Max knelt beside my chair and put a hand on my back.
I turned my face enough to see him. “Did I do this, Max? Did I set something in motion?”
“That’s two questions,” he said. “Different answers. First question: You give yourself too much credit, Maggie. What happened to that poor guy isn’t your doing. Second question: Maybe you did start something.”
I fell into his arms and wept. He tolerated the snuffling only so long before he reached for the tissue box on the counter and handed it to me. I sat back, blew my nose and took a few deep breaths.
“You know what Mike would say, don’t you?” he said.
“Mike said a lot of things.” I pulled out a fresh wad of tissues and blew some more.
“Your Mike would say, you make your bed, you lie in it,” he said. “Larry Nordquist is lying in the bed he made for himself.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” I said. “Whatever he did, the poor bastard didn’t deserve what he got.”
“Maybe not.” He struggled to his feet and cleared the soup off the table. “Is there anything you need to tell me about this Nordquist fellow before the police start asking you questions?”
I shrugged. “Like what?”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Saturday night after we got home from the Bartolini party,” I said. “It was late, after ten anyway. I went out to the garage to look for Dad’s gun.”
“Did you find it?”
“Jean-Paul did,” I said. “Dad built a false bottom into one of his desk drawers and hid it there.”
“Mm-hmm.” He nodded. “That’s something Al would do.”
A sudden thought seemed to hit him with a jolt. “You didn’t happen to fire the gun?”
“No, no. I never touched it. Don’t worry, Larry left here, intact, under his own steam,” I said. “He got in on his own, too. He knew where Dad kept a garage key hidden and he just walked right in.”
“What did he want?”
“He’s in a twelve-step program, though I think he’s fallen off the wagon. He’s been going around making amends with people for any wrongs he thinks he did them. But I think he wanted me to say that I had done him wrong, too,” I said. “When we were kids, we had a fight because he was trash-talking Mrs. B. And I won. He wanted me to know that what he said was true.”
“Trash-talking Tina Bartolini?” He tossed away that notion as ridiculous. “What negative thing could he possibly say about Tina?”
“It turns out Larry was a bit of a Peeping Tom,” I said. “He told me he saw her with a lover.”
That gave him pause. He thought over the possibility, shaking his head, trying to reject it. Finally, he said, “Never. Not her.”
I pointed at my chest. “Remember how I got here?” I said. “My dad, the salt of the earth, pillar of the community...”
“Point taken.” But still skeptical, he asked, “Did Larry tell you who this supposed lover was?”
“He wouldn’t say. But he did confess that he showed Isabelle where to find the key to the garage.”
That bit of information cleared up a mystery for him: how Isabelle had gotten into the house at night to creep into my room. He said, “The little prick.”
“De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” I admonished.
“Honey, I’m a lawyer. If I never spoke ill of the dead I wouldn’t do much business,” he said. “Where’s the gun now?”
I pointed up. “Loaded, in a drawer next to my bed.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
There was a knock on the connecting door to the dining room. Before we had a chance to answer, Kevin pushed through. “How’s everyone in here doing?”
“We’re still mostly vertical,” I said.
“Ready to answer some questions?”
Max sat down beside me and took my hand. I knew that if Kevin asked me anything that Max, my attorney, thought I shouldn’t answer, he would squeeze that hand as a signal to stay quiet.
Before he sat down, Kevin took a glass from the cupboard, filled it from the tap and drained it in a few gulps. He refilled the glass before he sat down across the table from us. “It’s that smell, you know. You just can’t get rid of it. Have any lemons?”
“Look in the fridge,” I said.
“What’s going on out there now?” Max asked as Kevin opened the refrigerator and began his search.
“Our crime scene investigator has taken over. The department is working crowd control; it’s getting to be quite a circus.” He found a lemon in the crisper, took it to the sink and cut it in half. “Most of the neighborhood is out there, trying to get a look. Wouldn’t be surprised if someone started selling ice cream and balloons. I saw a media satellite truck down the street. I advise you to stay put until they’re all gone.”
I asked, “Shouldn’t you be out there, Detective, detecting?”
“Not much we can do until the scientific team finishes.” Kevin squeezed one half of the lemon into a glass of water and rubbed the other half under his nose. He sat down opposite us, with the glass in front of him, and took out a notebook and a pen. “But we can get some of the bread-and-butter questions out of the way while we’re waiting.”
He clicked his pen and looked at me. “You ready?”
“Fire away.”
In answer to his questions, I told him about Larry’s visits on both Friday and Saturday nights. I hesitated before telling him what Larry said about Mrs. B, but somehow, whether true or not, that nugget seemed important, and so I did.
Kevin clicked his pen a couple of times, apparently concentrating on something he had written before he looked up at me.
“Why didn’t you tell me that yesterday?” he said. “We spent all that time up at Indian Rock, and you never mentioned Larry or what he said.”
“Yesterday it was gossip,” I said. “Today it could be something else.”
Like a good detective, he put some effort into keeping his expression neutral. He reacted with some interest, however, when I told him about finding George Loper on my front porch Friday night, lying in wait for Larry, who was hiding behind the hydrangea. I told him that Larry had been coming into the yard all summer to look after Mom’s garden. Both Mr. Sato and George Loper had shooed him away; Mr. Sato had called the police, as Kevin well knew because I’d asked him to look into it.
Thinking about Loper’s baseball bat and the gash I saw on Larry’s forehead, I asked, “What was the cause of death?”
“Too early to say.” He changed the subject to time frames: when did I last see Larry, when had we last deposited refuse into the Dumpster? What had we last deposited into the Dumpster? The Dumpster was out front and accessible to anyone; had I seen anyone other than people in my household use it? The answers were: Larry was last seen around eleven o’clock Saturday; the big clean-up happened Saturday, but on Sunday we were still tossing out bags and boxes of junk gathered the day before. I hadn’t seen anyone other than our household use the Dumpster, but I wasn’t keeping watch over it. The last deposit I knew about was Hong’s fast food wrappers a little over an hour ago.
“The Dumpster started smelling bad on Sunday night,” I said. “George Loper made sure we noticed.”
“What happens now?” Max asked.
Kevin shrugged. “Nothing happens until the medical examiner clears the scene. My chief may call in a special homicide squad from the county sheriff to advise our department, but that decision will depend on what the M.E. has to say.”
A uniformed officer pushed through the swinging door. “Halloran?”
“What is it, Peng?”
“Guy outside wants to see you.” The officer, Bo Peng, handed Kevin a business card. “He seems pretty upset, and he’s damned insistent.”
Kevin handed me the card and waited for me to make a decision, yes or no.
I passed the card to Max and rose from the table. “It’s Beto. I’ll go get him.”
Kevin put up a hand. “Better if you stay put
—it’s a zoo out there. Peng will bring Beto in.”
Beto entered the kitchen in a rush, face red, tears streaming down his cheeks. Kevin held out a chair for him and got him a glass of water from the tap.
“Is it your dad?” I asked.
“What?” Beto seemed confused by the question at first, but then he waved it away. “No. God, I mean, it doesn’t look good, but he’s hanging on. Jesus, Maggie. Zaida called me at the store and told me that there were cops all over your place and that the coroner’s van showed up. I thought—”
He looked from me to Max, and back at Kevin, his lower lip quivering.
“We’re okay, Beto.” I passed him the tissue box. Kevin put his big hand on Beto’s shoulder to calm him.
Beto mopped his face, blew his nose, and managed to gulp in a couple of deep breaths. After a big exhale, he said, “Sorry. Flash of déjà vu, I guess. Panic response. Last time I saw that many cop cars in one place was—” He couldn’t get the words out.
Kevin said, “Your mom?”
Beto nodded as he reached for more tissues. With red-rimmed eyes, he looked at me. “What the hell happened here?”
I said, “It’s Larry Nordquist.”
“He’s dead?”
“Very,” Max said.
“Holy Mary, mother of God.” Beto crossed himself. “But I just saw him.”
“When?” Kevin asked.
Beto finally managed a sort of smile. “Is that an official question, Officer, sir?”
“Damn straight, bro. When did you last see Larry?”
“Saturday afternoon,” Beto said. “He drove Father John to our party and waited out front. I went out and asked him to come in, but he said he wasn’t in a party mood.”
“What time did Father John leave?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Beto turned enough in his chair to give Kevin a snarky look. “You know how many people came and went Saturday? Well I don’t. And I sure as hell didn’t play time keeper. All I can say is that Father John wasn’t feeling very well so he didn’t stay long; he prayed, ate, and ran.”
“He left before Jean-Paul and I arrived,” I said. “Don’t ask me the time, but the sun was still up.”
Kevin asked Max next: “Where were you Saturday night?”
“After I got Maggie and Jean-Paul home from that shoot-’em-up in Oakland Saturday afternoon, I took BART into San Francisco. Stayed over with friends and came back yesterday.”
“How well did you know Larry Nordquist?”
Max just shrugged. “Never met the guy. Only time I ever saw him was this morning, in the Dumpster.”
“Any more questions, Mr. Cop?” Beto asked, good humor returning.
“Yes, one.” Kevin flipped to a clean notebook page and clicked open his pen and faced Beto. “You said you were at the deli when Zaida called you.”
“I was,” Beto said. “Elbow deep in sliced pastrami.”
“And you didn’t bring us lunch?”
“Fuck you, bro.” Beto, grinning now, snatched up Kevin’s notebook and tossed it at his chest. “I don’t cater this sort of shindig. But I tell you what, Kev. Let your guys know that today only, if they come into the store and mention your name, I’ll give them ten percent off their meal.”
“Such a deal,” Kevin said, turning to me. “Junior here normally gives the boys a thirty percent discount and free drinks.”
“Are you two finished?” I asked. When they looked my way, I asked Beto, “How’s your dad?”
“The ultimate diagnosis is, he’s old and worn out. Doc thinks he had a transient ischemic attack, probably not his first. Could have an aneurysm. His chances for a major stroke before Christmas are excellent. While they have him, they’re evaluating him for Alzheimer’s and other dementia,” Beto said. “But at the moment, except for some spaciness and cuts and bruises he got when he fell, he feels pretty good and he likes the nurses, even if he can’t remember their names.”
“We should all hope to go the way Maggie’s dad did,” Kevin said. “He sat down to take a nap and just never woke up.”
“Halloran?” Max furrowed his brow. “What’s the possibility this Nordquist idiot climbed into the Dumpster for a snooze and got hit in the head by something that was thrown in on top of him?”
Kevin held up his hands. “Not my question to answer.”
That scenario didn’t seem likely to me. I turned to Max. “I didn’t see anything piled atop the sleeping bag that covered Larry that could have cleaved his head so cleanly and so deeply. Not through the padding of the sleeping bag. For what it’s worth, I know that sleeping bag did not come out of our house.”
Max covered my hand with his. “You okay?”
I shrugged; yes and no.
“Kevin,” I said to get his attention. “Father John has been looking after Larry. Has anyone contacted him?”
“Dunno.” He pulled out his phone and hit speed dial, asked that question of whoever answered, explained briefly who Father John was and his relationship to Larry, and volunteered to notify the padre. He said, “But, sir,” a few times and got no further with whatever he wanted to interject into the conversation. He seemed deflated when he put the phone away.
He met my eyes. “The chief hasn’t sent anyone to inform Father John. There will be more questions for you later, but they can wait. Do you want to go with me to talk to John?”
“I want to go, yes,” I said, checking the time on the wall clock; Father John should still be serving soup. “But not with you. You said the media are already here. Under the circumstances, the two of us shouldn’t be seen in public together.”
When he started to protest, I said, “There are TVs in the psych unit, Detective.”
Kevin suddenly seemed to fold down into some deep, dark place.
Beto leaned in close to him. “Kev?”
After a long sigh, Kevin said, “The chief took me off the case. He says I’m too close to it.”
“Hard to argue that one,” Beto said. “What’s that about the psych unit?”
Kevin ignored Beto’s question. “Chief said I have enough on my plate right now to take on a new case. The bastard.”
He glared at me and Max. “I did what you guys told me I should do. I told the chief everything.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy, did I?” Max said.
Kevin hung his head. “Damn, if she even sees me coming out of this house.”
“Who?” Beto’s focus bobbed from person to person, like a spectator at a three-man tennis match. “What psych unit? Do you mean Lacy? But she’s in rehab, right?”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Kevin said.
“Okay. But what about Father John?” Beto said. “Someone, a friend, needs to tell him. ”
I turned to Max. “Will you go with me?”
“Be honored,” he said. “Okay with you, Halloran?”
Kevin nodded. “Probably better if he hears it from you. But he’s still down in Oakland. How are you going to get there? The street out front’s totally blocked. If we start moving cars out of the way so you can get that red Caddy out, you’re going to have every asshole holding a camera jamming it in your face. I don’t think you want that.”
I turned to Beto. “If the street’s blocked, how’d you get here?”
“In the store delivery van,” he said. “But I had to park a couple of blocks away and hike up the hill.”
“You, walk?” Kevin patted Beto’s round front. “At least something good happened out of this mess.”
“Beto,” I said. “Do you remember the secret way into my backyard?”
“Yeah.” If he was feeling a bit out of the loop before, he was thoroughly mystified now.
“Do you think you could still get out that way?”
He glanced down at the roundness Kevin had patted. “Got a ladder?”
Kevin rose and tugged on Beto to get him up. “I’ll give you a boost.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going
to get your van. Maggie and Max can take it down to Oakland. On the way, they’ll drop us off at the store where you’re going to make me a great big pastrami sandwich and I’m going to tell you all my troubles.”
On his way toward the back door, Kevin pulled out his phone and told someone we were leaving.
I glanced at Max’s shoes to make sure his had rubber soles, saw that they did, and asked, “You ready?”
“Lead on, McDuff.”
We went out to the back corner of the yard, behind Mom’s vegetable garden. One summer while my family was away on vacation, with Beto’s help, Kevin, an amorous youth, had sawn through the back crossbeams of a two-foot-wide section of the redwood fence that surrounded the yard, and installed crude hinges. A hard push at the right place would open a piece of the fence wide enough for the boys to sneak through. That was the easy part.
To get to the back side of the fence, the boys first had to navigate their way up a narrow, concrete-lined rainwater run-off channel that ran between the backyards on my side of the street and the backyards behind ours, cross a weir where a second run-off channel intersected, and crawl through a culvert. The prize at the end of the obstacle course, if the boys were successful, was a little unchaperoned outdoor summer evening hanky-panky with their girlfriends; Beto was dating Sunny Loper from next door at the time, a situation her parents did not approve of.
And so, many years and quite a few pounds later, the four of us were going to run that course.
With surprisingly little effort, Kevin managed to pull the panel open on its rusty hinges.
Max looked through the opening and down into the run-off channel beyond with more than a little skepticism. He turned to me.
“Now I know why my brother was so worried about that boy.”
I had to smile, remembering how earnest Kevin had been on his mission to lose his virginity.
“You know what Mike would say?” I asked. “Love is a hurting thing.”
“That may not be all that hurts by the time this is over.” Max followed Kevin through the opening, paused and grinned back at me. “Always an adventure with you, kid. Always an adventure.”
The Color of Light Page 20
