Yesterday's News by Jeremiah Healy

of the porch roof and looked upward. A woman was framed by a light behind her.
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œMy name’s John Cuddy. I’d like to speak with you about Jane Rust.”
    â€œJane’s dead.”
    â€œI know. I’m investigating her death.”
    â€œWondered when you folks would get back around to me. Hold on. These days, takes me a while to get downstairs.”
    The second-story sitting room was fussy. Too many tables with little evident purpose, and crocheted doilies on every possible plane, flat or curved. Mrs. O’Day sat in a rocker, wattles under her chin and both hands around her cane, tapping its rubber tip on the old carpeting.
    â€œPrivate investigator, huh?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œWasn’t aware she had any family to hire someone like you.”
    â€œJane herself hired me.”
    â€œNow that she’s dead, how come you’re still working for her?”
    â€œShe paid me for three days’ worth. It seems to me she has that coming.”
    Mrs. O’Day watched me for a moment through Coke-bottle glasses. “Are you an honest man or just a very clever one?”
    â€œI don’t follow you.”
    â€œAre you honestly interested in Jane and honoring your contract with her, or are you just using that old-fashioned notion to get on the good side of an old lady you need to pump?”
    I laughed.
    She said, “Well, leastways you laugh honest.”
    â€œMrs. O’Day, Jane asked me to look into something. Then she turns up dead that night, supposedly a suicide. That just doesn’t ring true to me.”
    â€œDon’t know much about suicide. Against the Church’s preaching, which makes it kind of hard to understand it. But I can tell you this, she was a mighty troubled young woman.”
    â€œCan you tell me what happened last night?”
    â€œBest I can. I was home here, up pretty late planning.”
    â€œPlanning?”
    â€œBudget planning. I get $473.50 a month social security as sole survivor of the husband, God rest his soul. I never did work outside, so I don’t have any account of my own. Rent from downstairs covers the house costs and all, but still got to computate in advance where all of it should go. Today was Store Day.”
    â€œStore Day?”
    â€œYes. The Church, Lord bless it, has a volunteer van, comes to pick up those like me what can’t get out on our own. Takes us around to the grocery, the drugstore, laundry, that kind of thing. Regular schedule. Feel mighty sorry for the others.”
    â€œWhat others?”
    â€œThose outside the Church. They’re the ones people like you never see, because they ride the buses from ten to two when you’re in working. That’s the only time the buses aren’t so crowded you can get a seat. When’s the last time you ever saw a man or child stand so an older person could sit down? Then there’s the hoodlums, too. Leastways most of them are still in school of some kind, probably reform school, till two o’clock, so your purses and wallets are safe from them if you’re back in and locked up by two. Your generation thinks it’s all set, you wait till you get older, sonny. Back in thirty-three, when my daddy started paying into social security, there were sixteen workers for every retired person. Read that in Reader’s Digest, I did. Sixteen to one. Now there’s only about three and a half to one, and by the time you’re into your sixties, never mind seventies or eighties, there’s only going to be maybe one and a half workers for every retired person. I thank the Lord every night he won’t be keeping me down here so long to see that day come, I’ll tell you.
    â€œAbout last night, you were up late?”
    â€œPlanning.”
    â€œPlanning. Did you see or hear anything unusual?”
    â€œSee? Not rightly. I’ve got bad eyesight, need the two different kind of glasses