“Why does that seem funny to the police?” Mother asked. “It doesn’t seem odd to me.”

“They seem to think that I ran instead of driving my car so no one would identify my car as being in the driveway, later. They said a woman living across the street from the Anderton house, she was waiting for her daughter to get home from spending a week out of town. So she was sitting in her front room, looking out the window, and reading a book, for the best part of two hours… the daughter had had a flat on the interstate, turns out. This woman might have missed a person on foot, but not a car.”

“What about the back door?” Eileen asked.

“The people who live behind the Andertons were watching TV in their den with the curtains open, since they knew no one was in the Anderton house. They told the police that they saw Tonia Lee’s car pull up when it was still daylight, but fading fast. One woman got out. They sat watching TV and eating in their den while they watched, and no other car ever pulled up. They figured someone else had come to the front door. They did see Tonia Lee’s car pull out after dark, way after dark, but of course they couldn’t see who was in it. They were pretty interested, someone being in the house for that long; they thought someone might really be thinking of buying.”

We all mulled that over for a minute.

“I wonder why the police told you so much?” Patty asked.

Mackie shook his head. “I guess they thought they would pressure me into confessing or something. If I’d been guilty, it might have worked.”

“You run every night, you’ve always told us that, and I’ve often seen you. That’s not suspicious at all,” my mother said staunchly. We all murmured agreement, even Patty Cloud, who was none too fond of having to do work for a black man, I’d observed. Though having Debbie working for her didn’t seem to be a problem.