Eclipse

by Hilary Norman

  ‘I told you why.’

  ‘Because if you’ve come here to pry into my private life or find some kind of story, then dinner and any further conversation are off the menu.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Chauvin looked distressed. ‘The last thing I intended was to upset you. I swear I will never Google you again.’

  Grace almost laughed. ‘I guess I overreacted.’

  ‘Not really, after what you’ve been through.’ He shook his head. ‘The worst kind of nightmare, and I’ve reminded you of it, but it was there for me to read, you know, and I wanted to be honest with you.’

  Grace let the words hang for a moment.

  ‘Let’s just say I prefer not to talk about it,’ she said.

  ‘Understood,’ Chauvin said.

  ‘I hope so,’ Grace said.

  The evening slipped by pleasantly enough, with Sam, Claudia, Saul and Mel – and Joshua too for a while – all helping to make it relaxing for the visitor and for Grace. Only Cathy absent, delayed by an event at JWU, hoping to arrive in time to meet her mother’s ‘mystery Frenchman’.

  Sam’s barbecues were always easygoing, held out on their small deck, doors open to the kitchen and lanai, the calm waters beyond made occasionally choppy by boats whose skippers generally respected the laws and codes of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway that ran from Key West all the way to Norfolk, Virginia.

  The conversation was easy too, Chauvin readily answering questions about his life and family at home in Strasbourg, though less forthcoming about his career to date.

  ‘Not enough to tell yet,’ he said.

  ‘It takes time to build that kind of career,’ Sam said.

  ‘And luck, too, I guess,’ Saul said.

  ‘Which leads me to my very cheeky request.’ Chauvin’s blue eyes focused on Sam. ‘Is there a chance that you might grant me a “tagalong” – I believe that’s what you call it?’

  ‘You want to ride in a patrol car,’ Sam said.

  ‘What I would really love, if it were possible,’ Chauvin said, ‘would be to ride with you and your partner.’

  Sam regarded him for an instant, then nodded. ‘I have no problem with that,’ he said. ‘I know journalists have to make use of anything that comes their way.’

  ‘It’s true, I guess,’ Chauvin said, ‘that we are all opportunists at heart.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ Sam said. ‘Though I’m going to call my partner, make sure we’re not clashing on anything.’

  ‘Thank you, Sam,’ Chauvin said. ‘I’ll be forever in your debt.’

  ‘I don’t know how long we’ll be able to give you,’ Sam said. ‘It’s a busy time.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Chauvin said, ‘with this Black Hole killer.’

  ‘You read about that,’ Sam said.

  ‘Thomas does a lot of reading,’ Grace said.

  Cathy arrived just before Chauvin left.

  ‘Dieu,’ he said when he saw her.

  Grace glanced at him sharply.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchman said. ‘It was just the resemblance.’

  Sam smiled. ‘We know.’

  ‘I hoped to be here earlier,’ Cathy said, ‘but things at college dragged on.’

  ‘I gather you’re going to be a great chef,’ Chauvin said.

  ‘I love to cook,’ Cathy said, ‘but so do a lot of people.’

  ‘They’re not all as beautiful as you,’ he said.

  ‘God.’ Cathy laughed.

  ‘If Cathy becomes a successful chef,’ Mel said coolly, ‘it’ll be her talent and hard work that get her there.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Chauvin smiled at her. ‘You’re right to rebuke me.’

  ‘Not that Cathy isn’t gorgeous,’ Mel allowed.

  Chauvin held up his hands. ‘I’m saying nothing more.’

  ‘He seems a nice guy,’ Saul said afterward.

  ‘A little smooth and maybe naive,’ Sam said, ‘but I don’t think there’s any harm in him.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Grace said.

  ‘He’s clearly besotted by you, sis,’ Claudia said.

  ‘And not quite as young as you made out,’ Sam said to Grace.

  ‘I rather think it’s you, the detective, he’s after,’ she said. ‘Not me.’

  ‘I thought he was cute,’ Cathy said.

  ‘He could get annoying in large doses,’ Mel said.

  ‘I’m concerned that he’s here for a whole month,’ Grace said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ Sam told her. ‘Al and I will help him out tomorrow, answer his questions, maybe suggest one more get-together just before he leaves, make it clear he’ll have to fend for himself.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little rude?’ Saul said.

  ‘Grace saved his life,’ Cathy said. ‘She’s allowed to be rude.’

  May 26

  The doctor was feeling tense tonight.

  The way he often felt before important days.

  All days were important to a doctor.

  Every encounter vital to a patient.

  He realized that. He felt their need.

  He wasn’t sure if they always comprehended his empathy.

  Hard to tell when you were up on a pedestal.

  The way all doctors deserved to be.

  Some days were tougher than others. Long, arduous days when it was sometimes difficult to remember to rise above, to remind himself that he was entitled to his pride. When other people, often stupid people, got in the way of that.

  His reading tonight was biblical, his need for inspiration; drawing it from The Acts, the story of Peter raising Aeneas from his sickbed through Christ.

  On nights like this, he craved inspiration.

  A missing person’s report had come in early Thursday morning that had everyone in Violent Crimes on edge.

  Marie Nieper, age thirty-four, divorced, living alone in a condo on Harding Avenue. Presently working on a home study course in interior design.

  She had missed a lunch appointment with a girlfriend yesterday, and no one had heard from her or seen her since.

  Bad vibes all around.

  Thomas Chauvin arrived at the station at eleven-thirty.

  Sam gave him a swift tour of the building, as promised, and then he and Martinez walked him along Washington Avenue to Markie’s for a sandwich.

  ‘Is this where all you guys hang out?’ Chauvin asked.

  ‘Not all,’ Sam said. ‘But Al and I like it.’

  ‘Me too,’ Chauvin said.

  He ordered a club sandwich and Diet Coke, then asked if Sam minded him asking a couple of personal questions.

  ‘Depends how personal,’ Sam said. ‘You can try.’

  ‘I’m just interested to know how you and Grace met,’ Chauvin said.

  Sam glanced at Martinez, saw his partner’s dark brows rise, then looked back at Chauvin. ‘We met through work.’

  ‘Great good fortune,’ the other man said.

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ Sam said.

  ‘Saul told me that you guys adopted Cathy,’ Chauvin said.

  ‘Yes, we did,’ Sam said, wondering just when Saul might have told him that.

  ‘Why don’t you give us your research questions now?’ Martinez said curtly.

  ‘OK.’ Thomas Chauvin opened his notepad. ‘I have quite a few.’

  ‘Great,’ Martinez said.

  ‘You did ask the guy,’ Sam said.

  The questions were straightforward, easy for them to answer.

  Points of police procedure, mostly, relating to violent crime, nothing they felt it inappropriate to respond to.

  They gave him thirty more minutes, then told him that if he wanted to do the tagalong, they needed to make a move.

  ‘This is a great start to my trip,’ Chauvin said.

  ‘Glad to help,’ Sam said easily. ‘We’ll drive around some—’

  ‘And then you’ll have plenty of time to take a long, slow look around by yourself,’ Martinez said.

  Mildred was scheduled to check i
n at the Adams Clinic at two.

  However bad she’d been prior to and during her visits to Dr Sutter and Ethan Adams, David could not remember ever having seen her as jittery as she was today.

  ‘What can I do?’ he had asked her at ten.

  ‘You could take me for a drive?’ she’d said.

  ‘You got it.’

  She had wanted to go to South Beach.

  They had parked the car and taken a stroll along the promenade, and then, seeing that her old bench was unoccupied, they’d sat down for a few minutes.

  ‘Old friend,’ she said, giving it a little pat.

  David said nothing, giving her time.

  ‘How about a walk on the beach?’ Mildred said after a while.

  They walked in silence, holding hands.

  ‘Remembering Donny?’ David asked at last, gently.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But that’s not why I wanted to come today. I’ve always wanted to do this here with you.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty more times we can do it, if you like,’ he told her.

  ‘Maybe.’ Mildred smiled at him. ‘Though I don’t think I’ll be needing to come here again, to this place. What you and I have is so much more.’

  ‘What you had with Donny was the world to you,’ David said. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Back then, I guess it was,’ she said. ‘But I know different now.’

  They walked back to the edge of the beach, shook the sand out of their shoes, and went back to the car.

  The detectives were still in Martinez’s Chevy, fielding Chauvin’s questions when, almost over the Julia Tuttle Causeway, Sam answered a call from Joe Sheldon, who said that he and Cutter had just spotted a red-haired woman in overalls getting out of a black Suzuki SUV carrying two bags.

  ‘Probably nothing,’ Sheldon said, ‘but she’s knocking on someone’s front door right now.’

  ‘Address?’ Sam said.

  ‘Lenox Avenue, near 7th, east of Alton Road.’

  ‘There in ten.’ He twisted around in his seat. ‘Gonna have to drop you off, Thomas.’

  ‘Can’t I come along?’ Chauvin asked.

  ‘Afraid not,’ Sam told him.

  ‘I promise to behave.’

  ‘Where’d you leave your car?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘I came on the bus,’ Chauvin said.

  ‘Good.’ Martinez waited until they were on Arthur Godfrey, and pulled over. ‘Have a nice day.’

  ‘Thanks, guys.’ Chauvin opened the door. ‘I hope I get to see you again.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ Sam said. ‘Give me a call at the start of your last week and we’ll fix something up.’

  Chauvin got out and shut the door.

  Martinez gunned the engine.

  Just before two p.m., in the offices on Collins Avenue that Dr Bartolo Lopez shared with several other physicians, Mrs Angela Valdez – one of the part-time receptionists, just back after two weeks’ vacation – was catching up on a few things with the doctor.

  ‘A terrible thing happened,’ Dr Lopez said. ‘I’m not sure if you were still here or not.’ He paused. ‘The Delgado murder?’

  Angela Valdez’s eyes widened. ‘Who got murdered?’

  More than one Delgado on their books.

  The doctor filled her in, and the receptionist’s horror grew, recalling the last time she’d seen Beatriz Delgado, when she’d had an argument with her daughter in the waiting room.

  ‘Just one day before I went to Portugal,’ she said.

  Lopez looked at his calendar. ‘Your last day was the tenth, right?’ He shook his head. ‘If I’d known they’d been here, I would have told the police.’

  ‘You think it could be important?’

  ‘I think everything could be important when it comes to the last few days of a murder victim’s life.’

  Angela Valdez crossed herself. ‘Should we call the police now, Doctor?’ She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Though your next patient’s due.’

  ‘It’s waited this long,’ Lopez said. ‘I’ll call them later.’

  Mildred was all checked in.

  Her room was comfortable, furnished in soft apricot tones, and if it had not been for the array of call buttons and sockets for emergency equipment on the wall behind the bed, she might almost have been in a hotel.

  The last time they’d been in a hotel had been on their honeymoon. Boston first, then New York City. David had encouraged her to see her elderly parents, from whom she’d been estranged for many years, but they’d seemed almost like strangers. Too much had happened to her over the years, the void between them too deep, but they’d all behaved well, and Mildred was glad she had seen them again.

  After all, she could not be certain of seeing anyone clearly again . . .

  Stop that, she told herself. Cataracts were nothing, her surgery a mere trifle to Ethan Adams.

  Yet still, she’d been dealing with a brand-new sense of dread, unrelated, she felt, to her ridiculous squeamishness.

  It had begun plaguing her about a week ago.

  The dread that something might go wrong.

  That something bad was going to happen.

  ‘Dollar for your thoughts?’ David’s voice broke in.

  She smiled at him. ‘Not worth a penny.’

  There was a knock, and Dr Merriam poked his head around the door. ‘Welcome, Mrs Becket,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

  ‘I tried heading for Mexico, but my husband stopped me,’ Mildred said.

  ‘I thought you said you were going to behave,’ David said.

  ‘Is there anything you need?’ Scott Merriam said.

  ‘Sedation,’ Mildred said. ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘Doctor Wiley and I are both on duty,’ Merriam said, ‘so if you need anything.’

  ‘I’ll ask, thank you.’

  ‘Meantime, you just try and relax,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Huh,’ Mildred said.

  Sam and Martinez took over from Cutter and Sheldon on Lenox Avenue.

  The SUV was parked right outside.

  ‘No tinted windows,’ Sam said.

  ‘The Naples neighbor could have been wrong about that,’ Martinez said.

  The redhead answering the door was African-American and male by gender, a pin on his white overalls identifying him as ‘Marilyn’, with curves to match. He looked Sam over with approval, voiced no objection to admitting two Miami Beach detectives into the apartment.

  ‘This isn’t my home,’ Marilyn said. ‘My clients asked me to get the door.’

  The ‘clients’, waiting in the living room, were both in their late sixties, wearing skimpy towels. Both partway through Brazilian waxes, according to Marilyn.

  That thought alone enough to make the detectives’ eyes water.

  Dead end, and they both knew it.

  They went through the motions, asked ‘Marilyn’ very politely for ID, and the redhead did not refuse, handed over a driver’s license in the name of Dewayne Jones with a soft, resigned sigh.

  ‘Nothing illegal happening here,’ Dewayne/Marilyn said.

  ‘Except maybe your entry,’ the old guy said to the detectives, showing the first sign of resentment.

  ‘We knocked,’ Sam said.

  ‘And this person let us in,’ Martinez added, looking at Jones.

  ‘Would it kill you to say “lady”?’ Marilyn said.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Martinez said.

  ‘We’re sorry to have disturbed you,’ Sam said.

  ‘Not at all,’ the female client said. ‘You’re kind of hot, Detective.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Sam said, then turned to Dewayne/Marilyn. ‘I wonder if you could do me a big favor? It may sound kind of strange.’

  Marilyn smiled. ‘I think I can cope.’

  ‘Would you mind if I sniffed the contents of all your products?’

  Martinez groaned. ‘This just gets better and better.’

  ‘There’s no dope here,’ Marilyn told them.


  ‘We’re not looking for drugs,’ Sam said. ‘I’m just trying to track down a particular scent that beauticians sometimes use, but I’ve been unable to identify – you know how that kind of thing can bug you?’

  Marilyn shrugged. ‘Sniff away.’

  ‘Pardon me for breathing,’ the old guy said, looking down at his towel, ‘but what happens when this stuff stays on too long?’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Marilyn said.

  ‘Jesus,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Not what you signed on for when you married me,’ Mildred said to David.

  It was just past three-thirty, and though her surgery was not scheduled until five, Dr Merriam had come by a while ago to give her something to settle her nerves.

  ‘A dependent old woman,’ she went on. ‘If anything goes wrong, that is.’

  ‘It won’t,’ David said. ‘It really won’t.’

  ‘But if it did . . .’

  ‘Then that would be exactly what we both signed on for,’ David said. ‘After all, who knows which part of me is going to crumble next?’

  ‘It can’t,’ Mildred said. ‘I might need you to guide me.’

  ‘What I’ll probably need is help stopping you running around too soon.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What happened to positive thoughts?’

  ‘I’m not sure of that either,’ Mildred said.

  David’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

  ‘Take it,’ Mildred told him. ‘It might be important.’

  There was a knock, and Dr Wiley came in.

  ‘I’ll take this outside,’ David said.

  ‘Just wanting to know how’re you doing, Mrs Becket?’ Wiley asked.

  ‘Not too badly,’ she said. ‘Thanks to the pill Doctor Merriam gave me.’

  ‘That’s good.’ The doctor took her pulse, and she smiled, closed her eyes. ‘Very good. You just relax.’

  ‘Might as well.’ Mildred opened her eyes. ‘I’ve signed the consent forms.’

  ‘No going back then.’ Dr Wiley smiled. ‘Any questions?’

  She shook her head. ‘I just want to get it over with now.’

  ‘Waiting’s always the tough part,’ Wiley said, and patted her hand.

  Mildred usually found hand-patting patronizing, but from this young man she didn’t seem to mind too much. His hands were gentle and his eyes intelligent, and his exam careful as he listened to her heart and then felt her abdomen, though Mildred couldn’t quite imagine why it needed to be so thorough when all they were going to do was . . .