“Okay,” she said then, and followed Theo back down the dock to slip twenty-three where she stopped and regarded Theo’s unprepossessing vessel. It looked like what it was, a work boat in not terribly good repair. He offered her a hand and she stepped aboard.
“Do you want a tour?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
It didn’t take long. Down the ladder into the galley, astern to the crew bunk room he’d converted into a living space where there were bookcases and a vintage chrome and leather lounge chair positioned beside a small wood-burning stove. Then forward to the head and the vee berth where he slept.
To Irene it seemed quite foreign and exotic—cramped, but appealing. He was tidy for the most part, though the bed wasn’t made. It probably never was; it wouldn’t be easy to actually make a bed in that oddly shaped space. “Where does your head go?” she asked, thinking it might be claustrophobic.
“Up in the vee,” he said, pointing in that direction. “It’s right beneath the hatch and I can look up at the sky. And when it’s nice I keep the hatch open.” Indeed, at the far end of the bunk an oblique patch of light fell onto the pillows, where, Irene noted, an orange cat was stretched out in the rumpled bedding.
In the narrow passage they were jammed together, and Irene suddenly felt trapped, uneasy and distinctly awkward standing there looking at this man’s bed. She made a little motion to escape. He made himself flat against the wall and lifted his arm as she ducked past. “It’s nice,” she said with a quick smile, back in the galley now, not so intimate.
“Thank you,” he said. “Can I give you a drink?” When she hesitated he said, “Go up on deck. I’ll be right behind you.”
Irene did as she was told. Up on the deck the sun had fallen behind the trees on the hills above Route 3, turning the sky a pale violet and throwing the deck into warm shade. She took off her jacket and tugged her tee shirt away from her damp skin. Here she didn’t have to hide the gun under her arm—he knew she was carrying. She sat down in one of the lawn chairs and looked out across the water towards Shelton where she could see rafts of logs and the Simpson timber mill sheds and stacks beyond. And beyond that the town climbing up the hill. She wondered if she had her field glasses whether she’d be able to pick out her own house. She could, she thought, see the dock of the Shelton Marina from her upstairs bedroom—the view reversed.
Theo emerged from the galley carrying a bottle of Maker’s Mark and a bowl of ice, two glasses hooked in his fingers. He sat down in the other lawn chair and poured them each an inch. “Ditch?” he asked.
She smiled and shook her head. He’d read her right—if she’d wanted water he’d have had to make another trip. His relaxed confidence put her at ease. It was nice there on the deck in the early evening, a little breeze off the water stirring her hair and drying the sweat on the back of her neck. Theo touched the lip of his glass against hers. The bourbon was cold and sharp on her tongue, but the first sip spread a pleasing warmth through her chest.
“Tell me about your case,” Theo said.
Irene smiled ruefully. “My case,” she said. “It’s not going anywhere. I’m going to close it. Call it an accident. There’s nothing else to do. It’s what the family wants.” She looked at him. “I don’t think it was an accident, but I don’t even have an opinion really about who did it or why, and there’s no compelling evidence to support a charge against any one of them.”
“A hunch?” he asked.
“A hunch, yes,” she agreed. “But I’ve been in this business long enough to know what I know. I just don’t have anything to give you.”
In the normal course, if the sheriff’s department was going to recommend prosecution, the investigating officer—Irene in this instance—would provide all the reports and evidence relating to the case to the prosecuting attorney’s office, and brief Theo too, or whichever assistant was assigned the case, as Irene was doing now, giving him her observations and impressions, details that might not have been captured in anyone’s report. The prosecutor relied on the sheriff’s department and on the individual officers to provide what was needed for a successful prosecution, and the two departments worked in concert, two branches within the judicial system. If the evidence wasn’t there, the prosecutor couldn’t prosecute. This was a conversation that was normal and expected in the usual course of business, though it wouldn’t typically be taking place after hours over drinks on the deck of someone’s boat.
“What are they like,” Theo asked after a while, “the Parises?”
“Hmm,” said Irene. She liked it that he had asked that question. What were they like? “I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t know how to describe them. They’re all nice, I guess, in their own way, smart and sophisticated, they’re easy to talk to and pleasant enough, and taken one by one I’d have to say they seem just fairly normal and not that much different from you or me or anyone else. No one seems necessarily like they’re hiding anything, but then on the other hand there’s this sense I have of them closing ranks—like they’re gracious and welcoming and they let you in, but only so far and then you hit a wall. They circle the wagons. I think they think they don’t have to answer in quite the same way as regular people do to—I don’t know what—society? Or Mason County society, maybe. They’re their own little fiefdom, their own enclave. They’re like aliens in a way, like they landed in a spaceship, or they’re from some other culture, just summering out here in the colonies. They have their own standards.”
“Entitled,” he said.
“Entitled,” she agreed, “that’s a good word for it.” She smiled at him. “And they’re accustomed to keeping secrets. They’re comfortable keeping stuff to themselves.”
After a moment Irene said, “She was very promiscuous, you know, sleeping with a lot of different men.”
There was a silence, then Theo said, “And you disapprove?”
Irene felt a sudden flash of pique. She could tell that her cheeks had flushed. “It’s an observation, that’s all, not a judgment. It’s risky behavior.” She was quiet for a moment, getting her anger in check, trying to think why she’d said it in the first place and why his comment touched a hot spot. Did she disapprove?
“No, I don’t disapprove,” she said finally, looking at him. “She was very full of life actually, that’s the impression I get. She embraced a lot of experiences and that might have gotten her in trouble.” To her dismay she felt the prick of tears starting in the back of her eyes. What was that about?
Theo leaned forward and placed his hand over hers where it rested on the arm of her chair. Irene went rigid. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, looking very directly into her eyes. In a moment he removed his hand, sat back and took a sip of his drink, watching her.
Irene was flustered, trying to get a grip. “I’m not upset,” she said finally, though she was and she knew he knew it.
They sat in silence for a while, then Irene said, “I’ve gotten to know her in a way, in the way you do when you’re investigating something like this. I’m not sure I would have liked her, but I would like to have known her in life.” She paused. “It almost seems as if she could walk through the door at any moment and there she’d be, and I’d know her and be happy to see her. That’s what her father said, as if she’s just absent, not dead. Anne’s become very real to me. I go to the places she’s been, I talk to the people she talked to. I’ve sat on her bed and gone through her dresser drawers. I know a lot about her, but I don’t know who killed her. Someone did. She inspired strong feelings in people and for someone it was too much.”
Irene wondered if it was the bourbon speaking or if she just needed to have someone to talk to, someone to listen. Sometimes you didn’t know what you thought until you said it, like it was all percolating around in your head in a jumble until you actually put it into words. It was one of the downsides to working alone, without a partner. In L.A. in a homicide investigation you’d have an entire team, experts and underlings, all manner
of people to talk to, a hurricane of theories and opinions.
She looked at Theo and smiled a little ruefully. “I’m quite obsessed, I guess, at this point. It’s all very frustrating.”
“Hey, what about me?” he said lightly. “I was looking forward to prosecuting a homicide, inconveniencing the summer folks.” He smiled wickedly, lightening the mood. “Are you sure there’s nothing?”
“There’s nothing,” she said, “I’m sure.” She ticked them off her fingers. “There’s a jilted boyfriend, an angry and envious half-sister, the new secret boyfriend, the angry and envious half-sister’s broke and guilty husband—that’s one of the men she slept with—and the very assured and manipulative neighbor to the north nursing a crush and a grudge over a property dispute. I can’t even rank them in terms of probability. They all had motive, they all had opportunity, but which one is the one that whacked her on the back of the head, I don’t know.”
Irene was over her pique and feeling calm and relaxed. The cat came up the ladder and brushed against her before jumping onto Theo’s crossed legs where it adapted itself like a panther in a tree, limp as silly putty. It was getting dark. Irene should go.
“How’s Victor?” Theo asked, sending a little jolt of electricity through Irene’s midsection.
“Victor’s fine,” she said. “I hope you’re over that.”
“I’m over that,” he said.
She threw him a glance from under her eyes. “Thanks,” she said softly.
“We’ll wait until next time,” he added.
“There won’t be a next time,” she said.
“Okay,” he said amiably, “good.” Then after a silence, and hesitantly, he asked, “What about that other business?”
Irene didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to be reminded of Patrick McGrath and the incident along Highway 3 or of the presence of Theo Choate on her porch and in her kitchen in the aftermath, the intimacy of his access. The scrapes on her shoulders were healing and the bruising around her eye had mostly faded. She shrugged dismissively. “That’s over, too,” she said tersely. Then added after a moment, stiffly, a reluctant concession to his concern, “I followed up some afterwards, at the hospital and the department.”
“Good,” he said simply, letting it go.
“I need to go,” she said, and stood up, slipping into her jacket.
He stood up too, dumping the cat unceremoniously onto the deck.
“Thanks for the drink.”
“Any time,” he said. “Now you know where to find me.” He steadied her with a hand as she stepped onto the dock and watched as she picked up the chain and the wad of tape. She flashed him a quick smile, then was gone, walking quickly down the pier into the gathering dusk.
Theo watched her walk away, and he knew she glanced back when she came to the end of the dock before stepping onto the gangway leading up to the parking lot, because her pale hair was the last thing to fade into the darkness and he saw her head turn. He would be silhouetted against the lightness of the water so she’d know he was standing where she’d left him, watching her go. The lines of a song ran through his head, ‘I was looking back to see if you were looking back to see If I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me.’
Theo was glad she’d looked but he didn’t make too much of it. He still wasn’t sure she’d go out with him if he asked. She was jumpy as a cat. Most single women he encountered were on the prowl, dating on Match.com, eager and anxious, their need rendering him cautious and wary. Irene, he thought, wasn’t looking at all. In fact she had some sort of invisible fence built up like a force field—he’d felt it when he reached over to touch her hand— that repelled attraction. He wondered again what her story was.
XXIX
Anne’s body was gone. Released to the mortuary, Chesterine said. The family hadn’t wanted anything done, no embalming, nothing cosmetic. They didn’t even want her dressed. What was left of Anne was now across the hall in a cardboard coffin in a small private room where the family could congregate and sit for a few minutes before the cremation, which was to take place that afternoon. There would be no service, no pastor, no hymns, no ritual. Rich people are funny, Chesterine had said. Some rich people. They don’t care what anyone thinks. “It’s practical,” she said, “it’s all going up in smoke anyway, but some people do more for their pets.”
Irene laughed. By now a cardboard coffin and an absence of ceremony seemed to her in keeping with the contradictions of the Paris family and their world—their odd shabby elegance, their quirks, their utter insularity. They did what they felt like doing and set their own bar.
Irene hoped she was doing the right thing, letting the body go. “Well,” she said, “that’s that.”
“That’s that,” agreed Chesterine. “Sometimes you never know.”
“Right,” said Irene, thinking of Luis. “I’d like to know.”
Chesterine shrugged.
“What’s happened with your John Doe suicide?” she asked. “Did they figure that one out?”
“Nope,” answered Chesterine, “they’re stymied too. Can’t ID him.” And she laughed, amused by the frustrations bedeviling local law enforcement.
IN THE hall on her way out, Irene opened a door marked PRIVATE and looked into a dimly lit room where a few rows of chairs on one side faced a coffin opposite. She slipped in, closing the door behind her. A couple of candles gave the room the look of a chapel and a scent of pine. Music was piped in, a tasteful loop of Pachelbel’s Canon. No offense to anyone. The top half of the coffin was open. It was Anne, her hands folded over a plain shroud, the skin waxy, more like an effigy than a corpse, so little left of life. Irene sat down, tired and dispirited. She leaned forward and crossed her arms on the back of the chair in front of her and rested her head. If anyone looked in, it would appear she was praying. The room was air-conditioned and cold. She’d done what she could. There was plenty for her to move on to, and the seeming importance of the unresolved circumstances of the death of Anne Paris would eventually fade until she wouldn’t be able to recall why it had ever seemed to matter.
Her phone was vibrating. “Yes?” she said tersely, sitting back. She knew it was probably not polite to take a call here, but the Parises probably wouldn’t care, and anyway, there was no one here to know.
“Hi, honey, I’m home.” Ira Logan’s voice low and ironic in her ear.
Ira Logan instantly lost his place as Irene’s prime suspect and plummeted to the bottom of her list. A wave of relief washed over her. Canada had not swallowed him up after all. She hadn’t quite realized just how bad she’d felt about letting him go. She was silent.
“You there?” he asked.
“I’m here,” she said.
“It’s me, Ira.”
“I know,” she said.
“I’m back in Boston and I’m packing my things.”
“You made good time,” Irene said.
“I did,” he agreed. “It didn’t turn out to be as much fun as I thought. I just wanted to make time. I hardly stopped, hardly slept. But the car ran like a top.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I can’t stay here. It creeps me out,” talking now in his own voice without the irony and sounding a little ragged. “You’ve been here, right?”
“Right,” she agreed.
“Find anything out?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “not really.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t find anything incriminating or particularly illuminating is what it means,” said Irene. She didn’t see the point in bringing up what she’d learned about the landlord and his relationship to Anne. “I’m closing the case, calling it an accident.”
“You know what’s weird?” Ira asked after a moment.
“What?”
“I’m here in our apartment and all I feel is like we’ve broken up. I don’t feel sad like you’d think I would knowing she’
s dead— I feel bitter and sorry for myself because I’ve lost her, as if she’s left me for someone else. Like she’s moved on.”
Irene wasn’t sure but she thought he was crying. “Ira?” she said.
“I’m taking my clothes and my books and one of the rugs, and I’m leaving the rest.”
“Where will you go?” she asked again.
“I don’t know. I can live in my car for the time being,” he said.
Irene laughed, as he’d meant her to, picturing the Triumph.
“No. I’ll put my stuff in storage and stay at the hospital until I find a place. Half the time it feels like I live at the hospital anyway.”
Irene thought about telling him where she was at that moment as they were speaking. She imagined putting her phone up against Anne’s ear and letting Ira say good-bye. She wondered if she should tell him that the cremation was that afternoon. “Anything I should know?” she asked.
“Not that I know,” he said.
“Well,” she said.
“Yeah, well,” he agreed, “you’ve got my number.”
“And you’ve got mine.”
“Thanks, Detective.”
“’Bye, Ira.” And they hung up.
So that left Libby and Elliot and Rueben Guevara, because Irene didn’t believe that if Ira Logan had whacked Anne on the back of the head, that he would have resurfaced at home in Boston to resume his life and his job and be calling her to check in.
THE PARIS family was arriving as Irene left. Tall thin figures in dark clothes moving up the walk in the hot afternoon. She passed Oliver on the steps leaning on Libby’s arm, wearing a black fedora and a jacket, a muffler folded across his chest despite the heat. He dipped his head but didn’t speak, the brim of his hat obscuring his face. She didn’t know if she’d been acknowledged or snubbed. Out on the street Leland was parking, the spaces filling in now. Irene saw Rueben Guevara maneuvering his old Lincoln into a spot, and the Strauss brothers without their families coming up the sidewalk. It seemed suddenly very sad and final to Irene, and she wished she’d said something more to Ira. He wouldn’t figure in this family anymore.
An Unattended Death Page 18