May the Best Man Die

by Deborah Donnelly

  “She's at work, and so am I, now.” Mike gestured toward the Bayou's foyer. “I'm getting takeout for the troops in the Homicide Van, eight jambalayas and ten bread puddings. We're set up at the Hot Spot. Carnegie, they told me you ID'd the body. Are you sure you're all right? I hope they didn't show you—”

  “The wound? No, just his face.” I shuddered. “That was enough. It must have been a mugging, don't you think, if someone took his wallet?”

  He shook his head. “Unlikely. Why would a mugger be back there behind the Café? Besides, we think Kraye passed out before he was knifed. Damn near half his blood was pooled in the grass. Pardon my French.”

  “Behind the Café?” I said weakly. “I assumed he was killed on his way home . . .”

  “No, it happened right below the deck of the Hot Spot.” Mike was distant and preoccupied, almost talking to himself. “A mugger might have dragged the body into the Ship Canal, but from the look of the site, Kraye somehow got up after the attack, staggered down to the water's edge, and fell in. We're searching for the wallet, but I'm betting it just came out of his jacket in the water. Probably out in the Sound by now. I don't believe this killer was looking for money.”

  “How could anyone do such a horrible thing?” It sounded trite as I said it. Mike had surely seen worse. “Of course, Jason could be a pretty disagreeable person, I know that myself—”

  “He was a person,” said Mike. “That's all that matters. There's somebody walking around today, in Seattle or somewhere else, who took a life. And I'm going to find him.”

  “No matter who it is?”

  Mike looked at me, and his hazel eyes went cold. It was eerie; I could feel myself transforming from his lover's best friend into Joan Q. Public, potential source of evidence.

  “Carnegie, you know something.”

  “I don't know anything! It's just a little detail—”

  “There aren't any ‘little' details, not at this stage of an investigation.” He leaned eagerly across the table. “At this stage, the odds of solving a murder get worse by the hour. We get lies, we get misinformation, we get people holding back the one piece of the puzzle that could break the case open. If you know, saw, heard, or even guessed anything that might be relevant, you need to tell me. Now.”

  So I told him. About the binoculars, the stripper, Darwin's scuffle in the frozen grass. Everything. Mike pulled out his phone while I was still speaking, and when I finished he strode to the counter, grabbed his order, and left the Bayou at a run. Man on a mission.

  My own mission was just as urgent: to let Lily know what I'd done. But she didn't answer her phone at work, and I was reluctant to leave too specific a message on her voice mail, for fear of someone else hearing it. So I settled for asking her to call me as soon as she could, and made my dejected, slow-motion way back to Vanna.

  I drove through the early December darkness to Lily's empty house, and within minutes of opening the door, still fully dressed, I was deep asleep under the fragile shelter of my best friend's quilts . . .

  “How could you?”

  I came to with a heart-thudding lurch and no idea how long I'd been sleeping. My best friend loomed above me like an avenging angel.

  “How could you tell them Dar's a murderer? He'd never hurt anybody!”

  “Lily, I didn't tell them that. I just told the truth, about what I saw—”

  “About your spying, you mean.”

  “I wasn't spying! Look, I'm sure the police just want to talk with Darwin, like they talked to me. I mean, they even suspected me for a little while, but—”

  “So that was it! They suspected you, so you accused Darwin instead. That's why you didn't even warn me what was going on. I had to hear it on the phone from some desk sergeant!” Lily raged up and down the living room, between my temporary bed and the boys' Christmas tree. Her coat was still on, her hair disheveled, and she'd left the front door open to the cold. “They called me at work. They're searching for him, and they wanted me to describe his car. Me! As if I'd help them harass my baby brother. And then I called Mike and he said it was you . . . you bitch!”

  I had never, never seen Lily so shockingly out of control. I sat up in bed—my little island refuge in this sea of turmoil—and tried to frame a rational reply.

  “Lily, listen to me, please. I tried to call you. And besides, I'm sure the police are talking to everyone from the party, not just Darwin. He's not the only one who was drunk last night.”

  She stopped pacing to glare at me, her eyes wild. “He's the only one who's black.”

  “Surely you don't think that here in Seattle—”

  “You know all about it, do you, Carnegie? You know all about racial profiling, and what it's like to be a young black man in a white-bread city?”

  “Of course I don't. But I know Mike is an honest man! He's going to check for blood on Darwin's clothes, and there won't be any. Then he'll do everything he has to, to prove what really happened. And he'll make sure that Darwin is treated fairly. You trust Mike, don't you?”

  Lily, exhausted now, sank down on the foot of the bed and nodded silently. My heart ached for her.

  “Come on, Lily, let's get a grip here. Don't you need to pick up Marcus and Ethan?”

  She shook her head. “Fran took them home for dinner.”

  “All right, then. What can we—”

  “Lily?” Across the room, Darwin himself was standing in the open doorway.

  “Dar!” Lily flew to her brother and wrapped her arms around him. His handsome young face was haggard and grave, and he wore new-looking khakis and a pristine red sweater. Where were last night's jeans and T-shirt? My stomach turned over.

  “I'm sorry,” he murmured, patting the back of Lily's head as she poured out all her anxiety and love. “I'm so sorry, Lil. I thought I'd be OK, just one drink, you know? Just one.” He breathed a sigh that came up from deep inside, and held her away from him by the shoulders. “I won't do it again, big sister, I promise. You believe me?”

  “Never mind that now, baby. The police are looking for you—”

  “They already found me.” Darwin smiled, painfully, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Mike said he'd give me five minutes, just to show you in person that I'm OK. I'm going to the station with him, voluntarily and all, and get it down in writing that I'm innocent. But I don't want you coming. I want you to stay home with my nephews.”

  I joined them at the door and saw Mike standing at the bottom of the steps, his breath visible in the yellow glow of the streetlight.

  “Darwin,” I said hesitantly, “did Mike tell you that I saw you fighting with Jason?”

  “He told me.”

  Lily folded her arms and turned her back, staying close to her brother.

  “Do you understand that I had to tell the truth?”

  “Oh, yes,” said the young man softly, sounding anything but young. “That's the first thing you learn in recovery, Carnegie. To stop lying, to yourself or anybody else. I understand, and I forgive you.”

  Then Darwin James kissed his sister, and descended the steps, to face whatever was coming next.

  Lily watched them drive away, and stared down the empty street for a few minutes more. When she looked at me, her familiar face was a stranger's.

  “He may forgive you,” she whispered through her tears, “but I don't think I can.”

  Chapter Nine

  AURORA AVENUE NORTH, ONCE IT CURVES PAST THE LOVELY CITY park at Green Lake, becomes an unlovely strip of low-end retail. The strip offers, among other delights, an abundance of fast food, used cars, and cheap motel rooms. On the night of that dreary Monday, I sat in one of those rooms and had myself a good cry. Then, double-teamed by a marshmallow mattress and a troubled mind, I had myself some bad sleep.

  On Tuesday morning, I sat on the marshmallow's slick polyester bedspread—the orange paisley swirls stayed imprinted on your retina when you closed your eyes—and vowed to find better quarters by nightfall. I could always check
into a real hotel, and charge it, but my credit card balances were astronomical already. Along with my father's red hair, I've inherited his horror of debt; surely I could find someone else to crash with.

  Lily hadn't kicked me out, exactly. After Darwin left, she just stalked into her bedroom and shut the door. But I got the message. We would sort this out eventually, once Lily was ready, but she was a long way from being ready. Maybe when Darwin is cleared. If he's cleared.

  I set aside that grim idea and tried to think about my workday. Top of the list, even before I drove down to Fremont, was to call Ivy Tyler's office.

  “I heard all about Jason Kraye,” said Ivy, her voice flat with strain. “Horrible. Just horrible.”

  “Shall we postpone the wedding?”

  “I . . . I'm not sure.” Even the redoubtable Ivy, it seemed, could be knocked off-balance by murder. “I suppose that's up to Sally.”

  “And Frank,” I pointed out, observing the forms, but knowing full well who would actually make the call.

  “Yes, Frank, of course. The police are interviewing him right now in our conference room.”

  Of course, I thought. Frank must be a suspect, too. But the thought of Sally's pushover bridegroom slashing someone to death was absolutely ludicrous. Still, somebody did it, and if it wasn't Darwin . . .

  “—rumors everywhere, and no one's getting any work done.” Ivy heard herself sounding callous. “I mean, it's only natural that a tragedy like this is disruptive to . . . Dammit, Carnegie, I sound like one of my own PR people. It's a mess, that's all. It's horrible and it's a mess.”

  I couldn't have agreed more. “Ivy, we can talk about the wedding later—”

  “No,” said the woman who was holding her own against Starbucks. “No, when decisions have to be made, you make them. Can you come downtown to my apartment, before you go see Kevin Bauer? Sally and Frank can meet us there.”

  “Before? . . . Oh, right. Sure, give me about an hour.” I had forgotten all about my afternoon field trip to Habitat. And who knows how long that's going to take, I fretted. Maybe I should just live in Vanna.

  On that note, my next call should have been a bitter complaint to my landlady. But I ran out of steam when I heard the recording of her cultured, quavering voice.

  “This is Mrs. Frederick Castle, and I am not here to speak with you. You may leave a message if you wish, but please speak slowly and distinctly . . .”

  Mr. Frederick Castle had been dead for decades; his widow was an old lady of the old school. And it wasn't her fault about the dry rot, after all.

  Sighing, I settled for leaving a ladylike request that she call me back at her convenience. Then I phoned Joe's office, to check in with Eddie. I didn't tell him about the motel, just that I'd overslept and had a meeting downtown.

  “Long as you're down there, Carnegie, why don't you go see Boris and have him check over those estimates for Buckmeister/Frost? Get 'em signed in blood this time. He keeps changing the numbers for the pewbacks and the tabletops. Last time I called him, he hung up on me!”

  Boris Nevsky, known more or less affectionately as Boris the Mad Russian Florist, was a genius with flowers but a dunce with customer relations, and sometimes I had to run interference for him.

  “Eddie, you know perfectly well that Boris can't guarantee the price of fresh flowers down to the penny. He's always close, though.”

  “Hmph. He's always a pain in the behind. Just because you used to go out with him, doesn't mean he can—”

  “Eddie, don't start.”

  “Sorry, sorry. I forgot you had a nasty shock yesterday. You need some Christmas cheer, sister. How about stopping in at the library, maybe take Lily out for a nice lunch? She always perks you up.”

  I flinched, glad he couldn't see my expression. “Lily's awfully busy lately. Maybe another day.”

  Eddie was right; my seasonal spirit was wearing thin this morning. And it wore even thinner when I arrived downtown to find the Bon Marche parking garage already jammed with early-rising Christmas shoppers. I wound my way to a spot at the very top level, open to the icy wind off the Sound, and trotted down the hill on Stewart Street to the Pike Place Market, past the ubiquitous Salvation Army Santas and the inescapable Yuletide Muzak. Comfort and joy, my foot.

  Ivy Tyler had a large and secluded house in the country somewhere, but for business entertaining or late nights at the office, she kept an apartment in one of the Pike Place Market buildings. She was one flight up from all the produce stalls and the fishmongers and the multitude of shops, and right behind the big neon clock that's been glowing next to the big neon “Public Market” sign since the 1920's. It was typical Ivy, to locate her pied-à-terre right in the hectic heart of the city.

  I'd been there once before, when Dorothy Fenner first introduced me to Ivy, and had time during that visit to admire the building's amenities—even the hallways had classy side tables and lamps, like a gracious old hotel—and the apartment's view of Puget Sound, where the squat white Washington State ferries moved among the mounded green of the islands. Time, too, to appreciate Ivy's taste, which ran to postmodern furniture and exquisite little oil paintings and bits of statuary.

  Today, though, there was no time to do anything but duck and cover. The bride was going ballistic.

  “Postpone?” I could hear Sally's near-shriek even before Ivy opened the apartment door to me. “Postpone my wedding because of a drunken brawl at your stupid bachelor party?”

  “It wasn't a brawl.” Frank's voice was subdued but sullen, a heels-dug-in voice. “Jase was murdered. Don't you think, just out of respect—”

  “Oh, please! When did Jason Kraye ever respect anybody else?” Sally, in a pale jacket trimmed with paler fur, stood defiantly in the living room, tossing her silky blonde hair and looking daggers at her beloved. When she saw me, and noticed Ivy's frown, she tempered her manner—but only a little.

  “All right, Mother, I'm sorry he's dead, but I've been planning this for a year and a half, for God's sake. How do you reschedule a New Year's Eve wedding? Put it off till next December? Postponing would ruin everything. Besides, I've been lifting weights for months to get buff for my dress. I can't keep this up forever.”

  Ivy forbore to comment on her daughter's travails. “Let's just sit down and discuss this, shall we? Tell me, Frank, would it be important to you to delay the wedding? And for how long?”

  “I . . . I don't really know.” The groom's mild, good-natured features had tightened into a perplexed frown, and his voice, dull with shock, kept trailing off into silence. “Jason kind of volunteered himself to be best man . . . He was my roommate at the frat, and we went snowboarding together and all, but we weren't really that close . . . I still can't believe . . . I mean, jeez, murder?”

  Scratch Frank off the list, I thought. No way did this guy kill anyone.

  He looked at me in appeal. “Carnegie, is there some kind of etiquette rule about this? What do you think we should do?”

  “It's not my decision, and there's no rule,” I told him. “It's just a question of how you and Sally feel about proceeding. Maybe you should take some time to think it over.”

  “I don't need any more time!” said Sally. She flopped down into the postmodern curves of Ivy's purple sofa—in that price range, it's probably called eggplant—and folded her arms like a nine-year-old facing a plate of, well, eggplant. “I want to go ahead, and that's all there is to it.”

  The phone rang then, and Ivy surprised me by rushing to pick it up, apparently forgetting her daughter for some other, more urgent concern. I assumed it was MFC business until I heard her first words.

  “Charles! Did you sleep at all? I hated to leave you this morning, but Dr. Lawrence said . . . yes, she's here, they both are. Of course.” She offered the phone to Sally, with a murmured, “He says he finally got some rest.”

  Sally also surprised me. She sat up straight to take the call from her stepfather, and spoke with a deferential solicitude quite unlike her usual
snap and snarl.

  “Here I am, Charles. Yes, it's dreadful about Jason. Frank and I feel just terrible. In fact, Frank thinks we should delay the wedding . . . really? Could you tell him that? I'm sure you're right, thank you!”

  Triumphantly, the bride presented the phone to her groom, and I watched, fascinated, as Frank in his turn grew solemn and respectful. Even in retirement, Ivy's husband must be quite a formidable personage. After a few “yes, sirs” and “I understand, sirs,” Frank ended the call and looked at the three of us, all watching him expectantly.

  “Charles says he feels pretty strongly that we shouldn't delay. He says it won't help Jason any. I suppose he's right, isn't he? So I guess we're good to go.”

  Chapter Ten

  SALLY SQUEALED AND HUGGED FRANK, NINE YEARS OLD AGAIN for a moment, and then slithered into a full-body embrace that was anything but PG-13. So that's why he puts up with all the tantrums. Ivy smiled at them indulgently, and not for the first time I marveled at how a brass-tacks businesswoman could turn so quickly to mush. I would have slapped the girl silly by now.

  “When you have the time,” I pointed out dryly, “you'll need to think about a new best man.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Frank, over Sally's shoulder. “I could ask Craig Clark, I guess, or Lou Schulman . . .”

  As if being best man were some minor favor: lend me ten bucks, be my best man. Well, not everyone cares about tradition . . . My own phone chirped, and the display showed Mrs. Castle's number.

  Eager for good news, and irritated with Frank, I excused myself to take the call in Ivy's sleek little kitchen. But the news wasn't good.

  “Another week?” I sagged against the stainless-steel fridge in dismay. “Can't they do the new plumbing any quicker? . . . Oh. I understand, Mrs. Castle. No, I'm not at my friend's place anymore, that didn't work out. Well, don't worry about it. I'll find a motel. Bye.”

  “Motel?” Ivy was standing in the kitchen doorway. “Carnegie, what's going on?”