Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

“Not exactly, but they’re together right now. She thinks I don’t know because he parks his car on the side street and she tells Mom she’s meeting her girlfriends. Puhleez!” She rolled her eyes. “If you stake out our place, he’ll bring her home eventually. If Missy won’t cooperate, tell her I know — and I’ll tell.”

I left Sasha to her shopping and went back to the neighborhood, parking on the side street where Cody usually met Missy Brandon. Finally I saw the rusty blue Plymouth pull up to the curb. Two people got out of the car, a teenaged girl with long brown hair and a tall young man with a carrot-top and tattoos snaking up both arms. They locked lips and bodies, not coming up for air until I walked up and called them by name.

“Who the hell are you?” Cody growled.

“I’m the private investigator who was at Missy’s house a couple of days ago, asking questions about her neighbors and the day they died. Now I want to talk with both of you.”

“Why?” she asked, wide-eyed. “We don’t know anything. I was in school when that happened.”

“No, you weren’t. The gardener working at the Krimmlakers’ house saw you and Cody go into the house. He also saw you and Cody getting into Cody’s car later that afternoon, after the police had arrived. So you were both there. Sasha knows. She suggests you cooperate with me.”

Missy looked panicky when I mentioned Sasha. “We didn’t see anything. We were making out.”

“I have a pretty good idea what you were doing,” I told them. “So does Sasha. Take me through it step by step.” They looked scandalized, which was refreshing, in a way. “I don’t mean your grand passion. You may have seen something without realizing it could be important. Tell me what you heard and saw as you were walking up the street toward your house.”

They exchanged glances. “We parked here so Cody’s car wouldn’t be in front of my house,” Missy said.

“That gardening truck was in the driveway of the other house,” Cody said. “Didn’t see anybody in the yard. He must have been in the cab.”

“What did you do once you got into Missy’s house?”

“We went up to the bedroom.” He glared at me. “You want to know how many times we did it?”

“Spare me. I just want to know if you looked out the window any-time during the next few hours.”

“Yeah, a couple of times.”

“Did you see anyone?”

He thought about it. “The gardener.”

“Besides him.”

“UPS guy left a package at a house down by the corner.” He rubbed his nose. “There was a guy in a boat on the lagoon.”

That caught my interest. “What was he doing?”

“Rowing,” Cody said. “He rowed across to a house on the other side, pulled up to a dock, and got out.”

“That house directly across the lagoon?” Missy frowned. “I saw a guy there, too. But he wasn’t rowing a boat. He was at the side of the house, where the trash cans were. I thought he was a garbage-man. He was wearing coveralls.”

Cody shook his head. “I saw the coveralls, but why would a garbageman be in a rowboat?”

Good question. Maybe he wasn’t a garbageman. “What did he look like? What color were the coveralls?”

“Light blue, or maybe green,” Cody said. “I only saw him from the back. He had a ball cap on his head. Couldn’t tell what color his hair was.”

“I saw him from the front,” Missy said. “It was an Oakland A’s cap, green and yellow. I figured he was a garbageman because he had stains all over the front of the coveralls. You know how yucky those guys get.”

“He could have been a mechanic,” Cody said. “Mechanics wear coveralls when they’re working on cars. They get grease and oil stains all over themselves.” He stopped, as though something had suddenly occurred to him. “Those stains. Like maybe that was blood? Man, are you telling me that guy was a killer?”

“Like you said, why would a garbageman — or a mechanic — be rowing a boat across the lagoon? You two are going to have to talk to the police.”

Missy protested. She didn’t want her folks to know she and Cody had been doing the nasty boogie that day. But now that Cody realized he was a witness, he was eager to cooperate. I walked with them to the Brandons’ house, just as Sasha returned from her shopping trip. I called the girls’ parents and Sergeant Lipensky. Once the adults got there, I headed for the cul-de-sac at the other side of the lagoon and took a look at the house directly opposite the Brandons’ place. There was no one home, but the yard wasn’t fenced. Sure enough, there was a small rowboat tied up to a dock. A row of garbage cans and recycling bins were lined up along the side of the house, about thirty feet from the dock.

I began ringing doorbells. I found a witness, an elderly woman who lived in the cul-de-sac. “I saw a man. He was walking between the houses. No, he wasn’t wearing coveralls. Slacks and a shirt, I think, and an A’s baseball cap. He got into a car parked in front of my house.” She didn’t know the make or model of the vehicle, but she thought the car was green.