Skies of Ash

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  “What does Melissa Kemper have to do with any of this, Mr. Chatman?”

  “We’ll go easy on him,” I said, grabbing my bag from the desk drawer. “Cuz he’s injured and he’s lost his family.”

  “You’re so sweet,” Colin said, pulling on his blazer.

  I twirled car keys around my finger and smiled. “A real Mary Poppins, I am.”

  23

  BEN AND SARAH OLIVER LIVED ON JOAQUIN WAY, IN A SALMON-COLORED Mediterranean with white window frames and a rust-colored, ceramic-tiled roof. Their Westchester Bluffs neighborhood overlooked the wetlands of Ballona Creek, the campus of Loyola Marymount University, and the Pacific Ocean, now lost in the blues and grays of dense winter fog. At half past six, all living rooms on Joaquin Way—except for the Olivers’—glowed with electronic entertainment. In the Oliver home, no light burned beyond the faux balconies hanging from each second-story window, and no cars were parked in the driveway.

  Colin, driving his Dodge Charger, parked behind my Porsche, and we met at the curb. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Smells like my grandma up here.” He pointed at bushes. “Wild rye. Sage. Lavender. Yep. Just like Grandma.”

  “So,” I said, stepping closer to him, “I want this to go easy, all right? Like a slow dance at the prom. Don’t wanna put my hand up his skirt too quickly cuz he’ll shut us down.”

  Colin nodded. “Got it.”

  I squinted at him. “Do you really ‘got it’? Cuz you’ve said that before and…”

  “Yeah, Lou. I got it.” Then, he winked at me.

  We strolled through the side gate, unlocked as promised.

  A white party canopy had been set up over the two-tiered backyard. Tall cocktail tables were set up underneath, as well as a scattering of chairs that waited for the asses of invited guests who’d soon hoist plates of cheese and baby lamb chops on their laps.

  Colin and I quickly stepped across the slick flagstone pathway and descended steep steps that led to an ivy-covered guesthouse.

  The arched wood door opened. “Evening.” Christopher Chatman’s gray Adidas tracksuit clung to his small frame. The purple scratches on his face zigzagged past bandages. White gauze covered both of his hands, and a sling supported his left arm. “Thank you for coming out so late in the day,” he said. The novocaine effect had worn off, but his voice was still smoky and white-man-singing-“Ol’ Man River”-deep. He coughed—sandpaper and mucus stirred together in a mixing bowl.

  “It’s no problem at all.” I considered his bandaged hands and sling. “How are you?”

  His red eyes still watered from soot and sorrow. “It’s just a fractured radius. My head, however, is not a ‘just.’ I hit it when the firemen jumped me. And the bandages… I got pretty cut up from the wood and glass on the ground.” He gazed at his sling. “Wasn’t thinking. Just took off toward my house.” His attempt to take a deep breath resulted in a coughing fit.

  I moved closer to him, just in case he fainted.

  He waved me off. “Just…” He coughed. “Not feeling well,” he wheezed, trying to catch his breath. “May I please see your identification?”

  I cocked my head. Huh?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “If you’re not comfortable showing me…”

  “It’s no problem.” I reached into my pocket.

  “Just so that I know for sure that you are who you say you are,” Chatman explained. “There have been reporters…” He studied my identification card, handed it back to me, then took Colin’s.

  I peeked past him and into the guesthouse. The window in the small dining room overlooked the Olivers’ canopied backyard. The kitchen sparkled with white tile and white older-model appliances. Spotless hardwood floors and a potbellied fireplace aglow with dying embers made me think of Adeline St. Lawrence’s use of the word “hobbit.”

  “So reporters have been bothering you?” Colin asked.

  “A few,” Chatman said. “Usually Ben or Sarah protect me.” He handed back Colin’s card.

  “Do we check out?” I asked.

  Embarrassed, Chatman’s face darkened. “I used to be the type to trust someone’s word. Lately, though, I follow Euripides’ thought: ‘The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.’ ”

  I bristled. “Says the banker who works wonky hours.”

  “Ha,” he said with a good-natured grin. “It’s all good. Didn’t mean to make you feel weird about it.” He turned on his heel and limped back into the living room. “Please have a seat.”

  Colin and I perched together on the couch since the only other option was an armchair.

  Countless medicine vials and water glasses crowded the glass coffee table. The smell of burning wood mingled with those of thick mucus, cinnamon potpourri, and chicken broth.

  My stomach loosened as nausea crept up my throat.

  “Detective Norton, I googled you,” Chatman said as he limped to the armchair. “As I read more about the fire, I was comforted to know that you’ve been successful in the past.” He looked at Colin. “I found nothing about you on the Internet.”

  Colin cleared his throat. “Well, I’m… I…”

  “If you’re not googleable, then you must not exist.” He grinned. “That was a joke. A bad one, I guess.” To me, he said, “I was also happy to read that you recovered your sister’s remains. The Darson case… What a nightmare. But some good came out of it.”

  “Yes.” I offered him a smile tighter than a pair of size 6 shoes on size 9 feet.

  “I’m afraid I can’t talk long.” He sat on the edge of the armchair. “The painkillers make me sleepy. A bit breathless. A little punchy. Maybe we can start now, and then you can come back again if you need to?”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “I’m glad the pills do that,” he continued. “Force me to sleep, I mean. When I don’t take them—I’m terrified of becoming addicted, so I’ve skipped a dose here and there—but when I don’t take them, I have nightmares.” He paused, then said, “What would you like to know?”

  “Are you currently employed with Vandervelde, Lansing, and Gray?” I asked.

  “I am.” He smiled. “That was an easy one.”

  “And your employment is in good standing?” I asked.

  He started to stand from the armchair. “Would you like something to drink? I’m sorry I didn’t ask earlier—”

  “We’re fine, thanks,” Colin said.

  “Harder question,” I said. “Tell us about the night before the fire.”

  The man’s smile dimmed as he eased back onto the armchair’s edge. “Well… We ate dinner around seven, seven thirty.”

  “Who cooked?” I asked.

  “My wife. I can make money, but I can’t make a meat loaf to save my life. I made everyone strawberry shakes for dessert.”

  “Anything eventful before dinner?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing strange. Okay, well. My wife…” He stopped speaking.

  When he didn’t continue, Colin asked, “Your wife what?”

  Chatman flexed his free hand, then stared at the vials on the coffee table. “She drank a lot that night. Well, she had started to drink a lot every night. But on Monday evening, she was… I asked if she was okay. She nodded, but it looked like she was about to cry. I left it alone because my prodding would cause her to shut down even more.”

  “Sarah Oliver mentioned that she stopped by that evening,” I said.

  He nodded. “Zumba class. My wife didn’t go.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me about dinner and Juliet’s behavior on Monday night.”

  He shook his head. “She was very sharp with me. At one point, she told me to stop calling Chloe ‘dumpling.’ She said that I was passive-aggressively calling Chloe fat.” He looked at me. “That’s not what I meant, and that’s what I’ve always called Chloe.” He sniffed, then swiped at his nose. “After dinner, we all went to the den to watch A Christmas Story. My wife had another glass of wine—she fell asleep on the cha
ise in the first twenty minutes of the film. The kids lasted for about an hour.”

  “What time did you all go up to the bedrooms?” Colin asked.

  “I woke everyone up around nine,” he said. “Tucked the kids in, then hung out in the bedroom with my wife for a moment. Flipped through a few channels and found Four Weddings and a Funeral, one of our favorite movies. Watched it, and then we talked about paint. Talked about Chloe and soccer, about Christmas shopping, and…” He blinked, and a teardrop rolled slowly down his cheek. “Then, around eleven, she took a Valium, and I left to drive to the office.”

  “Juliet had a prescription?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “She took them for anxiety,” he said. “I’m not comfortable with it, especially since she drinks so—” He gasped. “The wine. The Valium.” His eyes bugged. “Did she overdose? Is that why she couldn’t get up and save—?”

  I held out a hand. “Mr. Chatman, all of that is still being—”

  “No,” he shouted. “No, no, no. Why didn’t I…?” He covered his mouth with his free hand. “It’s my fault. I should’ve said something. I shouldn’t have gone to the office.”

  “And why did you go in so late?” I asked.

  In the dim light, his skin glistened with sweat. “Had to prepare for an early-morning teleconference with the team in Chicago. In my business, just like your business actually, hours are unpredictable. I left the office around 4:10, and when I got home… Fire trucks. My house… on fire. Everything on fire. The flames… They’d already swept through and stole my family. But the fire… it left me behind.” He gritted his teeth and tapped the arm of his chair. “I want to talk to you, Detective Norton and Detective…” He squinted at Colin.

  My partner blushed. “Taggert.”

  Christopher Chatman coughed and coughed, then plucked a tissue from the box on the coffee table, then coughed some more and spat what he had coughed into the tissue. “I haven’t really talked to anyone about this. Not even Ben. Not an hour passes that I don’t think about ending it. Taking what the fire denied me. I’m lost without them. And I just need to understand.”

  “Understand what, Mr. Chatman?” I shivered even though the room was warm.

  “Why God is doing this to me.” He dried his eyes on the bandages of his hand, then took a wheezy breath. “Let’s move on, please.” He used tissue to dab at his sweaty forehead. “Maybe another easy question.”

  “Would you like me to get you help?” I asked.

  He cocked his head. “Help? Like… from a psychiatrist?”

  I nodded.

  He sighed. “Thought you were going to ask an easy question.”

  I offered an understanding smile. “You’re a commodities broker, correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Is that basically a stockbroker?” Colin asked.

  “I don’t trade in bonds or stocks,” Chatman explained. “I trade grain, livestock, gold, silver… So it works like this: Some of my clients, for instance, think the price of gold will rise now that the dollar is uncertain. On the other hand, other clients think the price of gold will fall. I advise them, they place their orders with me, I buy or sell on their behalf.”

  “You get a commission regardless,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “You don’t seem like the banker type,” Colin said. “You’re not…”

  “An asshole?” Chatman shrugged. “I’m good at numbers; I’m good at guessing. I’m interested in helping people live better lives. Happier people means the world is a better place. I compete against myself—do better, Christopher. Make people more money, Christopher. Learn from your mistakes, Christopher. Some see that as a weakness, but…” He shrugged again. His anguish about his family had passed, and he was talking to us as though we were potential clients.

  “Any enemies at work?” Colin asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Juliet mention being frightened of anyone?” I asked, remembering that 911 call. “Had anyone threatened her? Any road rage incidents?”

  “Are you saying that this fire…?” He shook his head. “That it was deliberately set?”

  “We aren’t sure what caused the fire,” I said. “We don’t know if it was arson or truly an accident, so we need as much information as possible.” I exhaled. “So I’ll need you to think real hard on this. And I’ll need you to make me a list of people who may have had the slightest problem with you. You may have dated their ex, used their coffee creamer without permission…”

  His gaze dropped as he thought about that. “Okay.”

  “And put on that list any recent visitors or workers you’ve had at the house. You all were remodeling, and so…”

  His eyes shimmered with tears. “There were a few contractors and day laborers, and… I thought nothing of it, how the guys leered at my wife sometimes. I figured, you know, Mexican men, that’s what they do, gawk and stare, even though she wasn’t at her prettiest.”

  “Because she was sick, right?” Colin said.

  “She caught a virus,” Chatman answered.

  “Did she go see a doctor?” Colin asked.

  The man shrugged. “I encouraged her to. If she did, she didn’t tell me. Over the last year, she didn’t tell me a lot of things. Once, she’d taken too many pills and she’d thrown up before I got home. She didn’t say anything about it, and I didn’t see any evidence of it. Just saw an empty wine bottle. It was Chloe who told me. Told me that Mommy had taken medicine and vomited. That was just last week, and I never brought it up to her. I wanted to think it was the paint fumes that had made her sick.”

  “About that,” I said. “You were painting the upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms.”

  “Yes,” Chatman responded.

  “The windows were shut,” I said. “Usually, when you paint, you crack open windows for ventilation. To get rid of some of the fumes.”

  He shifted in the armchair. “Usually.”

  I waited, then said, “But not in this case.”

  “We were burglarized a few years ago,” he said. “The thief came in through a cracked window in the den. I still beat myself up about that happening. It could’ve ended differently—we all could’ve been killed. Anyway, you can’t arm the security system with a cracked window, and since I was leaving for work so late… My wife and I didn’t want to take that chance again.”

  “Investigators found lengths of PVC pipe in the window sliders,” I said.

  “All the windows had them.” He swiped at the beads of sweat forming on his temples. “To keep someone on the outside from sliding open the windows.”

  “But it keeps people on the inside from escaping in an emergency,” I said. “People forget when they’re scared. They’re not thinking clearly and forget about all the weird workarounds like PVC pipes in the windows.”

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “We were reacting from the burglary.”

  “Did you call Juliet early Tuesday morning?” I asked. “Like an, ‘I’m leaving the office now’ call right before you left the office to come back home?”

  “Call her?” He peered at me as though I had asked him about the mechanics of wormholes and quantum tunneling. “I didn’t want to wake her. She wasn’t feeling well.” With a shaky hand, he touched each bandage on his face. “Oh God… It’s true.”

  “What’s true?” I asked.

  He twisted the gold wedding band on his finger. “Ben told me about your meeting at Ruby’s. He told me, and I didn’t believe him. In your eyes, I’m already guilty. I didn’t believe Ben because I’m… I’m… I’ve never claimed to be the salt of the earth. But I work long, long days to provide for my family. I tithe ten percent. And I pray. Although not recently. God and I aren’t on speaking terms right now.”

  “Your son,” Colin said.

  “Played with fire all the time,” Chatman said. “And it’s possible that he… that he…” His eyelids fluttered. Dark sweat rings were forming in his jacket’s underarms.


  “Of all the people you know,” I said, “why do you think it’s possible that he could’ve set the fire?”

  Chatman stared at his knees. “He hated me. And he was in this weird phase where he’d set fire to my things.”

  Colin and I exchanged glances.

  Chatman offered us a tired smile. “Yes, I knew he was burning my clothes. He’d also burn my papers, my files—anything just to annoy me. I actually had to lock my office door because he’d sneak in and… The house. He knew how much it meant to me.” He rubbed his face with his free hand and shook his head. “No. He didn’t do this. He loved his mother, his sister. He wouldn’t… I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “We should probably let you rest,” I said.

  “There are a few more people we need to talk to,” Colin said.

  Chatman flinched. “Like who? The hockey-jersey guy?”

  “We don’t know the answer to that question,” I said, knowing that the hockey-jersey guy had been scratched out of the equation.

  “Surveillance cameras,” Chatman said. “We have a security system. You should be able to see someone coming or going, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “And we’ll check those.”

  “Who are these people you need to talk to?” Chatman asked. “And what would anyone else have to offer besides gossip? Between this and the insurance company, I’m just… This is the worst moment of my life, but no one will let me grieve. Everyone is questioning my integrity, and I’m not used to that.”

  “People died, sir,” I said. “We have to ask questions, including unpleasant ones.”

  “Especially since you increased your home policy to five hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Colin said.

  I glared at my partner. Damn it, Colin.

  “I had to replace everything that the burglar stole,” Chatman shouted. “And we hadn’t increased our policy since my son had been born. What’s strange about that? Am I the only man in the world who has increased his policy?”

  “Calm down, sir,” I said, hands out. Then, I threw my partner another glare. You got it? You got shit, dude. “Detective Taggert, why don’t you…?”