Widow’s Walk

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I was on the low doorstep of a three-decker on Lithgow Street off Codman Square, looking for Esther Morales. She opened the door on my second ring, a small tan woman with bright intelligent eyes.

“Si?”

“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m working for Mary Smith. You do her housecleaning.”

“I clean for Mr. Smith,” she said. “Fifteen years.”

“Not Mrs. Smith?”

“She come along. I clean for her, too.”

“The police think she murdered her husband. What do you think?”

“I think I am very impolite. Please come into my house.”

“Thank you.”

She took me to the kitchen in the back of the house and made me some coffee. The woodwork and cabinets were stained a dark brown and gleamed with many coats of varnish. The vinyl tile flooring was made to look like quarry tile and gleamed with many coats of wax. I sat at a glistening white metal kitchen table and drank from a mug with a Red Sox logo on it.

Esther Morales sat across the table from me and had some coffee, too.

“Are you with the police?” she said.

“No,” I said. “I’m a private detective hired by the lawyer who represents Mrs. Smith.”

“So you are trying to help Mrs. Smith?”

“I’m sort of trying to find out the truth of what happened,” I said.

“She killed him.”

“You know that?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you know,” I said.

“Mr. Smith was a very nice man. He was very pleasant. He paid me well and gave me nice presents on the holidays.”

I nodded.

“Then she came,” Esther said.

“Yes?”

“She is not nice.”

“How so?” I said.

Esther frowned. I realized that she didn’t understand the expression.

“What wasn’t nice about her?” I said.

“She was bossy. She yelled at me. She yelled at Mr. Smith.”

“What did she yell about?”

“She would yell about money.”

Why should they be different.

“Anything else?” I said.

“I could not always hear them and, sometimes, when people speak too fast or speak oddly, my English…” She shrugged.

“How about Mr. Smith? He ever yell at her?” I said, “No. He was very kind to her. Sometimes she would make him cry.”

“They have friends over?”

“She did,” Esther said.

Esther disapproved of the friends.

“Female friends?” I said.

“No.”

“How about Mr. Smith?”

“Only the young men.”

“Young men?”

“Yes. He helped them. He was a, I don’t know the word in English. Mentor.”

“Same in English,” I said. “He mentors young men?”

“Yes. He is very generous. He helps poor boys to go to school and learn to do work and get ahead.”

“And they came to his house?”

“Yes. He would teach them at his home.”

“How about Mrs. Smith. She ever teach them?”

Esther was too nice to snort, but she breathed out a little more than normal.

“And why do you think she killed him?”

“For money.”

“His inheritance?” I said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Money he would leave her.”

“Yes.”

“Was there a gun anywhere around the house?”

“I did not see one.”

“Do you know anything I could use to prove that she killed him?” I said.

“She is a bad woman.”

I nodded.

“Anything else?”

“Just what I have told you.”

“Do you know anyone else who might have killed Mr. Smith?”

“No. It was she.”

I finished the last of my coffee.

“This is very good coffee, Mrs. Morales.”

“Would you wish more?”

“No. Thank you very much. I’ve kept you long enough.”

Esther walked me to the door.

“She is a terrible woman,” Esther said.

“Maybe she is,” I said.

I thanked her again and left and walked back toward Codman Square past a dark blue Ford with its motor on, to the convenient hydrant where I had parked my car.