“Quite a lot of excitement thanks to you folks,” she remarked.

“Not the sort of excitement you want,” I said. “I’m sure it’s quite upsetting for everyone, having a murder in the neighborhood.”

“Well, it’s not as if he lived here, and from what I hear, he was a wrong ’un. Not that that’s any excuse for killing another human being, but in this life we reap what we sow, don’t we?”

I could get to like Emily.

“Chief Burke was over here yesterday, asking me if I’d seen or heard anything that night,” she went on. “But I go to bed early, and I take out my hearing aids, so I was of no use to him.”

“I was actually trying to find out some information about the Green family,” I said. “It only just occurred to me that some of the people who come to see the house might want to know about the family that used to live there, and so far I haven’t found anyone who knew them.”

“I knew them,” she said. “Not well, but probably as well as anyone who’s still living here. They moved in—let’s see. Twenty years ago this summer. Bob and Carol Green. In their thirties—seemed like a nice couple. They had a little boy when they moved in, and the little girl was born shortly afterward.”

“What were the children’s names?” I asked. Not that the children’s names seemed at all relevant, but I needed to keep up the pretense of working up a short history of the house.

“The boy was Zachary,” she said. “Nice when old-fashioned names come back in style, isn’t it? And the girl was Jessica.”

“Jessica? You’re sure?” I had to struggle to conceal my excitement at this bit of information.

“Quite sure,” she said. “I always liked the name. On account of Jessica Tandy. You remember her.”

“The original Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire,” I said. “Of course.”

“Very good, dear,” she said. “Most people only remember her as the old crone in Driving Miss Daisy.”

“My husband’s in the drama department at the college,” I said.

“That explains it. Yes, the little Green girl was Jessica. Popular name—we had two or three other Jessicas about the same age. And at least one boy named Jesse. But I could keep Jessica Green straight because she was a redhead, and half the time her mother dressed her in bright green, to match her eyes.”

I couldn’t wait to tell Chief Burke that I’d probably identified the fugitive Jessica.

“When did they move away?” I asked.

“Six years ago—it’ll be seven in March,” she said. “And they didn’t just move away—there was quite a to-do! Bob Green did something in the stock market, and they always seemed quite well off. I half expected them to move into one of those starter castles over on the other side of town—you know the ones I mean?”

I nodded.

“They had three or four cars, and a boat, and they were always giving elegant, catered parties.” Emily went on. “They kept horses in the field behind the house. They even broke ground for a pool in the backyard. But then something happened, and the pool stayed a hole in the ground, and the horses left, and the fancy cars were replaced with more practical ones, and the caterers stopped coming. One day they were gone. I heard the bank foreclosed on the house. And I got the feeling a lot of people in the neighborhood weren’t too happy with Mr. Green. People who’d invested with him.”

“I guess the bank had the half-finished pool filled in,” I said.

“I expect the insurance company insisted,” Emily said. “And the stable was practically falling down, too, so they tore that down as well. Frankly, a lot of us in the neighborhood were glad to see your lot show up. We were starting to worry that the bank would just wait till the house fell apart so they could tear it down and sell the land for condos.”

“So there’s no one here who really resents the designers, then?” I asked.

“A few people aren’t keen on all the traffic that’s going to happen when the house opens,” she said. “But even they know that’s short term, and if fixing up the house and having people tromp through helps sell it, all the better. It’s bad for the neighborhood, having an abandoned house. An open invitation to squatters, or mischievous teens. Ask Chief Burke—we have a recurring problem with break-ins over there.”

“Recently?”

“Not since your people came,” she said. “But four or five times this fall.”

“That matches what I’ve heard,” I said. “Emily—do know know anything about all the secret compartments in the house?”

“Secret compartments?” She tilted her head as if not sure if I was serious.

“Randall Shiffley calls them hidey-holes. Secret compartments built into the walls or the floor. A lot of them. A couple of dozen, all through the house. He found them when they were repairing the house.”

“I never heard about any secret compartments,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t get invited over there much. I was never what you’d call socially prominent, and they were trying to be. But I think I’d have heard if anyone in the neighborhood had seen secret compartments. Maybe that’s what happened to all the money people are supposed to have lost with him.”

“I thought he lost it in the market,” I said.

“Maybe he only told his investors that,” she said. “Maybe instead of investing their money he converted it into Krugerrands, and hid them in the secret compartments until he was ready to run away.”

“Kruggerrands?”

“You know, those South African gold coins—very popular with these shady criminal types, I hear, if they’re planning to make a fast exit. Or diamonds. Although you’d think if they had any diamonds they’d have managed to finish the pool.”

“I’ll share that theory with Chief Burke, if you like.” I probably would. It wasn’t any crazier than some of the theories I’d come up with.

“Well, I should let you go,” she said, glancing at the clock. And then at her TV remote, so I deduced that something she wanted to watch was about to start.

“Thanks for the information,” I said. “We’ll have to figure out how much to say about the Greens in our tours.”

“Probably as little as possible,” Emily said. “People like that always come out of the woodwork and threaten to sue if you say the least thing against them.”

“If you’re interested in seeing what the designers have done to the house, drop by,” I said. “I’ll leave a ticket for you.”

“Thank you, dear.” Emily’s eyes gleamed with real enthusiasm. “I do love house and garden tours—nothing more fun than peeking in on how other people live.”

She ushered me out and waved a cheerful good-bye from the doorway.

I headed back to the house with an interesting new theory. And I knew the minute I walked back into the house, I’d get caught up in the madness. So I stopped by my car, leaned against the bumper, and called the chief.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Something right, I hope,” I said. “I have an idea who Jessica, the fake reporter, really is.”

“I’m listening.”

And listening rather irritably, by the sound of it.

“You know the people who used to own the house before the bank foreclosed on it? The Greens?”

A small pause.

“I know of them,” he said. “I never met them, and I understand they’re no longer living in town. Haven’t been here for six years. Do you think they had something to do with the murder?”

“I talked to a little old lady across the street. Emily Warren.”

“The one-woman neighborhood watch,” he said. “I know Mrs. Warren.”

“She didn’t know the Greens that well,” I said. “But did remember that they had a daughter born shortly after they moved in. A redheaded daughter named Jessica. She remembered the name particularly because of Jessica Tandy.”

“Jessica Tan—oh. Driving Miss Daisy. One of Morgan Freeman’s finer roles. The fact that that he didn’t win an Academy Award for that role—but I digress. So you think the Jessica who pretended to be a student reporter was Jessica Green?”