The Night Remembers

8

“So you came out here because she asked you to?”

“Right,” I said to the detective named Gaute.

“Kind of strange, don’t you think?”

“Me coming out here?”

“Sure. You put her husband away.”

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

“You mind going over it one more time?”

“Nope.”

He turned on a battery-operated recorder he carried in his pocket. He put it close enough to kiss, identified who he was and who I was and what we were talking about, and then said, “You want me to read you your rights?”

I shook my head.

“Go ahead.”

“Lisa Pennyfeather called me earlier this evening.”

“What time would that be?”

“Approximately ten.”

“All right.”

“She said something had happened.”

“You know Mrs. Pennyfeather?”

“Somewhat. When I was a detective I worked on a case involving her husband.”

“A case?”

“A murder case.”

“I see. Continue.”

“Plus which, she came to my office earlier today.”

“Do you mind telling me why?”

“She wanted to hire me.”

“Hire you for what?”

“To prove that her husband was innocent.”

“Of the murder you arrested him for?”

“Right.”

“So what did you do?”

“I declined.”

“Why?”

“I felt uncomfortable. Plus I still believe he was guilty of the murder.”

“Tell me about tonight.”

“I arrived here about ten-thirty. Mrs. Pennyfeather came out on the front porch and led me around to the gazebo.”

“How did she seem?”

“Her mood, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Very calm. I mean, given what she was going to tell me.”

“So you saw the woman on the swing?”

“Yes.”

“Did Mrs. Pennyfeather know the woman?”

“She said not.”

“How did Mrs. Pennyfeather explain finding the body in the first place?”

“She said she’d gone out for ice cream and put the car in the garage when she got back and had to pass the gazebo. That’s when she saw the woman.”

“Why didn’t she see the woman on the way out to the garage?”

“That’s a good point.”

“You can’t answer it, though?”

“No. You’d have to ask Mrs. Pennyfeather.”

“How did the people inside react?”

“About the way you’d expect. Shock. Disbelief. Carolyn, the daughter, seemed to take it hardest of all.”

“How about Mr. Pennyfeather?”

“He’s afraid you’re going to blame him for the woman’s death.”

“Did he say why he thought he’d be implicated?”

“Well, he’s only recently been released from prison for one murder. He gets home and a few days later an unidentified woman is found in his back yard. Dead. Anybody would get nervous.”

“So nobody inside the house said or did anything that might lead you to think they had something to do with the murder?”

“No.”

He shut off the recorder. He was a tall, chunky man in a tan all-weather coat and a snappy gray fedora spattered with raindrops. He smoked a cigarillo with a white plastic tip, and he smelled of Aqua Velva. He was probably fifty. “You got any thoughts on it at all?”

“Not really.”

“You don’t find it strange she called you?”

I thought about it. “I find it strange, yes. But I don’t think she set me up or anything.”

“You base that on anything in particular?”

“No,” I said. “I think she found the woman and got scared.”

“So why did she come to your office this morning?”

I saw what he meant. It did seem awfully coincidental. I looked out at the back yard. It blazed white with lights from the county men doing the medical exam and the lights from Channels 2, 7, and 9. Down some of the white latticework on the gazebo you could see a few lurid splotches of red blood.

“I guess I should talk to Mrs. Pennyfeather a little more,” Gaute said.

He put the recorder back into his coat pocket. In profile, his silhouette against the lights in the back yard looked broken and tough. “It all looks pretty strange right now. By morning things should be a lot clearer.”

“There’s a positive mental attitude.”

He smiled. “They gave you that crap, too, when you were working for the county?”

“Sure. They had these psychologists come in every year or so and try to pump us up.”

“You see a kid get run over, you just got to keep it in perspective. That kind of stuff.”

“You got it.”

“What a crock that stuff is.”

I laughed. “It doesn’t help you a lot when you’re really down, that’s for sure.”

He tipped his hat toward me, starting to make his move to the back yard. “Those shrinks?”

“Yeah?”

“They’re crazy. Every one of them.”

He went down the steps and into the explosion of light that had made the ground soggy brown, the trees flat black, and the gazebo the drab gray color of all things that die in winter.