The Weeping Buddha
Page 31
“Shhh, Barney.” She held out her hand to quiet the overly zealous mutt. His barking became even louder and more repetitive. Finally, she reached the barn door and was able to escape into the quiet.
Inside, the whisper of socked and slippered feet shuffling across the pine floors behind the door muffled the noisy hound, although Devon wondered how anybody could focus with Barney keeping watch outside. She had missed the first sit at four-thirty, and it looked like she was the only new arrival for the five o’clock meditation. She slipped off her shoes and placed them neatly in the row of other shoes. It would be a few minutes before the door opened so she stretched her back and neck in the foyer. She was out of shape for everything but catching crooks and murderers, and wanted to be warmed up before attempting the lotus position for half an hour. Once she had finished stretching she pulled the rope handle to the door and stepped inside. A blast of heat from the small gas furnace hit her face. She shut the door behind her and waited until the circle had passed before bowing and joining the back of the line. She was just in time. The Jikido clapped once, and in unison they folded their hands in prayer. He clapped a second time and everyone found his or her spot; Devon chose a place close to the door. On the third clap they bowed and took their seats.
She placed her feet in the position Hans had taught her so many years ago—the left leg wedged into the right thigh and the right foot cradled by the left ankle—then she placed her left hand under her right hand and brought the tips of her thumbs together as the hands rested themselves near her naval. Three gongs emanated from the singing bowl and seemed to flow through the room, through Devon’s body, and into her heart. Then there was only silence and breathing. Devon began to count her breaths, one to ten, one to twenty, up to one hundred. The candle at the end of the room seemed to illuminate Hans and make his aura vast and golden until it encompassed the altar. The floor turned to liquid as she breathed, and a fainter glow began to seep around the edges of the other meditators. She felt a beam of energy strengthen her spine, making her sit taller and straighter. She could almost see Beka sitting across from her.
Time must have passed swiftly because the chiming of the bell jarred her as if she had been rudely awakened from a deep sleep. She was conscious of her kinesthetic response to the sound—the tightening in her abdomen and shoulders—as if she were on guard, even in her deepest meditation. Having been absent from the zendo for so long, she had to pay extra close attention to the other Zen practitioners and follow their motions. She folded her hands in prayer and raised them before her face. Then she listened to the words they began to chant. “Creations are numberless, I vow to free them …” Hans’s voice at the front of the room embraced theirs with his bass timbre.
“Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them.” Tenors, altos and sopranos chanted in unison.
The last words were spoken in one final exhale, releasing every shred of breath inside and leaving her lungs as empty as her mind. “The enlightened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it …”
There were three more gongs and only after the resonance of the last one finished did the group stir. They brushed off their zafus and zabuton mats, shook their cramped feet, and stood facing each other. The Jikido smacked the wooden clappers together one more time, they bowed, and when they stood up everyone appeared to be human again—only Hans maintained his Buddha-hood.
“Everybody,” he announced, “we are having a memorial service for Beka after tomorrow night’s vigil. The vigil will begin at eight p.m. and end with the memorial service at eight a.m. We will sit on the half-hour with five-minute kinhin intervals. Please feel free to come for a few hours or the whole night. The sit is open to the public, as is the service.”
Devon watched as the formality in the room dissolved and the group broke into more informal cliques. A few of the members came up and hugged her. “Good to have you back. I’m sorry that it was under these circumstances,” Peter, the Ino, told her.
One woman hung back nervously; she looked familiar but Devon could not place her. After the small group around Devon cleared, the woman bowed to her and introduced herself. “I’m Jenny O’Doherty, Gabe’s secretary.”
Hoping to hide her shocked face, Devon bowed to the woman.
“Beka brought me here a few years ago, after you stopped coming. She didn’t like to do things alone, and I needed something in my life besides work and my good-for-nothing husband.”
Devon’s brain began clicking—they hadn’t really looked at Jenny O’Doherty as a suspect, and from what Loch had said, Devon didn’t think she had an alibi for New Year’s Eve. “You’ve been coming for a while then?”
“A few years,” Jenny murmured.
“Did you ever go into the city with Gabe?”
“Whenever the gallery needed help getting organized. We were getting ready to open a new show of his work.”
Devon nodded—the canvases propped against the walls. Her mind raced beyond the conversation to the fact that Jenny O’Doherty must have a key to the studio. She did not want to ask her too abruptly, though.
“I don’t know what to do about this,” Jenny was saying. “It’s so horrible. Hans has been helpful, but it’s such a shock.”
Devon felt Hans’s hand on her elbow. “Excuse us, Jen. I need Devon to look at something.” He led her back into the meditation room and shut the door behind them. “Here is the prayer list.”
“Who else has touched it?”
“Peter and myself are the only ones who should have; somebody else must have, though.”
“Can you have Peter come in here so I can print him? I’ll need to sort his prints from yours and anyone else’s I find.” Hans poked his head out of the door to call Peter. “Hans?” she added as if it were an afterthought. “I could probably use everybody’s prints.” He nodded and stepped into the foyer. She began dusting the cover and pulling the prints off of the black glossy cardboard folder.
Peter stepped into the room. “You needed my prints?”
“Thank you, Peter.” She pulled out her inkless print kit and rolled his fingers quickly. “You’re done, send in the next victim.” He looked at her questioningly. “I’m joking.” Sometimes she wondered if American Buddhists had any sense of humor; she knew the Asians did. Jenny O’Doherty came into the meditation room looking nervously about, even though she had just left the room a few minutes earlier.
Devon began to roll her thumb and found that her fingers were remarkably cold and damp. “Do you still have keys to the Soho building?” Devon asked nonchalantly.
“I have keys to everything,” Jenny confessed. “I don’t know what to do with them. I guess Robert Goldstein will tell me when he gets around to the will.”
“Did your husband ever come home?”
Devon took her left hand and began to roll her thumb, then index finger …
“Excuse me?”
“Detective Brennen said your husband was missing on New Year’s Eve.”
“He wasn’t missing,” she said harshly. “He was drunk.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as he was when he finally showed up. I threw him out.” O’Doherty looked at her feet. “I’m coming tomorrow night. I can’t sleep anyway, so I might as well come here.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Devon printed six more people, then asked Hans to come back in. “Can I keep this?” she asked, pointing to the prayer book.
“I recopied it so you could have the whole book. I thought you might need it.”
“We’ll turn you into a detective yet, Hans.”
“And we’ll turn you into a Buddhist! You’re coming to sit tomorrow night.” It was not a question.
“I feel like I need this in my life right now.”
“Then you do.” He hugged her, his arms solid and strong around her—the best hugger in the world, she thought. “Just on the East End,” he whispered.
She blinked at him. Had he been reading her
mind?
“You are my dharma daughter, like Beka was,” he answered her silent question.
She headed down the path, following a few of the others through the dark, but stopped halfway. Barney was staring beyond her, without barking. She turned and saw Jenny O’Doherty standing at her car watching her with her mouth half open. Devon started toward her, but the woman quickly got into her car, started the engine, and pulled out into the road. It was only then that Barney began to bark.
Her cellphone was blinking with a message again; she knew it was Loch and punched his number on auto dial. “You rang? How’d the interviews go?”
He coughed. “These people were your friends?”
“Part-time friends.”
“They’re about as appealing as …” he paused, “I don’t know what … something I detest …”
“Beets.”
“Beets!” Loch laughed.
“They aren’t going to warm up to you when you’re thinking one of them is a murderer.”
“Like I care.” The sarcastic edge to his voice could not be muffled, even by the poor reception.
“Did you get everybody’s fingerprints?”
“Already gave them to Frank.”
“And what about alibis?”
“I thought I was the lead on this investigation.”
“That’s just for appearances, Loch. You know I’m really boss.”
“Women always are.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
“Alex seems covered. Josh and Katiti’s alibi seems shaky; Gary’s going to follow up. We haven’t located Maddie or Godwyn yet.”
“What about Sam?”
“Sam Daniels does not have an alibi for New Year’s Eve. Evidently, he doesn’t celebrate that holiday. He also has a fondness for bourbon, Jack Daniel’s to be precise.”
“You like Sam for this?”
“There’s something funky there, Dev. He has a real grudge.”
“Against Beka?”
“And Godwyn.”
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing, I’m just thinking. Listen, sweetheart, I want you to go home and get some rest. Frank needs you to pick him up on the way to work. His car is in the shop. I think he’s expecting you sometime around seven-thirty. Gary and I are checking alibis in the a.m., then I’m going to the North Fork to find Miss Maddie Fong and Gary’s off to the city to find God—what’s his last name?”
“Kamani.” She looked out of her windshield into the impenetrable night. It was barely six-thirty and black as pitch. She could hear him shuffling papers on the other end of the line. “Are you coming back out to Sag Harbor?”
“I might squeeze you in between three and five,” he answered.
“How about if I come get you?”
“Your mother gave me a mouthful about your health. Evidently, you need your beauty rest …”
“Lochwood Brennen!”
“She’s right, you look peaked, and you were up most of the night last night and the night before …”
She did not let him finish. “I can’t believe you met my mother without my being there to intervene! Did Dad really threaten you with a harpoon?”
“Now I really feel like it went well.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, honey, if anything happens to you I’ll make sure Dad is proved innocent.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel any better? Go home and get some damn sleep. There’s nothing more you can do tonight anyway.”
“If that’s true, there’s nothing more that you can do either. Come home with me.” She could tell he was looking at the file by the way his voice not only withdrew from the line, but his presence seemed to disappear as well. He was going to work at his desk until he figured it all out or fell asleep sitting up. “I give up. Have fun with your casebook, but remember, when you wake up holding the picture of a corpse, you could be in bed holding me.”
They hung up simultaneously and moments later her phone lit up with his numeric page, 999-9999. Maybe she didn’t need a beeper after all. She headed for home.
CHAPTER FORTY
The Arrival at Mutual Integration:
When two blades cross points, there’s no need to withdraw.
—PORTION OF A ZEN KOAN
Devon made a fire in the fireplace and flicked on the TV while a can of Progresso soup heated up on the stove. She didn’t know what else to do, and Loch was right, she was exhausted. She could actually count on one hand the hours of sleep she had had since New Year’s Eve. Boo watched as she stacked the wood, his tail thumping on his pillow by the hearth whenever she walked past. She rolled up pages of newspaper leftover from the Sunday Times, which she hadn’t had time to read, his head following her every move. Finally she lit the fire and he laid his head down to rest as Devon took her place on the couch.
It was nice to be home alone. Quiet, no one to bother her. The phone rang.
“Hey, Dev. I met your man today.” It was Alexandra. “Not bad.”
“Liar. He’s mean as an old snake. Listen, did you get the video today?”
“It has to come all the way from L.A., Dev. I called my assistant and asked her to find it. She had to go to my storage locker, and things aren’t in alphabetical order in there. I hope you appreciate it. She FedEx’d it this afternoon.”
“So I’ll have it tomorrow?”
“After ten.”
“Great, can you call me when it arrives?”
The kitchen door opened and Aileen walked in carrying a bag of groceries. Boo jumped up from his bed to greet her with a wagging tail and a quick dab of his tongue on her hand, then returned just as quickly to Devon’s side.
“Sure. What’s going on, Dev? You’re acting very mysterious.” Alex’s voice sounded hesitant.
Devon sighed heavily and kicked the pillow under her foot. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation, Alex, that’s what’s going on. I’m hoping the video might help.” Boo knocked her free hand with his nose so that it landed squarely on his head. She patted him involuntarily.
“We’ve looked at it before. Remember? I ran it for about twentyfour hours after the party. I never saw anything the least bit telling.”
“We weren’t watching it for information.” Boo tossed her hand in the air again. She smiled, aware that she had stopped rubbing his ears a few moments earlier. “No one went through it frame by frame.”
“Well, I did, sort of,” Alex told her. “But I guess I was just looking for clips to edit into a larger abstract of Beka dancing. You really think it will help?”
“I don’t know, Alex. My job is to collect the evidence; Loch’s the one who puts it all together.”
“Loch’s going to see it?” Devon could hear the hesitation in her voice. “There’s some stuff on there I don’t want anyone but you seeing, Devon. You can’t arrest us for illegal acts committed so many years ago, can you?”
Devon felt it was best for her to be completely honest and had to say, “If there was a murder on the tape, I could use it as evidence.” It hadn’t even occurred to her that she might need a court order to get the tape, and if there was something incriminating on it she wanted the evidence to be admissible.
“What about drugs, Devon? I mean, if you were just a regular Joe, it would be no big deal, but there was stuff happening at that party before it started that I taped.”
“I can give you my verbal assurance that I won’t use any of the drug use against you or anyone else on the tape. This case isn’t about drugs.”
“Are you sure about that?” Devon didn’t answer. “I think I’d better discuss this with my lawyer.”
There was another pause on the other end and Devon knew she was in danger of losing the tape altogether if she didn’t play the next few moments very carefully. “Alex, this is about Todd and Beka, and figuring out what happened to them. Nothing else. You want me to find Beka’s killer?”
“Of course.” Alex’s voice grew softer.
“I know you
did stuff you’d rather not have made public; so did I. It was the ’80s. We’re not going to punish you or anyone else for being young and stupid.” She could feel the tension in Alexandra dissipating even though she couldn’t see her. “Listen.” She decided to change her tack entirely. “I’ll be the only one to look at the tape unless there is something on it that proves insightful to the murders or Todd’s disappearance. After I watch it I’ll call you and let you know if I feel that Loch needs to see it as well. At that point we can bring in the lawyers, if that will make you feel better.”
“That sounds reasonable, but I’ll need a non-disclosure agreement from you first. Just in case.”
She knew Alex would call her lawyer anyway as soon as they got off the phone, but in order to get Alex’s mind off of legalities, Devon said, “Tomorrow night there’s an all-night sit in honor of Beka and Gabe.”
“What are you doing, praying for enlightenment on this case?”
“You could say that.” Devon didn’t want Alex knowing more than was absolutely necessary. “Hey, you don’t know where Maddie and God got off to, do you? I wanted to let them know about the sit.” Devon saw Aileen wave from the kitchen and point to the soup on the stove. Devon nodded, got up off the couch, and walked into the kitchen.
There was a click on Alex’s line. “That’s me, gotta go.”
Devon had the distinct feeling it was Maddie on the other end. “If Maddie calls, tell her to call me.” Devon rattled off her cell number.
Her soup was steaming in its bowl and looked not only good, but comforting. The theme music for some sitcom started and Devon began to sip her clam chowder, hoping to placate her mind with someone else’s woes.
“How was the reunion?”
“You should have come.”
“And hang out with all of the nosous upliftous crowd? Nnosous No thanks.”
Devon chuckled. She had forgotten how she and Aileen had given Latin names to all of the cliques in junior high—burneous outus, jockeous sportus, cheereous leaderetch, nosous upliftous.