The Ruinous Sweep

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Stills nodded. “At 8:10, to be exact.”

  “So if they were fighting at eight, I can guarantee you Donovan would not be angry when — if — he came back later.”

  “That doesn’t jibe with our witness’s report.”

  “I don’t care. You have to know him. It’s . . .” She stopped. This was not going well, and stopping was something she should have done approximately fifteen minutes ago.

  Callista Stills stood up. Good, she’s leaving, thought Bee. But she wasn’t. She looked out the window, her hands on her hips.

  Just go. Please.

  Stills turned around. “His baseball bat was there,” she said.

  “Are you sure it’s his?” Bee was grasping at straws.

  Stills nodded. “And what makes us doubly sure is that Donovan’s prints are all over it.”

  “Well, of course, he —”

  “And nobody else’s.”

  Bee had no “imaginative” comeback for that. She leaned forward, wrapped her arms around her knees, stared at the floor.

  “I’d really like to see your journal, Beatrice.”

  Bee’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”

  “You were writing in a journal when you were in the ICU.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Stills made no attempt to hide her scorn. She glanced down at her own notebook. “The nurse on duty Saturday, April sixteenth, distinctly saw a brown Moleskine book, approximately five by eight inches in size, in your hands when she had you forcibly removed from the unit.” She looked up. “Does that jog your memory?”

  This was it. This was the reason she was here.

  “He didn’t say anything. Just noises. Gobbledygook.”

  “But you wrote it down. You felt it was worth recording. So maybe we could get something out of it, as well. Maybe even a clue as to who hit him.”

  Bee shook her head. “He couldn’t have seen a thing.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. I went over there again two nights ago. He got hit somewhere around ten thirty.”

  “That’s the earliest time, based on what we know.”

  “Well, anyway, I went over to Wilton around that time. It wasn’t raining like it had been Friday and there was no moon. Moon didn’t rise until later. And it was only a quarter of a moon anyway. A waxing gibbous moon — I checked it on Google — that didn’t rise until after midnight.”

  “Impressive,” said Stills. “Are you after my job?”

  Bee stared at her. She wasn’t being flippant. It was a compliment. But Bee couldn’t rise to it. Couldn’t let the detective get to her.

  “I waited right where he was hit. Waited until a car came around the corner from Oakland. They don’t come very often. I’m sure you know that.” The detective nodded. “Anyway, this driver crept around the corner, worried about oncoming traffic. And even though I had all the time in the world, I couldn’t see a thing of that vehicle except the lights in my eyes. I made myself keep watching right up to when the car was even with where I was standing on the curb. Nothing. No license plate, that’s for sure. But no color, either. Even when it had passed I couldn’t tell the color.”

  “Keen observation,” said Stills, and there was nothing grudging in her respect. “But in all of this research did you ask yourself what Donovan was doing on the opposite side of the street from his house? What he was doing about three houses farther down Wilton than where he lived, and on the other side of the street?”

  Bee just looked away. Hadn’t thought of it. She glanced at Stills, who, to Bee’s surprise, was not gloating.

  The detective sat down again, this time with her legs apart and an elbow resting on each knee. “So why don’t you want me to look at the journal?”

  Bee stared at her. “Because it’s personal.”

  “Ever heard of obstructing justice?” Bee just stared. “I’m sure a smart girl like you knows what that means.”

  Bee felt herself unwinding. Why was she doing this? She didn’t want them to see her journal because there was personal stuff in there, but she wasn’t the one they were after. They were after Donovan. They wanted the case cut and dried. Boy kills his father and then commits suicide by throwing himself in front of a car. Would those few words he had muttered while he lay dying in his bed really convince anyone of anything? What was she trying to prove? What was it she wanted? Could she bargain with them?

  “Bee.” Stills was looking at her square on, a little impatient now.

  “I’ll consider it,” said Bee. “But I want you to tell me something in return.”

  “Like what?”

  “Who this eyewitness was. These eyewitnesses. Why you’re so sure this is a murder-suicide. That would be a start.”

  “What, so you can go and cross-examine them?” Stills’s face grew solemn. She shook her head. “That isn’t the way it works,” she said. “This isn’t a game, okay?”

  Bee could barely breathe. She willed herself not to nod. Not to give the detective the slightest sense of acknowledgment that she had even heard her.

  “Don’t play Nancy Drew with me, Beatrice. Have you got that? If I have to, I will subpoena that journal. I’d rather not go to the trouble, but if you force my hand, I’ll do it.”

  Bee swallowed. “And what if I just burn it?” She flinched as she said it, half expecting a blow in retaliation. All she got was a challenge.

  “That would be an indictable offense, punishable with up to ten years in prison.” She let that sink in. “I’m sure, in a case like this, you’d get off lightly. Say, only a year or two.” Then she stood up, straightened her jacket, and with one last questioning look at Bee, headed toward the door. She turned as she reached it. “Thank your mother for her hospitality,” she said. Bee nodded. She watched the detective open the front door and step out, only to turn one last time.

  “Why are you fighting me, Bee?”

  Bee wasn’t exactly sure. Wasn’t sure she could explain it even to herself. She cleared her throat. “Because somebody’s got to be on Donovan’s side.”

  Stills shook her head sadly. “I’m not on anybody’s side. I can’t seem to make you believe that. I just want answers. There are two people dead. Don’t you think their loved ones — yourself included — deserve answers? Deserve some justice?”

  Bee nodded. Justice. That’s exactly what she wanted. Donovan deserved that. She believed it with all her heart. And because she did, she stepped up and slowly closed the door on Inspector Callista Stills.

  She showered. Turned the water as hot as she could bear, wanting it to sting, wanting it to penetrate the sharp iron fibers of tension in her every muscle. She leaned into the tile wall and let the water scald her back. She shampooed and conditioned and shampooed again and conditioned again. Finally, she turned off the shower and meticulously wiped down the curved glass walls and door with the squeegee, not leaving a single smear, a single drop of water, just in case it mattered. She wrapped herself in a huge towel and then attacked her hair with a blow-dryer and brush as if it were infested with vermin. Back in her room, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, she put on clean clothes for the first time in days: a red kilt, simple black top, and an ivory-colored cardigan she liked the feel of — the comfort of — more than anything else.

  She watched a car pull away from the driveway, one of Mom’s clients. She went to find her mom in her office and gave her an in-between-clients hug. Her mother held her a little too long but didn’t ask how the interview had gone or where she was going. “Let us know if you’re going to be late,” she said.

  Beatrice Northway was the only person she knew who drove the car of her dreams. It wasn’t hers. It belonged to her extraordinary globe-trotting great-aunt, who had left the car with Bee while she went off to work with Médecins Sans Frontières, saving people in far-flung countries that Bee didn’t always know the names of. At least that’s what she thought Toddy was up to. There was something a little
bit shady about her. She was a crack shot, for one thing. How many doctors were crack shots? “She might be putting people in the care of those MSF doctors, for all we know,” her father had once suggested of his peripatetic relative.

  There was no way to describe the Nissan Figaro as anything but cute. Ridiculously cute: an escapee from a toy store or a children’s cartoon. Something from a fifties Italian movie, where little cars climbed steep and very narrow cobblestone streets. The car should have been black-and-white, because it surely didn’t belong in the real world, but in fact only the roof was white, while the body color was called topaz mist, a romantic paint color for such a chubby little cute car. It had none of the amenities one expected in a car other than a barely serviceable radio, but she approached every drive in it with excitement. Not because it was fast or luxuriously appointed or incredibly comfortable. It was none of these things. She loved it because it was unique, and because there was the faintest whiff of her extraordinary great-aunt about the vehicle. A trace of some shady perfume.

  She remembered introducing Donovan to the car. He stopped dead in his tracks and gawped. Was this a deal breaker? Would he refuse to be seen in this terminally adorable vehicle? “Amazing,” he said. Then he beamed at her. “I bet you gave it a name.”

  She nodded. “Toddy.”

  “Because it’s like a hot alcoholic drink?”

  “No, because of my aunt Toddy. It’s her car. I’m just its adoptive parent.”

  “Toddy the Turtle,” he said, which she was going to protest until she realized how perfect it was. “Kind of like Thomas the Tank Engine.”

  “Is that what you’re watching these days on Netflix?” she had asked him.

  “Wouldn’t miss it. The fifth season — whoa! The affair Thomas has with that racy diesel. Who knew he was gay?”

  Beatrice had thought with that outburst maybe their relationship had a chance of working out.

  “Is Toddy the Turtle as fast as Thomas the TE?” he asked.

  “If I work at it I can get her up to ninety-five,” she said.

  “Miles per hour?”

  “Nope. Only kilometers,” she said. “But even when I’m holding up people on a two lane, they always smile and wave when they pass.”

  He nodded as if he would have been one of those smiling, waving people. “Do you think I’ll fit?” That was a good question. At six two, it would be a squeeze. But he did fit. He fit well.

  She stood in the driveway and patted the car’s hood. “We will miss him, won’t we, Toddy?” Unlike Thomas the TE, Toddy had no words of comfort for her.

  She drove to Wilton Crescent again. It was 5:00 p.m. Thursday, April the twenty-first. She parked in front of Donovan’s place. The sun wouldn’t set for another two hours, but there were lights on in his house. She turned off the ignition and sat for a moment. She looked across and down the street to where Donovan had died — well, where the dying had begun so dramatically. The scene-of-crime tape had gone, although she caught sight of a scrap of it fluttering high up in a tree branch. She thought of Trish looking out their front window and seeing that ragged little yellow flag. How long would they be able to bear living here? she wondered.

  Trish greeted her at the door. She took Bee in her arms and held her, swaying, for the longest time. Bee held on, wanting to squeeze her back as strongly as Trish was squeezing her but knowing she could never be that strong.

  Trish stood back and looked her over. “Good, you didn’t bring flowers,” she said. “Enter.”

  Scott wasn’t there. He’d missed work for a couple of days, but Trish had assured him she was okay today and he could go. Then she’d gone back to sleep, she said, and only woken up a few minutes earlier, famished.

  So they sat at the bar in the kitchen eating pho, and Trish talked about all the people who had come by and what they had brought — especially advice — and the dealings she’d had with the funeral parlor about a memorial service, which had been fine but surreal somehow. It would be later. They couldn’t deal with an actual funeral.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been around,” said Bee when there was a silence long enough to say anything. Trish lifted noodles to her mouth with her chopsticks and slurped them down, then hurriedly wiped her face with a napkin. She looked at Bee, her eyes brimming with emotion.

  “Oh, honey, I knew you’d make yourself present when you were ready.” She looked at Bee for a long moment. “I hope we’ll still see you sometimes.”

  Bee assured her she would, but she wondered if that was true. Surely all she could possibly represent to Trish now was the loss of her son. She picked up her spoon to drink some of the broth in her huge bowl of soup, paused, and put it down again. Trish looked at her. “Something on your mind?”

  “A cop named Callista Stills.”

  “Ah, Inspector Stills.”

  “That’s higher than staff sergeant, isn’t it?”

  Trish nodded. “You’re thinking of Bell, right?” Bee nodded. “Yep, Stills is his boss. What about her?”

  Bee’s shoulders slumped. “What has she said to you? About, you know, what happened?” Trish looked away, closed her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me,” said Bee hurriedly, as if she’d ruined everything by bringing it up. “It’s just . . .”

  “She’s careful what she says,” said Trish after a moment of silence. “I mean, she doesn’t want to come right out and say it, but it’s fairly obvious they think Donovan killed Al.” She shook her head. “I don’t see it.”

  “Me neither. He was going to talk to him. He was going to tell him he wouldn’t be visiting anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “Wait. He told you?”

  Trish nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. He told us all about how he was really and truly messing things up with you and you’d given him an ultimatum.”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s how he took it, and he was proud to admit it.”

  “But I didn’t want him to break it with Al.”

  “No, you wanted him to see a therapist. He told us that, too.”

  “Oh.”

  “Bee, I’d been telling him for years he didn’t owe his father anything. Donovan had always been kind of . . . I don’t know, noble about it. If long-suffering counts as noble.” Trish shook her head sadly. There were new lines in her forehead, darkness under her eyes. She’d obviously gone over and over this. “I think he thought that he could help somehow. That his father could be saved, even if it took a long time. Cured. But Al was beyond saving, and all Donovan was doing was hurting himself, over and over. The anger . . . the anger was the worst.”

  “I know. But I honestly don’t think he would ever . . . I mean I can’t believe he could get angry enough to actually . . .”

  “Take a bat to him?” said Trish. Bee flinched, then nodded. “I tried to tell Stills that.”

  “So did I,” said Bee. “They say they have a witness but won’t tell me who it is or what it was he or she saw happen. I mean, if they saw Turn hit his father, then there’s no question, but . . .”

  Trish patted her forearm. “He didn’t see that. The guy’s name is Rolly Pouillard.”

  “Oh,” said Bee. “One of Al’s drinking buddies.”

  “Rolly Polly,” said Trish. “That’s what Dono called him.”

  “And he was in the apartment?”

  “I guess so. He’s the superintendent of the apartment building. Apparently, he and Al were drinking when Donovan arrived. They had been at it for some time. Rolly said Donovan went ‘mental’ when he saw they were drinking. Which struck me as odd, because God only knows how often Donovan has had to witness his father in that condition.”

  Bee shook her head. “I know why. Why Turn got upset.”

  “Because they were going to have the Talk.”

  “Exactly. Turn had made Al promise to be there and sober. It was serious.”

  Trish shook her head. “Al and promises . . .”

  “So what actually happened?”<
br />
  Trish had been staring off into the middle distance. She looked at Bee and for a moment it was almost as if she didn’t know her. Then she came to. “I guess he smashed things with the bat. Went to town on Al’s side table. Broke a ceramic bowl full of popcorn. Then brought it down again and broke some beer bottles and glasses, whatever. Which is when Rolly told him to get out. And he did.”

  “So he didn’t actually hit Al.”

  “Not according to Rolly. Al got up at one point, lost his balance, and fell. He cut his chin, but that was about it.”

  “So Rolly didn’t see it happen? The murder?”

  Trish shook her head. “There’s corroboration. Al’s neighbor in 306 heard the argument, and when he heard the door slam looked out to see Donovan, or someone matching his description, heading off up the hallway. He’s a guy who makes regular complaints about the noise from Al’s place, and he’s gotten into the habit of writing down the times so he can make a detailed report to the police.”

  Bee sat staring off into the same distance Trish had so recently scoured, as if there were answers there. There were none, none that she could see. “But nobody saw him hit Al?”

  Trish turned back to her soup. Spooned up some broth, then went to pick up her chopsticks and stopped. She had been famished, she said, but Bee watched her put the utensils down again as if her hunger had dissipated.

  “We totally do not need to talk about this,” said Bee. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be. You need to know. I need to know. And Inspector Stills needs to know the truth, right, Beatrice?” She said her name as if it were Italian, with the C lengthened into ché, as if she were some princess.

  She turned on her stool and took Bee’s hands in hers. “So this is what happened, as far as they can tell. At 8:10 the neighbor heard the door to 304 slam, after listening to a lot of noise coming from the apartment. This fellow saw Donovan leave. Rolly stayed on, made sure Al was okay. Rolly was in a bowling league and had to leave shortly thereafter. He left Al with a good stiff bourbon, according to him. The police checked out his alibi. He was at Merivale Bowling Center from something like eight thirty until after eleven. When he got back to the apartment building, he decided to check up on Al and found him beaten to death. He called 911. The police came and the neighbor, hearing the hubbub, told them how he’d seen the same boy racing from the apartment again at 10:13 just as he’d seen him go at eight. Again there had been loud noises, what the neighbor called ‘domestic violence,’ and a door slamming shut. He only saw the boy from the back, but he was in the same clothes he’d seen him in earlier, the clothes Dono was wearing when they . . . when they found him. He was not carrying a bat. The bat was left behind, and the only fingerprints on it were Donovan’s.