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Then I headed to Paint Hollow to talk to more Colliers.
    ***^***
    I’d scheduled time with all of Vera’s children that day. Buck and Marilee I’d talk to on the telephone; neither intended to show up for Vera’s funeral. Somehow, I wasn’t shocked.
    Eileen Collier Lynch, however, was “put out.” She took a long drag off a short cigarette and fumed at me, quite literally. “I spent half a day cleaning out the guest room!”
    I found it hard to believe she’d had to do any cleaning. Her house was spotless enough to do Aunt Marge proud. It was also darn near empty. Boris, sniffing for dust and hiding places, was stuck with nothing. The furniture was hard wood with plain cushions; the walls were bare; there were no shelves of any kind. No vases, no books, not even a memo pad on the fridge. I had a feeling that this woman did not own so much as one pair of socks more than she felt was absolutely minimally required. If anti-hoarding is a disease, she had it. Bad.
    Boris finally perched behind my legs. Eileen sat rigidly on the opposite chair.
    I didn’t need to ask questions. Eileen, like Ken, had no problem speaking ill of her kin. Ken she dismissed as a “Mama’s boy”; Army as “weak”; Rob was “lazy”; Beau was “nasty”. Laura was “sweet,” while Davis was “a loser”. Honey was “mean,” Jeff “weird.” Marilee was “stuck up” and Buck was “not a factor.” As for herself, “I didn’t get along with Mama much, but nobody ever did.”
    From there we went to Army’s place, where Boris stalked birds at the feeder while Army and I sipped sweet tea on the patio. He excused Ken and Eileen as bitter, Rob as gentle. On Beau, he had to toughen up. “Beau’s got a temper.” Davis he pitied as “out of place”. Buck he admired as “tough”, and Marilee as “honest”. Both Honey and Jeff he viewed as “unhappy”. But when I pressed him on Laura, he shrugged. “We-el. She and my wife Gloria don’t see eye to eye. Laura’s big on church and she holds it against Gloria that she doesn’t go.” On his mother, however, he was downright evasive. “Mama was hard to know.”
    The next stop was Rob Collier’s. Like most of the Collier men, he worked for himself, and he was scowling at a pile of invoices in his workshop. It smelled of copper, and PVC, and whatever else it is that goes into plumbing. He spoke in small, reluctant sentences. “Mama did what she saw fit.” “Ken carries a grudge.” He thought Army was “too nice”, but otherwise, his assessments matched Army’s, with the addendum that Laura was “the only one got along with everyone”.
    Beau Collier was lounging in a hammock, drinking beer and listening to WCZY, then broadcasting country music. He started to set his dogs on Boris, saw my face and changed his mind. “Woman with a gun,” he grunted. “Like tits on a bull.” I went hot, then gritted out my questions. Fortunately for my temper, Beau kept it short. His mother was “a bitch” and all his siblings were “snakes”.
    Laura’s house, neat and full of country charm like little bonnet-wearing ducks, was a relief after Beau. She had two cats, both of whom fled before Boris as if he was a tornado, and she offered me lunch. I declined, for two reasons. One was that I had brought a lunch. The other was that she was heating up mushrooms and peppers in a skillet. I don’t like mushrooms anyway, but under the circumstances, it seemed idiotic to take a chance.
    The strange thing was, I should’ve liked Laura. She was indeed nice. Sweet. She blessed Boris’s heart, declared Ken a hard worker, Eileen a martyr, Army a darling. Rob was “just the sweetest brother”, and she even managed to describe Beau as “troubled”. Davis was smart, Buck a hero, Marilee a saint, Jeff well-read. Only of Honey did she speak ill: “Uppity”. But I couldn’t like the woman. Every word she said sounded sincere, and her face matched, but there was something else, hard to define,