“I suppose you talked to that other man, the one who was here earlier.”
“That’s right. Maxwell Cole from the P.I. gave me your name and address. May I come in?”
She sighed. “Oh dear. I told him I didn’t want to get mixed up in any of this. I should have kept quiet.”
I felt awkward, leaning over to speak to her through the small opening. And it was difficult to understand her, since the dog was still carrying on its ear-splitting yammering in the background.
“If I could just speak to you for a few minutes, Miss Davis, it would be very helpful. I have to ask you a few questions about what you saw.”
“Mrs. Davis,” she snapped. “I haven’t been ‘Miss’ for a long time.”
The peephole window slammed shut. A moment later, I heard her begin working her way down the door, unlocking a series of four deadbolts before the knob finally turned and the door opened.
Instantly the dog darted out, making a dive for my nearest ankle. Mrs. Mavis Davis grabbed him and scooped him up into her arms on the second attempt. By then he had only grazed my sock. The dog was an ugly, dun-colored miniature poodle with wildly protruding eyes and several missing teeth.
When I first saw her, Mavis Davis was also toothless, but once she had retrieved her dog, she held him with one arm, reached into her apron pocket with her other hand, and popped a pair of dentures into her mouth.
“Shh, now,” she said to the dog. “It’s all right, Corky. This man is a policeman. He isn’t going to steal anything.”
Corky remained unconvinced. He continued to bark.
Mavis Davis stepped to one side and motioned me into the house. As I walked past, Corky made another lunge for me. This time he grabbed for my elbow. The only thing that saved my jacket was the dog’s lack of teeth. The woman sat down in a rocking chair and patted the dog lovingly.
“Corky worries about me, you see,” she said fondly. “We live here alone. He’s my only protection.”
Other than raising an ungodly racket, I don’t know what good the dog could possibly have done her. He grew quiet finally, and lay in his owner’s lap, glaring menacingly at me.
I looked around the room then. It was filled with old-fashioned furniture covered with fancywork and doilies. In the corner sat an old cabinet-style radio that probably hadn’t worked in years.
Keeping one restraining hand on the dog, Mavis reached over and picked up a skein of yarn and some crochet work from a nearby table. Next she perched a pair of narrow-lensed reading glasses on her nose. Resting her needlework project on the dog’s back, she begin crocheting, peering at me from time to time over the upper rim of her glasses. She was a scrawny woman, in her seventies or so, with narrow, angular features and a hooked nose.
“So what do you want, Mr….?”
“Beaumont,” I supplied. “Detective Beaumont. I want to talk to you about what you saw night before last.”
“You mean when I was out walking Corky?”
“Yes.”
“’Twasn’t much. Just a woman getting out of a cab, late at night. Happens all the time.”
“Except this time she was going into a house where a murder took place a short time later,” I said. “Did you get a good look at her?”
“I already told that other man. She was blonde, and she was all dressed up too, in a long blue dress, white gloves, and no shoes.”
“She was barefoot?”
“If you’re not wearing shoes, young man, then you’re barefoot, seems to me,” Mavis answered crossly.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Corky woke me up about twelve-thirty. He used to make it through the night without needing to go out, but he’s been sick lately. Getting old, maybe, just like me. When he has to go, he has to go. So we went out. I had my bag and my pooper scooper. It’s the law, you know.”
I nodded. “Yes, I know,” I agreed.
“Anyway, he has this favorite place, so we went there. It’s on the parking strip, a block or so the other side of Harvard. I was standing waiting for him to finish when the cab drove up.”
“Drove up where?”
“To that house, the little one there between those two big apartment buildings. Do you know the one I mean?”
“Yes. go on.”
“Anyway, this woman got out of the back seat. I noticed her because you don’t often see people that dressed up in this day and age. You just see kids with long hair and ragged clothes or jeans, and nothing matches.”
“What about the woman?”
“Oh, yes. She got out of the cab, went up to the window, and paid the driver, and then went into the house.”