“No,” he said with a finality that let Aloa know now was not the time to push the idea.
“Did Corrine talk to you about Kyle?” Aloa asked instead.
“She didn’t like him, that’s for sure.”
“Why did she let him stay?”
“Her husband. He was quite the despot.”
Aloa moved closer, settling herself on a footstool across from him. “Tell me more.”
Hamlin swirled the tumbler and took an exaggerated sniff of the cognac before gulping half of it down and beginning to speak.
“He liked to be looked up to. Had a savior complex, I think. It sure as hell was that way with Corrine.”
Hamlin stared into his glass as if the story could be found there. Aloa waited.
“About fourteen years ago, Corr was caught inside a bank during a robbery. Three guys stormed in, ordered everybody on the floor, then, for some reason, they shot one of the tellers. It was a big story back East but not much about it here. The teller had a nine-month-old baby. Her husband lost a leg in Iraq.”
Hamlin’s eyes shined in the low light.
“And?” Aloa prompted.
“And Christian came in after it was over, wearing a suit and flashing his badge. He was supposed to interview all the customers. You know, FBI and all that.”
Hamlin took another sip of his drink.
“Anyway, Corr had lost it when the gun went off. She’d pissed herself and was crying and pretty shaken up. The other agents just ignored her, but Christian went out and got her a pair of sweatpants from his car, then he drove her home and made her soup or something and that was it. They got married six months later.”
Hamlin fell silent.
“I’m not sure how that makes her husband a despot.”
Hamlin sighed. “Because that little bit of shame was always in the background of their marriage. It was like he never quite let her forget she was weak and that he’d saved her. And she had just enough self-hatred to believe him.”
Hamlin threw back the rest of his drink.
“Then, they have the accident and she’s the one driving.”
“And the guilt ate her up,” Aloa said.
“It hollowed her out,” Hamlin said. “She was pretty messed up when I met her, but so beautiful, you know. Like this flower in the desert that’s just trying to survive. I think I helped her. A little.”
“But you weren’t in love with her?”
He shook his head. “Too selfish, I guess.”
He poured another finger of cognac and tilted the bottle in her direction. She declined.
“Did she say anything about Kyle?”
Hamlin swirled the liquid in his glass. “He was a jerk who seemed to think he was in competition with her for Christian’s affection, but she couldn’t get rid of him. Like I said, Christian needed to be adored.”
“And you don’t think Kyle would kill her? Even if, for instance, she tried to fire him?”
“Maybe if he got angry enough, but I don’t think so. He’d just go behind her back like some junior high queen bee.”
Which left Hamlin as the prime suspect. Did he realize that?
He looked at her through bleary eyes. “So who’s your next suspect, Ms. Pulitzer Prize? Mrs. Peacock with a rope? Colonel Mustard with a revolver? Oh, I know, it’s Professor Hamlin with a knife. A big, fat knife.”
He lolled his head against the back of the chair. “I’m so screwed. What made me think I should trust you and why did I go along with my dad’s stupid plan? If I didn’t look guilty before, I sure do now.”
It took Aloa a moment to connect the moniker “dad” with Tick.
“Why did you go?”
Hamlin looked toward the ceiling and ran a hand over his scruffy beard. “He showed me the letters he’d written that my mother sent back without me knowing. Turns out, he did love me.” He threw back the rest of the cognac. A tear rolled down his cheek. “That’s the hell of it all, now isn’t it?”
At 1:00 a.m., Aloa gave up on sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, a dizzying image rose of the sea crashing onto a fringe of rocks far below her feet. She threw off the covers, wrapped herself in a white robe embroidered with the name Whilshire House (who embroidered their house’s name on robes?) and padded downstairs. She poured herself a glass of water from a pitcher in the refrigerator and headed for the library. Without her motorcycle and cello as insomnia cures, words would have to substitute.
She flipped on the lights in the library and walked the shelves, trailing a finger along the titles. Georgia O’Keeffe. Ansel Adams. Works by playwrights from England to the United States, from Colombia to Japan. Her finger stopped.
Aoi No Ue. Wasn’t that the book she’d slid back into its spot at Christian Davenport’s house?
Pulling the slim volume from the shelf, she settled onto a leather couch, wrapped herself in a throw, and read.
Lady Aoi was the wife of Hikaru Genji, the emperor’s second son. He’d married Lady Aoi when he was twelve and she was sixteen. The difference in ages bothered her, and it stung even more when her husband began to take lovers as she grew older. When the play opens, Lady Aoi is deathly ill and believed to be possessed by a spirit—the jealousy of one of her husband’s mistresses, a woman named Lady Rokujō.
Lady Rokujō had lost favor with Lady Aoi’s husband and also lost face when her carriage was shoved aside on the road to make room for Lady Aoi’s coach. She wanted revenge.
Priests were called, and in a ferocious fight, Lady Rokujō’s spirit was finally subdued and Lady Aoi survived.
Aloa closed the book and looked out the window to a pool of light that puddled on the asphalt from a nearby streetlamp. Was there a reason this book about jealousy and revenge—one that hinted at the very thing she believed of Kyle—had been sticking out from Christian Davenport’s bookcase?
She thought of the cases she’d covered. A preschool teacher who’d murdered her husband’s mistress with a machete blow to the head, a restaurant owner who’d rigged his partner’s car with C-4 after their business went bankrupt. The playwright was correct. Jealousy was a powerful spirit, one that could turn even an ordinary, mild-mannered person into an angry beast.
And while Kyle Williams might be mild-mannered, what he had endured as a boy made him no ordinary man.
DAY 11
Bright winter sunlight greeted Aloa as she came down the stairs at 8:00 a.m. She wore yesterday’s clothes, although she’d rinsed out her underwear and dried it overnight over the shower door. At some point, she would either have to go home or buy some new clothes. She thought of her ruined leather jacket and felt the tiniest arrow of mourning once again.
“Coffee?” she said as she came into the kitchen. Her head had cleared, but her body felt like she’d been on the losing end of a roller derby game.
P-Mac cocked his head toward the coffee maker and Aloa poured herself a mug, swallowing two ibuprofen she’d retrieved from her daypack. The coffee tasted like a cross between river mud and radiator fluid. She grimaced and sat down. What she wouldn’t give for her French press and a bag of good beans right now.
“When do we do the deed?” P-Mac asked.
They’d come up with a plan last night after dinner.
“At ten,” Aloa said. “That’s when the relief nurse comes. I saw it on the calendar. She comes in four times a week for a couple of hours so Kyle can run errands.” The whiteboard in Davenport’s bedroom was graffitied with appointments—a nutritionist, a masseuse, doctors, and the therapist—along with notes for shopping, extra help, pharmacy orders, outings, and equipment maintenance.
“So we tail him and see if we can get a look at his truck while you talk to Davenport?” Tick said.
“Exactly. See if there’s evidence he hit me—dents, blood—and I’ll find out whether Corrine was planning to fire Kyle that night,” Aloa said. “With any luck we’ll have both a motive and proof of the hit-and-run by this afternoon.” She glanced around the kitchen. “By the way
, Tick, where’s your son?”
“Sleeping off a bottle of cognac,” Tick answered.
“When I talked to him last night, he told me you’d kept all the letters you wrote to him,” Aloa said.
“So sue me. I’m a hoarder,” Tick grumped, although both he and Aloa knew it wasn’t true.
“Will you get to see your grandson?” she asked. Hamlin had told Tick about the boy after he’d read Tick’s letters.
“I’ve seen a picture of him,” Tick said. “Burns showed me. Good-looking kid. Maybe someday I’ll meet him.” He coughed, swiped at his eyes, and stood. “Damned wind is kicking up my allergies.”
“He’s allergic to human feelings,” P-Mac said.
“Or maybe I’m allergic to windbags.” Tick stomped from the room.
Aloa watched his hunched shoulders and thin gray ponytail as he left and felt a rush of affection for him.
“Let him be, fellas,” she said.
At 9:30 a.m., Aloa and the Brain Farm climbed into the Escalade, pulled out of the mansion’s two-car garage, which also held a Maserati and a gorgeous BMW motorcycle, and headed for the Davenports’ house. Doc parked down the hill where they could see anyone who entered or exited the house. At 9:55, a tall woman in blue scrubs knocked on the door. At 10:01, Kyle came out of the house with a bundle of reusable grocery bags under his arm.
“Got him,” said Doc as they watched Kyle trudge to the top of the steep street. He looked tired, like he’d aged a decade.
Murder will do that to you.
“That’s my cue,” Aloa said and started to get out of the car. “Give me my phone, Tick.”
“The only thing I’m giving you is a big plate of no,” he said.
“What if something goes wrong? What if somebody tries to mug me while I’m waiting for the bus to take me back to your place?” She hated to play the helpless woman card, but sometimes you had no choice.
Tick rubbed his nose and looked out the window. “All right, but only for emergencies. Otherwise you keep it on airplane mode. The cops already found us once.”
“Will do,” Aloa said, taking the phone and shoving it into the pocket of her borrowed jeans before slipping from the car. “Now go on before you lose him.”
“Stealthy as she goes, boys,” P-Mac said.
It took two rounds of knocking before the nurse opened the door.
She was in her midthirties with red hair and full lips.
“I’m here to see Christian Davenport,” Aloa said.
“No one was on schedule,” the nurse said. She had a thick Russian accent.
“It’s important,” Aloa said. “I know he’ll want to hear this.”
“Whatever you say,” the woman answered and stepped aside.
Aloa found Davenport in his chair in the study, looking into the backyard, the room filled with the notes of some country-western tune.
“Christian?” Aloa said.
He wheeled the chair around and something flickered across his face. Surprise? Annoyance? Aloa couldn’t read it.
“Jesus,” he said. “Kyle said you committed suicide. Right after you were here.”
“He might call it suicide,” Aloa said, coming into the room, “but I think a better name for it is attempted murder.”
Davenport piloted the chair toward her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“May I sit?” She wanted to be eye to eye with him.
“Help yourself.”
Aloa took a chair. “Remember when I was here and you had Kyle bring me tea?”
“I remember. You came in here saying you thought Hamlin wasn’t the killer and making noise about that ridiculous investigation in Afghanistan, which is not part of anything by the way, and then you got ill. You said you had an accident.”
“That’s not why I got sick. Kyle put something called tiger’s-mouth root in the tea. It comes from China and causes dizziness, nausea, and hallucinations. He sent me to the headlands, hoping I’d jump.”
“Whoa. Back up there. You’re not making a whole lot of sense.”
“Shall I talk more slowly? What part don’t you understand?”
“The part where you accuse Kyle of trying to kill you.”
“How about I lay it out.” Aloa leaned forward and ticked the points off on her fingers. “You ask Kyle to bring me tea. I drink it and start to hallucinate. I’m sent off to the headlands where I almost jump. I’m dizzy and nauseous, hearing voices, and I find out there’s this thing called tiger’s-mouth root that fits everything I experienced, right down to the taste in the tea and the smell.”
“Kyle wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“He’s done it before. He fed weed to his business partner’s kid to get revenge.”
“Where are you digging up this stuff?”
“I talked to his ex-business partner.”
“Why would Kyle do something like that?”
“Because whenever Kyle gets cornered, he lashes out.” Aloa rested her elbows on her knees so she was close to Davenport’s face. “I’m about 99 percent sure he killed your wife and I’m also pretty positive he hit me with his truck to try to get rid of me.”
Guitar and violin leaked from the speakers. The notes had a sad feel.
“Let me turn down the music,” Davenport said. He moved a gloved finger and the volume decreased. “You’re saying Kyle killed Corrine?”
Aloa nodded.
“And then tried to kill you? Twice?”
Another nod.
Davenport considered her. “That makes no sense. What about all the evidence that points to Hamlin? The texts, the phone records that put him in the neighborhood when Corrine died, the fact he was afraid he’d lose his teaching job. I’ve been on the prosecution end of plenty of investigations and the case is good. He had opportunity. And motive.”
“The professor was nearby but not for the reason you think. He has an alibi. A good one.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you, but I’m sure the cops will know it soon enough. If they try to arrest Hamlin, I can pretty much guarantee he’ll talk.” Aloa studied Davenport: the pale skin, the dark eyes, the wasting body. “That leaves two possibilities. Kyle or you.”
“How could I stab my wife, Ms. Snow?”
“Exactly. So that leaves Kyle.”
“How about you spell out this nefarious plot for me?”
“First, your neighbor sees a left-handed person knock on the door. Kyle is left-handed. Plus, he’s wearing blue jeans. Hamlin doesn’t own a single piece of clothing that’s not black. I checked.”
“That’s what you’re relying on?”
“Details, remember?” Aloa said. “Then, your wife opens the door, which I doubt she would do if it were a stranger, which rules out the idea of robbery—or a hit man.”
Davenport’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not even remotely funny.”
“I didn’t intend it to be. According to Kyle’s ex-business partner, a week before Corrine died, he told your wife about Kyle giving weed to his son and she said she was going to fire Kyle. Did Corrine talk to you about that?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Well, I think she did it that night. Whether she’d planned it or whether Kyle said something that pushed her over the edge, I think she fired him. I think he left and got angrier the more he thought about it. He came back and killed her—and before you ask, Kyle’s so-called alibi is for the wrong day. I checked.”
Aloa let the information sink in. “He sees you as a father figure, you said so yourself. And by firing him, Corrine was cutting him off from you. He would be angry. He’d feel abandoned. He spent his formative years being abused and beaten. Who knows what he’s capable of?”
“But I heard Hamlin talking . . . ,” Davenport began.
“That’s called confirmation bias. You wanted to believe it was Hamlin.”
“The psychologist said Kyle was better.”
“Looks like he or she was wrong.”
&
nbsp; “And you said he fed weed to a little kid?”
“Apparently he did.”
Davenport turned his chair and moved it toward the window. Outside, sunlight dappled the vegetation and made the pool dance with a thousand diamonds.
“Would you mind opening the doors?” he asked.
Aloa came over and pushed open the French doors, and Davenport piloted the chair onto the small wooden deck. The air smelled of damp soil and fresh growth. The sun made Davenport’s face seem even more pale. She could see the dark shadow of his beard. What would it be like to be unable to do even the most basic things?
“I used to come out here and watch Corrine swim,” Davenport said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “She was like a dolphin or a mermaid. She had a beautiful body. So strong. So powerful. But she never believed that about herself. She thought she was weak. And me? I was the opposite. I always thought I was strong.”
Aloa waited. A gray mourning dove fluttered onto the back fence.
“But, you know, fate doesn’t really care what you think of yourself,” Davenport continued. “Fate does what it does. It puts you in a chair or it puts you in the ground. You can try, but there’s no way to fight it, or to understand it.”
“I’m not sure I believe in fate,” Aloa said.
“How else to explain this whole screwed-up world? How else to explain what happened to Kyle, to Corrine, to me?”
The dove sounded its sad five-note cry once, then again. The faint sound of traffic came to Aloa’s ears.
“The thing is, Kyle uses herbs, Aloa. He has a guy in Chinatown. He goes there once a month for antianxiety tinctures. And the day you were hit? He was out for a lot of the afternoon. He told me he had an eye appointment. Sonia, the nurse you met, was here. He wasn’t.”
Aloa could see his jaw muscle twitch.
“Why didn’t I see it? Why did I let it go on? All the stuff he said about her. The way she started avoiding him. She knew he hated her. It must have been the affair. Kyle heard about it and he probably shifted his feelings about his mother to Corrine. That mom of his, and I use the term ‘mom’ loosely, was always bringing guys home. Then she drove off with some trucker she hardly knew and left Kyle alone, prey for that kidnapper. I can see it now, how Kyle would see Corrine as betraying me, betraying the only family he had. He was angry at his mother and jealous of the man she chose over him, and when he and Corrine argued, or if she tried to fire him, the rage against his mother kicked in. Transference.”
The Thin Edge Page 18