The Attic Tenant
I went back the next morning with coffee, two cups of it from the place on Front Street that does theirs with chicory, and a legal pad, and a printed-out scan of the 1930 federal census for Carteret County, which Dee had pulled from Ancestry while eating a bagel. The Lindemans were at work. Anita had given me a lockbox code and asked me not to move any of the art. I do not move art. Art is other people's feelings.
Emmett was where I had left him, which was not a surprise. The dead, when they are attached to a specific place, are in some ways the easiest clients I have: they don't cancel, they don't forget the appointment, they don't show up in the wrong parking lot. They do sometimes change what they are willing to tell you, but that is not the same as not being there.
"Morning, Mr. Royster." I set his coffee on the plank floor a careful arm's-length from him. He did not reach for it. He did not need to. Coffee is a gesture. "I brought you something. I don't expect you to drink it. I'd like you to have it anyway."
"That's kind of you, ma'am."
"Marce, please."
"Miss Marce."
I sat on my apple crate. I opened the legal pad. I had made some notes in the night. I spend a lot of nights making notes.
"Mr. Royster, I looked up the Whitleys. Edna Whitley, widow, head of household, born 1881 in Pamlico County. A daughter, Ruth, eighteen in 1937. Two boarders in the back rooms. I