Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 34

I wake early the next morning, alone in Vinerd Howse, ashamed of how much of the night I spent tossing restlessly, unable to sleep, wishing for company but not my wife. I pull on my robe and step out onto the little balcony off the master bedroom. The streets are empty. Most of the other houses on Ocean Park are closed for the season, but one or two show signs of activity, and a jogger, out early in the crisp air, waves cheerily.

I wave back.

Down in the kitchen I toast an English muffin and pour some juice, for I did not fill the larder when I arrived, expecting to be here only a day or two. I carry my breakfast into the little television nook by the front hall where, three decades ago, I saw Addison and Sally tussling away. Simpler times.

You might start with Freeman Bishop… I think he was a mistake.

A mistake? What kind of mistake? Whose mistake? Mine? My father’s? Questions I throw at the roller woman, even though she is not present to answer them.

And how can a dead man help me find Angela’s boyfriend?

I cannot sit still. I wander from room to room, poking my head into the guest room, done up in red wallpaper and red fabric on bed and chairs, the room where my mother died; and into the bathroom that doubles as a laundry room, with the cheap linoleum floor that was already old when my parents bought the house; back into the small kitchen, where I pour more juice; and, finally, into the dining room, where that blowup of my father’s Newsweek cover still hangs over the unusable fireplace. THE CONSERVATIVE HOUR. The way it was before, as the Judge would say. When life seemed golden. I remember how my father’s nomination tested the unity of the Gold Coast, how lifelong friends stopped speaking to each other as they came down on opposite sides. But perhaps splintering was more common than I suspected in our happy little community. Didn’t Mariah tell me that the congregation at Trinity and St. Michael split down the middle when Freeman Bishop’s cocaine use came to light? And if-

Wait.

What was it Mariah said? Somebody who would have left except-except-

I hurry back into the kitchen, snatch up the telephone. For once I reach Mariah on my first try. Battling back her efforts to fill my ears with the latest conspiracy news gleaned from the Internet, I throw in the crucial question:

“Listen, kiddo, wasn’t there somebody you said would have left the church over Father Bishop’s drug use, except she had her reasons?”

“Sure. Gigi Walker. You remember Gigi. Addison used to date her little sister? Of course, Addison used to date everybody, so I guess that isn’t much of a-”

“Mariah, listen. What did you mean when you said she had her reasons?”

“Oh, Tal, why are you the last to hear everything? Gigi and Father Bishop were an item for years. This was after his wife died, and after her husband left, so it wasn’t quite the scandal it could have been. But, still, Daddy said he didn’t think a man of the cloth-”

Again I interrupt. “Okay, okay. Listen. Gigi. That’s a nickname, right?”

“Right.”

“And her real name is…”

Even before my sister answers, I know what she is going to say. “Angela. Angela Walker. Why do you want to know?”

Mariah babbles on, but I am not listening. The telephone is trembling in my hand.

No wonder Colin Scott, according to Lanie Cross’s tale, gave Gigi Walker such a hard time that she cried. He knew what I now know, but he knew it first.

I have found Angela’s boyfriend.

But somebody else found him first, which is why he is dead and can tell me nothing.

I cannot reach Agent Nunzio. Sergeant Ames refuses to listen to my theories, and I can hardly blame her. If I have actual evidence that she has the wrong man in custody, she suggests that I should share it with her. If I do not, then I should leave her alone and let her do her job. The trouble is, I am in the dangerous middle ground. Sitting in the kitchen of Vinerd Howse, trying to figure out how to get her to take me seriously, I run up against a wall. I think I know who tortured Freeman Bishop to death and what he wanted, but I am certainly in no position to prove it. Bonnie Ames, on the other hand, has a witness willing to testify that Conan bragged about what he did, a history of violent behavior on the part of her suspect, and evidence that Freeman Bishop was behind in money he owed Conan for drugs.

I do not know how Colin Scott manufactured all that evidence, but I have no doubt that he did so. Poor Freeman Bishop was not included in Jack Ziegler’s command that the family not be harmed. So Scott tortured him to learn what he was supposed to tell me, and, as the sergeant pointed out grimly when Mariah and I visited her, it is unlikely that the priest held anything back. And there is the problem, I reflect as I hang up the telephone and begin once more to wander the house. If Father Bishop told Colin Scott everything, why did Scott still see a need to follow me? If he was following me, he obviously had not learned where my father hid… whatever he hid.

Which means that Freeman Bishop never told him.

Which means that Freeman Bishop never knew.

I think he was a mistake. The bad kind.

Now I understand what Maxine was talking about. Freeman Bishop was murdered because Colin Scott thought he was Angela’s boyfriend. And he was, indeed, Angela’s boyfriend. He just wasn’t the Angela’s boyfriend my father meant.

Nevertheless, as far as I am concerned, it was the Judge who got him killed.