No Accidental Death

by Garrett Hutson

  The ship’s business is the ship’s business. A wave of resentment washed over him for a moment, and he scowled at her. She stared back levelly. She’s only trying to help. “Fine, I’ll fill you in.” And he told her what he’d seen that night in the officers’ corridor, and his conversations with Ensign Farnsworth.

  She listened, nodding along. When he’d finished, she said, “I think you have a new suspect, Doug.”

  The thought had been nagging at him since shortly before he told her the story. He knew she was right—but it also seemed far-fetched.

  She must have seen the conflict on his face. “Think about it—Nick Bonadio wouldn’t be able to weasel out of punishment for going A.W.O.L. unless he had something to leverage. And he did it by going to the ship’s commander without going through the proper channels—which means the commander had reason to see him; otherwise, he would have sent him down the chain to a lower officer. It all adds up to Nick having something on Commander Rose that the commander wants to remain secret.”

  “You sound like one of those amateur sleuths in the dime novels,” he teased.

  She laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment—Miss Marple always gets the murderer, doesn’t she? And as a matter of fact, I am an amateur sleuth, Douglas Bainbridge. I helped you last year with those assassinations, didn’t I?”

  He had to smile. “Yes, you did. You were a big help, and you know it. But there’s a reason I said this sounds like something in a dime novel—there’s an awful lot of supposition involved.”

  She crossed her arms. “I can’t argue with you on that. But you have to admit it’s a logical conclusion.”

  “It’s one logical conclusion.”

  “Bribery and extortion are often motives for murder, Doug. You can’t deny that.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “No, I can’t.”

  She nodded in satisfaction. “So then, what’s next?”

  He thought about that. He had a lot of loose ends. “I think tonight I organize my thoughts, and then first thing tomorrow I’ll go see a detective sergeant I met a couple of years ago, during Tim’s murder investigation. I might persuade him to give me some information, and maybe a few tips.”

  14

  Sunday, August 15

  Doug stayed up long after everyone else in the apartment had gone to bed. He sat at Kenny and Abbie’s kitchen table, putting together a summary of what he knew so far. He listed every suspect he’d discussed with Lucy, along with motive and means.

  Victim: Nick Bonadio

  Witnesses to his last hours: Ben Trebinski, Chet Heiselmann, Roger Aikins

  FACTS:

  Nick was last seen on W. Foochow Road, downtown Shanghai

  The body was found more than two miles away, in Chapei

  He was shot by a Colt M1911 pistol, which is the standard-issue sidearm for the United States Armed Forces .45 ACP cartridge.

  The British version uses .455 caliber bullets instead of .45

  Potential Suspects:

  Motive(s):

  Means:

  Lola Cunningham

  Because Nick was being too pushy, maybe even aggressive

  Unknown

  Chet Heiselmann

  Jealousy over Nick monopolizing Lola; resentment that Nick always weasels out of punishment.

  Saw him last

  Tatiana Petrova

  To protect Lola from Nick

  Unknown

  Kawakami

  What was his interest in Nick Bonadio?

  Of course

  Commander Rose

  What leverage did Nick have on him? Was it enough to kill for?

  Has the right kind of pistol

  The Italian sailor

  Revenge for the fight that Nick started over Lola

  Saw him earlier that night

  ?

  Doug read it over several times, hoping something would jump out at him. But nothing did, and his eyes were getting heavy. From the couch in the next room he could hear the Traywicks’ amah snoring, and that made him even sleepier.

  He pushed back from the table, folded the paper in half and stashed it inside his suit coat pocket. Then he crept down the hall to the guest bedroom where Lucy lay asleep. He got undressed to lie down beside her—but at the last moment he changed his mind and left his boxer shorts on. He was in someone else’s house, and Kenny and Abbie were just on the other side of the wall.

  When he slipped under the sheet, he noticed Lucy had on a camisole and panties—so she must’ve had the same thought. He kissed her forehead, and her eyes fluttered open.

  “About time you came to bed.” She took his arm, and wrapped it around herself as she rolled over.

  He pulled her to him, in spite of the heat of the August night, and her steady breathing lulled him to sleep within moments.

  **

  Doug awoke in a cold sweat. He’d been dreaming of blood in the streets, and body parts, and sirens. And screaming, so much screaming.

  He propped himself up on his elbows, his heart pounding against his chest, and looked around. It was still dark, and the quiet whirring of the bedside desk fan was the only sound. The lace curtains at the window fluttered in a slight breeze, but otherwise the house was still.

  He pulled back the sheet, careful not to awaken Lucy, and slipped out of bed. On the dresser next to the wash bowl sat a small hand towel, and he ran it over his face, neck, chest and stomach. Even his boxer shorts were damp with sweat, but he ignored that and crept down the hall toward the kitchen. His mouth felt like it had been dried with cotton balls. Kenny and Lucy kept a pitcher of sanitized drinking water in the ice box, and he could use a glass.

  In the moonlight coming through the kitchen window, he saw Kenny’s tall and lanky frame standing in front of the sink, both hands on the counter, head lowered. He was in boxer shorts, and the moonlight reflected off of his pale back. A tumbler of dark liquid sat on the counter near his right hand.

  Doug cleared his throat to announce his presence, and Kenny startled.

  “Oh! Doug—you couldn’t sleep, either?” Kenny said, turning to face him.

  Doug shook his head and opened the ice box to grab the pitcher of water.

  “We’ve got half a bottle of gin, if you want something stronger,” Kenny said, an oddly melancholy tone in his voice. “It might help you sleep.”

  “No thanks. I’ll stick to water. What time is it, anyway?”

  “About four-thirty. I’ve been up since before four.” Kenny picked up the tumbler and took a sip of it. “Whiskey,” he said, anticipating Doug’s question.

  “Is it helping?”

  Kenny snorted. “Not really.”

  “The hospital today?” Doug poured some water into a tea cup.

  Kenny nodded, but stayed silent for several seconds. “I was glad to help,” he began, and his voice trailed off.

  Doug nodded. “I understand.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you do. You were at the Nanking Road bombing this afternoon, I heard. Abbie told me.”

  Doug nodded again, but said nothing. He stared at his tea cup, and then downed the contents. The water was cold, and it soothed him on the way down, so he poured some more.

  “I’ll gladly help again, too,” Kenny said, quickly this time, as if he felt the need to explain himself. “It was just ...awful. They kept bringing in more and more wounded soldiers, both sides, and some of them were—I wasn’t prepared.”

  His voice cracked a little on that last part, and Doug walked over to him and put an arm around his shoulders, giving him a brotherly squeeze.

  “Not many of them spoke any English, either, so it wasn’t possible to reassure them that the doctors would help them,” Kenny added softly, slipping his hand around Doug’s waist and letting it rest atop his hip. “They were all so frightened.”

  “Many of the dead at Nanking Road were children,” Doug said, and his own voice cracked. “It was just chance—the bomb was meant for the Japanese flagship in the river, but a gust of
wind blew it onto shore, right into the crowd.”

  “God, that sounds horrible.” Kenny gave Doug’s waist a little squeeze. “Are you sure you don’t want a stronger drink?”

  Doug chuckled without mirth. “No, thank you. It wouldn’t help, and I should get back to bed soon.”

  “You’re a stronger man than I am, Douggie.” Kenny picked up his glass with his left hand, and drained the contents. “For medicinal purposes.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.” Doug gave his friend’s shoulder another brotherly pat. “You’re a lot stronger than you think you are, Kenneth Traywick. I’ve seen it. You take things in stride a lot better than I do, and that’s the truth.”

  A faint smile cracked Kenny’s melancholy façade, and his right hand gave Doug’s waist another little squeeze. Then his thumb began to rub the divot of Doug’s spine just above his tail bone.

  Doug stood very still for several seconds. His heart began to race as he wondered if he’d given off entirely the wrong signal these last several moments—standing hip-to-hip in their underwear, with his arm around his friend’s bare shoulder. He’d known how Kenny felt about him for almost a year now, and he’d gotten used to the idea in a detached sort of way, holding it at a comfortable distance. Kenny was his best friend, one of the kindest and most giving people he knew, and Kenny would be devastated if he knew how uncomfortable Doug suddenly felt.

  “Kenny...” Doug began, but stopped.

  Kenny’s thumb stopped moving, and a second later his hand moved away from Doug’s waist, and dropped to his side; on the way, his fingertips grazed Doug’s backside in a way that might not have been intentional. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what came over me. The whiskey, I guess.”

  “Undoubtedly the whiskey,” Doug was quick to agree.

  “Well...that and the fact that Abbie hasn’t touched me since before Margaret was born.” Kenny’s voice carried a touch of bitterness.

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” Doug said, feeling awkward. He wasn’t really sure how to best respond to his friend’s unexpected revelation.

  Kenny grabbed the decanter of whiskey and poured another splash into his tumbler. He put it to his lips and took a long drink.

  “My wife and I haven’t had sexual relations in over nine months,” he announced, still with that note of bitterness. “Not since Abbie was four and a half months pregnant. She’s shown no interest whatsoever.”

  Doug shifted his weight on his feet. Men didn’t discuss such intimate things with their friends. “Have you tried asking her...”

  “About nine hundred times, Doug.” Kenny exhaled hard and stared at a spot on the floor near Doug’s feet. “I think Abbie’s been fooling around with Fa Changying.”

  Doug’s mouth dropped open. “Your amah? Are you sure?”

  Kenny sighed and shook his head. “No. But if she isn’t, she wants to. She watches Changying’s every move with great big doe eyes.”

  Doug couldn’t help but think of the way Jonesy had once described Kenny looking at him. He wasn’t about to point out the contradiction.

  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, my friend. Abbie loves you. She probably has a case of the baby blues. They say it’s really common. Try to be patient.” He knew even as he said it that it was far easier said than done.

  Kenny stared at him in silence for a long moment. Then he looked away, and nodded his head backward toward the hall. “You should get back to bed. Good night, Doug.”

  “Good night, Kenny.” Doug put his empty tea cup in the sink and walked out of the kitchen, patting his friend’s forearm on the way out.

  15

  The boom of exploding mortar shells less than a mile away wouldn’t let them sleep in that morning. Doug, Lucy, Kenny, and Abbie crowded around the Trawicks’ front living room window, which looked north over Soochow Creek toward Hongkou. To the right, beyond the hulking form of the massive nineteen-story Broadway Mansions Hotel, they could see columns of smoke rising from a wide area.

  “The Chinese have started shelling Japantown,” Doug observed.

  “Inside the International Settlement? Isn’t that illegal?” Kenny asked.

  “Technically, yes. But the Japanese have been using Settlement roads to move troops from the river to the battle zones in the Chinese districts—and they’ve been passing right through Japantown, moving openly in both directions. It’s allowed them to get reinforcements to their lines without interference. A bit of an unfair advantage, if you ask me.”

  “Isn’t that also a violation of the Settlement’s neutrality?” Abbie asked, suddenly cross. “It puts us all in danger.”

  Doug’s mind filled with images of yesterday’s carnage at Nanking Road. His pulse quickened, and sweat coated his upper lip. He took a deep breath. The wind had blown that bomb maybe eight hundred feet off-course; these shells raining on Japantown were falling four or five times that far away. There was minimal danger here.

  “It depends on how you look at it,” he said, sticking to Abbie’s question and ignoring her argument about danger. “The international treaties allow the treaty nations to post troops within the Settlement, to protect their citizens and maintain order. The United States has a Marine detachment based here, as do the Japanese. And an entire squadron of ships from our Asiatic fleet are based here, including my own ship.

  “Now, moving troops through the Settlement to get to a battle field...well, that’s a gray area. The Japanese have maintained from the beginning that they’re just protecting Japanese citizens in China—which is a stretch, to say the least, but they’ve stuck to the story. The argument keeps them technically in compliance with the treaties.”

  “But it’s forced the Chinese to act, hasn’t it?” Kenny said. “I mean, you can hardly blame the poor Chinese for bombarding the Japs’ supply lines, can you? What choice do they have?”

  “There are women and children living in Japantown, Kenneth,” Abbie said, her voice as cold as ice.

  Kenny frowned. “Well then, the Japanese shouldn’t be moving their troops through a civilian area, should they? Seems to me they’re asking for trouble.”

  His tone was uncharacteristically short, and Doug couldn’t help thinking about the tensions Kenny had disclosed a few hours before. That, plus a poor night’s sleep, and Kenny was probably a powder keg about to explode.

  “But think about the children!” Abbie snapped.

  “War is a tragedy for everyone involved,” Lucy said, her voice soothing. She placed her hand on Abbie’s back. “Women and children have always suffered.”

  Doug wasn’t sure how to feel about Lucy’s sentiment. It was generally true, but in this particular situation it seemed to create a false equivalency. While it wasn’t so in every war—some were simply stupid and senseless—sometimes there were clear good guys and bad guys.

  “Let’s not forget, the Japanese have been the aggressors in China for a long time. The Chinese are the injured party, and they have to take actions to defend themselves from aggression.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s disputing that, Doug,” Lucy said, quietly.

  Kenny shook his head. “The Japs are hardly ‘protecting their citizens’ when they put armed fighting men among their own civilians, inviting the Chinese to attack them there.”

  Doug had to wonder how much of Kenny’s indignation was natural, and how much was a reaction to his wife’s petulance.

  “Why don’t we all go sit down and have some more tea?” Lucy said. “Abbie, let’s you and I go make another pot.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Abbie said, and cast an irritated sideways glance at Kenny before she turned away. She took Lucy’s arm, and marched toward the kitchen.

  “You okay, buddy?” Doug murmured from the side of his mouth.

  “I’m fine,” Kenny said, too short, and then he looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Douggie. Just tired and irritable, that’s all.”

  *

  “What are you two up to tod
ay?” Kenny asked a few minutes later when they all sat around the kitchen table with steaming cups of green tea. He looked and sounded his usual cheerful self again.

  “I have a couple of errands to run, uptown,” Doug said. “It shouldn’t take me long, though. Maybe we could all meet for lunch later?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Kenny said, grinning. He looked at Abbie. “What do you say, dear?”

  “I think I’m going to get Margaret dressed, and the two of us are going to church.”

  Doug wondered if he looked as shocked as Kenny did, but decided that probably wasn’t possible. The Traywicks were officially Anglican, but the kind who only went to church services three times a year—Christmas, Easter, and All Saints. They’d had Margaret baptized in May, and Doug and Lucy had stood with them to be named God parents.

  Kenny recovered quickly enough. “I suppose prayers are in order right now, aren’t they? What a wonderful idea, dear. I’ll come along.”

  “Are you up for some company on your errands?” Lucy asked Doug, putting her hand on his knee. Her tone was casual, but the look in her eyes told him she knew it was investigation business, and she wanted in.

  He would actually welcome her participation in the first one, but then he intended to visit the ship’s bridge for some information he could get there. Women weren’t allowed aboard U.S. Navy vessels—but he supposed she might find an alternate activity while he did that.

  “I’d love some,” he replied.

  **

  An hour later, Doug and Lucy entered the West District police station on Gordon Road, in the section of the International Settlement west of Thibet Road known as “Uptown.” It was the area where Pete and Julia lived, and so did George and Betty. The hottest nightclubs were also in the area—the Paramount, the Majestic Café, Ciro’s, and Roxy’s were the biggest and most popular, all on or just off Bubbling Well Road.