Beach Strip (13 page)

Hayashida was speaking to the sisters, saying he would be dropping by after the service to retrieve the appraisal photo. The sisters left, reluctantly I sensed, for I was busy counting my fingers, and Hayashida closed the door behind them. “I don’t suppose you have a sales receipt for that ring,” he said. He had settled a corner of his butt on the desk.

“No,” I said. “I never saw one.” I looked up at Hayashida. “Are those women suggesting that Gabe took the damn ring off their mother’s corpse?”

“Nothing like that at all. But somebody did.”

“Her husband. Mrs. Honeysett’s husband.”

He nodded. “Probably. Before the coffin lid was closed. That’s not unusual.”

“So maybe, when he ran into money problems, he could have sold the ring to Gabe, right?”

“Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Except.”

“Except what?”

“Did Walter Freeman ask you if Gabe had made any expensive purchases lately, or acted as though he had come into a large sum of money?”

“You know he did.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said no. You probably know that too.”

Hayashida nodded, a little sadly, I thought. “Do you remember when Gabe gave you that ring?” He withdrew his notepad from an inside jacket pocket as he spoke.

“Two, three weeks ago. Maybe a month.”

“Why didn’t you tell Walter about it?”

“Because Walter’s a jerk. And I was upset, and I wanted to hold on to everything about Gabe that mattered to me. How’s that?”

Hayashida nodded again, writing in his notepad.

I stood up. I wanted to leave as quickly as possible. “That man in there,” and I raised my arm, pointing back into the room where Wayne Honeysett’s ashes were, “he’s the guy who talked to me. I know it. He told me that he knew what happened. He meant what happened to Gabe, I know that too. And now there’s a connection between him and Gabe, isn’t there?”

Hayashida finished making his notes, snapped the pad shut, put it back in his jacket pocket, and slipped off the desk. He opened the door and gestured for me to leave. “Just between you and me,” he said as I passed, “I think Walter’s a jerk too.”

D
riving home from Wayne Honeysett’s funeral service, without the ring Gabe had given me, I thought about cormorants and decided to start acting like one, which had nothing to do with swimming after fish and everything to do with taking charge of my life. At home I made a pot of tea, dumped a gurgle of brandy into it for flavour, and sat at my table, making a list.

On Saturday mornings, my father always made a list of things to do. The list would include all the chores he planned to finish by Sunday night. I do not know what was on the list or whether he did everything he promised to do. I only know that, while my father was not the brightest or the most successful man I ever knew, he was the most satisfied, and satisfaction sounded very appealing right now.

Here is the list I wrote:

I added the last one because who wants to make a list with thirteen items? Then I used a magnet shaped like a daisy to fasten my list to the refrigerator door, where I could see it and remind myself about what I knew and what I needed to know, about where I was right and where I was wrong. I was wrong too often.

I sat reading the list over and over, and when I finished my tea and brandy I poured another drink, but this time I left out the tea. Which was when Dewey Maas called.

“Would you like to talk?” Dewey said. “I’d love to see you. Just for a few minutes. I’m not far away. Down by the lift bridge.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“I heard about the man they found here the other night. It’s not in the papers, but there are rumours that he put his head under the bridge when it came down. Can you imagine that?”

I told Dewey I would meet him, but not on or near that damned bridge. If he came to the gate behind our house, we could sit in the garden and have tea.

“THIS IS SO PRETTY.”

Dewey and I were seated at the small, round metal table in the middle of the garden. He was wearing a golf shirt, a pair of chinos, and loafers with no socks. Dewey never wore socks.

If you wanted a specimen of a middle-aged man worth considering for a life partner or a weekend fling, Dewey would make
the cut. He’s tall, blond and muscular. His nose is hooked and his teeth are crooked, but his eyes crinkle when he smiles, which is often, and he has the kind of gentle disposition you get when you spend more time around dogs than around people.

“I’m a little confused,” I said, pouring iced tea for both of us.

“About what?”

“About why you’re here. It’s been how long? Three, four years?”

“Nearly five.” He sipped his tea, watching me over the rim of the glass. “Four years, eight months. Since we talked, since I saw you last.”

“You’re kidding me. Not that it’s been that long, but that you remember so accurately.”

“Josie.” His hand reached across the table and rested on mine. “You know I’m a little, uh, confused about things, um …”

“Dewey—”

He pulled his hand away. “Do you know why I never made a serious pass at you?” He frowned and looked away. “I didn’t, did I? Did I?”

I assured him that he hadn’t, that he had been a perfect gentleman in my presence, warm and funny and sweet.

“The reason I didn’t,” he said, “was because, if I had and if you had turned me down or been insulted, we wouldn’t, we
couldn’t
be friends. Not the same way. And I loved you as a friend. I really did. But I also wanted to love you in other ways.”

“Dewey—”

“But women …” He leaned back in his chair, frowned, and shook his head. “Women are so turned off when a man is less than totally masculine, they call it.” He leaned forward again, speaking faster. “I mean, some men, I knew one guy especially, they get really turned on about the idea of having a relationship with a bisexual woman, thinking, I guess—”

“Dewey—”

“—they can fulfill some threesome fantasy about them and
two women together and there’s no threat to them, the man, if the women start getting it on because—”

“Dewey!”
A little sharper this time.

It worked. “What?”

“I don’t care about fantasies, and I don’t care who or what you sleep with, and I’m not even sure I understand deep friendships between men and women that don’t have a sexual connection. But that’s okay, to hell with it, let Dr. Phil or somebody else work that one out. I just want to know why, after four years and whatever—”

“Eight months.” He smiled, embarrassed.

“Why, after all that time, you suddenly call me. I mean, after you called to say how sorry you were to hear about Gabe.”

He seemed to consider that for a moment. Then, taking a deep breath, he said, “I always wanted to call you. Just to talk with you. But calling a married woman, especially one married to a police officer, a detective? It was just too … too risky, I guess. I was happy for you, Josie, really. I just haven’t been so happy myself since you left the shop and got married.”

I believed him. Dewey was that sweet. Who wouldn’t believe him? “So,” I said. “Who’s minding the chihuahuas?”

“The dogs? It’s Wednesday. I’m closed Wednesdays now. Give myself some time off.” He looked around the garden. “This is so pleasant. I’ve never seen it from this angle before.”

“This angle?”

“Well, I’ve seen it from, you know …” He was blushing. “The boardwalk back there. The beach, usually.”

“You’ve been here?” I said. “Looking into my garden?”

“Only from the beach. A lot of people walk on the beach, Josie. It’s a public beach, and sometimes I thought we might bump into one another, just to talk. I mean, I thought if we met here we could talk.”

I was working this over in my mind when he added, “I saw
your husband. I saw Gabe a couple of times, him out in the garden here. I don’t know where you were. I introduced myself once, and we kind of chatted about things—”

“You introduced yourself to my husband?” I said. “Did you explain how you knew me?”

“I said we’d been friends, Josie. That’s all. I said we were friends, and Gabe wanted to know how we met, and I explained how I used to come into the veterinarian’s now and then to help with the dogs.”

“Gabe never told me he spoke to you.”

“He seemed like a nice fellow. Really nice. He came over to the gate to talk to me. I was never in the garden, not like now. I told him I thought he was a lucky man to be married to you. That’s what I said to him. ‘You’re a lucky man.’”

“And what did Gabe say?”

“He said he knew. Every day he knew just how lucky he was to be your husband.” Dewey thought for a minute, then added, “I had a feeling he was preoccupied with something. I mean, he had been sitting right here, at this table, writing in a little notebook, and I think I interrupted him. He seemed to be doing more thinking than writing, so I didn’t stay long.”

“When was that?”

“The last time I saw him. He said you were out. He thought you were out shopping. That’s the last time I was here, which was a week ago last Monday.”

I sat back in my chair. “The day before he died.”

“That’s right.” Dewey nodded. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I mean, that’s really weird, isn’t it?”

I told Dewey I had errands to run, places to go, and gathered up the empty glasses. We shook hands, and I told him it was all right to call me again sometime, maybe in another week or so.

I didn’t have places to go. I just had one place to go, and I should have gone there much earlier.

CENTRAL POLICE STATION HAS NO PARKING SPACE
for visitors. I drove through the lot, passing spaces marked for judges, lawyers, cruisers, detectives, emergency vehicles, and maintenance workers. No one, I suppose, is expected to visit Central unless they’re either official or arrested. I parked two blocks away and walked back, through the late-summer afternoon. It seemed everything had slowed to a crawl, including law enforcement investigations.

The uniformed cop behind the desk asked who I wanted to see. I told him I wanted to see Sergeant Hayashida. If he wasn’t available, I would see Sergeant Mel Holiday. If he wasn’t in, I’d settle for Walter Freeman, the asshole. I didn’t say “the asshole” aloud, but I was thinking it, just to keep me in the mood.

The cop stayed cool, said he would call Hayashida, and asked me to sign in please.

THE FIRST THING I LEARNED ABOUT COPS
after I married Gabe was that they are lousy housekeepers. Even the women cops I’ve encountered work among stacked files, dirty coffee cups, scribbled sticky notes, and general chaos. How can they find bad guys when they can’t find a sharp pencil? Hayashida was no different, but he dressed better than other detectives—button-down shirt, knit tie, summer-weight jacket, pressed trousers, tasselled loafers. Not a
GQ
magazine cover, maybe, but he was the most fashionable thing in his work cubicle, except for me in my pink ruffled blouse and black pencil skirt, plus the alligator pumps I bought at Saks in New York on a holiday with Gabe. If you’re going into a den of lions, it helps to look like a lioness.

“What’s up?” Hayashida said when I’d settled into the only other chair in his cubicle.

I took my time crossing my legs, tugging my skirt over my knee, folding my hands primly, and taking a deep breath. “I want
to see the report on my husband’s death,” I said. “The one that says he killed himself.”

Hayashida seemed faintly amused. “Why?”

“Because I’m his wife,” I said. “His widow, actually. And don’t give me that stuff about it being confidential. It’s a public document, and if I have to get a lawyer to demand a copy, I’ll get a lawyer.”

“I can’t let you keep a copy.”

“I don’t want a copy to take with me. I just want to see it. Let me read it and I’ll hand it right back to you.” I smiled and tilted my head. “Okay?”

“What do you think you’ll learn from it?”

“I have no fucking idea.” I really did say “fucking.” It was part of my attitude.

Hayashida handled it perfectly. “Well, in that case,” he said, and swivelled to face the computer terminal on his desk, which he turned at an angle to prevent me from seeing the screen. With a two-fingered typing style, he entered whatever he needed to find the file on Gabe and slapped a few more keys. From the corridor beyond his cubicle, I heard the soft whir of a printer. Hayashida rose and left the cubicle, dropping three sheets of paper in my lap when he returned. “No pictures, okay?” he said. “If you want pictures, you’ll need that lawyer.”

“I don’t want pictures,” I said.

Hayashida sat at his desk and began scribbling something on a notepad. It might have been his grocery list. I didn’t care.

The top sheet was headed “Non-Accidental Death Report” and listed everything I already knew—Gabe’s name, address, birth date, all of that, plus the description of his body on the blanket, names of witnesses, with reference to the files containing their statements, and next of kin, which was me. Gabe’s gun was identified as a standard-issue Glock G22 model, serial number HPD7836. Three Determination of Death choices were provided:
Homicide, Suicide, and Undetermined. Someone had checked the box next to Suicide. The form was signed by Walter Freeman, Chief Investigating Detective, and Melville Holiday, Assisting Investigator.

I turned to the second sheet, headed “Autopsy Report,” which made me sit up straight, anticipating what I was about to read. It was easier than I expected.

The deceased, I read, had been a man in his early forties, 183 centimetres tall, 81.7 kilograms in weight, and in apparent good health. It listed his scars, eye colour, dental work, everything that I knew far better from the living Gabe than any coroner could expect to learn from the dead one.

Near the bottom of the sheet was a diagram of a body, one of those simplified genderless drawings with no hair and no genitals. A line had been drawn into the head, at a slight downward angle. Beneath the drawing, I read:

I turned the sheet over to find more bureaucratic ways of saying someone’s brains had been blown out. The coroner had been provided with a choice of four boxes beneath Determination of
Death—Accidental, Homicide, Suicide, and Unknown. He had checked Unknown. Now I had a buddy who disagreed with Walter Freeman. But then, most people did.

The third sheet was headed “Forensics Report,” beneath an impressive stamp of the Attorney General’s office. This one included four photographs embedded in the report, but they were of bullets not bodies. One bullet was pristine and pointed and, let’s be honest here, penis-like. The other was crumpled at the front. Two other photographs showed dark angled lines on metal, as seen through a microscope, rifling marks they were called, made from the grooves inside guns to make the bullets spin when they leave the barrel, helping the little devils fly more directly to their destination in flesh and bone. God, I hate guns. I hate them so much I wish I didn’t know so much about them.