You Know Who Killed Me (7 page)

I never seem to visit Belle Isle in nice weather, when the picnic ground's in use and the culture crowd is drifting in and out of the Dossin Marine Museum with its dioramas of bootlegging boats and artifacts from the
Edmund Fitzgerald.
Admiral Perry's guns still guard the place, their muzzles spiked with twenty years' worth of birds' nests and exhausted condoms. I could have used the guns the time I almost left my brains on the softball diamond, soaked to my knees with snow. A lifetime ago. Someone's parole would be coming up for review.

There was talk of turning the island over to Lansing and making it a state park; anything to avoid paying for the upkeep. Everything on it needed painting or patching or tearing down and burning up.

Well, the same was true of the city where I work. It was rotting from the top down and from the inside out like Dutch elm. The politicians let the homeless live in tents on public property and boarded up the houses they didn't tear down.

I turned on a classical station to stop that train of thought. It could only lead to another three weeks in the Amy Winehouse Memorial Spa.

They'd picked the ball field to pitch their tents; a little Hooverville, only with nylon instead of canvas and space heaters powered by borrowed generators making a racket like billiard balls bouncing off the skulls of pro wrestlers. This was where all the folks who sold dead flowers on exit ramps and stood on street corners holding cardboard signs made from the north walls of their houses came to rest. Campfires were burning, against ordinance. I smelled Spam frying, coffee boiling, and cannabis. Joan Baez was driving Old Dixie down one last time on a portable CD player. Hip-hop vomited out of someone's earbuds, loud enough to cause a brain hemorrhage to the one wearing them. It seemed no one wanted to bother to learn the harmonica anymore.

I parked and approached a group of men and women constructing a bonfire on the pitcher's mound with chairs and mattresses. There's nothing like the smell of urine cooking to take your mind off the cold.

“Who's in charge?”

A man who was all white-stubbled chin and hook nose leaned a maple headboard against his knee and pulled a filthy scarf away from the bottom half of his face. He'd used his teeth to open bottles. “All of us are, brother. The island's a socialist state.”

“Okay, Woody. That's a shore-bound breeze wafting from Canada at about a thousand miles an hour. Where you going to sleep after you burn down all the tents?”

“What do you care, brother? What's anybody care what happens to us no more?”

“You know what McDonald's is paying by the hour?”

“Fuck you.”

“I don't either, but everyone else seems to. Happen to know where Amelie Gates is working today?”

“Don't know nobody by that name.”

“There a volunteer tent?”

He blew his nose on the sleeve of his camo coat. He was a colorful character. “That white one there, up by the fountain.”

“Much obliged, Woody.”

“The name's Howard. Who's this Woody you got me confused with?”

“A guy who sang about rock-candy mountains and jails made out of tin. You ought to look him up on your smart phone.”

“Got one, wise guy.” He dug it out of a pocket and shook it in my face.

“Okay, Howard. No offense meant.”

He was poking at his phone in the rearview. If he dug up Woody Woodpecker first, I was going to get my car keyed.

The bust of Dante Alighieri topped a marble pedestal on the main drag, wearing a cabbage on his head. What the author of
The Divine Comedy
was doing in that location was anybody's guess. He didn't look any too pleased to be there.

The tent erected nearby was really a canopy, stretched across the tops of aluminum poles secured with ropes and stakes. A long trestle table ran down the center with clam chowder, dumplings, scalloped potatoes, and shaved ham staying warm in aluminum containers above Sterno. A bevy of women wearing aprons over topcoats and earflapped caps kept the containers filled from an army of gas grills at the back of the tent and ladled the contents onto paper plates for those who couldn't help themselves. I got in line behind a red-haired kid with wads of Kleenex stuck under a pair of stereo earphones, but I didn't pick up a plate.

“Is one of you ladies Amelie Gates?”

“That's me.”

A woman behind the scalloped potatoes swept a sleeve across her brow. Her French accent was as out of place as Dante.

I didn't know what to expect; a drawn-looking woman, maybe, with pinched nostrils and dark circles under her eyes. Maybe someday I'll learn not to form conclusions ahead of evidence, and then my detective training will begin.

The Widow Gates was small, but built to proportion, with a small upturned nose, eyes like black olives, and a delicate mouth set in a small square chin. Her figure was indeterminate under the apron and quilted coat. The checked hunter's cap covered her hair, but it would be as dark as her eyes and probably short; I have fixed ideas about Gallic women. The smile she wore to greet me looked genuine, and entirely without regret. But everyone mourns in his or her own way. They don't all tear at their faces and scrape their knees throwing themselves on the coffin at graveside.

“You look like you could use a break.”

“We all do. What makes me special? Where's your plate?” She looked doubtfully at my suit and warm overcoat.

“I'm not hungry,” I lied; the fare smelled like a Nordic feast, and I hadn't eaten since Subway last night. “I'm here on business, if you've got a minute.”

She glanced sideways at her fellow volunteers. “That's just about what I've got, Mr.—?”

“Walker.” I held out my card. “I'm trying to find out who knows who killed Donald Gates.”

 

EIGHT

The smile faltered a little when she read the card. She turned to the woman standing next to her. “Beverly, can you look after my station for a few minutes?”

The woman nodded, and moved into the middle position between dumplings and potatoes. Amelie Gates ditched her apron and we left the canopy and sat down at an unoccupied picnic table. She was sweating a little from standing over the heated dishes; she unbuttoned her coat and let it hang free. She was slender and moderately busty.

“Those billboards were a good idea,” I said. “People drive by them every day. They stick.”

“I can only take credit for the line. Putting up signs was Michel's idea.”

“Michel?”

“Our—my son. He's ten. He remembered when our cat went missing two years ago, and we put up posters all over the neighborhood with its picture. I was crying at the time, over so little news from the sheriff's department. He's a sweet boy. Making the arrangements kept us busy and took our minds off our grief. He helped me pick out the photograph. It's one of my favorites; I didn't know, when I took it—it would be—” Her chin quivered. She looked down at her hands folded on the table.

“Did you find the cat?”

“No. Does anyone ever?”

“Once, anyway. It was found in perfect health, licking the condensation off the wall of a luggage compartment in an airplane a thousand miles away from home. You never know about these things.”

“The hell with the cat. He barfed all over my best sofa.”

“Tell me about Donald. Lieutenant Henty said you met in Quebec.”

“My father was caretaker of a hunting lodge. He still is. The place Donald used to hunt was bought by a corporation and reserved for executive retreats. I worked the counter, checking in guests and seeing to their comfort. He was cute. He had a start on a beard—it's kind of a uniform of the sport—but it was coming in sort of sparse and ginger-colored. It made him look younger than he was rather than the other way around. I was—I guess you could say I was—” She groped through her command of the language.

“Smitten.”

She brightened. “Yes. It's an old-fashioned word, isn't it? You don't hear it much anymore.”

“In a few years half the world won't be able to understand the other half. What did he hunt?”

“Elk.” She shook her head, still smiling. “He wasn't very good at it, I'm afraid. In eight years he never shot one. Do you know what I think? I think he had lots of chances but never took them. It was just an excuse to get away with friends and commune with nature.”

“What were his friends like?”

“I never really got to know them. He'd had some of them since high school, and they were scattered all over the United States. They only got together during the season, and he stopped going after Michel was born. The trips were too expensive to justify, with a family to look after.”

“I'd like the names of his friends, if you can get them.”

“I suppose I can. He kept an address book. Why?”

“I used to hunt deer with my father upstate. He always said if you really want to know who your friends are, you should spend three days with them in a hunting camp. The veneer wears off quick.”

“Why would someone kill Donald? That's the question I want to ask when they find who did it.”

I lit a cigarette, mainly to cover the smell of warm food drifting my way. I don't eat breakfast and I didn't want to chisel off the chronically hungry. “You seem pretty sure they'll find him.”

“I have to. It's all I have, apart from my son. I lost the baby, you know.”

“I heard. I'm sorry. What do you think of the reward your church put up?”

She looked me in the eye. “It's a damn nuisance. People keep calling the house with what they think they know. I tell them to call the sheriff, or the church. I've tried to persuade the Reverend Melville to withdraw it. She says that's up to the person who offered it, and he's adamant. Do you know who he is?”

“Do you?”

“No. I think if I could just talk to him, make him see the reward is actually getting in the way of the investigation, he'll see my side. But Florence won't budge. Budge, yes?”

“Yes. I think your English is better than you make out. Pretending to have to think about what someone's saying to you is a good way to buy time while you think of what to say back.”

Up close her eyes weren't black at all, but a deep shade of brown.

“Do you always say exactly what's on your mind?”

“When I think it'll save time.” I pointed to the pocket where she'd put my card. “You can get me on my cell when you have the names of Donald's hunting buddies. Men open up among themselves more than you might think, especially over drinks and euchre.”

“Euchre?”

“Card game: one of those cuss-and-slam-down-a-card affairs. It's not played much outside the Midwest.”

“He never mentioned it. Do you know how to play?”

“I'm rusty, but I could brush up.”

“Will you teach me? I've been looking for something to occupy my thoughts since the billboards.”

“I'd be glad to; just as soon as I brush up on it myself.”

She smiled, and I saw the pain then.

“I'll hold you to that. It's the quiet that sets in, you know? After the ceremony and the good wishes and the offers to help are over and done with. It's one of the reasons I'm here feeding strangers while my son is being looked after by other strangers.”

“How are they getting along?”

“Children are resilient. Anyway, that's what everyone keeps telling me, or almost everyone. Michel's teacher thinks he should be in counseling. I don't know. What do you think?”

“What I think doesn't count. I've never had children.”

“That's refreshing. You're the first person I've spoken to on the subject who hasn't had an opinion.”

I was still looking for something in that for me when she moved on.

“Not just yet, I think. He knows he can talk to me about anything, when he's ready. I hope that's the right decision. We read all the books, when I was pregnant the first time. One says keep after them, another says let them alone. The authors all have the same letters after their names. I always look at their biographies, to see if they're actually someone's parent, but that doesn't tell me much. It isn't like studying for a test, where there are right and wrong answers, nothing in between.”

“That only applies to tests.”

She worked her hands; strong hands, the nails well kept, but not to the point of glamour. “Mr. Walker, do you think you can find who did this?”

I jumped on that one; something inside my field.

“Chances are someone will. Murders get solved as a rule. Most of them right on the spot, with the killer standing over the victim and his confession all ready. The problem ones take time, so that when there's a solution the press has lost interest. Then it shows up after the weather report, when people stop reading to get to the comics.

“It might be somebody you know,” I added. “An uncle, a shirttail relative, the oh-so-helpful next-door neighbor who posts all the signs; he's the one the police concentrate on. It happens. You have to be prepared for that, along with what comes with it.”

The woman who'd taken over her station came out from under the canopy and leaned down close to her.

“I'm sorry to interrupt, dear. Traffic's picking up.”

“I'll be there in a minute.”

When we were alone again Amelie said, “I can't imagine anyone I know could be responsible. But even if it's someone I thought was a friend, it's better than wondering if anyone I pass on the street is the one who did it.”

She stood.

“Thank you for coming. I feel better knowing Don hasn't slipped through some crack in the system.”

“There are plenty of those, but it doesn't happen as often as people think.”

“Don't forget about euchre.”

“I won't.”

I took the hand she offered me, let go of it, and left. There wasn't a thing to be gained by telling her that the solution's almost always as bad as the problem.