There Must Be Some Mistake (18 page)

BERNADETTE LOO
showed up with Detective Darling the next day. They were right on time and I was, too. Jilly had a lunch date with Morgan, no doubt to be debriefed about the dinner with Chantal. I invited Bernadette and Jean Darling inside and offered coffee and butter cookies, those Nabisco ones that look like flowers. They were the only cookies I had in the house.

“So look,” the detective began. “I want to go over your last talk with Parker, and I'd like to get your sense of this letter, and then I may have some things I want to discuss.”

“Fine,” I said. “I don't know what I can tell you. I think I said it all last time.”

So she asked a few questions and I answered much as before, trying to add details when I remembered details. I told her about the eye, his offer to remove it, the pastries his wife liked—I was at a loss, really. “He said she'd gotten huge, like it was a sudden thing, that there was no predicate that he knew about. He told me almost nothing about the other woman, but you've found out a good deal about her, right? High-school teacher and all that?”

“We've done some work on that,” Darling said. “But what I need to know is whether he made a specific threat, or something that could be understood as a threat, to his wife's life.”

“No, I can't say that,” I said. “At the end he was saying he was going to die in her arms, in Ella Maria's arms.”

“Said those words?” the detective said.

“Yes. It wasn't like he was happy about it, but he was resigned to it. Said she was good to him, I remember that. Said he was a bad husband and that they had loved each other once.”

“So he was saying they didn't love each other any longer?”

“That was implied, but it was more like the reason to stay together was that they had been in love with each other once. That's more what he was saying.”

Jean Darling had a few more questions, but I had about run out of memory, so we didn't get much further with that. All this time Bernadette Loo was sitting there stone-faced, nodding occasionally, making little noises as if in agreement, or acknowledgment. I couldn't figure out why she was there.

“So what about this letter?” Jean asked, presenting the letter, which was now dressed up in a large Ziploc bag. “What do you make of this?”

“How should I know?” I said. “I have no idea except what it says on its face. She says she was going to shoot herself, or threatening to do so, and he tried to stop her, to get the gun, but—you know—couldn't, and the gun went off, but no one was hurt. Then she left. Later he was found dead, an apparent suicide.”

“If you take the letter at face value, that's a convenient truth, isn't it?”

“Yes. Convenient. But I didn't know the guy, really, so it could be anything. You need somebody who knew the guy.”

“Do you think it's possible that Mr. Parker was in any way involved in the other incidents here at Forgetful Bay?” Darling asked.

“What?” I said. “What other incidents are you talking about?”

“The painting incident,” she said. “Maybe the death of your neighbor the nail-salon owner. Anything else out of the ordinary that might have happened here recently. The mailbox robbery, the girls, whatever.”

“It hadn't occurred to me,” I said. “Chantal would have recognized him if he was her attacker, though I think he had a mask.”

“Rabbit mask,” Darling said.

“As for the Asian guy, Forest Ng, I figured he lost control of the car, ran off the road, crashed and burned.”

“Was he a reckless driver, generally speaking?”

“How would I know?” I said.

“Well, he was your neighbor,” she said. “Neighbors sometimes know things about each other.”

“I like to keep that to a minimum,” I said.

“I see,” Detective Darling said. “Fine. We have people looking into his records, his business, his connections with Parker.”

“Did he have any connections with Parker?”

“It seems as if he may have had such,” she said. “As I say, we're looking into it. There is one more thing I'd like to go over with you.”

“Fine,” I said. I started eating the cookies. Nobody else had touched them, and I wanted a cookie, so I started eating them, one at a time.

“We wondered if you would be willing to take a slightly more active role in helping us get Mrs. Parker to return to Kemah. This would involve some travel, maybe a week or more of your time—you are a retiree, yes? So you are not restrained by a work schedule?”

What do you say to police asking for help?
No thanks?
I wasn't interested in volunteering. “I don't think that's likely,” I said. “You have people. It's your job. I'm a bystander.”

“Understood,” she said. “But we thought she might be more responsive to someone she knows, or someone who knew her husband, especially in a friendly context. We were thinking a couple of us might go with you to Canada, try to get you a meeting with Mrs. Parker. You know, as a friend, a person Mr. Parker had opened up to before all this happened. You would be the carrot, more or less.”

“I'm almost sure that'll be no,” I said.

“Could you give it some thought?” Darling said. “Everything would be taken care of, of course, and you'd be in good hands.” Here she smiled too much.

“I will,” I said. “I will give it some thought. But don't bank on it, OK? I mean, it really doesn't seem like a thing I could comfortably do, for a thousand reasons.”

DIANE SHOWED
up unannounced a week later at three in the afternoon, with a suitcase and a dog. The dog was a liver-colored curly-haired spaniel. He was an active dog. He would chase a ball all day long, she said, and demonstrated this with about twenty minutes of tossing a tennis ball around the main floor of the condo. The dog ran at top speed to get the ball each time Diane threw it, slid across the hardwood floors as necessary in an often vain effort to stop, then usually bounced off a wall or a piece of furniture, grabbed the ball, and trotted back to her, apparently begging her to throw it again, which she did, over and over. It was amusing at first to see how much energy this dog had, but shortly the charm waned.

“What kind of dog is this?” I asked, not recognizing the breed.

“It's a Boykin,” she said. “Boykin spaniel. Happiest dog in the world. I got it from a woman in Rhode Island who said she could not keep up.”

“Got a name?” I asked.

“Leo,” she said. “For da Vinci or DiCaprio, depending on your orientation. He's as smart as one and as pretty as the other. And trains easy.”

Then the dog pissed on the kitchen floor.

“He missed out on some fundamentals,” she said, snapping paper towels off a roll on the counter and clearing the mess.

“Thanks for that,” I said, wiggling my forefinger in her direction. She bunched up the towels while looking under the sink for the garbage can, then washed her hands in the sink.

I figured a quick mop would finish the job, so went to the closet where the mop lived and got it out, took it to the laundry room, rinsed it in the sink there, and returned to the kitchen.

Diane held out her hand for the mop. “I'll get it,” she said.

Truth was I liked the dog on sight and I immediately regretted not having a dog of my own. I thought that later I might look at the local rescue sites. “So, you decided to come after all. It's good to see you, really. You look great—healthy, cheerful, like old times.”

“Not nearly,” she said. “But thanks for the effort. I was hoping to stay a night or two, if that's OK. Who's bunking here now, anybody?”

“Now, right this minute, or now today?” I said.

“Are there rooms available is what I meant.”

“Sure,” I said. “Jilly's here. She's thinking of getting a place down here, too. I mean, like you said you were. I haven't seen Morgan in a while. The woman I told you about, Chantal, she has a condo over at the other end of the development.”

“So you got two bedrooms free, then, at the moment?”

“One free and one with all your things in it.”

“That would be fine if it's OK with you,” she said. “I'm here to look at places and to see Cal. He's in custody. There was some screwup with the new plea. He's going to jail anyway, so it's a question of how long. They're trying to arrange the new deal I mentioned for eighteen months.”

I nodded. “That's not going to be fun,” I said.

“Actually, he says it's not as bad as you imagine. Maybe jail's not that bad here, in the boonies, you know, compared to a big city or one of the grand institutions.”

“That's good news.”

“Yeah. I thought it was. He seems to like the solitude. He's got his own cell now, and he says he's got it fixed up as much as you can, I guess, and he's reading a lot.”

“Who would have thought?” I said. “Brings out the monk in him.”

Leo was surveying the house, trotting from room to room, coming back to see that we were still there, smelling everything there was to smell. “How old is he?” I asked.

“Almost two,” she said. “He's real leggy right now, but that's supposed to work out in a while when he gets more meat on his bones.”

“Maybe he'll settle down some as he gets older?”

“Maybe. I hear they're pretty active.”

“That'll be fun,” I said. I nodded and then nodded some more. I was aware of how much nodding I was doing, but I did not have any idea what to do next. She saved me the trouble of worrying about it.

“Maybe I should put my stuff in the room, freshen up a little? Something like that? When are we expecting Jilly?”

“Anytime, really. I think she was going to lunch with her real-estate person.”

“Oh. That's great. Maybe we can look together sometime.”

“Not sure you're going to be looking at the same places,” I said.

“Never can tell,” she said. “Strange bedfellows and all.”

Bernadette Loo came by to ask me what I thought of the detective's idea and I told her there was no way I was going to Canada to help find Mrs. Parker. “It's crazy,” I said. “Is that woman a real detective? Is that what detectives do nowadays? Get the citizens involved? I don't think so. Doesn't she watch television? I didn't want to offend her, but there's no chance.” We were standing in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs.

“Maybe they were trying to get outside the box,” Bernadette said.

“I prefer being inside the box,” I said. “Away from Mrs. Parker.”

“I hear that,” she said. “But Jean's not that bad, maybe a little idealistic or something?
Hey, kids, let's put on a show,
that kind of thing.”

“She must be new, right?”

“I don't know,” Bernadette said. “She has only been in her place here six months, and I only met her recently, so I don't know if she transferred or got promoted or what.”

“Kibosh the deal, will you? If you can?”

“We had a fire over the weekend down at the Ransoms' place. You know them?”

“No,” I said.

“Electrical dysfunction—malfunction. Burned up one of their bathrooms pretty good. Scared Lydia. That's the wife. A barbecue setup was stolen from the Wenges' yard, one of those stainless-steel jobs the size of a pool table. He likes to barbecue, apparently. And there was that drive-by shooting…”

That was when Diane stuck her head in the stairwell and said to me, “Who you talking to down there?”

“Bernadette Loo,” I said. “HOA president.”

Diane came down the steps and introduced herself as my “estranged wife,” shook Bernadette's hand vigorously.

“Pleased to meet you,” Bernadette said. “So you're visiting our Wallace?”

“For a few days,” Diane said. “Looking for property.”

“We got some places, if you're interested,” Bernadette said. “Happy to show them.”

“Might be a little too close for my estranged wife,” I said.

“Or him, maybe,” Diane said.

“Nah,” I said.

“Gotta run,” Bernadette said. “Got errands.” She turned to me. “Was a joke,” she said. “The shooting.”

“Got it,” I said.

She shook Diane's hand again. “It's a pleasure to meet you. I think I may have met you previously. You did live here awhile, yes?”

“Good while,” Diane said. “Years ago. But some of us run a pretty cloistered ship, if you know what I mean. So I didn't know a lot of neighbors.”

Just then Leo shot down the stairs and out the door with the yellow tennis ball in his mouth, then stopped suddenly in the driveway and sat looking at Diane.

“He wants me to throw the ball,” she said.

Bernadette turned and smiled at the dog, then started across to her car. “Don't keep this boy waiting,” she said, tousling the curly hair on Leo's head.

Chantal's neighbor two doors down was found dead in his garage that day. He was Oscar Peterson, the guy I'd met the day Parker was found. He was sitting in his car with the door open and one foot out on the concrete of the garage floor. There were no signs of violence of any kind. People in the neighborhood said they heard gunshots, three gunshots, two in quick succession, then a third a beat or two later. But Peterson had not been shot. The cause of death was not apparent at all. When the people who said they'd heard gunshots were asked they said the sounds could have been fireworks. A neighbor of Peterson's said she saw someone riding away on a motorcycle earlier in the day. She didn't remember having seen the motorcycle previously. People speculated that it might have been a suicide, one of those carbon monoxide suicides, except the garage was open in front and the car wasn't running and the car door was open and there was no hose setup from the exhaust. Otherwise it was a great theory. Except for one neighbor who said that the killer could have completed the killing with the car exhaust, binding Peterson in the car, running the car with the car closed and a hose attached, then unbinding Peterson and withdrawing the hose apparatus before leaving on his motorcycle. All agreed this could have happened, but few thought it likely. Most of us figured heart problem.

News of Peterson's death spread quickly. I got a call from Bernadette and, a few minutes later, one from Jean Darling. I was on the phone with her when I heard the sirens coming down from Kemah. “Another dead guy,” Darling said. “This time nobody knows anything.” She repeated the outline Bernadette had given me moments before—the car, the garage. “You know him?”

“Only vaguely,” I said. “I met him. He's two houses from Chantal.”

“Right,” Darling said. “Chantal's not home. We already checked.”

“Did you call her?”

“Bernadette did.”

“Anybody else hurt? Anybody see anything?”

“Guy on a bike,” she said. “Yellow motorcycle, black helmet, jeans, plaid shirt. Like fifty dozen other guys on bikes.”

“Have the rest of your people arrived?”

“Some. Everything's moving quick. I'm at his house now, but this one is not mine. Another guy, Larry Weiner, is taking it.”

“OK,” I said. “I'm going to find Chantal. Maybe I'll get her to come over.”

“That'll be good,” Jean Darling said. “There's a mess here. We're turning people away.”

We hung up and I called Chantal, but before it even started ringing I had an incoming call from her. I canceled my call and took hers. “You heard, I guess?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “You all right?”

“Yeah, but apparently that part of the development is off-limits. You can come here.”

“I'm at the restaurant, but I should be there in a while. Bernadette said they'd get it cleared away before tonight, that I'd be able to get in the house.”

“Diane is here,” I said, looking at Diane, who had come out of her room as the phone calls came in. “She's staying over a few days. She's down to see Cal and look at property.”

“Fun,” Chantal said. “Where's Jilly?”

“On her way, I expect. I haven't talked to her since earlier.”

“She know Diane's there?”

“No, not yet. Where's your daughter?”

“Houston. She has that show.”

“Is that now?”

“It's soon,” Chantal said. “They have any idea about Peterson? She didn't say anything except he's dead.”

“No. Seems natural. But it's a little strange,” I said.

“I know the guy,” Chantal said. “Nice. Clean cut, has an ex who comes to visit. Has three kids or something. They visit, too. Sometimes a week or a weekend. You see them at the pool. Mostly they come with the wife, I guess. I thought he was a lawyer, but it's not like he goes to work a lot, so maybe he's living on investments.”

“I met him,” I said. “But he's over there, so I know nothing.”

“You'd have to go outside, all the way outside,” she said. “How is it with Diane? Is she right there in the room?”

“Yes. Of course. It's fine, I understand. I need to call Morgan and tell her we're all OK so she doesn't see something on the local news.”

“All right,” Chantal said. “I'll call when I'm leaving.”

“Talk to you then.”

I waved the phone at Diane, who was, by now, sitting on the sofa with Leo, combing his ears. “I gotta call Morgan,” I said. “Be with you in a minute. You're getting this whole story, yes?”

“Somebody died across the way,” she said, waving in the wrong direction.

“Up here,” I said, pointing in the right direction. “Up at this end. Not very close to here, but two houses from Chantal. That was her.”

“Got that,” she said. She held Leo's ears at their base so when the comb hit tangles she wasn't yanking the ear. She looked like she was doing a great job and he looked like he appreciated it.

I called Morgan, got her voice mail, left a message saying there was another death but not to worry. After I said it I realized I hadn't talked to Jilly and I really didn't have a clue where she was. I'd expected her back right after lunch.

So I called Jilly and got her voice mail and left the message again.

Then I put the phone down on the kitchen counter and went out on the deck to see if I could see anything down toward Chantal's house, but I couldn't see much through the trees and whatnot. Police cars, lights flicking around the place from police cars, but that was it.

Diane followed me out to the deck with Leo in tow. She sat down. He jumped into her lap. “I always thought this was a nice place,” she said. “But I think I maybe won't look at those condos she was talking about.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Stuff happens.”

She changed ears but kept on combing.

“We had a guy up the other way who was supposed to be a dealer,” I said. “He had lots of friends who used to come visit him for very short periods of time, like minutes. He would always meet them outside, in their cars. His aunt owned the place and he lived with her. At least that's what Parker told me. Then some neighbors complained, and then there were cops around, and then the kid wasn't there for a while, I mean, like a couple years.”

“I remember the drug dealer,” she said.