It crossed my mind that maybe that’s why Gibbs Storey was seeing Alan. She was a neat freak, a pathological neat freak of some kind. He was trying to get her to loosen up, not dust for a day.
But who was I to say what was deviant, right?
While I was encouraging Gibbs Storey to stop crying-I do a surprising amount of that in my job day to day, and I’m pretty good at it-I was thinking that if somebody came and chopped off the rest of this house and just left this room standing, Sherry and I still couldn’t afford to live here.
Why did we fight so hard to stay in Boulder? Why? We worked our asses off, together we made a decent amount of money, or what should have been a decent amount of money, and what did we get for it? A barely insulated frame box with a crappy furnace, a twenty-year-old roof, and wall-to-wall carpeting that smelled like a colony of prairie dogs used it for a few years before donating it to the Goodwill. If you’re a cop, or a teacher, or a lady selling flowers in a little shop just off the Downtown Mall, that’s what working your ass off gets you, if you want the privilege of living a dozen blocks away from Gibbs and Sterling Storey in beautiful, beautiful Boulder.
It gets you shit.
Maybe Sherry was right. Maybe it was time for a change. Back to Minnesota? I didn’t know.
Gibbs was curled up in the corner of a big sofa. I was across from her on a chair made out of twigs and branches. Her sniffles seemed to be slowing. Finally, she whimpered, “I’m a private person. Soon everybody is going to know everything, right?”
Well, that gave me pause. I’m thinking I have a grieving widow on my hands, and that I’m going to be ladling out the comfort and tugging the tissues if I want to get anything out of her, but instead I’m wondering whether she’s upset just because her family secrets aren’t likely to remain secrets for too long.
That was a whole different state of affairs.
“ ‘Everything’ being what exactly, ma’am?” I said. It was as innocuous as I could make the question sound. I hoped it was innocuous enough, because if Gibbs heard any semblance of the echo of what she’d just said to me-assuming she was one tenth as smart as she was pretty-I figured that my forward progress was going to be severely hampered.
She swallowed, opened her eyes a tad wider, and inhaled slowly. Yep, she’d caught wind of the echo.
“What is it that you want, Detective?”
“Please call me Sam. Sam Purdy.”
She dabbed at her eyes with one of the tissues I’d handed her. It wasn’t wadded; it was folded neatly. She used one of the sharp corners to do the dabbing. “But you are that detective friend of Dr. Gregory’s, right? The one who works with the Boulder Police Department?”
Tricky question. “That is how I make my living, ma’am.”
“Why are you here? Why did you come to see me this morning?”
“Something’s been troubling me, I mean wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night troubling me about… your situation, and I’m hoping you can help me make some of my confusion go away.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“You’ve lived with your husband a long time since you knew he had killed your old friend, right?”
“Yes.”
It was a reluctant yes. Not reluctant because the facts didn’t ring true to her, reluctant because she could spot the danger looming ahead if she accepted my premise.
“Well, I’d like to know how you could stay with him. It’s important. To me, really important. I don’t understand how you could go through the routines, you know, the daily… stuff that makes up marriage, knowing what you knew.”
“He’s my husband, Detective.”
Yeah, yeah.But I heard the present tense. And knew she’d wanted me to hear the present tense.
“But wives leave husbands all the time, ma’am. All the time. They leave husbands over goofy things, over things that are much less consequential than murder. Money, booze, other women. Snoring, halitosis, sex-too much, not enough-you name it. But you didn’t, and I’m trying to understand that.”
What I didn’t say was“My God, woman, your options are limitless. I know twenty men who would bow down and lick clean the ground you walk on.”
“I love Sterling.”
I wanted to touch my chest right then, press on my sternum with at least three fingers to see if the tightness I was feeling had to do with my heart or with myheart,but I was afraid it might freak her out to see me caressing myself, so I didn’t. Instead, I reached into my coat pocket and fingered the bottle of nitro the way I used to stroke the velvety rabbit’s foot I carried around in my pants pocket as a kid.
I said, “And that’s enough?”
“It was for me,” she said.
Past tense now.
I took a moment to look away from her and give myself a pep talk. I told myself that I could look her in the eye and not be weakened by her beauty. That my resolve wouldn’t dissolve in her loveliness.
When I looked back up at her, I was pretty sure that I’d been wrong.
“Can I admit what I’ve been wondering about you?” I said.
In an endearing way that ambushed me, she said, “Please.”
“I’ve been wondering whether you’ve been threatened, you know? Or maybe you’ve feared what your life would be like if you turned him in, what would happen to you. Is that what kept you from calling us?”
My mother collects Lladro angels. The smile Gibbs offered reminded me of the face of one of the angels, only prettier. “That wasn’t it, Detective. I’ve gone over all this with that woman detective. With Miss Reynoso.”
I waved off her objection. “Different departments. California, Colorado. It’s a left hand, right hand thing. I don’t mean to be repetitive-to force you to be repetitive-but in my business it truly helps sometimes to hear things yourself.” I glanced away from her, then right back. Gibbs Storey was still gorgeous; that hadn’t changed. “I’d understand those reasons. You know, if you were scared. If that’s the reason it took you so long to-”
“But you don’t understand that I love him. And that love made every choice difficult. Every option… complicated.”
Is that what love did? Would Sherry say the same thing? I didn’t know. I’d like to have asked her.
Maybe I would. Probably I wouldn’t.
I said, “I’m having a little trouble with that, I’ll admit.”
Gibbs stood up and crossed the space between us. She leaned over, placing her hands on her knees so that the flawless skin of her face was only about a foot from my eyes. She said, “Would you like something to drink, Detective? Some coffee, maybe? It’ll just take a minute.”
She made me some decaf in a little glass coffeepot with a spring thing in the middle. It looked like something from a high school chemistry lab. The results were pretty good. I bet Alan had a pot just like it. Probably most of Boulder had a pot just like it. Sherry and I would be last. More likely, everybody would move on to another kind of coffee-making appliance before we got around to getting the one with the little spring thing in the middle.
We’d get ours on the sale table at Target.
She served the coffee in a cup with a saucer and a little platter of cookies. Often when I go into people’s houses to talk, they offer me coffee, or a Coke, or even a beer, but I know it’s fake polite, not real polite. They’re seeking to grab some of my advantage; they don’t really want me there. I didn’t get that feeling from Gibbs. She seemed sincere with her coffee and cookies.
“About your husband’s disappearance, ma’am? If you can bring yourself to discuss it-I’m sure it’s painful-I’d very much like to hear your thoughts about what happened.”
Her eyes filled with tears again. Was that grief? If it wasn’t, it was a close approximation.
“I got a call just last night around bedtime. After eleven. It was from someone in Georgia, a policeman, I think. Maybe a firefighter. I don’t recall. They’re still looking for him, you know. I haven’t given up hope.”
“
Yes, I know. That’s why I called it a disappearance. I’m sure they’re doing extraordinary things to find him.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Was last night like him? Like your husband? To stop and help someone like that? That was a courageous, selfless thing he did. An act of true heroics.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s the work I do, maybe it’s just some inborn cynicism-I admit that’s a fault of mine-but I’ve come to believe that some of us are born with more of the Good Samaritan gene in us than others. I’m curious where Sterling fell on that spectrum.”
She thought about it for a moment.
“It wasn’t like him at all. Stopping to help someone like he did. Usually Sterling put his own self-interest first. It’s not one of his best traits. Love doesn’t require perfection, does it?” Her eyes found the small plate in front of me. “You don’t like the cookies. Some fruit, maybe, instead? I think I have grapes.”
I almost got stuck on that question. Not the cookies-and-fruit one. The one about perfection. Sherry hadn’t done what she did because I wasn’t perfect. No, that’s not why she left. That had to be true. The day I said “I do,” I knew I wasn’t perfect. I went to bed every night knowing I wasn’t perfect. I knew it the same way I knew that the stars felt like snowflakes under God’s feet. I just knew it.
She knew it, too. Sherry left me for some other reason then, something more.
Or something less.
“No, ma’am. No thank you on the fruit, and no, love doesn’t require perfection. So what evidently happened last night at the Ochlockonee River?” The name of the Georgia river rolled magically off my tongue. “Him stopping to rescue somebody. That would have been an exception then, what we might consider an anomaly?”
She nodded. “I’ve been comforting myself with the possibility that it was an act of… you know, contrition? Atonement?”
“Because he heard about the investigation that was going on? He was making up for what he had done?”
“Yes, I’d like to think so. I’d been keeping him informed of what was going on here, you know, legally. Sterling knew what kind of trouble he was in.”
I lowered my eyes and allowed my expression to soften before I looked back up. “My understanding is that at the time of the… tragedy, he was traveling to visit a friend?”
“Yes, an old college friend. A man named Brian Miles. Brian lives just outside Albany, Georgia. He’s a tech guy. An electronics genius of some kind. I don’t know him that well. He and Sterling used to chase girls together in school-he’s that kind of friend. They stayed in touch. We never socialized much together, though. I always thought Brian was kind of, you know, gay. Sterling says not.”
Relevance?Got me; I filed it.
“And this visit? It was typical for Sterling to look up old friends during business trips?”
“No. Not male friends anyway, not just for the hell of it. Sterling likes women for company. He prefers women for company. Always has. He always will.”
She managed to state it as though it were a simple fact, as though he preferred Hilton to Hyatt or Pepsi to Coke. But there had to be something more, didn’t there? When people do unexpected things at unexpected times, it’s important.
“Has that been a problem for the two of you? That Sterling prefers women for company?”
She stared at me again. She had quite a repertoire of stares. This one was an it’s-none-of-your-business stare.
“All couples have issues, Detective. We have ours.” She glanced at my stubby left hand and spotted the thin gold band almost disappearing in the lard on my finger. “You’re married, aren’t you?”
I was tempted to get lost with her. Tell her about Sherry and Simon and having Thanksgiving alone. But I don’t tell stuff to strangers. Certainly not to strangers treading in homicide soup like Gibbs Storey. So I didn’t tell her. But I knew I’d come close.
I came close because she’s so pretty.
That was an ugly realization.
I moved my right hand so that the gold ring was no longer in view. What did I want to ask? I wanted to know how in the world a man could prefer the bed of another woman when he was married to the one who was sitting in front of me. I opened my mouth to ask at least twice, but each time I chickened out. Even rehearsing the words in my head, they sounded wrong.
I ended up asking a safer question. “So this whole sojourn from Tallahassee was unusual? The trip to see an old friend, a man? Then stopping to aid a stranger. Were you aware that Sterling was going to visit Mr. Miles?”
“Yes. Yes, I was. Sterling called me during the football game in Tallahassee. He knew about the search of our home, about the detective waiting here from Laguna Beach. He knew what was facing him here. He really wanted to talk it out-you know, his situation-with someone he trusts. Sterling doesn’t have too many male friends, but Brian is someone he trusts. As much as he trusts anyone.”
“Mr. Miles?”
“Yes.”
“The one he chased girls with?”
“Yes.”
“Was Sterling angry with you for your role in exposing him to the police?”
She maintained her balance and matched my steps as though she was accustomed to following bad dancers.
“He was, and he wasn’t. I’ve been so torn-my loyalty to him, my love for him. An impossible choice. He understands that I’ve been placed in a difficult position by all this.”
“And you have, haven’t you?” I said. I meant two or three things with the question but figured she only heard one.
After a little sinus upshift she started to whimper again.
My decision-making process was abrupt, almost instinctive. I didn’t plan to say what I said next. I just said it.
“I have some time off from work. Personal time. I’d like to help you find your husband. Try to find out what happened that night. At least go… to Georgia and do what I can to make sure everything possible is being done to…” I didn’t know how to end the sentence.
Gibbs did. She said, “Find him.”
“Yes.”
She melted me with those eyes. “Please do that. Will you do that? Find him.” I didn’t know what to make of the stare she offered up next. But Gibbs Storey skipped third gear and went right into sniffle overdrive.
In seconds I had an arm around her, and she was leaning into my man-boobs. Want to know what it was like? Having her in my arms, having her delicate beauty against my fat flesh?
Comfort. Solace. Succor.
Giving, getting.
I felt like goddamned Shrek with the goddamned princess.
It felt like heaven.
Didn’t feel right, though. I can tell you that.
And it didn’t answer that question about why Sterling chose the bed of another woman. Or the question about why I’d volunteered to go ask him.
Nope, it didn’t do any of that.
THIRTY-TWO
ALAN
The storm had departed and left the Colorado plains in bright sunshine, which was typically what happened after a fierce snowstorm along the Front Range. But our seventy-degree Saturday had become a high-thirties, low-forties Sunday. Less than a full day had passed, and we were in a whole different season.
Lauren slept most of Sunday, a bad sign. Grace and I ran some errands, played some toddler games for which neither of us understood the rules, built a snowman out of snow that was the consistency of a Slurpy, and the whole time I pretended that the big bad wolf wasn’t really at our door getting ready to huff and to puff and to blow our house down.
Once I succeeded in getting Grace into her crib for her midday nap, I checked my messages at the office. I was anticipating that I would be receiving a call from Gibbs seeking my compassion about her husband’s disappearance in Georgia. But the only voicemail wasn’t from Gibbs; it was a long message from Jim Zebid.
“Hey, Alan. It’s Jim. I assume you saw theCamerathis morning. I have to admit I’m a little con
cerned about it… um… you see, my guy-I’m sure you remember the one I’m talking about-swears he hasn’t told anybody about his, you know, his thing with the guy, the one in the paper. And I certainly haven’t told anybody about it but you. And now the cops know, obviously, and it’s in the news. So it’s a concern, obviously, and I’m left wondering whether-this is hard to say-you might have been a little indiscreet after we talked earlier in the week.”
His tone wasn’t belligerent. It wasn’t even heated.
“I’m not accusing you, believe me, but the position my guy is in right now is really precarious. I mean, if her husband talks, you know-about, you know, it could be real bad for my guy. Anyway, if you have any thoughts about all this, I’d love to hear them. I’m on my cell all day. I think you have the number.”
He’s not accusing me?What else would I call it?
I dialed his cell number. He answered after three rings. “This is Jim.”
“Alan Gregory, Jim.”
“Alan, hold on. I need to get someplace I can talk. It’ll take a minute, I’m downtown.” I heard the sounds of a soulful saxophone. I knew exactly where he was on the Mall. He was at the corner of Pearl and Thirteenth. Some cold air wouldn’t keep throngs away from the Mall on a sunny autumn Sunday when the number of shopping days until Christmas was dwindling away like Girl Scout cookies in a firehouse.
“Okay, this is better. Thanks for holding. So what do you think about what I was saying before?”
“What do I think?” I wasn’t about to start this conversation. That was going to be up to him.
“The article?” he said.
“Yes?”
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