There Must Be Some Mistake (19 page)

“That's right,” I said. “You were in residence.”

“Yup,” she said. “I waved at that guy all the time when he was hanging around outside. A friendly wave. Neighborly.”

“That's the don't-shoot-me wave, yes?” I said. “I can't believe I forgot you were here then.”

“I didn't want to interrupt you.” She finished the second ear and hugged Leo, rocked him in her arms. “We don't like to interrupt, do we, Leo?”

“You want to take him out for a walk or something?” I asked.

“Maybe in a minute,” she said. “Who's coming now? Jilly, the woman Chantal, is that it? Morgan will probably stay up in Houston? Your Bernadette, who could show up at any minute. That woman cop you were talking to? Who was that?”

“Her name is Jean Darling,” I said. “Detective Jean Darling.”

Diane pursed her lips too dramatically. “You got a lot of women around here, don't you? You got practically a bevy of women.”

She was right. It wasn't lost on me that I had mostly women friends. On the other hand, I didn't really want a lot of men friends. Too much trouble. Always huffing and puffing, this way and that, control issues, roosters strutting around, including me, of course. I was content, maybe more than content, to stay out of the barnyard.

“It's true,” I said to Diane. “A large group of people or things of a particular kind. Exactly what I like.”

ELLA MARIA PARKER
fooled everyone and returned shortly after we got the letter declaring her innocence in the matter of her husband's death. She arrived in Kemah at Forgetful Bay with two guests, whom she introduced as members of her family. One was a woman confined to a wheelchair with a broken ankle, which she reported had been recently repaired through several surgeries during the last of which a plate had been inserted into her ankle, screwed directly into the bone. She invited all comers to “feel the plate” in her ankle at every opportunity. This was Ella's sister Sig, short for Signe, which was said to be a French name that the sister had gotten by virtue of her father's fascination with French New Wave cinema. The other traveler was Peter Rohe, a former television commentator for Velocity TV, who was only to be with us for a very short time given his demanding overseas schedule.

“I met Peter in New York,” Mrs. Parker said to us as we gathered at Bernadette's condo to commemorate her homecoming. This was a command performance arranged by Bernadette in an effort to prevent any appearance of HOA complicity in the sub rosa sentiment said to exist against Mrs. Parker's return. Present were myself, Chantal, Detective Jean Darling, Jilly, Bruce and Roberta Spores, assorted others.

Diane had, by this time and after more than a few days at my place, removed herself to a local residence hotel called the Candlewood Suites, which she found quite comfortable, having a suite of two rooms on the first floor, allowing easy egress and ingress to attend Leo's needs, such as they were. She had looked at two condominiums in Forgetful Bay and found both “possible,” though she was not ready to commit to either and was still looking at real estate with her broker.

“And how was the Alaskan portion of your trip?” Roberta Spores inquired. “Was it as beautiful as it is on television? We love Discovery and Nat Geo, don't we, Bruce?”

“We do,” he said. “We are closet Alaskans.”

“It was very pretty and very sad,” Mrs. Parker said. “I could not forget the loss of my beautiful husband, Duncan. I wept in my cabin.”

“This is true,” stated her sister Sig. “I was with her much of the time and she wept constantly. Never have I seen Ella Maria weep so much.”

“We're so sorry,” Bernadette said. “It is wretched what happened to Duncan. Everyone thought he was looking forward to retaking his post as president of the HOA.”

“I know he was,” Mrs. Parker said.

I started to ask why he'd given up the post, but then realized I had misplaced a data point, the suggestion of misconduct with the dancer Olive Mars, and I realized this line of conversation would lead nowhere anyone wanted to go, so I coughed instead of speaking, covering my mouth with a napkin I had picked up off the table where Bernadette had laid out the chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were very tasty, and when I recovered I commented in that regard. “The cookies are excellent, Bernadette. Are these from the Toll House recipe?”

“McDonald's,” she said. “Surprising good, yes? McDonald's sells three for a dollar, two for a dollar if you're in a bigger city. Or maybe it's a franchise option. Anyway, here it's three.” She picked up the plate of cookies and passed it around to the guests. I took another, but I was not the only one.

“We had another death in your absence,” Jean Darling said, earning herself a wicked look from Bernadette.

“Another?” Sig said, rolling closer to the table to see what treats remained.

“Mr. Peterson, Oscar Peterson, was, uh”—and here Jean seemed to realize the difficulty; she stopped right there in the middle of her sentence, paused, and then continued—“well, it doesn't matter here today. We're so glad you are back, and please, if I can help you in any way, you can count on me. I live here and I'm available at the station or here at any time.”

“What happened to Mr. Peterson?” Sig said.

Bernadette shook her head. “I don't think the police have refined their investigation yet.”

“So it was not natural causes?” Sig said.

“Was it a shooting?” Mrs. Parker said. I was surprised by the way she asked, it was casual, she was eating a cookie at the time, chewing, and she asked the question as if it had no particular emotional connotation for her, no connection.

“No,” Bernadette said. “No evidence of shooting.”

As I remembered Duncan Parker's description I spent a good deal of my nontalking time eyeing the widow. She was, indeed, overlarge. She was tall like he said, but she must have slimmed down on her trip, because she didn't look particularly overweight. She wasn't model thin, but she fit in her clothes, wore heels in spite of her height, and was altogether striking. Perhaps he had exaggerated the girth of her. I had a hard time imagining her and Duncan Parker as a couple because she seemed very much a nonmarine wife, a striking woman who would have, perhaps owing to her size, an easy go of it in the matter of a companion. Parker was a smallish man, five foot seven, maybe eight, and kind of ordinary, whereas Ella Maria was anything but, what might be called, in the lexicon, an exotic.

“I think we need to meet Diane, don't we?” Chantal said to me.

We weren't meeting Diane, but it was our prearranged exit line, so we shook hands, nodded, wished all the best, and said good-bye, taking Jilly with us for the imaginary meeting. On the walk back to the condo, Jilly said, “Man, that thing is huge.”

“I wouldn't kick her out of bed,” Chantal said.

“You people,” I said. “She seems pleasant and attractive.”

“I liked her, too,” Jilly said. “And her sister was something, wasn't she?”

“Like what?” Chantal said.

“Abnormal, I guess. She sure was interested in the eats.”

“Those cookies,” I said.

“The Peterson deal was awkward,” Jilly said.

“She handled it well,” Chantal said. “I think she killed her husband, though. That's all I could think about. Her shooting him in the face. In the head. Where was he shot, anyway?”

“Forehead, I think,” I said. “Or temple. One of the obvious suicide spots.”

“Mouth would be one,” Jilly said. She was kicking a half-size black-and-white soccer ball we happened upon in the green space we were crossing.

“It was twenty-two caliber, wasn't it?” Chantal said. “I don't think you use those in your mouth for suicide. Have to shoot the brain.”

“That would be a brain shot, wouldn't it?” Jilly said. “Shooting upward through the mouth?” She put her finger in her mouth to illustrate. “Did you look this up or something?”

“No,” Chantal said. “I'm probably wrong.”

At the house Jilly said she was taking a shower and disappeared into her room. Chantal and I took up spots in the living room and clicked on the big flat-screen television. She changed some channels and I watched the screen and read the closed captions I always had on. After a few minutes of this, Chantal gave up the remote.

“I had a thing with Peterson,” she said, her voice chalky. “Long time ago now. Well, a year and a half, nearly.”

“Really,” I said. I looked at her and she was staring at the screen, or in the direction of the screen. A vacant stare. Like she was hypnotized.

“We started up one day. He was walking, I was outside. We talked, hit it off, went in for a water, had a drink instead. Was easy after that. We went with it. Kept going, weeks, months. I met the wife, their kids. I thought she'd snap to it, but that didn't matter, somehow. He was a lovely guy. Gentle, kind, thoughtful. It was sexual but more than that, a privacy that we shared, a hidden world, it was like we both let it all go at the same time. I felt like we might eventually be together, so it was storybook—you never expect it and then it drops in your lap. Hadn't happened before, not husbands, lovers, nobody. And we didn't talk about it. We sailed along, secret meetings, he'd come to the restaurant, we'd meet at the house, wherever.”

She stopped there. The room was cold, as if someone had turned the air-conditioning down an extra ten degrees. Chantal reached in her purse and brought out a pack of cigarettes.

“Do you mind?” she said. “Just this once?”

I waved OK.

She lit the cigarette and took a hefty drag, let it roll slowly out between her lips. “Don't be afraid of women, Wallace. Women are not poison.”

“So how did it end?” I said.

“Did I say it ended?” Chantal said.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I assumed.”

She laughed. “I'm kidding you. It did end, and badly. But that's another story.” She scooted to the edge of her chair, sat there, and slipped her feet into her heels. “What are we doing for dinner? Let's take everybody. Is Morgan coming down?”

“Not today,” I said.

“Let's drive somewhere,” she said. “Galveston. Let's go see if John's Oyster Resort is still there. See if that mouse is still running around. What do you say?”

I knew better, but I said yes.

I squared it with Jilly, who didn't seem to think it was a big deal, at least until I invited her to come along. Then she made a face and shook her head. “Another time,” she said.

So Chantal and I headed for Galveston. The night was balmy, a sweet breeze signaling a shift in the weather, the scent of the salt water carried in the air, the small lights along the coast highway and others reflected in the water, behind us the moon, up in the southeast and moving fast. I asked Chantal to tell me about Peterson. At first she shrugged, waggled her free hand—she was driving—then she said, “It's always complicated, isn't it? Two random people shuffled together. What chance have you got? Everything is so unlikely, and yet you get enmeshed. Options disappear. You're in a UFO beam that renders you helpless.”

I made an otherworldly noise.

“Sorry,” she said. “Anyway, that was me. He was perhaps less taken by the romance. And lost interest from there.”

“I hear that,” I said.

“Yeah,” Chantal said. “Sometimes you live with it, sometimes you find alternatives. You could make a list—departure, withdrawal, punishment, violence, cruelty, replacement.”

“You do, don't you?” I said. “Every time.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It's best to simply detach the head of the offending element, a clean, brutal cut. Then it's over and repair begins. The wound is cauterized.”

“Perfect,” I said, but I wasn't thrilled with the conversation and I started to say that, then figured she was already feeling bad so I'd let it go. Her reaction to Peterson's passing surprised me. Where she'd remained apart from things at Forgetful Bay, this time she was hooked. That said everything. I decided to change the subject.

“Anything else going on? Restaurant OK?” It was a poor effort, but I had hope.

“Nothing,” she said, staring straight out the windshield. “Nothing much.”

“You know John's Oyster Resort isn't there anymore, don't you?”

“Sure,” she said. “I wanted to drive awhile. You eager to get back?”

“Not immediately,” I said. “We could stop at your place if you want.”

“Tinker's there,” she said. “Came back yesterday.”

“How did the exhibit go?”

“She seemed disappointed,” Chantal said. “She added a bunch of stuff to her piece, both in the video and in the physical presentation. She told me she picked up things she found in the neighborhood and dumped them in her space. Things like tree limbs, garbage, cardboard boxes—for some reason she's in love with cardboard boxes.”

“Cardboard has a great smell,” I said. “I like the crisp new boxes, ones that have never been used.”

“You and Tinker ought to get together,” Chantal said. “So she dragged all this crap into the gallery and I asked her how do you re-create that, like if somebody wanted it? And she said, you don't, you make something similar. So I asked her what happens when she dies? What happens then? She said there would be photographs of the different states of the work, plus videos, texts describing the process, and so on and so on. It's an idea, but as soon as somebody offers to buy something it changes completely.”

“Becomes commerce,” I said. “I've seen that before.”

“She wants it to be changing all the time, out of control.”

“I know the feeling,” I said. “But some of the extremes don't work. Who was that guy a hundred years ago who cut his penis off? That wasn't a good move.”

“That's an urban legend,” she said.

“No, I think it was real,” I said. “We can Google it, if you want. I could do it now.”

“Forget it,” she said. “What's one penis more or less?”

“Right you are,” I said. “So, you want to stop by and see her?”

“Not really,” she said. “Speaking of the severed penis, did you hear about the ref?”

“What ref?” I said.

“This referee got in a fight with a soccer player he was throwing out of a game and the fight escalated and the referee eventually stabbed the guy, so the player was taken to the hospital and died en route, and meanwhile the game was still going on and the crowd found out the player died and they rushed the field and killed the referee and that's not enough, apparently, so they quartered him, cut him limb from limb, and decapitated him, and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field.”

“Hail Mary,” I said. “Where'd you get that?”

“Tinker. She collects stories like that. She's done it for years. Any story that's grotesque or full of gore she saves for her artworks. She used to know this other girl, named Jen something, who did it, and she picked it up. I guess she wants to have the work reflect the extremes of the world we're stuck with these days. Sometimes I wonder about her.”

“Extreme gawker,” I said.