It had to be You

drove Lily home a few minutes later, Lily said, “We’re out of work again. What shall we do next? And don’t say ‘Listen to the radio,’ or I’ll go mad.“
    “You don’t have to listen. I just want to keep up with what Roosevelt is doing.“
    “We might be able to help out Howard,“ Lily said. “He seems to have become a bit cranky about this investigation of Mr. Connor ‘s death.“
    “Has he asked for our help?“
    “Have you already forgotten about trying to help him find that hiker?“ Lily remarked.
    “He didn’t ask us to. We volunteered when I spotted the fellow in the woods.“
    “So what’s wrong with us offering to help again?“
    “I don’t know,“ Robert admitted. “Somehow it’s different. I don’t think he’s going to like us offering help.“
    “But he offered to help you take down those cabinet doors.“
    “That doesn’t count. It wasn’t something I was supposed to know how to do.”

    Robert was right.
    Howard asked, “What makes you think I need help?“ sounding offended.
    Robert tried to make it seem like a joke. “Because we’ve been fired from our own jobs, and we’re easily bored.”
    That made Howard smile slightly. “If I can think of anything you can do, I’ll let you know. In fact, I’ll let you read all my notes of the interviews I’ve done so far. Since both of you are such snoops, maybe you’ll see something I’ve overlooked. But I’m not letting them out of my sight. You have to read them here.“
    “Only if you make us a big pot of real coffee instead of that awful half-chicory stuff Mrs. Prinney insists on serving us,“ Lily said.
    “By the way, Ralph and I didn’t have to search the woods for the hiker. We found him eating breakfast at Mabel’s,“ Howard told them.
    “Did you get any valuable information from him?“ Lily asked.
    “Some. He saw a tall man, all in black, wearing a black fur hat, striding up the hill behind the loony woman’s house.”
    Lily and Robert sat down and divided up the large file, trading off sections. Each made a few notes while Howard went to Mabel’s to pick up sandwiches for the three of them. He was gone long enough for Lily and Robert to go through about two-thirds of the file.
    When he returned, Lily said, “I had no idea you wrote down all this. Are you sure you remembered the exact wording the people used?“
    “I have a good memory, and I always try to write it down before I even leave wherever I’ve been.“
    “There’s only one thing I’ve seen so far that might not have been done,“ Robert put in. “But I haven’t read it all yet. Did you find out from Miss Twibell the order in which the supposed lawyer asked her and Betty to sign as witnesses and when Kelly Connor started visiting his grandfather?”
    Howard was ashamed to admit that he’d forgotten to check this. And apparently so had Miss Twibell. “I’ll remind her today.“
    “I admit I’m a snoop and a cynic,“ Lily said, “but you’re much kinder than I am. For example, you seem to believe Kelly Connor’s story about someone trying to burn up his bus. I think it’s probably true, but I’d go look under where the bus was parked just in case.”
    Howard grinned. “I did. He’d moved it away from the fire, but the tire tracks were there, and deeper where it had stood. The pitiful attempt to build a fire with damp driftwood and a few bits of loose lumber was obvious.“
    “Maybe you’re not as nice as I feared,“ Lily said. “But could he have done it himself?”
    “Why would he?“ Robert asked.
    Lily shrugged. “Who could tell? Maybe he has some secret of his own that required it.“
    “You know I can’t take anyone to jail or court based on vague personal theories,“ Howard said. “I need hard evidence or a confession. But I can go and ask more questions.“
    “Who are the people you’re going to question again?“ Robert asked.
    Howard listed them. “Betty at the nursing home. I need to know more about how he reacted to her cleaning out his wound. It must have been painful, and he wasn’t a pleasant person.
    “I also need to put more pressure on Connor’s attorney and his secretary. I need to know whether either of them talked to anyone else about the will. Even if they didn’t name names. Could someone else have gossiped about it? My own impression of that girl wasn’t flattering. She might have thought the will was so interesting that she shared the information with her girlfriends or