an off chance somebody saw something.”
    â€œSuit yourself,” Dahlberg said, heading back toward his own porch. “But you’re wasting your time. Littlefield killed her.”
    â€œWe’ll see about that,” I muttered to myself.
    The house on the other side of Dahlberg’s could probably be described as a handyman’s special. Paint peeled from the three wooden columns that leaned across the front porch. The fourth column was actually a pair of two-by-fours braced in place. The front door was laying horizontally across a set of sawhorses, and a tall thin man in overalls was running an electric sander back and forth across the blistered surface of the wood. A pair of plastic safety goggles made him look like a giant dragonfly.
    He didn’t see me standing there and didn’t hear me calling “excuse me,” until I tapped him on the shoulder.
    Startled, he looked up and shut off the sander.
    â€œSam Burdette,” he said, after I’d introduced myself. “Excuse the mess. We’ve been in the house a year this month. Seems like we’ll never get done.”
    I repeated my anything-unusual questions.
    â€œLet me think,”