Authors: Linda Lee Peterson
Edited to Death (18 page)
I patted his shoulder and began walking him toward the door. “You may be right. Thanks
for coming over.” I stood on the front porch, idly deadheading the mums in the planter
boxes while I watched Glen drive off. If only tidying up the rest of my life were
so easy.
When I came back into the living room, Michael was looking sober. “Glen’s right,”
he said. “Leave it alone.”
“I will, I will. I just need to talk to John Moon tomorrow. Then, I’ll forget it.”
Michael scrutinized me. “I don’t believe you.”
“Michael—” I began to protest.
He held up a hand. “We don’t need to discuss it, Maggie. We’ve got a seven a.m. practice
tomorrow at the Oakland rink, and I just called John Moon to come a little early.
He’ll meet you in the grandstands at six-thirty.”
I prickled. “I can make my own arrangements to talk to Moon, Michael. You’re treating
me like one of the kids.”
He shrugged. “Not really. At this point, I think the boys have a far more secure grasp
on the concept of telling the truth and keeping commitments than you do. Besides,”
he added, “I’ll be right down there on the ice. I want to watch you tell Moon every
last thing you’re thinking about.”
We went to bed in silence.
When I arrived at Skate Oakland, the pink streaks of morning were just showing up
in the night sky. It had been a polite-but-businesslike start to the day at home.
Michael and I had exchanged information, but not affection. Schedules, rearrangements
so Anya could drop the kids off at school, negotiations over the dental appointments
and soccer practice later in the week. The kind of parental juggling dialogue that
takes the place of conversation in modern, middle-class households. Especially when
the wife is an adulteress and the husband is pouting. Michael and I left in separate
cars for Skate Oakland since we were both going on to work, and neither of us leaned
toward the other in the driveway, even for our routine goodbye kiss. I fretted about
the omission all the way to downtown Oakland, vaguely remembering that I’d read that
husbands who got a goodbye kiss every morning were at lower risk for heart attacks.
Great, now I could feel guilt about damaging every facet of Michael’s heart.
The ice rink had seen more bourgeois days. Once it had been home to indulged kids’
birthday parties—the kind where the birthday girl would show up in a little sequined
pink skating skirt, her hair pulled back in a ballet-style bun. Now it was distinctly
seedy and existed primarily for the pleasure of hard-core skating enthusiasts, homesick
Canadians who would come after work or early in the morning, lace up and take to the
ice, and head into the center to execute half-forgotten turns, camels, and spins.
It was also home to the Oakland Ice Devils, one of the East Bay’s official entrants
in the Northern California senior ice hockey league. They referred to themselves as
“Geezrs on Ice,” a self-deprecating name that belied how seriously they took their
sport. The Ice Devils were a motley group, tied together by nothing more than age
(all forty-plus) and the fact they couldn’t remember a day when they hadn’t skated—or
wanted to—since they had learned to walk.
A couple Canadians, of course, half a dozen guys from Midwestern places where
pierogi
or
lutefisk
had been on their mother’s tables, a Norwegian who’d left Trondheim behind for the
right engineering opportunity in Silicon Valley, Michael, who grew up worshipping
the two Bobbies (Orr and Hull), and one Korean-American cop—John Moon.
Moon and I sat in the grandstands and watched the pre-dawn skaters glide off the ice
as the Ice Devils filed out of the locker room and started warming up. Moon, his skates
next to him, was sipping from a commuter mug. He held up his thermos. “Want some herb
tea?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, I’m all-caffeine in the morning.”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s hear it. Michael says you’ve got some more theories.”
“Not theories, really, just some loose ends.”
“Such as?”
I told him about the mix-up at Josh’s school, and our worry that it was a deliberate
way to keep me from looking at the file.
“But you did eventually see the story file?”
“Yes, Glen Fox brought it over last night.” I shook my head.
“And there didn’t seem to be anything substantive in it. Either all the good stuff
had been removed, or Quentin hadn’t put much in it to begin with.”
Moon took a notebook out of his duffel bag, flipped to a page and handed it to me.
“Look at this inventory of what was in the file. See anything missing?”
I scanned it. “No.”
“Tell me everything about the call you got at the restaurant about your son,” he said.
“Don’t leave anything out.”
I talked him through the whole incident, including what Michael and I had sorted out
the night before—someone who knew our family, who knew where I was having lunch, who
knew what I had on, even knew the school would have the answering machine on at lunchtime.
“And the call came from a man,” I said. “And there’s only one male teacher at the
school.” Moon listened carefully.
“I don’t think that means much. The caller only said he was calling from the school.
That doesn’t mean he was actually there, or even on staff. Anything else? An accent?
Sound old or young?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t ask about that,” I said. Of course, it’s pretty noisy in
the restaurant, so it’s likely the hostess didn’t hear all that clearly.”
“I’ll have one of my guys talk to the hostess at Cock of the Walk again,” said Moon.
I handed back his notebook. “So what should I do?” I asked. “Do you think there’s
any chance Josh is in danger?”
He shook his head. “Probably not. It sounds to me like an expedient way to delay your
look at the file. But since there’s nothing missing, that doesn’t make much sense.
What does concern me, however, is that whoever dreamed up this scheme knows a good
deal about you. More confirmation of what we already suspected—whoever murdered Mr.
Hart is someone you know.”
Stated so baldly, this information twisted knots in my stomach.
“Great,” I muttered. “So what else can I do to help?”
“Keep thinking. If you get more ideas or information, call me. Other than that, I’d
concentrate on your life, if I were you.” He poured a little more tea into the thermos
cup. “You should be pretty busy, between the kids and your new job.”
I looked back at the ice. Michael was doing warm-up sprints. Watching him move, so
assured and intense, so physically present, I felt that familiar little flutter inside.
I remembered the day Michael and I met, at an ice rink. My do-good college sorority
had taken a group of street-tough kids on an outing. When the lights went down for
one of those corny “couples only” sessions, Michael had skated over to our little
giggling group, gave a mock bow to all the girls, and asked me to waltz. He was such
a wonder on the ice, it didn’t matter how mediocre I was. “Just relax and trust me,”
he said, and I’d found myself skating backward, swooping across the ice with a grace
I didn’t know I had. My sorority sisters and our little charges burst into applause
when the tinny recording
of The Skater’s Waltz
drew to a close. Boy, did that seem like a long time ago.
“And what with my marriage on thin ice, and all,” I said bleakly, “since we’re here
at the rink.” I paused. “You know, we met at an ice skating rink.”
“Michael told me,” said Moon. “I know he takes your sons skating. But you don’t join
them?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s a chance for them to have guy-time, without me hanging
around.” I shrugged. “They don’t usually invite me, anyway.”
Moon cleared his throat. “People’s marriages are always mysteries to outsiders, aren’t
they? They’re like those puzzle boxes. You can’t figure out how they open unless you
know the right combination of moves. And usually, only the two people inside the relationship
know those moves.”
“How about yours?” I said, “A puzzle box, too?”
Moon smiled noncommittally. “Does your shamelessness about prying come from being
a journalist? You have license to ask anyone anything you want?”
I sighed. “And my mother raised me to have such lovely manners,” I said. “I used to
ask people questions for a living, but now I’m just trying to understand what kind
of a mess I’m in—and what part of it is my own making.”
“Which mess are we discussing?” asked Moon. “Quentin’s murder, or your marriage?”
“Both, I guess,” I said.
“Only you can know what you’ve done to the relationship with Michael,” said Moon.
“You and Michael have to sort that out. And that’s private. But murder is a public
business, and that’s why it’s in the hands of public servants like me and my colleagues.
Your job is to keep thinking and keep me informed.” He screwed the top back onto his
thermos. “And to stay out of harm’s way.” He packed the thermos into his gym bag.
“And now I’ll answer the question you asked me a few minutes ago. My wife and I have
been married for twenty-six years, so after all this time, I’m sure our marriage is
a puzzle box to the outside world. Most days, it’s a puzzle to us, as well.”
“In what way?”
“Who knows why any marriage works? In both my jobs—as a high school counselor and
now as a cop—I see domestic lives that look like broken-down wrecks at the junkyard.
Parents who can’t talk to their sons or daughters. Daughters and sons who keep secrets.
Husbands and wives who let things get to such a terrible place that a marriage is
irreparably broken, or worse, becomes violent.” He stood up and slung the strap of
the bag over his shoulder. “And then I go home, determined not to succumb to the pressures
that drive people apart.” He looked at me. “Police officers often have very tumultuous—and
frequently, not very successful home lives, you know.”
“I thought that was just in the movies.”
“Occasionally movies tell the truth.”
“But you’ve been married for a long time,” I persisted. “Beating the odds?”
He smiled. “I hope so. I have a few rules for myself. I try to leave the job on the
job. And I try to pay attention to what the AA people say—one day at a time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I try not to worry what trouble my son may get into when he becomes a teenager. I
just try to teach him every silly card game I know. I try not to worry that my daughter
won’t get into the music conservatory she’s got her heart set on. Instead, I just
show up at all her concerts and recitals and applaud until she gives me the ‘Okay,
Dad, now you’re embarrassing me’ look.”
“And your wife?”
“Ah, my wife,” he smiled, “Well, you already know I let her shop for my clothes.”
“And?”
“And, same thing as with our kids: one day at a time. I try to concentrate on what
will make this evening pleasant, instead of worrying about all the chores we have
to do on the weekend, or feeling hurt that her mother doesn’t approve of my profession,
or that my mother thinks she isn’t much of a cook because she’s not Korean and can’t
make
kimchi
.”
I thought about my early-morning parting with Michael, and the goodbye kiss that didn’t
happen. If we were being measured on the one-day-at-a-time standard, we’d failed the
test before it was even light outside.
“But you must know these things,” said Moon. “You and Michael have been married a
long time as well.”
“Twelve years,” I said. “And we seem to have hit a bump in the road.”
“Over, under, or through,” said Moon. “I tried to sleepwalk through my military service,
but that’s the one infantry lesson I remember.” He looked down at the rink. “I’m older
enough to give you some advice, Maggie. Get past the bump.” He gestured at the rink.
“I’ve got to get out on the ice.”
I looked up at him. “Thanks for meeting me this morning.”
He smiled. “I don’t think Michael gave either one of us much of a choice, did he?”
He maneuvered down the steep stairs, stopping to exchange shoes for skates, opened
the gate, and glided onto the ice. I took a deep breath, picked up my handbag, and
went out into the full light of day.
Calvin was waiting in my office when I arrived at work. Waiting? More like ensconced.
Feet up on my desk, telephone receiver tucked under his chin, he gestured me in with
a mug of coffee. My mug.
I sat down in the visitor’s chair. “My, my, we look comfortable.”
“Okay, okay, I got it,” he said into the receiver. “Hold on a sec.” He put his hand
over the receiver. “Be with you in a minute, Maggie.”
“Take your time,” I said.
“Good, good,” he said, “Catch you later.”
He beamed at me. “So the plot thickens.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I heard about the screw-up with your kid yesterday.”
I grimaced. “I don’t like it. And you should have heard Michael on the subject.”
“Maggie, it’s a warning. We’re onto something.”
“We?”
