Killing Cassidy by Jeanne M. Dams

years.”
    I was suddenly, unwillingly, touched with sympathy. There was something in that last remark, a wistfulness, a shy pride—but I still wasn’t prepared to risk ptomaine. “I’ll bet it’s delicious, but Alan and I are still not quite up to eating much. Jet lag?”
    Surely even he had heard of jet lag. He did have a television, after all.
    â€œMan, I know all about that. When I come back from ’Nam, I wasn’t up to nothin’ for a week. Long ways back, that was, but I still recollect how sick I was. ’Course, I hadn’t had no good food for a long time in that cage they put me in.” He finished his beer, belched, and crumpled the can in one huge fist. “Okay. So you want to hear about the professor. What you want to know?”
    â€œAnything you can tell us, Jerry. You said he didn’t have many visitors. That surprises me a little. He had so many friends.”
    â€œYeah, but you know how it is. People get busy, they move away, they figger somebody else is goin’ to keep the old man company. They got their own lives. Just like you.”
    The guilt that I had tried to lull to sleep stirred and stretched itself. Alan’s hand closed over mine, and he took up the conversation.
    â€œI trust, at least, that someone looked in on him regularly. At his age, almost anything could have happened.”
    â€œOh, they was a few people now and then. But as for reg’lar, that was me. I’d go see him every day. He didn’t get out much anymore, only to the store for food and that. So mostly I’d find him in that workshop of his.”
    â€œWorkshop?” I frowned.
    â€œYeah, the glass. You know.”
    â€œNo. What was he doing with glass?”
    â€œGee, maybe he took that up after you left. How long ago’d you say that was?”
    â€œOver three years ago, now.”
    â€œYeah, I guess maybe it was after that. He was gettin’ restless, see. He didn’t go to work in the lab no more, said he couldn’t see good enough.”
    â€œYes, he’d given that up even before Frank died. It was hard on him, but he was very firm about it. He said he wasn’t going to be one of those old bores who got in the way of the young people and messed up their experiments. As if he would!”
    â€œYeah, well, when he quit, it left him with nothin’ much to do with his time. And I guess he went to one of them art fairs, up in Brown County or somewheres, and he got interested in that stuff they do with colored glass. So he built hisself a workshop out back and took it up.”
    â€œHe started working in stained glass? At—what—ninety-three, ninety-four?”
    â€œYep. Pretty good at it, too. People come and give him stuff to do for them, whaddaya call it—”
    â€œCommissions?”
    â€œYeah, that’s it. He was real proud of that. Did right pretty stuff. Give me one last Christmas.” He gestured toward a dirty window where a sun-catcher hung crookedly from a rusty wire.
    I had missed it when I first came in, overlooked it in the general clutter. Now I couldn’t take my eyes off it. A swirl of abstract color, it glowed like a costly jewel in a pinchbeck setting.
    â€œDon’t know what it’s supposed to be, but I kinda like it,” said Jerry.
    My throat was too tight to answer. Once more Alan stepped into the breach.
    â€œIt’s a beautiful thing, Jerry. Do you remember who came to give Professor Cassidy commissions? We’d like to see more of his work.”
    â€œLots of it in the workshop. I could take you over and see it.”
    â€œThat would be very kind of you, and we’d like to do that. But we—my wife—would also like to talk to the people who saw the professor close to his death, if you remember who any of them are.”
    I marveled at Alan’s patience. I was longing to get out of the smelly trailer, see Kevin’s workshop, learn