Beach Strip (6 page)

“When what’s over? My life?”

“This. Do you want to keep living where you are? Breathing smoke and dust from the damn steel companies? Living under a couple of expressway bridges, tracking sand into your house every day?” She sat up again. “Do you know that one of your neighbours keeps a helicopter on his porch and a swamp buggy in his driveway? We passed it on the way in.”

“I’ll bet you don’t see that in Kitsilano.”

“I’m not suggesting you live in Kitsilano. I mean, you can if you want.” She meant I could if I could afford it. “It would just be nice to have you nearby, downtown or Burnaby or somewhere. What’s wrong with wanting to have your sister live near you?”

“Mother too?”

I had caught her off guard. It had taken her twenty minutes to forget about Mother. Her jaw tightened. “Mother could have another stroke, a major stroke, any day.”

“Then better she has it here, with me near her. When Mother goes, I’ll consider coming to Vancouver. How’s that?” I had no intention of moving to British Columbia.

Tina thought about that. Then, “How long had Gabe been depressed?”

“He wasn’t depressed.”

“It tends to be depressed people who commit suicide.”

“Gabe did not commit suicide. He did not put his gun to his head and kill himself.”

“Isn’t that what the police are saying? Aren’t they saying it was a suicide?”

“They’re wrong. I know they’re wrong. Gabe never put his gun together unless he was going on duty—”

“What’s that mean, ‘put his gun together’?”

“You take your weapon apart …” I sounded like a police procedure manual. “… when you’re at home. You put the clip with the ammunition in one place, making sure there’s no bullet in the firing chamber, and put the other part somewhere else. So the gun’s never ready to fire, in case somebody finds it or …” I wasn’t sure of the other reason for making a gun unable to fire. I just felt better about it. “Everybody puts their weapon in kitchen drawers. It’s a cop thing, around here at least. You put the weapon in the kitchen drawer and the ammunition clip beside the cereal boxes, or some other place. Cops joke about it. Cops joke about everything. Don’t reach for the cornflakes and come up with the Glock. Gabe would
not put his gun together and carry it out to the blanket when he knew I was on my way to meet him.”

“Unless he planned to use it.”

“I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it.”

“What’s a Glock?”

“His gun. I don’t know what happened to Smith & Wesson. One made cough drops and the other made cooking oil.” It was Gabe’s joke. Most people don’t get it. Tina was most people, so she thought it over before reaching across the table and putting her hand on mine.

“Okay, I understand,” she said. “About the gun.” The waitress arrived with two glasses of Chianti and a basket of bread sticks. “What’s with all that yellow tape wrapped around your tool shed?” Tina asked when she left. “Wasn’t Gabe found on the beach?”

“Some pervert’s been in there playing with himself,” I said. “That’s what Mel thinks.”

“Mel? Who’s Mel?”

“A cop who used to work with Gabe.”

“What’s he like?”

I shrugged. “A nice guy.” I had to say
something.

I looked up to see Tina staring at me with one eyebrow raised. The waitress brought our food, and when she left I expected Tina to say aloud what I had just read in her expression, but we ate in silence until Tina began reminiscing about Dad and various aunts and uncles. I ate barely half of my pasta. Tina devoured her meal, then flashed her American Express card, and we drove back to the beach strip in silence.

TINA WAS STANDING AT OUR KITCHEN WINDOW,
looking out at the garden. Beyond the fence and above the boardwalk, the horizon was lit with the white silken promise of a moon preparing to
rise over the lake. “I can see the attraction of living here on the lake,” Tina said. “Except for everything else.”

I was sitting at the kitchen table. I had poured a finger or two of brandy into an old glass but had not touched it yet. I was waiting for my sister to leave. Some sins need solitude. “What’s ‘everything else’ mean?”

Tina waved her hand. “The traffic on the bridge, the stuff from the steel companies, some of your neighbours … and, you know, it’s not the cleanest beach in the world.”

“That’s why Martha Stewart keeps turning down my invitations.”

She turned from the window, her arms folded across her chest. “Did Gabe appreciate your sense of humour?”

“As a matter of fact—” I began.

“Does Mel?”

Someday, Tina will have a verbal ambush named after her. In high school, Tina claimed she joined the debating club because a couple of cute boys were members, which was a lie. The only man in my lifetime who was both cute and a good debater was Bill Clinton, and the combination was so rare that it got him elected president. Tina joined the debating club so she could learn to cut people up with her comments. If she had joined the choir and learned to sing as well as she learned to win arguments, she’d be Céline bloody Dion.

Hearing her mention Mel was enough to overcome my reluctance about the brandy. I took a long swallow and closed my eyes while it burned its way toward my stomach. When I opened them, Tina was still staring at me. “What do you want to know about Mel?” I asked.

“What makes him a nice guy?” She began walking and talking, moving around the kitchen, closing cupboard doors and picking crumbs off the counter. “When women like us, you and me, when we say a man is a nice guy, it means more than he opens a door
for you or buys his wife expensive trinkets, stuff like that. That’s what I think.”

“He’s not married.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“He’s also younger than me.”

“How many years?”

“Four or five.”

“Tall?”

“Kind of.”

“Lots of hair?”

“A bunch.”

“Wavy?”

“Sure.”

“Blue eyes, right? You always fell for guys with blue eyes.”

I refused to give her the satisfaction.

“Am I going to meet this Mel?” She sat across from me.

“Probably.” I looked up at the clock. It was past ten. “I’m going to bed. Hang your breakfast order on your doorknob.”

“Josephine.”

My sister had become my mother. I hadn’t changed. I refused to answer and climbed the stairs to my bedroom, finishing the brandy on the way.

I HAVE A THEORY
that time moves at different speeds in darkness. I don’t know if it moves faster or slower when the light is out. Only that its pace changes. The first night with a new lover always passes at a speed you never expect, sometimes long and leisurely, sometimes swift and fleeting. Never normal.

Lying in the darkness, I heard the television set in the living room below me and the traffic passing on the highway bridges above the roof. From out on the lake, I heard a freighter’s horn announce that it was approaching the canal, and a moment later
the air horn on the bridge warned everyone it was about to rise. From another place, I heard Gabe in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and then whistling under his breath in that tuneless way he did. Lying on my side, my back to the bathroom, I heard him pad across the floor and felt the bed sink behind me with the weight of his body, and I awoke.

I rolled over. No one was next to me. The house was silent, the traffic from the highway bridges distant and intermittent. I rested my arm across my eyes until the tears stopped. Then I rose from the bed, wrapped myself in my bathrobe, and crossed the hall to the guest room, where I stood at the open door and called Tina’s name until she stirred and said, “What?”

“I want you to know …” I began. There was an old steamer trunk near the door. I’d bought it from the junk shop down the beach strip last year. There was nothing inside. I sat on it now. “I want you to know that whatever happened, or whatever you think happened, I never stopped loving my husband. Okay?”

“Why are you saying this?” Tina’s voice floated at me from the darkness.

“I just want you to know.” I was clenching my fists so tightly in my lap that they hurt. “I never stopped loving Gabe. Not for one minute, okay?”

“Okay.” Tina’s voice was sleepy and frightened. I had intimidated my older sister. It did not make me feel good about myself.

I think I mumbled something about seeing her in the morning. Then I returned to bed.

T
he first hour after sunrise was the time my father believed he was most likely to see angels. My father was not a religious man, so he didn’t mean it literally. He simply loved mornings because mornings held promises, and evenings held something else. I agree with him. If angels exist, I expect to meet one at sunrise.

I was up with the sun. Tina would remain sleeping for hours, still on west coast time. I made coffee, poured myself a cup, and carried it to the back door, where I stood looking out at the lake. Joggers were already passing on the boardwalk, some alone and wearing headphones, others in groups of two or three, chatting as they bounced past, a couple with dogs trotting alongside. I watched them all, silhouetted against the sun, and I looked up to see cormorants flying east across the lake. I looked at the tool shed last, wrapped in yellow plastic tape printed with
crime scene
. I imagined a man inside, watching while I moved about the kitchen or dressed or undressed in the upstairs bedroom with its window overlooking the lake, where Gabe and I slept and talked and made love.

Some people saw angels in the dawn. I saw perverts.

I finished the coffee and morning paper and almost walked to the telephone to call Gabe at Central Station. That’s what I did after I finished my coffee and the newspaper. I would call Gabe to talk to him, if he was available. When I reached him, Gabe and I would discuss everything except the case he was working on at
the time. When the case was closed and Gabe had moved on to the next one, he might reveal some of it to me, leaving out the gory details. But when he was in the middle of an investigation, especially a violent homicide or child abuse case, he left his feelings on the beach. If he were involved in something horrific, he would park the car at the side of the house when he arrived home, walk to the boardwalk, and stand looking at the lake. Then he would come through the garden to the back door and into the house, leaving life’s crap outside.

He learned how to do this while getting over the death of his children. A therapist taught him about places where he could leave things he didn’t need or want. He had a place like that in his mind while he lived alone. He called it his white room. Wherever he was, he would close his mind and erase images of all the furniture, the pictures, the books, the carpets, the lamps, everything. In his mind, the room around him would be totally plain and white. Nothing could intrude. He would be Gabe Marshall for a while, without connections or pain.

After we married and moved to the beach strip, he found another place, which was the lake. He did not need to be Gabe Marshall, free of everything including pain this time. Just free of things he didn’t need, and he would stand staring at the water long enough to leave the things he didn’t want to burden me with out on the water until they sank from sight. I’m a little sceptical of that stuff, but then I’ve never been in therapy or worked at a job that involved stepping over somebody’s intestines. All I know is that Gabe never failed to walk through our back door with a smile for me, no matter how upset he might have looked when he got home and parked the car at the side of the house, before he walked to the beach and stood looking at the lake until all the bad stuff was sent out there to sink to the bottom with the other pollution.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, remembering that smile,
when I sensed someone coming through the garden from the beach, as Gabe might have, and I held my breath until he reached the door. It was Mel. He wore his blue police windbreaker over a white cotton T-shirt that wrapped around his chest like skin on an apple, tight jeans, and white Reeboks. He stood staring at the garden shed, his hands on his hips, and I opened the door before he could knock. We looked at each other, not speaking. I was wondering how Tina knew Mel’s eyes would be blue.

“How’re you doing?” Mel asked finally.

“Surviving. My sister’s here. From Vancouver.”

Mel looked over my shoulder.

“She’s sleeping,” I said. “You want some coffee?”

“No, it’s all right. I’m on my way to the station. Just dropped in to see how you were. And I’ve got news.”

Two people going by on the boardwalk stopped and leaned toward each other, watching us and whispering. There’s the widow, I could imagine them saying. I didn’t want them seeing or saying anything about me.

“Come in,” I said, walking back to the kitchen table.

Mel closed the door and leaned against it, inside the house but not in the kitchen. “I called the station this morning,” he said. “The lab says that’s definitely semen from the floor of the garden shed. They’ll do a DNA analysis for identification purposes in case they come up with a suspect.”

I didn’t want a suspect for perversion. I wanted a suspect for the murder of my husband. More than that, I wanted the murderer himself. I wanted Mel to help me find him and help me kill him. I honestly had that thought, staring across the garden at the boardwalk and the beach beyond, where Gabe had died.

“Is it possible …” I began. I started over. “Is it possible that whoever killed Gabe—”

“Josie—”

“Let me finish. Is it possible that whoever killed Gabe might
have hidden in the shed and followed him to the beach, into the bushes?”

“The guy whose semen we found?”

I shrugged.

“First, we don’t know if anybody was in there at the time. And second, Josie, Gabe did it. It’s clear as hell—”

“No, he didn’t.”

Mel looked up at the ceiling, rolled his eyes, and spread his arms in a gesture of defeat. “There’s something else,” he said. “The body … Gabe is being released today.”

I sat staring at the wall, my chin on my hand.

“They need to know what you want to do, Josie,” Mel said. “Have you made arrangements for burial? Have you chosen a funeral parlour, an undertaker?”

“No.”

“You have to.”

“I’ll wait for Tina. My sister,” I added when he stood scratching an eyebrow and looking puzzled. “One of us will call later. Who do we talk to?”

Mel removed his notepad, scribbled a name and telephone number on the top sheet, tore it off, and walked to where I sat, placing the paper in front of me. “I’m worried about you,” he said.

“Good.” I reached for his hand. “So am I.”

Mel said nothing. Then, “I’ll call later,” and he walked to the back door.

“Do we need that damn yellow tape around the garden shed?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “You want me to take it off?”

I nodded and followed him into the garden.

Pulling the tape from the door, he called over his shoulder, “Walter Freeman’s arranging a ceremony for Gabe next week.”

I told Mel I didn’t want one.

“Doesn’t matter.” He carried the yellow tape to the trash pail.
“A cop dies, there’s a ceremony for him. You can do what you want about a funeral, but cops like to have a ceremony.” He brushed his hands together and looked at me. “Even when it’s a suicide.”

I told Mel it wasn’t a suicide.

“I wish you’d see it that way. Anyway, he’ll want you there. For the services.”

I told him to tell Walter if I wasn’t there he could start without me. Then I turned and went back into the house.

I didn’t need a place to visit Gabe. I didn’t need a block of marble in a cemetery to tell me who and where and what he was. And I didn’t need an undertaker selling me a five-thousand-dollar coffin either. There would be no ceremony with me present. Walter Freeman could do whatever the hell he wanted. I would have Gabe cremated and scatter his ashes on the lake.

TINA CAME DOWNSTAIRS AN HOUR LATER
wearing a peach-coloured robe and L’Air du Temps. She walked to me without a word and placed her arms around me, more of an embrace than a hug.

“You missed Blue Eyes,” I said when she straightened up and poured herself a coffee.

“Who?”

“Mel. He was here this morning. Gabe’s body is …” I swallowed the lump and started again. “They’re releasing Gabe’s body today. They want me to choose an undertaker. How the hell do you choose an undertaker?”

Tina set her coffee cup down and asked where my telephone book was.

I chose the funeral parlour nearest to the police morgue. That way, they wouldn’t have to drive very far. Maybe hearses have meters. I figured the shorter the distance, the lower the fee. It might be a silly reason for choosing an undertaker, but it was the only one I could think of.

Tina was appalled. Tina likes ceremonies, including funerals. They are an opportunity to wear new clothes. I didn’t tell her what I planned. She heard it for the first time after driving me to the funeral home and listening to me inform the undertaker that I wanted Gabe cremated and the whole procedure done for the lowest price they offered. The undertaker, or at least the guy who took the orders at the office, was young enough to believe that his own mortality was merely a rumour. It was easy to picture him as the class nerd in high school, which was probably last year. He nodded, closed his eyes, and smiled when I said I wanted no ceremony, just cremation in a plain wooden box, and I could pick up the ashes myself if it saved a few bucks.

“Returning the remains to you,” he said with his eyes still closed, “is included in our services.”

I signed the order, used my credit card, and we left.

“You’re just going to …” Tina said as we drove away and, after waiting for the courage to say it aloud, “… cremate him?”

“He has no other family,” I said. “He was an only child and his parents are gone. I’m it. And I’ll remember him my way.”

“But he was a police officer. Won’t they want to do something for him? I mean, when a police officer dies on duty, cops show up from all over the country—”

“He didn’t die on duty. And the police have decided he wasn’t shot by somebody else. They’ll have some ritual. A bunch of out-of-town cops will show up, march around wearing white gloves and a serious expression, and spend the night at a Holiday Inn playing poker and telling dirty stories. Or maybe they’ll forget the whole thing, considering it was suicide.”

“So you also think Gabe killed himself.”

“No, I don’t. The cops do.”

“Shouldn’t you have a funeral anyway?”

“For you and me? Listen, Gabe and I talked about this last year, when an officer was shot while checking a warehouse. They
really went overboard on that one, two thousand cops marching behind the hearse, tying up traffic all across the city. Gabe said if he was ever killed on duty I should comb his hair, dress him in a sweatshirt and jeans, and set him on a bench looking out at the lake.”

“Men can never talk about death seriously.” Tina folded her arms and glanced at me. “That’s why they have affairs.”

“To avoid discussing death with their wives?”

“No, because they’re afraid of dying. They want one more lay before they go, and they think the next might be their last.”

“You’re such a romantic.”

“It’s true.”

“Why do women have affairs?”

“Because their men let them down.”

That hurt. Gabe never let me down. Well, maybe once.

WE WERE OUT OF THE CITY
and driving along the south end of the beach strip, the low-rent section studded with small cottages whose residents gathered at Tuffy’s Tavern on the days their welfare cheques arrived. Tina wrinkled her nose at the sight of people sitting on their front steps smoking and drinking beer out of long-necked bottles. “You really like living here?” she asked.

“I love it.”

“Will you love it without your husband?”

“Not as much. But I’m staying anyway.”

“Daddy always said you were stubborn.”

And he always said you were a spoiled little bitch, I thought.

“There’s a car in your driveway.” Tina looked apprehensive.

I recognized Mel’s red Mustang convertible. When Mel was on duty, he drove brown and grey Chevrolets, but he refused to drive anything so mundane on his own time.

“Don’t panic,” I said. “You’ll enjoy this.”

I parked at the curb, and we walked down the driveway to the rear of the house and into the garden, where Mel stood looking out at the lake. I called Mel’s name and he turned and smiled. “Hey,” he said. Mel had a way of combining two expressions in one, his brow furrowing and his eyes narrowing as though he were somewhere between confusion and anger. He wore that expression when he wanted to make you feel good about him, or maybe just good about yourself for being near him. He wore it now.

Behind me, Tina made a pseudo-orgasmic sound in her throat.

“Mel, this is my sister, Tina. Tina, Mel Holiday.”

Mel extended a hand large enough to lift a watermelon. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here to help Josie.”

Tina said that’s what sisters were for, which caused my eyes to roll.

“We just made arrangements for Gabe’s funeral,” I said.

“I’ll be there,” Mel said.

“Well, you’ll be the only one. There’s no ceremony.”

“That’s how you want it?”

“That’s how Gabe would want it. The force won’t send anybody if I ask them not to, right? Not as long as they believe he killed himself.”

“The results came back from forensics,” Mel said. He glanced behind me at Tina, and I sensed the rest of his words were directed at her. “The bullet is from his gun. The guys in Toronto reviewed it, and they’re the best. So there’s no doubt about it. The paraffin test was positive, and there was alcohol in his blood—”

“How much?” I asked.

“Zero point five, something like that.”

“You can legally drive with that much.” I kicked at the garden shed door. “He could have been behind the wheel of his car, and you guys couldn’t have touched him. Don’t tell me he was so
drunk he decided to kill himself, Mel. He had maybe a couple of glasses of wine—”

“Josie—”

“No suicide note, Mel. How do you explain that? Gabe would leave me a note when he went for a walk on the beach. Why doesn’t he leave me a note before he shoots himself in the head?”

“It’s not me, Josie.” Mel was looking from Tina to me and back to Tina again. Tina—I know because I checked—was looking at Mel’s eyes. “Look.” He lowered his voice. “Everything you say is true. Nothing about this makes sense. But Walter and everybody else at Central, they look at what we have as evidence, and they believe he did it. There’ll be an inquest, but unless the coroner decides criminal action was involved, Walter’s not going to assign a bunch of cops to look into Gabe’s death. He’ll have no reason to. He’ll say that Gabe wouldn’t be the first cop to fold under pressure, and he’ll be right. Maybe Gabe was working on something that got him so damned depressed—”