There Must Be Some Mistake (16 page)

DIANE CALLED.
“I'm not coming,” she said. “If you don't want me there I'm not coming. Simple as that. It's up to you, Wallace.” Diane was changing her plans again. I didn't care. I wasn't selling the condo and she wasn't going to hound me, so it made no difference. I said something like that to her, smoothing the edges where I could.

“Have you found other places here?” I said. “Your pal said you had a Realtor.”

“I do and she sends me stuff all the time. I look at it. Can't really tell much. I gotta get down there and look at 'em in person. Cal is useless for that.”

“He was at the house,” I said. “I came home and he was on the deck with Jilly. He'd let himself in, apparently.”

“I'm sorry about that,” she said. “He doesn't follow instructions as well as I had hoped.”

“What were the instructions?”

“Don't use the key,” Diane said.

“So why give it to him?”

“Didn't think about it. He asked, I supplied. Never occurred to me he'd use it.”

“Why? He's your guy, figures whatever he does is OK with you.”

“I get that now,” Diane said. “I apologize. My mistake.”

“I got the key from him,” I said.

“I heard. So there you go,” she said. “All is well.”

I didn't want to let her off the hook, but at the same time it looked like a lost cause, so I said, “Whatever. Are you guys back on?”

“I see him,” she said. “Not overmuch, but we're friends. He's down there to plead out. I'm afraid he's going to have to go away for a time.”

“Are you kidding? I thought the lawyer said the charges would wither and die.”

“The lawyer was wrong and is gone now, anyway. The new lawyer says plead and take a couple years. I don't know how they do this stuff, but the new woman says he could be out in eighteen months.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I should have been nicer to him.”

“He wanted to straighten out some stuff with Jilly. He said it didn't go well.”

“I got that from her,” I said. “She didn't say anything about it, but she was unhappy.”

“Cal's not that bad, really. I don't know—maybe everything will get better in time.”

“He's an ass,” I said. “He's not going to turn into a nice guy in prison, is he?”

“Probably not, I guess.”

“So the future doesn't look that rosy,” I said.

We were quiet on the phone a minute, as if things had reached a point where we were being friendly, and we were both realizing it at the same time and unsure about what was next.

“I'm going to have to split here in a minute,” I said.

“Company?” she said.

“No, just the usual. Must make my rounds.”

“Hmm,” Diane said. “OK. Before you go, though, can you tell me whether or not it's going to bother you if I move back down there? I could move somewhere else—Galveston, for example. One of the other towns. Seabrook, Freeport. It's that I know that area right there really well and I was always comfortable there.”

“The condo was the only thing that bothered me,” I said.

“I'm sorry about that,” she said. “That was a bad move.”

“That and having Cal deliver the news. But apart from that, wherever you want to move is good with me. I'd be happy to have you in town, or nearby—wherever you want to be. Please don't hesitate on my account.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I am sure.” And I was. That was a good moment between us, gave me hope for patching up our friendship.

Bruce Spores was working in his garage on his perpetual-motion machine when I started my walk. He had his garage set up as a workshop and was always in there with his electric tools wailing away, with his radio cranked up and blasting Rush Limbaugh for all passersby. Bruce kept his cars outside, in the drive, which was explicitly disallowed in the covenants, but nobody paid that much attention to the covenants anyway, so it didn't matter. People used the wrong colors on their condominiums, but it didn't bother anyone on the HOA board. I didn't mind the rules. They weren't that restrictive. I didn't have to think about what color to repaint when I had to repaint. But others always stretched things, redid their yards without reference to the covenants, added knickknacks and gazing balls, dwarfs and trolls, miscellaneous reindeer, fountains, swans, biblical scenes, trellises, flamingos, concrete rabbits—all these profoundly personal expressions of self. I was good with rabbits up to actual size and, of course, giant rabbits, four feet and above, but for the rest, well, some seemed to elasticize the borderline. Forgetful Bay was ruled with a droopy hand.

Bruce cocked his goggles up on his forehead, shouted for me to come in, and waved in my direction with a bright yellow electric drill he had in his hand.

I started up his short drive, and he came out of the garage, still carrying the drill. “Hey, Wallace,” he said. “You hear?”

“Hear what?” I said.

“More trouble,” he said, standing the drill carefully on the roof of his car. It was a portable drill, one of those with the battery in the butt of the handle. “There was a police bust over on the far end, past Parker's place. Some people over there were apparently running a business, a girl business.”

I figured he was in on the gossip. “What business, exactly?” I asked.

“Modeling and massage. Escorts. Three young women live there, and there were several gentlemen present when the bust went down. They have a four-bedroom place. Like yours, I guess, I don't know. Anyway, they were booked on solicitation and so on. They've been given thirty days to get lost.”

“There's still time,” I said.

“No one died,” Bruce said.

“That's a breakthrough,” I said.

“Mrs. Parker remains MIA,” he said. “Looks like she's taking a permanent vacation up there in Canada. Was it Canada? Or Alaska? I get them mixed up.”

“One of those,” I said. “They're hunting her now?”

“Yeah, apparently. Bernadette told Roberta about it. She got it from that Jean Darling.”

“I talked to her,” I said. “I told her Parker came over and yakked about wanting out. I didn't know what else I could do. I mean, she was police.”

“I expect she knew, just wanted to hear it from you.”

“Well, I don't know where she got it,” I said.

“Bernadette. Maybe he told her, too. They had some talk when she took over the HOA thing, so probably it was in there.”

“I was the corroborating witness.”

“Something like that, yeah,” he said.

“So you think Mrs. Parker is not coming back? What, did she actually, like, whack him?”

“Beats me,” Bruce said. “The cops want to talk to her. They say otherwise, but they're not so sure about suicide.”

“And now we have escorts, too. I like it,” I said.

“I've seen those gals at the pool a couple of times. They weren't bad.”

He grinned, his eyes sparkling behind gold-rimmed glasses. I was looking at the gray stubble on his cheeks and chin, flickering in the early afternoon sunlight. He would not have gone into a sex shop or massage parlor in a zillion years, and the big grin was a giveaway. I didn't blame him. I wouldn't have gone in, either.

“Entrepreneurial spirit at Forgetful Bay,” he said.

“You go to Parker's funeral?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Roberta did. I stayed away. She said it was small and funereal, in that church on Bayside. Know that place?”

“What denomination?” I said.

“Nonspecific. Episcopal or something. They had music and readings and such, she said. Par for the course. I don't like funerals, generally.”

“I probably should have gone,” I said.

“I don't imagine anyone expected you.”

I was struck by that. What did he mean? Did he mean something, or was he saying the next thing that had come to him? Did he mean nobody expected any particular person, or was it me that no one expected? Then I figured it was the first. Still—

“Any other weirdness happening?” I asked. “You seem to have your thumb on the throat of things.”

“Nah,” he said. “One of the Everly Brothers is ill again. So I heard.”

“Those damn Everly Brothers,” I said.

“The new people on the other side of you? They've requested permission to add two rooms under their place, off the garage, I guess. Board is going to OK it, apparently. Vote was close.”

“Not a great idea to build on the ground down here, is it?”

“No, but, you know, they've got a lot of folks to house. You meet 'em?”

“No. I knew Ng, but haven't met the Changs.”

He nodded at me. “That's all right, I guess. They keep to themselves, like good neighbors, right?” Bruce clapped me on the shoulder and reached for his drill.

“The best ones,” I said, smiling at him. “The very best.”

Bernadette Loo arrived at my door at eight in the morning a few days later with a worried look on her face and a FedEx mailing envelope in her hand, one of the cardboard ones for small documents. “May I come in?” she said, and, without waiting for an answer, she came in.

“Come in,” I said. I was not awake, straight out of bed, wearing tan shorts and T-shirt. Not my best look.

“Sorry about busting in on you in the morning,” she said. “I know you sleep in the morning, right? That's what I was told.”

“Ordinarily,” I said.

“Well, I apologize,” she said. “But I had to show you this.” She wagged the FedEx at me.

“What's that?”

“It's from Mrs. Parker,” she said. “Sent from Saskatchewan. Yesterday.”

“What does she say?”

Bernadette handed me the envelope. I pushed apart the lips where the “pull here” strip had been pulled and fished out several sheets of paper containing a lengthy handwritten note. I was struck at once by the wonder of the penmanship. The writing was beautiful, very old school and very fine, not at all what I would have expected of Mrs. Parker, the giant. “It's handwritten,” I said, fetching the reading glasses from my home-office alcove.

“I assume it's her hand,” Bernadette said.

I nodded and clicked on the light. Then I read the letter.

“I, Ella Maria Parker, have commenced a new life as a single woman, a widow, a survivor, and a person of the not-impoverished class, going on with my life following a series of misadventures that have left me transformed, a person unlike any I have been before in my fifty-odd years on this green earth, a frightened woman of reduced means, a woman with four pairs of blue jeans, all of which were purchased at TJMaxx in the last years of my marriage to Duncan William Parker, now deceased, my husband of twenty-some years, a man of accomplishment and character who suffered for many of those years as a result of my own limited ambition, confidence, and effort, but who nevertheless himself prospered in his public life as President of Forgetful Bay Condominium Homeowners Association, a member of the United States Marine Corps, and an honored member of the Kemah City Council in Kemah, Texas, the town in which we spent the better part of our marriage, and from which I recently fled. I am writing to you today this message to put down in writing those events and circumstances that led to the untimely and unnecessary passing of Duncan Parker from this life into the next, in a form and format in which I will have the opportunity to render those events and circumstances in their fullest and most comprehensive arrangement so that all might know the particulars, the ins and outs, as it were, of dear Duncan's many trials over the last years of our marriage, and may understand thus the fine details which permeated that marriage in which I operated as a partially functioning partner along with my beautiful husband who has now predeceased me through means unknown, a trick of fate to which I was not a party and in which I was not an actor in any capacity. I was, nevertheless, for the entirety of our marriage up to that point a constant companion to Duncan Parker in many things, and in particular to his wish to remain happily married, a fact not known to all, known, in fact, to only a few, to include myself and his surviving sister Bianca Del Toro Parker for these many years, up until the recent events to which I herein refer.”

I stopped at this point and invited Bernadette to join me in the living room where we might be more comfortable.

“We should get the police,” Bernadette said.

“Yes,” I said. “You haven't called them yet?”

“I wanted you to see it,” she said. “Since you were his friend.”

I shook my head. “Why does everybody think we were friends? I barely knew the man.”

“Well, he wasn't friends with anybody else,” she said.

“Call the police. Tell them you got this letter from Mrs. Parker and that we're reading it now.”

“It's not a confession,” she said.

“I guess not,” I said.

“It's a declaration of innocence.”

“We should call that Jean Darling woman,” I said. “She is police. She in your phone?”

“I think so.” Bernadette already had her phone out and was looking through her contacts. “Yes, I have it here,” she said.

While she talked to Detective Darling I looked over the rest of the letter. It was more of the same, that unlikely language in that pretty black script. It reported that they had some discussion about the marriage, about alternative resolutions to their divergent views, and she was “a little bit” despondent to learn that Duncan was not completely happy. She threatened suicide with a pistol and, when they struggled over possession of the pistol, the pistol discharged. “Ironically,” she wrote, “no one was hurt.”

I imagined her in Canada writing this letter reporting a disagreement that happened before his alleged suicide and noting, as she wrote, the irony of the gun going off and killing no one while he was preventing her suicide and then, presumably, using the same gun for his own suicide. I didn't feel so good about that. I mean, who thinks about irony when they are hurting, when a crisis is right on top of them? Irony is a luxury for individuals in big houses and expensive dressing gowns, not people at the mercy of events.