There Must Be Some Mistake (13 page)

MONDAY I
was up early. I went out for a walk hoping to refresh my aging muscles, feeling bad that I hadn't been exercising. I was planning to go once around Forgetful Bay and then stop at Chantal's for coffee on my second tour, assuming she was there and receiving, but when I got to the extreme north end of the development there were three police cars at the Parker house. A small group of neighbors had gathered outside.

I found my brainy next-door neighbor Bruce and asked, “What's up?”

“Parker's dead,” Bruce said.

Another woman from the development, whom I recognized but did not know by name, said, “Suicide,” and shook her head.

“Jesus,” I said. “You sure?”

“Ella Maria's up in Houston,” Bruce said. “The police have called her and she's on her way back.”

“You know the wife?” I said. “I never met her. I don't even know if I've seen her.”

“You've seen her,” the unknown woman neighbor said. “She's hard to miss. Gigantic.”

Bruce said, “We've been to dinner a couple times. They were great together. She is big, like an Amazon woman, you know? Remember that thing when big women were calling themselves Amazons back in the day? She's one of those. And he was a small guy.” Here he held out his hand at an exaggeratedly low level, as if Parker were belt-buckle high.

“Cute,” I said. “Parker was strong as an ox. Marine, wasn't he?”

“Was,” Bruce said. “Been out a good while. But I guess marines are never really out.”

“This is crazy. They sure it's suicide?”

“Gun,” the unknown woman said. “He must have been a lot less happy than the rest of us.”

“We're having a bad year in the neighborhood,” Bruce said.

“Say that again,” I said.

I hung around for a few minutes, then headed for Chantal's, hoping she was up and around. I hadn't heard from her for a few days and she hadn't returned a couple calls. I was shaken by Parker. Dead. Bang, like that. I mean, with what he told me about the dancing woman, and the true-crime TV shows I'd watched, I thought the usual things—murder, multiple murder, suicide pact. I hoped his wife wasn't dead somewhere. Who knew if she was really in Houston to begin with? People in the murder shows are forever setting up alibis before they kill their spouses. I guessed it wasn't odd to hope he had committed suicide when the alternative was worse.

I texted Chantal “Parker's dead. Prob suicide. Coming yr way” and continued my walk to her house at the far end of our development. Before I got there a neighbor with no hair at all stopped me in front of a tan house and asked what was happening at that condo with the cop cars. He said he'd been watching out the window for half an hour.

I introduced myself, and he did likewise, telling me his name was Oscar Peterson. “Like the piano player,” he said.

“I think Duncan Parker's had some trouble,” I said. “Nobody knows anything, really, not yet. His wife's coming back from a business trip is what they say.”

“I knew it,” Peterson said. “It's that woman, you know, the woman they found there? My wife said that was trouble. Damn.”

“Could be,” I said. I gave him a facial expression I imagined was “who knows?” and moved on.

At Chantal's I rang the doorbell and waited, taking a couple steps back from the door so I wouldn't be too close when she opened it. I hate it when people ring my doorbell and then stand right up close to the door.

“Look who's here,” she said, the door cracked less than three inches.

“Pedestrian crossing,” I said, pointing at the crack she was peering through.

“Yes, sir,” she said, swinging it full wide. “Get inside the house.”

I went straight to the kitchen for a paper towel. I felt a little sweaty.

“You all right?” Chantal asked, following me. “Want coffee? Want bacon?”

“You got bacon?”

“I am baking some bacon right now,” she said.

Then I smelled it. It was there all along and I'd missed it. It was in the oven. We'd had some before when she had me sequestered. She cooked it on a rack sitting on a cookie sheet—the bacon. The grease falls and the bacon gets crisp.

“Sure,” I said. “I came around the bend down there by Parker's. There are cops and apparently he's dead inside. Plus gawkers. They think it's suicide, that's what some woman said. I didn't know who she was. She was talking to Bruce.”

“Are you kidding me? Parker? When?” she said. “How do they know it's suicide?”

“Don't know. This morning, last night? I don't know how they found out, either. Bruce said the wife was in Houston.”

“I thought she was a homebody. The wife.”

“Parker was over at my place a few days ago telling me how he wanted to get rid of her. I mean, he didn't want to hurt her, just wanted to be free of her so he could make time with the woman who danced in his driveway a couple months ago. Back when you got roughed up. Told me this woman was his piece of cake. A new woman, a new start.”

“He said that?”

“Well, approximately.”

“Fool,” she said. “Jesus.”

“I know. I was thinking on the way over I hope he didn't, you know, get her, too.”

“Get her?”

“The wife, the girlfriend, either one. Murder-suicide.”

“You're a nut. You don't know the wife, do you?”

“I know of her. Parker said she was really big, you know, like, big around. And tall. I mean she was already tall, like, man-tall, NFL-tall, and recently she ballooned through love of doughnuts.”

“I think I've seen her,” Chantal said. “There can't be two women that size around here, can there? She used to walk sometimes, I think. She's huge. I mean, like bug-your-eyes-out huge. It's wonderful, really. I mean, from the point of view of something you don't see every day.” She paused and stirred her coffee, looking over her shoulder out the window. “I guess that's not what I should be saying, huh?”

“It's our secret,” I said.

“It was inappropriate,” she said.

“You meant it as a compliment.”

“Yeah. I did. You know, the wonder of things,” she said. “Everlasting.”

Under a photo of a young and more attractive Duncan Parker in the next day's paper was the caption:

Morgan was in town for a few days, and we were at my place. She was upset by the news. “That's awful,” she said. “I always liked that guy, especially when I was younger.”

“What?” I said.

“I had a crush on him a couple years ago,” she said.

“Great,” I said.

“Things are getting kind of derailed down here, aren't they? Ng, Chantal, the dancer, now Parker.”

“It is adding up. We had a deal last week where a guy was having a fight with his girlfriend. They were throwing shit around and screaming. They were over by Chantal's and she called the cops, then somebody else showed up, maybe the girl's father or something, and the girl was pounding on the guy's door, trying to get her phone, which she'd apparently left inside, and he wouldn't open up, and that's when the cops cruised up in their cruisers, blue lights wailing, radios crackling, police chatter—”

“She get the phone?” Morgan said.

“Yeah, but what was funny was these kids staying across from this guy's condo, renters, I guess, threw open their doors and played that old TV cops song—‘who you gonna call' et cetera—at full volume right out into the floodlit night. It was terrific.”

“These kids,” Morgan said. “Where's Jilly?”

“She's coming later,” I said. “It'll be nice having you both here.”

“I'll bet,” Morgan said. “Should we invite Chantal, too? Maybe her daughter, Vacuum, or whatever her name is. Maybe some other neighbor ladies.”

“All right, OK, chill, will you? How's school?”

Morgan draped herself from one end of the sofa to the other, eating sea-salt-and-black-pepper Triscuits out of the box. She was wearing leggings and wedges and a thin scoop-neck tee that was way too long. By design, I assumed. “I'm not having a great time,” she said. “It is possible that architecture is no longer the dream of beauty I imagined.”

“Oh yeah? You mean you're changing?”

“Not sure,” she said. “This woman I know has a little house, and she asked me if I could give her some ideas about how she might renovate it, add a room, so I worked every night for two weeks drawing things for her, and, you know, I wasn't really thrilled by what I had.”

“Well, you're getting started.”

“I know, but even if I had come up with something, it would be crap, essentially this cute, slightly interesting, crappy little house addition in a sea of tract houses.”

“You have to earn the right to do the big things, I guess.”

“You never did,” she said.

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “Anyway, I quit before I began. Architecturally.”

“You worked for architects, though, didn't you?”

“A little, not much. One was pretty good. One wasn't. I certainly wasn't.”

“Me neither,” Morgan said. “The stuff I do sucks. My answer to everything is a corrugated metal building. I love those.”

“The moment came and went, I think, didn't it? For a while everybody was doing those.”

“Yeah. Before my time,” she said. “Maybe I can bring 'em back.”

“Or maybe the idea was, I don't know, exhausted.”

“Thanks, Dad. That's what I'm talking about. Even if I did it brilliantly now it would be shit. That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I made a mistake there.”

It was getting toward four in the afternoon and I felt tired so I said I was going to take a rest and invited Morgan to make herself at home. I went to my bedroom and got in the bed. It was cool and wonderfully refreshing and dark in the bedroom. The windows faced west, but I had blackout curtains, a gift from God, given my sleeping schedule. I lay on my back with my hands at my sides flat on the sheet, two down pillows under my head, a light cotton summer blanket pulled up to my chin. Years ago I always slept with a CD of rainfall on Long Island playing on my compact stereo, a gorgeous CD called
Winter Light.
Maybe that was the photo on the CD cover, I can't recall. I thought maybe I'd buy a new player, since I didn't have one anymore.  I'd tried to find the CD on Amazon once, but no luck. I liked the photographer who did the cover, I remember that. Joel somebody. Very pretty, very calm. I had bought a dozen CDs of rain, but that was the only one that was any good. In the bed I practiced the art of remaining perfectly still. I listened to the lovely thrum of the air-conditioning system.

Jilly showed up later than expected, and the three of us went to the All Star Room for a late meal. It was nearing ten when we got there, and service was dwindling. Jilly and Morgan took turns making fun of me the whole time. I liked that because it meant what it meant, it was reassuring, which was all good fortune for me. I was feeling lucky to have two charming women to have dinner with. Sometimes, when nobody was around—no Jilly, no Morgan, no Chantal, no Diane—I got a glimpse of what a lonely life would be like, and it wasn't pretty. It was frightening, really. You see people who live in complete isolation, move a certain hesitating way, look like they are on rails going through the motions, and you can sort of figure what that's like, gray and repetitive and endless. And then you're thankful there is somebody—anybody—in the car with you, at dinner with you, across the table or in the room, somebody else there breathing. It makes a big difference. But then maybe most people have lives that are so full and rich they can't even imagine having lives that empty.

“What, you zoning out?” Morgan said. “Didn't get enough sleep this afternoon?”

“I was thinking how much I enjoyed your company. Both of you.”

“That's sweet,” Morgan said. “Isn't that sweet, Jilly?”

“That is damn sweet. You're right.”

“I was also thinking about
Wallander,
” I said. “In the Scandinavian version that guy is exactly the right amount of depressed, wised up, existentially damaged, et cetera.”

“Existentially,” Morgan said.

“Amen to that,” Jilly said. “Get me a plate of whatever he's having.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I've only watched about two of them,” she said.

“He has the whole set on DVD,” Morgan said.

“I think I knew that,” Jilly said to her. “But whenever he puts on the Swedish stuff I fall asleep because I am so existentially wearied.” She did some a cappella snoring for us then, a few quick snorts.

“OK, all right,” I said. “I like him. I'm old and tired like he is, and most of the time I feel about like he looks.”

“Identifies heavily with the protagonist,” Jilly said.

“Identifies heavily with a white swayback horse standing in a lonely grove nearby,” Morgan said.

“With a solitary silhouette in a fifth-floor window late in the evening,” Jilly said.

“Fine. Fine, thanks,” I said. “Let's move along. Let's talk suicide.”

“Great concept. Why didn't I think of that?” Morgan said.

“I'm talking about the Parker suicide,” I said.

“What about it?” Jilly said. “Are there developments?”