Sweet Paradise

by Gene Desrochers

  The motives were starting to pile up like cardboard recycling at the Bovoni landfill. Walter had motive for the Kendal murder. For that matter, so did I. Kendal was in my office, and it was no secret I didn’t much like him. He was helping Francine with her reparations, meaning anyone with motive to kill Francine had motive to kill Kendal through association.

  “So, that’s how we got a hold of Kendal’s laptop so easily,” I said. “I mean, it did seem easy, but I wrote it off to her wanting to help figure out what happened. Speaking of motive, what do we know about the wife?”

  Dana pulled a metal water bottle out of her bag, took a swig and rubbed her nose again. “I know she does something online. Some kind of sales.”

  I pointed out the window, where Walter was picking his way over the gravel toward the building. Dana went to the door and called out. Walter entered my office for the first time without a body on the floor.

  “We need to talk,” Dana said as she motioned for him to sit. He looked dried out, dusty. I set a glass of water on my desk in front of him.

  “You got something for me?” Walter said.

  Dana fidgeted with her phone and adjusted her hat before she said, “You could say that.”

  Walter threw her his thousand-yard stare. His dark brown eyes caught the diffuse light from the window. Dana didn’t meet his eyes for a moment, then she brought her head up, let her shoulders relax and set her jaw.

  “I know. I just told Boise, so he knows too. Please don’t waste our time denying.”

  He kept staring at Dana. Two people on stage, me in the audience. Behind him, a roach inched along the edge of the wall. It found a crack and scurried into it.

  “What is it I should be denying?” Walter intoned. “Did I kill someone?”

  “Walter, no one’s suggesting that,” I said, trying to sound as neutral as possible. My heart thumped. Cornered animals were dangerous. If Walter had actually done something, there was no telling what he’d do next, no matter how confident Dana was in a peaceful resolution. This confrontation could escalate rapidly. I squeezed the pepper spray in the pocket of my shorts.

  “No one’s talking to you,” he said, his eyes still fixated on Dana. “Tell me exactly what you know about whatever it is I’m accused of.”

  “You’re gonna make me say it?”

  He gave a solemn nod.

  “I saw you go home with Kendal’s widow last night. I saw you put your arm around her waist and when she opened the door to that dead man’s house.” She paused, giving him a chance to interject a defense. When no parry came, she continued. “I waited three hours. You never left that house.”

  Walter’s nostrils flared. His chest rose and fell like a buoy in the ocean before a storm. I wanted to throw him a life preserver, but I owed it to Kendal and perhaps Francine to get some answers or at least come up with more questions.

  Two minutes felt like an hour as we all let the room settle. He could have denied it. He could have said he slept on the couch as a kindness to a woman who just lost her husband. He could have said nothing happened, and how dare Dana and I insinuate impure motives to a man and woman of such high moral character as Walter Pickering and Savannah Kendal. It occurred to me as a non-sequitur that both Kendals had location-based first names: Savannah and Adirondack. A town and a mountain range. North and South. High and low. Walter’s name didn’t fit in that geographic montage. His was merely a name. He had disrupted the perfect symmetry with his blatant non-geography.

  My father had cheated on my mother and Evelyn had done the same to me shortly before her death. A silent, yet poetic expression of guilt and denial radiated out of Walter, absent verbal confirmation. A visceral urge to tackle and beat him buzzed in my ears. Stars swam into my vision, the rage whip-sawing against my civilized conformity. My clenched jaw ached as my crumpled fist thumped my hip. No sinking into this abyss. Not today. Keep a clear head. He still wasn’t answering Dana’s question.

  “That superior look of smug indignation isn’t fooling anyone,” I said in a deep, hateful voice. “Answer the fucking question. Own it. Or, so help me ... ” I advanced toward him.

  His façade of chief and president at The Daily News collapsed. He was not a man interested in physical confrontation. Words were his arena.

  “Yes! All right, yes!” he squealed, fear in full bloom. “She and I, we had a relationship.”

  The armpit of his shirt, the Van Heusen brand he always wore in the same eggshell color, betrayed a ring of yellow damp. What had that commercial said? Never let ‘em see you sweat.

  The face of the man who had cuckolded me throbbed on the edge of my vision and superimposed itself on Walter’s face. Although I’d never seen them together in a compromising position, in my twisted version of events, he laughed at me while fucking Evelyn. That image continued to haunt me.

  Didn’t these swine have any notion of what they did to the people who lived in a marriage when they inserted themselves? Did they consider karma? I prided myself on my empathy, but I could not, would not, give them that benefit.

  I sneered at him. “Is that what you call it? A relationship.”

  “We care about each other,” he said in a small voice.

  “That’s easy to do when you don’t have to live with each other or support each other day in and day out. It’s fun. Like being an aunt, who thinks because she comes over once a week to babysit, she knows what it is to raise a child. Marriage is a child. Yeah, you are a murderer.”

  Walter and Dana both stared at me. The stillness of my office, of the entire afternoon, felt like a pointed finger. I blamed myself for Evelyn’s cheating. What more could I have done to make her happy? Lots. There was always lots more to be done. I still had to believe it didn’t excuse her behavior. How else could I live with myself?

  “So, what? Are you gonna marry that woman?” I said.

  Walter’s eyes were still wide as craters. He knew this went beyond his ordeal.

  “Boise,” he said.

  Some of his bravado was coming back, his politician’s mind sorted through options on how to get back to respectability. Walter couldn’t exist for long without it. These few minutes were driving him mad. The fear that we would spread his disrespectability like a virus to the rest of his staff and the island.

  He sat up a little straighter, his hands out in a plea. “Boise. Dana. I really do care for her.”

  “Shut up!” I blurted.

  He slumped back.

  “All right,” Dana whispered. “All right, Boise.” Her hands were out, spread like spiders. “Walter’s going to help us with this. Aren’t you, Walter?”

  He limply nodded.

  “See? Boise? He’s gonna help.”

  My back was turned to both of them. A bush on the right in the parking lot brought me out of my trauma. A perfect hiding spot for someone wielding a bow and arrow. I opened the door and left it open, beelining to the spot.

  “Boise!” Dana yelled.

  Halfway down the stairs, I shouted, “Don’t touch that door!

  Chapter 17

  Standing behind the bush, I scoped the angle. Why had it taken so long to spot this? It must have been where the shooter had crouched, which explained why I saw no one when I looked out the window. The bush was dense and had some vines crawling over it. I called Harold, and he drove to my office at a breakneck speed judging by the swiftness of his arrival.

  We huddled behind the bush. Walter had scampered upstairs to the newsroom as soon as I was out of sight.

  Dana wandered down and listened to my theory.

  “We need you to stand in the doorway. I’ll position her the way Kendal was that day. You figure out exactly where you would shoot from, but like I said, when you find a spot, use this towel to cover the ground. Maybe we can preserve some evidence if there’s anything.”

  Harold slung the towel over his shoulder and waited for us to take up our po
sitions inside the open door of my office.

  Walking up the stairs, Dana tried to speak. “Boise, I...”

  “Not now, Dana. I’m onto something. You deal with Walter. Clearer heads. It’s not something ... just shoulder it.”

  We reached the open door. “You’re gonna be Kendal.” I positioned her at the door, facing inside as if talking to me, her hand on the knob, ready to leave. I assumed my position and propped a chair where Junior had been standing.

  “Wow, you were really this close to him when the arrow?” She made a stabbing motion into her chest with her finger.

  “The head came through his chest like an alien. Don’t move, I’m going down to talk to Harold.”

  Harold and I surveyed Dana’s position. We found two nice openings in the leaves with enough room to pull the bow back. Harold commented that the second opening had better sight lines for center mass.

  “How tough is this shot?” I asked.

  “You’d need to be competent, but not necessarily brilliant.”

  Lifting the towel off the ground after Harold finished sighting on Dana, I snapped photos. There were no clear footprints in the browning leaves and dirt. No cigarette butts. No candy wrappers. So much for a stupid shooter. One leaf had some brown liquid dried on it. I inched my nose close. Cola. Coca-Cola.

  I waved Dana down, then turned to Harold.

  “How’s about a trip to the archery range?”

  “Today’s the busiest day of the week. I like to go on Tuesday mid-day better.”

  “Perfect. Let’s go watch folks shoot. Maybe you’ll even introduce me to a killer.”

  DANA WAVED OFF, SAYING she wanted to keep on Walter. He’d agree to get more from the widow about Kendal’s doings the last few months, or she’d expose him. When Dana had you in her sights, it was scary.

  The archery range was full of adults on one side and teens on the other. We had texted Junior, and he’d agreed to meet us there.

  Junior charged up behind us and did a mock tackle, shoving us forward. A couple other archers gave us librarian scowls for talking in the stacks.

  “Who’s the best shooter here?” I asked.

  Harold and Junior gave each other a knowing look, then Junior said, “Him,” and pointed at Harold. An attractive nineteen-year-old woman in a halter top dress sporting an African color pattern of gold, blue, and grey geometric patterns marched right up and kissed Harold on the mouth. He pulled away after an awkward moment.

  “Hiya, Teysha.”

  “Hello, lover,” she purred. “Brought your favorite.” She handed him a can of Coca-Cola dripping with condensation. Eyelash extensions jutted from her eyelids. Everything about her screamed, look at me! And it worked. We were riveted. Harold popped the lid and guzzled some Coke.

  She did a slow turn and pecked Junior on the cheek. “Where you been, J.?”

  Junior blushed a little. “You know, school. I’ve been off in Georgia.”

  “You shooting?”

  “A little.”

  She tilted her head and held out her hand, knuckles up. “I’m Teysha Collins. You are?”

  “Boise Montague,” I said, following her lead. “A friend of these guys.” Her fingers were almost as hot as her stare. This was a woman who could make a man do things. All kinds of things.

  “Strange we’ve never met,” she said, looking pointedly at Harold.

  “Boise’s been away a while. He just came back. Isn’t that right, Boise?”

  “That’s right, Harold. So right.”

  “You a shooter?” she batted her eyelashes at me as if blinded by the sunlight dimpling through the surrounding trees.

  “No, no.” I waved my hands way more than I needed to. “Harold’s shown me some basics, but I’m a full-blown beginner.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Harry’s a good one to learn from, if you can get him to teach. He’s never taught me shit about shooting arrows. We always wind up working on other things, right Harry?”

  She had close-cropped hair and dancing brown eyes. More than that, there was a palpable sensuality in everything about this woman. But, for many men, and I believed Harold was one of them, the sleazy factor was crucial.

  “Teysha Collins, get back here!” The holler came from a graying man wearing a shirt depicting Legolas, the elven warrior from Lord of the Rings. He had a leather weight belt wrapped around his waist and waved his bow around for emphasis.

  “My dad wants me back. Ta-ta.”

  She sidled away, the dress swaying like a hula skirt.

  “Woah,” I muttered. “Who is that, Harry?”

  “No, do not call me Harry. Only Teysha calls me that. Sounds strange coming out of a dude’s mouth.”

  Junior had a sullen look on his face. It appeared that his grandmother’s death weighed on him, but he was doing his best to take his mind off it for the moment.

  “You okay, Junior?” I asked.

  He ignored me. “I wish I could talk to girls like you do, Uncle Harold.”

  “It’s a gift,” Harold said without the slightest hint of irony.

  Harold seemed fine, like his mother being gone mattered little. That said, everyone handled death in their own way and life really did go on. I’d laughed and cried alternately in the days after Evelyn’s death, and I often wished my mother would go away. Maybe it was a relief to be free of that maternal shadow, particularly when it was as large as Francine Bacon’s.

  What really irked me was that Junior was asking Harold for a lifeline, a way for uncle and nephew to connect by having his uncle teach him a life lesson: how to get chicks into bed or at least to go out with you. Harold showed no interest. He watched Teysha saunter away, then eyed some of the other people, nodding hellos between sips of Coke. So, this was the real, real Harold. The persona that appeared when he was in a comfortable surrounding where he belonged. The alpha-male of the St. Thomian archery set.

  “Hey, Junior, I’m happy to take you out or help you to meet women.”

  “Nah, that’s cool, Boise. I’m good.” He punched his uncle in the shoulder. “Hey, man, can we shoot?”

  Harold looked at me. “Who do you need to talk to?”

  “Anyone you think could legitimately make that shot through those bushes and into my office.”

  He pointed at one group in the middle that a bunch of other archers were watching. “Boom. The best ones are right there. We got some others scattered about, but these are the best.”

  “Then let’s talk them up,” I said.

  We walked over, Junior trailing behind us. I’d never loved crowds. The place reminded me of recess back in grade school. People standing around, talking, laughing, playing games. Only here, everyone played one game: shoot a target with a deadly weapon. Who were these people kidding? They practiced the art of killing. Archery was not some country club sport like polo or golf. Archers trained day in and day out so they could kill things. Three archers turned, the same bulbous arrowheads held in their hands. They all grinned at me and their teeth were iodine red, like wolves after a kill. I blinked and their teeth turned white again.

  “Hi,” one of the women said. Her wolf eyes narrowed.

  I tapped Harold on the shoulder and told him I was going to the restroom. After he pointed the way, I slipped into a stall and tugged a small flask of vodka I kept for intense encounters out of my pocket. The vodka felt hot going down, but then it settled in like an epoxy seal. My frayed nerves calmed. Since I’d walked into this den of wolves, the bloody tip of Kendal’s murder weapon repeatedly flashed in my vision. Why all of a sudden? I didn’t really care about Kendal. Roger’s photo from his grandmother’s album snapped into my vision, adding a macabre slideshow.

  People died all the time. I’d solved Roger’s murder months ago. It was a done deal, so why was that black space haunting me at this moment.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Hey, Boise! You
in here?” Harold shouted.

  I followed him out into the superficial sunshine after dousing my face with water.

  “I thought you’d fallen in,” he said as we trudged through the crowd. He crumpled the can of Coke and threw it into a wastebasket. The faces blurred in a fog of people. A dark bedroom, droning soap operas and solitude beckoned.

  “Hey, everyone, this is the guy,” Harold said as we approached the group. “He’s the one who wants to know if any of you shot and killed a reporter last week.”

  “How many points we get for that?” a wise-guy hollered. A few people chuckled. Others looked serious.

  “You a cop?” someone asked.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, no, I’m trying to find out what happened for the family.”

  What was Harold’s play? Did he just like the attention? This was not helpful to the investigation, but I’d make the most of it. I started interviewing each of the archers, one-by-one while the others kept at their reindeer games. These people found the questioning exciting, even alluring. A couple of the women offered to give me their numbers after seeing my card that said, “Private Eye.” Some kind of romantic notion from Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain of the dark, dangerous investigator and his seamy existence tripped their wire. If nothing else, I might get a couple dates out of this, but most of the women weren’t my type, whatever that was.

  One woman gabbed on and on about how she could make the shot I’d described. She had a blonde and green weave in her hair. A peacock, although she was not alone. Several of the women wore wild clothing. More attention-seekers.

  “That shot. That shot is through a door and up a floor you say?” She had a slight British tint to her West Indian accent. Probably from Tortola or Jamaica.

  “Yes. What do you think of that?”

  “Piece of sweet potato pie.” The words buzzed out of her mouth like bees making honey. “Watch this.”

  She nocked an arrow. Her equipment was also peacock-ish with swirls of color splattered over the shaft and head. Every feather was a different color. Horizontal primary colors striped the bow from pole to pole.