A Fistful of Rain Read online

  CHAPTER 21

  The caterers were out of the house within minutes of the last guest’s departure.

  Even though Click and Graham had departed, Van had lingered, offering to help with the cleanup. I could hear her and Joan talking in the kitchen, and just from the tenor of their voices, I knew they were talking about me, trying to stay quiet. I stood just outside the arch which opens into the kitchen, listening.

  “. . . bad it was,” Joan was saying.

  “She took a fall in Tokyo,” Van said. “End of the third set, just went right off the stage. Didn’t even know she’d done it.”

  “She’s not made for it.”

  “She’s brilliant.”

  “She’s a musician, Vanessa. Not a performer, not like you.”

  “She’s great onstage.”

  There was a rustle, the sound of a cabinet opening and closing. “My husband knew.”

  “About the drinking?”

  “Not that, not specifically. But he knew what she was in for, knew where you were all headed. He tried to warn her. He wanted her to understand how isolating it would be, how lonely. But mostly, I think, he wanted her to understand that she shouldn’t trust it, not any of it, not anyone.”

  “You mean me, too?”

  Another cabinet opened, closed. I heard a sigh. “Sending her home proved him wrong about you. But even now he’d say that for everyone else—and he really did mean everyone—it’s about money. How much of it they can make off her, off the band. Those people, they don’t care about art or entertainment. They just want to keep getting richer.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being rich.”

  “Depends how you get there, Vanessa. There was this thing, I heard it on the news this morning, about how the albums have shot up the charts.”

  “You think it’s someone close to her?” Van asked. “Someone who put the cameras in her house and killed Mikel?”

  “She doesn’t want to think that her brother could have done a thing like that.”

  “Would you?”

  I’d heard more than enough, retreated, back to the living room. Their voices faded, leaving me with my own.

  We’d been with the Larkins for just under two weeks when the same Gresham detective, Wagner, came to talk to us again. He came in the afternoon, after school, and he got lucky, because Mikel was actually at the house, along with me. Mrs. Larkin invited him in and offered him a soda, then went to fetch us.

  Mikel and I had been sitting together, in the room he shared with the eldest Larkin boy. I’d been trying to do homework, taking comfort in having him close. When Mrs. Larkin stuck her head in to tell us that Detective Wagner was here, Mikel put his magazine down and told her we’d be right there.

  “What does he want?” I asked him as soon as she was gone.

  “He wants to know what we saw.” He said it all flat, trying to be bored by the horror of it all. “Dad’s going to be on trial and stuff, and he wants to make sure that he really killed Mom.”

  “But he already asked. We already told him.”

  “He wants to check it.”

  “I didn’t really see,” I said, after a moment. “I was going back to the porch.”

  “You saw enough.”

  “But I didn’t really see it, Mikel.”

  “I did.”

  “He just ran her over?”

  He nodded, slowly, as if leery of the memory, then got off the bed. “We should go down.”

  I followed reluctantly, trailing after him down the stairs. The detective scared me, the thought of talking to him again, remembering again, disconcerting. I was still having nightmares, and having to listen to questions that would force me to see things I hadn’t, make me recall things I was trying so hard to forget, filled my feet with lead.

  But Mikel, he was tougher, and if he was scared, it didn’t show, and that made it easier when I followed him into the kitchen. Wagner was at the dining table, with a smile this time, and Mrs. Larkin guided us to him, put us in chairs.

  “I just want to check some things, all right?” he told us.

  “Sure,” Mikel said.

  He started by asking where we were when it happened, what we were doing. Wanted to know how long Mom and I had been working on the pumpkin in the driveway, wanted to know how she’d been acting. If she was upset with me, perhaps, or maybe just upset about something else entirely. My answers were sullen, one-word, a string of nos.

  “He picked me up on the corner,” Mikel told Wagner.

  “Where were you going?”

  “Meet some friends.”

  “And your father saw you?”

  “He stopped the truck. He was mad. He doesn’t like my friends. Told me I had to come home.”

  Wagner asked some questions about Mikel’s friends, and my brother confirmed that they sometimes got into trouble. Sometimes they broke things, sometimes they took things, but it wasn’t like it was ever anything someone would miss, it wasn’t ever anything important, Mikel said. Wagner asked him if he was still getting into trouble, and after glancing to Mrs. Larkin, Mikel confirmed that, too. Not embarrassed, almost defiant.

  “What about you, Miriam? You staying out of trouble?”

  “Trying,” I said.

  “That’s good.”

  I looked at Mikel, longing to be tough like he was, to be strong and act like I didn’t care. Wagner made more scribbles on his pad, flipped pages, asked a couple more questions. He asked if Tommy ever hit our mother, if he ever hit us.

  “He never hits Mim,” Mikel told him, by way of an answer.

  Joan was saying my name, and Van was standing at the door, ready to take me home, and I got off the couch, feeling caught by the memories.

  Joan gave me a hug and a kiss, and I thanked her for everything.

  “I mean everything,” I said.

  “You’re worrying me, Miriam,” she said, and then told me to call in the next day or so. She’d be back in school, teaching again, but she said she’d try to keep her evenings free.

  The top was up on Van’s convertible, and when she switched on the engine the stereo began blaring Radiohead, and she lunged for the button to turn it off. There wasn’t much of a point to the silence; we didn’t have anything to say to each other.

  She drove me home, and I got out of the car, thanked her for the lift.

  “I’m having a thing at my house,” Van said. “Tomorrow night. If you want to come.”

  “You mean a party?”

  “Just for fun. I’m keeping it small.”

  “I’ll probably give it a miss,” I said.

  “Thought I’d offer.”

  “I don’t really hate you, you know that, right?” I said.

  “Sure you do,” Van told me. “Just not for the reasons you think.”

  There was a new mess to clean up after I’d changed into comfortable clothes, and I went through my bedroom and bathroom, mopping up the spills and finding the top to the bottle of Jack, trying to ignore the smell. I brought it downstairs and poured a small shot before putting it in the pantry with its brothers-in-proof, then checked the phone for messages while I took the drink. The voice-mail lady told me there were two messages, which I took to mean that the press had found a new story to pursue for the time being.

  The funeral home had a question about the bill, but said it could wait until tomorrow. The other one from Hoffman had been left only ten minutes before I’d gotten home. She said she had some questions for me, and would I please call when I got the message. She left her home number.

  Chapel would throw a fit, but if Hoffman had questions for me, maybe I could ask some questions of her, maybe get an idea about what was going on with Tommy. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  “This is Tracy.”

  “It’s Miriam Bracca, I’m calling for Detective Hoffman.”

  “This is she.” She sounded surprised. “Didn’t think I’d be hearing from you.”

  “You left a message.”

&n
bsp; “I’ve got some questions I’d like you to answer.”

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking I should probably talk to Chapel, first, or at least have him present.”

  “Look, you’re not a suspect, and I’m not going to try to trick you into anything. I’ve got some questions, I’m hoping you can help me find your brother’s killer, that’s all this is. Chapel would just complicate it.”

  “Is my father still a suspect?”

  “Are you willing to talk to me?”

  “Yeah, if it’s actually a conversation and not an interrogation.”

  “Are you at your home?”

  “Why?”

  “Could I come over there? I’m in Sabin, it’d take me about ten minutes or so to get there.”

  “You’re sure I’m not a suspect?”

  “You’re not a suspect,” she assured me.

  “Then why do you want to talk to me?”

  “I’m hoping you can help me find a new one.”

  It made me laugh, I don’t know why.

  “Sure,” I said. “Take your best shot.”

  CHAPTER 22

  I’d left the porch light on, and it was her, and I shut off the alarm and let her in, saying, “Did you speed?”

  “Why else become a cop?” Hoffman said. “For the perks.”

  “The perks?”

  “I get to shoot people, too.”

  “Oh.”

  I peered past her at the street, not seeing much but Hoffman’s car—it was a VW Passat, either black or blue or green, I couldn’t tell—and my trees. I stepped back in and locked up once more, but didn’t bother with the alarm, this time. After all, she had perks.

  “We towed the Chevy, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Hoffman told me.

  “No. Just keeping an eye out for reporters. What’d you do with the car?”

  “Evidence of a crime, we brought it in, had the lab go over it. It was the receiver base.”

  “So now you guys have voyeur video of me.”

  “We should be so lucky. All of the storage devices had been removed from the car. If you’re on tape, you’re on tape somewhere else.”

  “You know who owns it? The Chevy?”

  “It was stolen out of Roseburg back in May.”

  I nodded as if this was significant information, and we went into the kitchen. I parked at the table with an empty cereal bowl for an ashtray. Hoffman had come over wearing a coat and hat, one of the black watch cap ones, and she removed them both before sitting down. She had on a Lewis & Clark sweatshirt, and a turtleneck beneath that, black. She was wearing faded Levi’s, and short black boots, and she had that aura that some PNW women get, the very healthy ones who are fit and stay fit and spend summer weekends windsurfing in the Gorge and winter ones skiing or snowboarding Mount Hood.

  “Bet you rock climb, too,” I said.

  “Do I have granola in my teeth?” She smiled at me, and I understood she was making an effort to get us started on good terms, both with her manner and her words.

  “Call it a lucky guess.”

  I waited for her to take the seat opposite me, expecting her to get out a pad and a pen. She draped her coat over the back of the chair, after stuffing the cap in a pocket, then sat down.

  “You’re not going to take notes?”

  She tapped her forehead. “Like a steel trap.”

  “You want a cigarette or some coffee or something?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  I shrugged and lit one for myself. She looked me over as if trying to find clues, then pushed the bowl a little closer to me, so I wouldn’t have to reach. Her fingers were long, like Joan’s. On her right thumb was a ring, a simple silver band with an inlaid and intertwined repeating symbol. I stared at it a second before recognizing the letter as Greek.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “I get it now. You’re a dyke.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. “Sure. Aren’t you?”

  “What? No!”

  Hoffman’s head came back a little bit, and her expression plainly was asking me to give her a break.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “You speak queer.”

  “Passing queer. Pidgin queer. Not fluent queer.”

  “I’m not here to out you.”

  “I’m not gay. God, Chapel thinks I’m gay, too. I’m not, see, what I am is single. You’re confusing images. I’m the Quiet One. Van’s the Sexually Adventurous One, the Possibly Bi One, the Maybe a Confused Lesbian One.”

  “Van’s not gay,” Hoffman said, matter-of-factly. “Everyone who is knows she isn’t. There are people in the Black Hills of South Dakota who haven’t come out to themselves yet, they know Van in Tailhook is straight.”

  “So I’m the Gay One?”

  “I know a lot of women who will be very disappointed if you’re not.” She looked me over, as if appraising. “Or see it as a challenge. Don’t tell me this is news to you.”

  “It is news to me. You’re telling me that I now not only have to fear that every man I meet has seen naked pictures of me, I’ve got to include women, too?”

  “Not all women. One in ten to one in four, depending whose study you believe.”

  “That makes it so much better.”

  “You’ve got a huge lesbian following, you didn’t know that? I thought you celebs tracked things like that, where you’re getting coverage. You practically have a column devoted to you in Curve.”

  “Now you’re just yanking my leg.”

  “Maybe a little. But you do know what Curve is.”

  “I know what Soldier of Fortune is, too, that doesn’t make me a mercenary.”

  She smiled again, then said, “You still willing to answer some questions for me, Miss Bracca?”

  “Mim. One dyke to another?”

  “That had been my intent, but I’ll settle for closeted dyke to out dyke, if you like.”

  I blew some smoke off to a side, shaking my head. “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have a drug problem, Mim?”

  I was getting tired of having to answer that question, and maybe that was why I surprised the hell out of myself by saying, “Yeah, I drink too much.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Alcohol is legal.”

  “If I tell you about the illegal stuff, you gonna slap cuffs on me?”

  She shook her head. “You don’t do coke or heroin or anything like that?”

  “None of those things. Chapel asked me this stuff, too, when I went to see him about the pictures.”

  “He was asking for a different reason. He was asking to spare you embarrassment, maybe to anticipate possible blackmail. You’re saying you’ve used?”

  I held up a hand and ticked off controlled substances. “I’ve done coke, pot, X, shrooms, dropped acid, and even eaten opium. That was when we were in Hawaii.” I brought the hand down. “Once each for all of it, and only ever on the tour. Look, I know what you’re thinking, and I’ll say it again. Mikel never sold me drugs, never gave me drugs. He hated the fact that I drank, and he didn’t like me smoking.”

  “Both your parents drink, or just your father?”

  It was like being in the Larkins’ dining room all over again, except this time there was no Mikel, and Wagner was being played by a woman. I didn’t answer, but she waited me out.

  “Both,” I said.

  She leaned back in her chair, thinking. I finished my cigarette and crushed it out. Her eyes were on something past my shoulder, and I guessed this was what detectives looked like when they were trying to crack mysteries.

  “Can I ask you something, Detective?” I said.

  She came back. “Tracy.”

  I needed a second, and then another, before I started laughing. “Detective Tracy? Dick Tracy? A lesbian Dick Tracy?”

  She smiled, more amused at me than at the joke. She’d probably heard it a lot before.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “What were you going t
o ask?”

  “Is Tommy still a suspect?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Are you looking at any of Mikel’s friends?”

  “We’ve talked to his friends. Their alibis check.”

  “If you think it’s Tommy, why’d you let him go?”

  “We didn’t have enough to charge.”

  “So you don’t have evidence that he did it, but you think he did.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, Mim. I’m saying he’s still a suspect, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because your father’s got three hours he can’t account for, roughly from the time your brother was murdered until the time he called in the nine-one-one.”

  This was news. “Tommy’s the one who reported it?”

  “He called from the condo to say his son had been shot. The first unit found him there, took him into custody. He was drunk, he blew a point one-nine on the Breathalyzer. To put it in perspective, you blew a point one-three when we picked you up.”

  “I told you he’d been drinking—”

  “No, you told us you thought he had, because your brother didn’t, and you’d seen bottles and cans throughout the condo.”

  “You’re saying that my father shot my brother, then left long enough for me to come by and discover the body, and then he came back, got drunk, and called the police?”

  “If I thought you were lying about the bottles, yes. But I know you’re not. That’s where it falls apart.”

  “Only there?”

  She ignored that. “We didn’t find a weapon anywhere, we didn’t find gloves, and Tommy’s GSR test came back negative.”

  “GSR?”

  “Gunshot residue.”

  I remembered that they had swabbed my hands after they’d brought me in, too. Then I wondered how seriously they’d looked at me for my brother’s murder.

  She turned in the chair, showing me her profile and raising her right hand, as if shooting my microwave. With her other hand she made sprinkling motions over her right hand and forearm. “When you fire a gun, traces of the charge get absorbed into the skin. The test is very simple, very accurate. Both you and your father tested negative.”

  “And no gloves means what?”

  “Either he ditched the gloves, along with the gun, or he didn’t do it. We’re still looking for the gun.”