There Must Be Some Mistake (15 page)

CAL AND JILLY
were sitting on the deck at my condo when we got back. I hadn't seen them when we drove in, but they must have been watching us because when we got out of the car I heard Jilly call out, “Hey now!” in that
Larry Sanders Show
way, and I knew it was her because of her voice, and she was the only person who still did that
Hey now!
thing that everybody did for about ten minutes when the guy was doing it on the show.

Jilly said, “The return of
The Lost Patrol.
Come on up and have a nightcap.”

“What are we doing up there?” I said, craning to see her leaning on the railing. “You alone?”

“Not hardly,” she said. “I've got your close personal friend and my ex-husband, Calvin R. Molester, up here. He was here when I returned from town.”

Chantal and I went upstairs, collected a couple of beers, and went straight out onto the deck. After the introductions, which were perfunctory, I said to Jilly, “What did you mean he was here when you got here?”

“He was here,” she said, pointing straight down toward the deck.

“How did he get in?” I asked her, but I was looking at Cal.

“Key,” Cal said, holding up a bright silver key.

“Oh,” I said. “Our friend Diane.”

Cal nodded, raised his glass. “Good guess,” he said.

“Why don't you give that to me?” I said. “She doesn't need a key.”

“I probably can't do that,” Cal said, pocketing the key. “She sent it to me and I have to return it to her.”

“Give it to him, will you?” Jilly said. “Don't be Cal for once.”

“We've been talking old times,” Cal said. He turned to Chantal and explained, “We were young marrieds for a while years ago. She was my first wife and I her first husband, I believe. Isn't that right, Jilly? I think that's right.”

“Give me strength,” Jilly said. She turned and shook hands with Chantal for the second time. “It's nice to meet you,” Jilly said. “But now I think I will go to my room. Good night.”

“Good night, Jilly,” Chantal said.

“Don't leave on my account,” Cal said, waving his glass in the air.

“I'm thinking maybe you'd better move along,” I said to Cal. “Is there some reason you're here? Or is it a friendly key-brandishing visit?”

“I hear you talked to Diane,” he said. “She said you weren't friendly.”

“I was perfectly friendly,” I said. “Then. Now, not so much.”

“I get it,” Cal said. “Don't get your trousers in an uproar.”

“I want the key,” I said. I was counting on him being pretty drunk, figuring he wouldn't want to get into any monkey business under the circumstances.

He stared at me, then said, “Sure,” and reached in his pocket and pulled out the key, handed it over. “Whatever. Keys are available.” He turned to Chantal and said, “Nice to meet you again, ma'am. I've heard about you. I ate at your place once a couple weeks ago. I was going to intro myself then, but I got shy about it.”

“My lousy luck,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. “But new opportunities present themselves all the time, don't they?”

“They do,” Chantal said. “Like raindrops.”

Cal was out of his chair and headed for the sliding door, leaving his drink behind on the wide deck railing. “ 'Night, folks,” he said. “See you soon.”

I followed him inside the condo and down to the front door, where I let him out. “Listen,” I said. “I don't want to be unfriendly or anything, but I don't think there's much reason for us to see each other again, do you?”

“We shall see, Rodrigo,” Cal said. “The future will be what it will be.”

“Good-bye, Cal.” I closed the door and locked it. A reflex. Then I went to Jilly's room and knocked lightly on the door.

“Yes?” she said from inside.

“He's gone,” I said. “Coast is clear.”

“Maybe I'll stay put,” she said. “I'm tired.”

I decided to let it rest. “Sure. Sleep tight.” I started to leave, and the door opened a little.

“It's the first time I've seen him in a long while. It wasn't fun. But I don't want to be rude to Chantal. Will you explain?”

“Sure,” I said.

“She seems nice,” Jilly said.

“She is. And so are you,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

Chantal wanted to go home about a half hour later, so I walked with her to her condo and sat there with her for a few minutes while she microwaved a tiny cup of some strange-looking soup she said she'd made earlier in the day. Green. It was greenish, but not pea. Spinach, maybe. I didn't know.

After the soup I was ready to get home and resume my routine. Finding Cal at the house had been distracting and uncomfortable, so I figured I'd write a note to Diane asking her to chill on the Cal thing, at least insofar as it involved him coming to the house. Maybe he was flying blind, without instructions, which I thought might be the case, since Diane was usually less confrontational. She wanted the house, but I thought we'd solved that, at least for the moment, in our telephone call.

“Jilly is nice,” Chantal said. “Pretty.”

“All young people are pretty,” I said. “It's a universal truth. Even unattractive young people are pretty at my age.”

“I get that impression when we're out and about. You keep a close eye on the field.”

“What are you saying?”

“Girls. You watch the girls. All the time. Without cease. You are a girl watcher. At grocery stores, drugstores, shoe stores, the seafood place, restaurants, my place, wherever.” She held her hand up to her face as if holding a camera. “Click, click,” she said. “You take brain pictures.”

“Not at all,” I said. “Scanning the horizon for potential dangers. Protecting you, my dear.”

“I don't need to be protected from girls in sports bras.”

“Never can tell. Concealed weapons, et cetera.”

“You always done that?”

“I'm keeping an eye out, you know. It's all about style.”

“You are all about style,” Chantal said. “But tell me about Jilly. What's your arrangement?”

I didn't want to get into it. I said, “I don't have a good answer for that. She worked for me when I was at the studio. She was an artist, did layouts and design for print, mostly, some TV later. She's good, gifted. We became close when we were working together, closer when Diane and I split up.”

“Uh-huh,” Chantal said, getting a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“None for me,” I said. “Anyway, we get along very well. Morgan likes her, too, so sometimes all three of us do stuff.”

“She's another daughter?”

I hemmed and hawed about that. “Sort of, but there's always been this ambiguity about it. We worked together and so we had that setup as a beginning where we were unequal partners in a job, but partners anyway. So that's not so daughter-like, is it?”

“Not usually, no,” she said.

“I don't know,” I said. “It's a vexed thing. She was screwed up being married to Cal, even though it only lasted a couple years. I don't know the whole story, but apparently it was grim.”

“He seemed swell,” Chantal said. “Lacking only the pencil mustache.”

“A peach,” I said. “Incidentally, Jilly asked me to explain she left to get away from him. She was worried about being rude.”

“That's nice of her.”

“So that's Jilly,” I said.

“Fine,” she said. “I was curious. Scanning the horizon for dangers.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Sure.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I gotta go to bed now. Should we meet up soonish? We still have work on the Parker case.”

“We can do that,” I said. Then I slid off the stool and gave Chantal a proper peck on the cheek, which she returned in kind.

DETECTIVE JEAN DARLING
came around to meet the residents and to discuss the death of Duncan Parker. She was a good-looking woman about Jilly's age who lived in one of the semidetached cottages that bordered the lake on the property, though why the property needed a lake with Galveston Bay right across the street I never understood. Developers will be developers is the answer, I guess. I'd said hello to her a couple of times on my walks and nodded at her more often. She took her walks outfitted in black shorts and black T-shirt, which I always thought peculiar, and she had a dog, a German shepherd she called Big Dog. In fact, on one occasion I had been sitting on the curb taking a breather when Jean came by with the dog, and he came quite close to me and I petted him. His head was large. He was one hundred percent friendly, but the size of his head at close range was enough to scare me. I worried that he'd sense that I was frightened, because I remembered something from childhood about how you are not supposed to let on that you're scared by an animal, a dog in particular, lest the dog get upset about it. Something like that, anyway.

When she came to see me, unannounced, she was with Bernadette Loo, newly crowned HOA president, who introduced us in my doorway but begged off when I invited them both inside, saying she was going to drop in on Roberta Spores next door.

It was early for me, a bit before noon, and I had recently gotten up after a fitful sleep, having gone to bed that morning after six.

“What can I get you?” I asked Detective Darling. “Coffee, Coke, tea?”

“Water,” she said. “If that's convenient.”

“Perfectly,” I said.

“No ice,” she said.

“Gets easier,” I said, poking the glass into the water dispenser on the refrigerator, which was, unfortunately, set to dispense ice. “How about ice?” I said, waving the ice-filled glass at her.

“Ice would be lovely,” she said.

“Are you here on official business? Or what?”

“I'm doing a little reconnaissance for the department but also for Bernadette,” she said. “Two birds, one stone. That kind of thing.”

“OK,” I said. “How can I help?” We sat in my living room, which was less spare than I would have liked because I still had some of Diane's furniture, rather a lot of Diane's furniture, as a matter of fact.

“I'm talking with folks about what they know about Duncan Parker and his wife, and so on,” she said. She had a notebook, like the police that had come around after Chantal's trouble. “You knew Mr. Parker, is that correct?”

“Sure,” I said. “We were not friends, but I spoke to him on the street sometimes. Complained about the HOA fees, you know.”

“The fees are high?”

“Stupefying,” I said. “You pay them, too, yes?”

“Not so bad in the cottages,” she said. She referred to a loose sheet tucked into her notebook. “But you are not one of the derelicts, so to speak. You are very good, I'm told, about keeping up with the payments. Some people, as you may know, are less conscientious.”

“I hear that,” I said. “There's always a note in there pleading with the ‘derelicts' to act responsibly and pay their bills.”

“As for Mrs. Parker,” the detective said, “I gather from Bernadette that she intends to return soon and take up residence in the unit where her husband passed?”

“I don't know that,” I said. “If Bernadette says it she knows more than I do.”

“Yes,” Jean Darling said. “She had thought originally that Mrs. Parker was going to move on, perhaps leave the area, but that turns out not to be true, apparently.”

“I see. Well, she has every right, I guess. I'm not sure I'd want to come back, were I she, but not my call.”

“Though apparently some residents don't feel good about her return. A group has been formed, sort of beneath the radar, to explore the possibility of heading her off at the pass.”

“The language of my childhood,” I said. “Is that legal?”

She shook her head and raised her pen from her pad. “I really don't know the particulars. I suppose there are condominium covenants or similar. I imagine if a sufficient number of owners agreed that someone should be discouraged . . .”

“I don't know,” I said. “Sounds strange. What grounds?”

“Beats me,” she said. “The department, as far as I know, is satisfied with the investigation of the husband's death, and even if it weren't, that might not provide a sufficient cause for action. I guess some people here think the suspicions surrounding her attach to the community itself, which is not good for property values, sales, the rental market, and so on.”

“Do you have suspicions?”

“Me? No. I was repeating what I've heard.”

I scratched my head at this point. “I suspect it's illegal to exclude a property owner, or try to oust a property owner, based on the things you cited. I mean, people might want to get rid of anybody, but I'm not sure discomfort is sufficient reason.”

“I understand that,” she said. “I was reporting that I gather that many residents would rather Mrs. Parker seek other arrangements.”

“I don't really follow, Ms. Darling,” I said.

“It's Mrs.,” she said. “But my husband passed some time ago.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said. “My condolences.”

“Thank you. Please do not misconstrue my mentioning this,” she said. “I'm sort of the messenger here.”

“Let me ask you,” I said. “Do people imagine she figured in his death?”

“I don't really feel as though I can discuss that,” she said. “As a friend of Bernadette's I gather that Mrs. Parker is not well liked, and there are some residents who feel she may know more about his death than she let on.”

“Ah,” I said. “And the police?”

“As I said, the police are satisfied that it was what it appeared to be,” she said. “But we are always on alert. We make mistakes. When we do, we like to catch them early and repair them. Mend and repair, that's our game.”

“We don't want to be known as the deadliest condos in Kemah.”

“Right,” she said. “Now, was Mr. Parker a particular close friend? Of yours? Bernadette said you sometimes talked to him and that he was at your place a few weeks ago.”

“Did she?” I said. “Well, yes, I talked to Mr. Parker from time to time. He kept a nice yard, seemed to have a way with the grass, as you may know. Always had the good grass, so I got tips from him sometimes. And yes, he came by recently.”

“Could you tell me a little more about that meeting?” Darling said. “Was there some specific reason he selected you?”

“Wanted to chat,” I said. “He hadn't made a practice of visiting. I don't think he had a lot of friends, and he wanted to talk.”

“What did he want to talk about?” she asked.

“Is that an official question or a neighborly question?” I said.

She did a theatrically awkward face. “Hadn't given it any thought,” she said. “I was just wondering.”

“Ah,” I said. “Well, he was upset because of some difficulty in his marriage, and I have no idea why he picked me to discuss it with, maybe he thought I would be especially sympathetic.”

“And were you?”

“No.”

“I wonder if he had anything to say about his wife, Ella Maria Parker? Did you get some impression of how things were between them?”

“I'm not sure I'm comfortable discussing that,” I said. “It's hard to figure how I'm supposed to deal with you.”

“Because I'm police?”

“Right. I mean, if you want to talk formally as part of an ongoing investigation where it's my duty and responsibility to report as accurately as possible my conversations with people, that would be fine. I'd be fine with that. But here we're like neighbors and this is like gossip.”

“And you don't gossip?” she said.

“No, I do. I do. A lot. But it's with friends, people I've known awhile, with whom I have a certain relationship, usually, mutual understanding. That sort of thing.”

“And usually they are not police,” she said.

“They are never police,” I said. “I stay as far away from police as humanly possible.”

“Did you have a problem with the police?”

At this point I wanted out of the conversation and Jean Darling out of the house. So I said something like that, and she flipped a page in her notebook and said, “Why don't you give me an overview of your conversation with Mr. Parker? I'm asking formally now, as police.”

“OK,” I said. “He talked about being smitten with the woman who was dancing at his house one morning. I'm sure you heard about that?”

“Yes,” she said. “He said ‘smitten'?”

“Something like that. And she was hotheaded and turned up in his driveway that morning because she wasn't happy with the way things were going between them.”

“She intended to embarrass him? Confront the wife?”

“I got that impression, yes,” I said.

“And did he say anything else about the wife?”

“No,” I said. “Well, yes. That he would rather be, you know, sort of apart from her. Sort of single again.”

“So he could pursue other romantic interests?” the detective said.

“Correct,” I said. “That was the sense I got.”

“And was there more? Did he make any remarks about pursuing this goal? Was he going to get a separation? A divorce?”

“Divorce was a nonstarter,” I said. “I mentioned it. He said I was fortunate to be divorced and to have new friends.”

“New friends?”

“Women friends,” I said. “I have a grown daughter, and I also have a woman with whom I worked in Houston, and she comes down and stays sometimes. And I also see Chantal White socially.”

“Chantal White is the woman who was attacked, covered with paint, and so forth? Isn't that right?”

“Correct,” I said.

“And you started seeing her after that?” Jean Darling said.

“Correct,” I said. “She owns a restaurant and bar on the way to Texas City.”

“The Velodrome?”

“Correct,” I said.

“I've been there,” the detective said.

She smiled at me here and I smiled right back at her. “The food's pretty good,” I said. “I like the shrimp, particularly, but then I never met a shrimp I didn't like.”

“I'm sure they feel the same,” she said.

Jean Darling gave me a look, a police-officer look, something they must teach them at the academy, and it seemed to express in a split second decades of police distaste for ordinary citizens, of which I was at that moment the primary representative.

She folded her notebook and stood up without another word.