So that’s how it went. Now we were sitting on the couch looking at those same photos and reading the information that came with them, thinking back on our meeting with Marvin.
It had started raining hard again, and the atmosphere had settled on the house like a woolen cap. The electricity blinked and crackled a few times but stayed on. It was so dark outside we had to turn on a light.
“So,” Leonard said. “Where do we start?”
“Same place the cops did, with the people who knew the victims.”
“There’s a long list here,” Leonard said, flipping through the folder.
“I think we should do what Marvin suggested. Talk to the sister.”
“To do that,” Leonard said, looking out the window at the rain, “we have to get off the couch. And drive around. We could wait until tomorrow.”
“We weren’t hired to stay home and play Scrabble.”
Leonard’s eyes lit up. “It’s a perfect day for Scrabble. Me and John used to play Scrabble when it rained.”
“I’ll get us a couple of rain slickers and we’ll go to work.”
“So,” Leonard said, “you’re not suggesting we sit on the couch in rain slickers and play Scrabble and call that work?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Dang it.”
We left Leonard’s wreck in the driveway to let the rain work the hardened bird shit off his windshield, took my car.
Before we left, Leonard got something out of his car and slipped in beside me. He laid what he had on the seat between us and pulled off his slicker and put it in the backseat with mine. He picked up what he had laid down and put it on his head.
“What in the hell is that?” I said.
“It’s a deerstalker cap.”
“A deerstalker cap?”
“You know, Holmes wore one in the movies.”
“I know, but what are you doing with one?”
“I’m wearing it.”
“Should I wear a bowler and carry an umbrella and let you call me Watson?”
“Would you?”
“Where did you get that?”
“I bought it last Halloween, for a party.”
“You dressed up like Sherlock Holmes for Halloween?”
“I don’t get to dress up often,” Leonard said. “John went as Watson.”
“So why are you wearing the hat now? Halloween is long past.”
“We’re on the hunt. The game’s afoot.”
“Leonard, you are not wearing that foolish cap.”
“Why not?”
“Because you stand out like a hard dick in a nunnery.”
Leonard quit looking at me. He turned and stared at the windshield.
“So you’re gonna give me the cold shoulder?”
He didn’t respond.
“You have this thing for hats, Leonard, but you are not a hat person… Look, you can wear it in the car. The car only. Got me?”
Leonard put on his seat belt, rested his hands in his lap, and stared straight ahead.
“Outside the car, you got that thing on I might have to kill you.”