Night Game (6 page)

It was past 5:00 when we got back to our hotel. I was both exhausted and jangling from the coffee we’d been drinking. I also felt numb. Jeff paused for a moment outside the entrance.

“About earlier,” he began.

“Let’s just forget about it,” I said. “It wasn’t the world’s best idea.”

“It seemed like one at the time,” he said.

“So it did,” I said, putting my arm around his waist. “But I think we’re lucky it didn’t go any further.”

“Yeah.” He kissed me in a brotherly fashion, somewhere between my right eyebrow and my cheek.

We were crossing the lobby when Julie, the night clerk, called to us.

“Where have you guys been?” she asked. “Some man has been looking for you all night. I put him in your suite, Jeff.”

“What?”

“Some guy from Toronto,” Julie said. “He said he was a friend of yours, Kate. He waited in the bar for you until it closed. Then he asked me to let him in your suite, but I wouldn’t. When he said he knew you, too, Jeff, I figured it would be safer to put him there.”

“Does this guy have a name?” Jeff asked.

Julie looked through some papers on the desk.

“Yeah, wait,” she said, “I’ve got it here somewhere.”

“It wouldn’t be Andy Munro, would it?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said, surprised.

Jeff and I looked at each other and began to laugh, a tad hysterically.

“Surprise!” I said.

“Let’s go wake him up,” said Jeff.

“No, give me your key. I’ll handle this one alone.”

“You sure?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “But there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

“I’ll wait down here, then,” he said.

“I won’t be long.”

Jeff’s place was exactly the same as mine, if messier, on the floor above. I let myself into the room and turned on the entrance-hall light. Andy was on the bed, fully clothed, snoring. He looked so sweet that tears came to my eyes.

I tiptoed across the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and kissed his cheek. He opened his eyes immediately, looking confused, and made “where am I?” kinds of noises until his eyes focused. Then he smiled.

“This is a nice surprise,” I whispered into his neck.

He sat up and hugged me. He smelled stale, slightly sweaty, with an overlay of Scotch. But mainly he smelled like Andy, a welcome and arousing scent.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I think it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?” he asked. Letting go of me, he turned on the bedside lamp, and squinted at his watch. “Where the hell have you been?”

“It’s a long story” I said. “Let’s go to my room.”

I held off explanations until we were there, and I’d called down to the front desk to let Jeff know he could have his room back.

“I’ve got to get some sleep,” I said, stripping off my clothes.

“What about my explanation?” Andy asked, helping me.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I said. “Let me tell you about it in the morning.”

“Considering the circumstances,” he said, climbing into bed, “I guess I can wait.”

“I can’t,” I said, putting my arms around him.

I closed my eyes and felt the familiar textures of his body, the silk of his belly, the sandpaper of his beard, so well-known to me, and so exciting after being apart. But it wasn’t quite right. We were just out of synch, and I couldn’t erase the residue of horror and guilt from the night’s various events. Afterwards, Andy began to apologize. I stopped him.

“Tomorrow,” I whispered. A moment later, I was dead asleep.

I woke up at around noon, with a jolt. I had been dreaming about blood. Andy was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading the paper. I opened the curtains on a miserable day, stumbled to the stove, and poured myself a cup. Normally I drink tea to start the day, but this morning I needed the caffeine blast.

“About time,” Andy grumbled, but his eyes were smiling. “I’ve read everything in all three papers, including the Sun Coast Deaths. Average age, eighty-seven.”

“With the weather today, probably a few will drown,” I said, crossing to the table for a hug.

The rain streamed down the window panes, and the wind whipped palm branches against the glass.

“Some Florida vacation,” Andy said.

“How long have you got?”

“Just the long weekend. I’m going back Monday afternoon.”

“That only gives us three days,” I said.

“And you’ve already wasted half of one,” Andy replied.

“I’ll call the office. Maybe they’ll give me some time off. No, I’ll call Jeff first, see if he’ll cover for me. No, maybe I should let him sleep a little more.”

“Stop dithering, Kate. Call. Invite him up for a coffee. Then you two can explain exactly what you were doing all night long together.”

“Hanging out with cops, what else?”

Andy looked mildly astonished.

“Hey, I haven’t seen you for ten days. I have to get my fix somehow,” I said, picking up the phone.

“If I woke you up, I’m sorry,” I said, when Jeff answered. “You are ordered to present yourself at suite 413 for a cross-examination about our whereabouts last night. Staff Sergeant Munro presiding. Coffee’s on.”

I hung up and went back to the table.

“Here’s the sports section,” Andy said. He never reads it unless I point out a story I’m particularly proud of. It’s another reason we get along.

“Actually, I want the front,” I said. “Crime news.”

I went through the news sections quickly. There was nothing about Lucy’s murder, which didn’t surprise me once I thought about it. It happened too late for the morning deadlines. I was picking up the sports section when there was a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” Andy said.

“What’s the matter, are you afraid we’ll whisper in the hall to get our stories straight?”

“Something like that,” he smiled.

Jeff looked a little bleary and awkward, with his long pale legs hanging out of a tattered pair of navy blue jogging shorts. His T-shirt was faded and frayed. He did look cute.

“Morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Jeff,” I said. “I trust you slept well.”

“As well as could be expected,” he said.

“Me, too,” I said.

Andy handed Jeff a cup of coffee and motioned towards the sugar bowl and milk carton on the table.

“This court is called to order,” I said, in a deep voice. “His Honour Judge Andy presiding.”

“All I want to know is where you were last night, while I was enjoying the pink and grey hospitality of the Flamingo’s Nest Lounge,” Andy said.

“I’ll confess,” I said. “The evidence is all over the place. It’s a fair cop.”

I got up and went to the wastebasket.

“Exhibit A,” I said, holding up the empty half-bottle. “Champagne. Bought in honour of my birthday, and consumed on these premises.

“Exhibit B,” I said, holding up the other empty champagne bottle. “More champagne. Bought in honour of my birthday by my co-accused, Jeff Glebe. Consumed on these premises by my co-accused and myself, while I opened my birthday presents.”

“Exhibit C,” I said, crossing the room and posing with the leopard-skin nightie. “Birthday present, sent from Toronto by one Sally Parkes. I forgot to wear it last night.”

“It’s an improvement over that flannelette job with the pink flowers,” Andy said, approvingly. Jeff laughed.

“I only wear that when I have a cold,” I said, indignantly.

“Or when you have your period, or when we’ve had a fight, or when you’ve had a bad day at the office, or . . .”

“Enough, enough,” I said. “You don’t have to trot out all our intimate secrets. Jeff will be embarrassed.”

“Don’t mind me,” he said, smiling smugly. “I’m enjoying this.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Let’s get on with our tale of last night.”

I poured myself another coffee and sat down.

“After champagne and presents, Jeff was kind enough to take me out to dinner at an intimate French bistro . . .”

“Which I’ll charge to the
Planet
,” Jeff said. “I’ll call her Stinger Swain.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Then, after our duck
á
l’orange,
we went to a not quite so elegant roadhouse, where we drank long-neck Lone Stars and tequila by the shot and danced the Texas two-step, because there are some men in this world who actually enjoy dancing,” I said, getting in a small shot at Andy, who is terpsichoreally impaired.

“Finally, after they closed the bar on us, we strolled home along the moonlit beach telling each other tall tales.”

“Everything she has told you is the truth,” Jeff said, putting his hand on his heart.

“Wait a minute,” Andy said. “You strolled on the beach for four hours?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I forgot one thing. When we got to the hotel around the corner, we found a corpse on the beach.”

Andy didn’t quite spit out his coffee.

“And, of course, the cops kept us hanging around while they did all their police stuff,” I continued. “So that’s the story. Are you satisfied?”

I got up again and went to the phone.

“Jeff, I’m going to call Jake. Can I beg you to cover for me for the next couple of days? Andy’s here until Monday night. They probably won’t want that much.”

“No problem,” Jeff said.

“I’ll owe you one.”

“Don’t think I won’t collect.”

Jake grumbled about it, but gave me the time off. The pages were full of hockey playoffs, and another columnist was in Arizona looking at the Cactus League baseball camps, so Jeff would only have to file one column a day on the Titans. He left to see what he could scare up at the training camp in the rain. I put on the leopard-skin nightie.

It rained all day, giving us a good excuse to stay in. We called room service for club sandwiches and beer for lunch at 4:00, and played for the gin rummy championship of Western Florida. I won. Andy sulked. I made him feel better.

At 6:00, the phone rang. Detective Sergeant Barwell, sounding quite miffed, wanted to know why I hadn’t been in to sign my statement. I explained about my unexpected visitor, which he didn’t seem to think was much of an excuse.

“How soon can you get here?” he asked.

“Just a minute.” I put my hand over the receiver and explained the situation to Andy. He grimaced.

“I’m not standing in the way of a police investigation,” he said. “You’d better get it over with.”

“You come with me, and we’ll go out to dinner after,” I said, then turned back to the phone.

“We’ll be right down. Has Jeff Glebe been in yet?”

“He just left,” Barwell said. “Do you know where the police station is?”

I didn’t, so he gave me directions. Half an hour later we parked in front of the small stucco building, a wing of the municipal offices, modern and totally lacking in character. The door set off a beeper when we entered, which got the attention of a fat, bored-looking policeman sitting at one of half a dozen desks that crowded a room too small for the furniture.

He closed the dog-eared thriller he was reading and, marking his place with one pudgy finger, ambled over to the reception wicket. We told him our business. He glared and punched a button on the intercom.

“She’s here,” he said. “And she’s got a guy with her.”

Detective Sergeant Barwell’s disembodied voice told us to hold on a minute. The fat one didn’t move.

“You her lawyer?” he asked Andy.

“Do I need one?” I replied. “Is tardiness an indictable offence in Sunland?”

Andy looked pained. My inability to resist cop-baiting is not one of the things that endears me to him. I was saved from further transgression by Barwell’s arrival. He was dressed a bit better than the last time I saw him, in a shiny lightweight suit. His tie, which was an ugly swirling mess of blues and green, was firmly done up. He looked very anal-retentive.

“Asked him if he was her lawyer,” Fat Cop explained. “He didn’t answer.”

“I didn’t have a chance,” Andy said, smiling and putting his hand out to his counterpart. “Andy Munro. Not a lawyer.”

“No,” I interrupted. “He’s one of you.”

Barwell took his hand, warily.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“I think she’s trying to tell you that I’m a member of the Toronto police force,” he said.

“He’s a staff sergeant in the homicide squad,” I said, since he wouldn’t blow his own horn. “As in boss of the team. Like you.”

“And what do you have to do with this investigation?” Barwell asked. Fat Cop was taking it all in, his head swivelling back and forth like someone at a tennis match.

“Nothing at all,” Andy said, quickly. “I’m just visiting my friend Ms. Henry.”

Barwell grunted.

“I would have thought you would understand the importance of getting the statement,” he said.

Even Andy bristled at that.

“We’re here, now,” he pointed out.

“Right,” Barwell said. “You stay right there. Miss Henry’s coming with me.”

He took me by the arm. I pulled away from him.

“What’s the matter, you think I plan to make a break for it?” I asked. “I don’t need to be dragged around.”

“Kate,” Andy said, in a warning tone, then he turned to Barwell. “You could treat her with a little more respect.”

“I don’t know how you conduct your affairs up there on the big city homicide squad in Canada,” Barwell said, “but down here in the sticks, we expect cooperation from our witnesses. You might even say we demand it. She treats me with respect, she gets it back. She treats me like shit . . .”

He let his voice trail off. Andy was getting tight in the jawline, an early warning sign I’d learned to watch for.

“Let’s just cool it,” I said. “I apologize for not having come in sooner, okay? I’ll be pleased to cooperate, so let’s just go and get it over with.”

Barwell held the door for me. I thanked him and went through. He led me into a small office that was obsessive in its tidiness, and sat down behind his empty desk. There was another desk in the room, and a large corkboard. Pinned to it were a series of photographs of Lucy Cartwright’s body, taken from many angles. I chose the straight-backed chair that put me with my back to the view.

“What was your relationship with Lucy?” Barwell asked.

“I knew her, slightly,” I said. “I’ve seen her around the ballpark every spring for the past few years.”

“You like her?”

“Not particularly,” I said. “I thought she was shallow and she didn’t exactly give women sportswriters a good name.”

“Are you one of those women who goes into locker rooms with naked men?” Barwell asked.

“That’s one part of my job,” I said, trying to keep cool.

“You like looking at naked men?”

“Depends on the circumstances,” I replied. “And what has this got to do with the investigation?”

“What kind of family do you come from, anyway?”

“My father was a minister before he retired,” I said.

“And he lets you go around with naked men?”

“First of all, nobody ‘lets’ me do anything. I choose to do what I wish. Secondly, I don’t ‘go around with naked men,’ as you put it. I interview athletes, some of whom are undressed. That’s my job, and I do it very well. And finally, although it is none of your business, my father happens to be very proud of me.”

“No better than a whore, if you ask me,” Barwell said.

“Luckily, I’m not asking you,” I said. “Could we please get on with this statement you are supposed to be taking.”

“Lucy Cartwright was a slut,” he said. “Everyone in town knew that.”

“I think she was just a lonely, insecure person who didn’t know any other way to feel like she was appreciated,” I said, surprising myself.

“I think she got what she deserved,” Barwell said.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just stared at him, wanting to get out of the room.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not going to find the guy who did this,” he added.

“Why do you say guy? It could have been a woman, couldn’t it?” I asked. Barwell looked at me strangely.

“Could have been you,” he said. “Told me yourself you didn’t like her.”

“There are a lot of people I wouldn’t invite over to my house for dinner,” I said, “but I usually manage to stop short of blowing them away.”

“Tell me what you saw last night,” Barwell said, pulling his notebook out of his pocket.

“Again?”

He just stared at me. I guessed I didn’t have any choice.

“We were walking down the beach and I saw what I thought was someone asleep on one of those sunbathing chairs by the bar in back of the hotel. When I went to see if the person needed any help, I realized it was Lucy and that she had been shot.”

“Why did you think she had been shot?”

“There was blood all over the place,” I said.

“How did you know she hadn’t been stabbed?”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “It didn’t occur to me.”

“Didn’t occur to you,” he echoed. “But you said you didn’t hear a shot when you were on the beach.”

“Well, I guess maybe I did, without realizing it. Maybe that’s why.”

“The backfire.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t recognize it as a shot.”

“How could I? I don’t know from guns.”

“And it took you forty-five minutes to get from The El Rancho Roadhouse to the Gulf Vistas Hotel.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because we stopped for a while.”

“To rest,” he said, sarcastically.

“Yes.”

“Cut the crap,” he said, slamming his notebook down on the desk. “Your buddy has told me all about it.”

“All about what?” I bluffed.

“You tell me, and I’ll see whether you tell the truth.”

“I told you last night. I was feeling a bit dizzy, so I sat on the beach for a while. We talked.”

“What did you talk about?”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“I’ll decide what’s relevant around here,” Barwell said, loudly.

“I don’t really remember what we talked about,” I said. “We were singing, I remember that. We talked about work stuff, maybe, and about my birthday. It was my birthday last night.”

“And you look like you’re a bit old to be gallivanting around drunk in the moonlight, if you ask me,” Barwell muttered.

I didn’t speak.

“And way too old to be screwing in the sand,” he added.

“You pig,” I said, and stood up. “I don’t have to listen to your stupid insinuations. Just give me the damn statement to sign. This interview is over.”

“Sit down,” he shouted back, then spoke more quietly. “You probably don’t want your boyfriend out there to hear what you do when you are on the road with your friends from work.”

“I have done nothing I’m ashamed of,” I said. That wasn’t absolutely true. I hate ending sentences with a preposition.

“Did you notice anyone else on the beach when you were there?” Barwell asked, going back to his notes.

“Nobody.”

“After you found the body, what did you do?”

“We went into the hotel and called the police.”

“Have you remembered any additional information that you would like to add to your statement of last night?”

“No.”

Barwell opened his top drawer and brought out a piece of paper. He got up and handed it to me.

“Read this and sign it,” he said. “Then you can leave.”

He walked out of the office.