Night Game (8 page)

It took longer than the hour I had promised Gloves, but I got a pretty good story written and filed and was at the condo by 10:00. The group gathered included most of the players I would expect to be concerned about a teammate in trouble: Joe Kelsey; second baseman Alejandro (Americanized to Alex) Jones; Atsuo Watanabe, the Japanese shortstop; right-fielder Eddie Carter; and Tiny Washington, first baseman turned broadcaster. Eddie’s wife, Clarice, was there, too.

“Thanks for coming, Kate,” Karin Gardiner said, after she let me in. She is a small, natural-looking woman, a little chunky, with short, curly dark hair, a wide, imperfect smile, and fewer diamonds than most player wives.

“They’re framing the kid,” Gloves said. He looked like Howdy Doody without his moustache. I tried not to laugh.

“Maybe so,” I said. “But I don’t know what we can do about it.”

“Someone has got to stop them,” Gloves said. “And we’re all he’s got.”

“What makes you so sure he didn’t do it?” I asked.

“I know Domingo since he was little boy,” Alex Jones said, in his heavily-accented English. “His mother is my mother’s cousin. They lived with my family, lived in my house, the house I built for my mother, when Domingo was only small. It is like he is my baby brother. I know he would not do such a thing.”

“No violence in his past? No trouble in the Dominican? Drugs? Anything like that?”

“This boy is just interest in one thing, baseball,”

“Not quite, Alex,” I said. “With respect. He is also interested in women.”

“He is a man,” Alex shrugged.

“But he was involved with Lucy last season,” I said, “when he was playing here.”

“Who said that?” Joe Kelsey asked. “The police?”

“No, she told me that, come to think of it. The day before she died.”

“If everyone who slept with Lucy was a suspect, the jail would be full,” Eddie said.

“I’d be the only one outside,” said Joe, to some laughter.

“Plus, the police told me it was his gun that did it,” I said, trying to keep them to the point.

“His gun, maybe, but who knows who fired it,” Tiny said.

“True enough,” I said, “but who else could have? Who knew about his gun?”

“All of the people living at the condo, for one thing,” said Clarice. “Dommy showed it off.”

“How did he get it into the country?” I asked.

“He got it here,” Eddie said. “He just got it last week.”

“Why would he get a gun, if he wasn’t planning to use it?” I asked.

“Domingo always had a gun at home,” Alex said. “Everyone does. For the banditos. He felt safer with a gun.”

“How did he get it? Aren’t there laws against just going and buying a gun?”

“In Florida? Don’t be ridiculous,” Joe said. “This state has got the loosest gun laws around.”

“Actually,” Gloves said, “he couldn’t get it legally here. Because he’s a foreigner. He had to get the gun privately.”

“And you know who get it for him?” Alex asked, then answered. “Lucy, she’s the one.”

They let that one sink in for a while.

“So, someone else who knew Lucy would have known about the gun, too,” Tiny said.

“How could Lucy get a gun?” I asked.

“Who knows,” Gloves said. “She might even have bought one at one of the gun shops. Anyway, she knows a lot of people in this town. She would know where to get a gun.”

“What can we do to help Dommy?” I asked. “He’s got a lawyer already.”

“We can find the real killer,” Gloves said. “Or, rather, you can find the real killer.”

“Me? What are you talking about?” I laughed and looked around the room. Everyone else was serious.

“You’re the only one with any experience,” Joe explained. “You found out who killed Sultan Sanchez and Steve Thorson. You found the guy who was killing those kids in Toronto last year.”

He spread his hands in a gesture that seemed to signify that there was no argument to be had.

“Come on, get serious,” I said. “I didn’t find those guys, they found me. I’m not a detective. I just bumbled around after the story and tripped over the killers.”

“That’s all we want you to do this time,” Gloves said.

“Kate, he’s such a nice kid,” Karin Gardiner said. “I know he couldn’t have done this. But everything is against him. If we don’t help him, nobody will.”

“We’ll pay you,” Eddie said, insulting me. I dismissed that idea with a flap of my hand.

“It’s not the money. It’s just that I don’t know where to begin. I’m not a private eye.”

“No, you’re not a private investigator,” Gloves said. “But you are an investigative reporter, right? It’s just like any other story, except you’ll do more investigating than reporting this time.”

“We’ll all do anything we can to help you,” Joe said. “But we can’t go to all the places you can. We have to practise, for one thing. You can imagine how Olliphant reacted.”

I could.

“I don’t know how I can help,” I said.

“If you interviewed her family and friends you might find something out,” Tiny said. “God knows you found out all sorts of stuff about me when you wrote that article a few years ago. Some things I didn’t even remember myself.”

“You’re good at that, Kate,” Joe said. “You have an excuse for prying.”

“I could do that, I guess. I don’t know if it would do any good, though.”

“It’s better than doing nothing,” Gloves said.

“I don’t even know if I could get the paper to let me off the regular stuff,” I said.

“Just say you’ll try,” Karin said. “Please.”

“I can do that,” I agreed.

I wrestled with it all the way home. I would be lying if I said the idea didn’t attract me. I like playing detective, no matter how much I deny it. On the other hand, I know that any success I have had in the past has had more to do with luck than talent.

The decision was taken out of my hands the next morning at 8:00, when Jake Watson called.

“You’ve been seconded,” he said. “Orders from the managing editor. He wants you to go on the murder story so he doesn’t have to send down one of the police boys.”

“What about the Titans?”

“I’ve put Jeff on them for now.”

“He doesn’t mind?”

“He’s grumbling a bit, but he hasn’t got much choice,” Jake said. “He was going to go over and cover the teams on the other side of the state for a week, but I think our readers can do without another series of features on how unhappy they are at the Yankee camp, don’t you?”

“They’ll manage.”

“Okay. So I can tell them you’ll be filing something for the front section later today?”

“What do they want?”

“Just follow the story. I think they want a piece on the dead girl for the Saturday paper. You’ll be dealing with Shelley Mitchell on the city desk. Call her.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Do good, kid,” he said. “Make us proud. The honour of the sports department is at stake.”

“Thanks for the added pressure, Jake.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The Garden of Memories Funeral Home, from which Lucy would be making her final journey, was a low-slung, modern, beige stucco building, with Moorish arches and stained-glass windows of an objectionable abstract design. Jeff and I parked my car in the shade of a large palm and crossed the closely cropped lawn to the front path. We checked the notice board for directions to the Serenity Chapel, where Lucy’s family was receiving friends.

Walking down the thickly carpeted corridor past other reception rooms, I tried to avoid staring at the corpses propped up in their satin-lined coffins while, all around them, the living sipped cups of coffee and chatted. Most of them—the quick and the dead—were elderly, although in one particularly sad room, a couple who looked to be still in their teens sat on either side of a tiny coffin, with a baby displayed on pink velvet.

We signed the guest book outside the Serenity Chapel, took a deep breath, and entered. It was a large room, decorated in reassuring, muted tones, with paintings of classical northern gardens on the walls. There were perhaps a dozen people standing around in in three or four groups. What conversation there had been stopped, and every head turned our way. I put on my most polite and respectful smile and waited for one of them to speak.

A tall young man approached us, looking uncomfortable in a tie and suit that was too small for his muscular bulk. He was slightly menacing, with long hair tied back in a ponytail and a Fu Manchu moustache.

“Are you looking for someone?”

I introduced myself and Jeff.

“We worked with Lucy,” I explained.

“I’m Ringo, her brother,” he said.

Ringo?

“I recognize your names,” he added, after we shook hands.

“Did she mention us?” Jeff asked.

“You’re the ones who found her.”

“As a matter of fact, we did,” I said. “We’re very sorry for your loss.”

The words came out easily enough. I was, after all, a minister’s daughter, and used to this kind of event.

“The bastard who did it,” her brother said. “I’d like to get my hands on him.”

He clenched his fists, as if to demonstrate the degree of his ferocity.

“I wonder if you would introduce us to your mother,” I said. “We would like to express our condolences.”

Ringo shrugged, then led us to a pale, drawn woman sitting on a couch by the (mercifully) closed coffin, nervously smoking a cigarette.

“These here are the folks who found Lucy, Mom.”

I ignored his tactlessness and conveyed our sympathies.

“I’m June Hoving,” she said, then indicated a wiry older man with thinning hair and glasses, who stood beside and slightly behind her, one hand resting on the back of the couch.

“This is my husband, Dirk. He was Lucy’s stepfather.”

We shook hands, then June invited me to sit next to her. She was big-boned and strong-looking for all her grief, but had a tense and distracted air. Her hair was pulled back into a severe chignon, with a few wisps escaping around her forehead. She wore a plain navy-blue dress belted at her slender waist.

“Lucy talked about you,” she said. “She told me that you were her role model.”

Oh lord, I thought.

“I’m honoured,” I said.

“She always wanted to be a reporter,” she continued. “Her father was a writer, too. I guess that’s where she got it. I was glad she had ambitions.”

She stopped, then stared bleakly ahead. Her eyes were red. She lit another cigarette.

“I understand that you two were very close,” I said.

“Like sisters,” she said. “Everyone said we were like sisters. We were friends, best friends.”

“I know this isn’t a good time,” I said, “but I would like to write a story about Lucy for my paper in Toronto. Would you be willing to do an interview with me?”

She glanced at her husband, who was talking to Jeff.

“I guess that would be all right,” she said. “When do you want to do it?”

“Whenever is convenient for you.”

“The funeral is tomorrow,” she said. “I could do it the next day.”

“That would be Thursday,” I said.

“If you say so,” she said. “I don’t know one day from another anymore. They’re all the same. Rotten.”

“I’ll call you Thursday morning,” I said.

She gave me her address and phone number, which I wrote on the flap of my cigarette pack.

“Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?” I asked. “Perhaps one of her friends?”

“She didn’t really have many close girlfriends,” her mother said. “I think maybe they were jealous of her.”

“Was she seeing any man regularly?”

“Not lately. She didn’t want to get too serious about anyone. She saw what happened to me. I got married when I was eighteen, and I haven’t had much of a life. I always told her there was plenty of time for getting married and having a family.”

She got that haunted, bleak, look again.

“Oh, shit, here I go again,” she said, and started to cry. Her husband bent down to pat her shoulder, and glared at me. I got up.

“We’d better go,” I said to Jeff.

Before we had a chance, there was a small commotion at the door. Lucy’s brother was scuffling with a large, shambling man, who was as intent on coming in as Ringo was on keeping him out.

“She was my damn daughter,” the man shouted, shaking off Ringo’s hands. He stood, a bit unsteadily, and glared around him. The room fell silent, tense.

Lucy’s father, if that’s who it was, was a mess. Clearly, he was drunk. His face was blotchy, his grey hair, thin on the top, hung in greasy tendrils to his shoulders. He was dressed in faded jeans and a work shirt, embroidered long ago with flowers and a peace symbol.

“My own damn daughter,” he repeated, more quietly.

Hoving began to move towards him, but June stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“I’ll handle this,” she said, then crossed the room.

When the old hippie saw her coming, he began to cry.

“It’s okay, Ringo,” she said to her son, coming between him and the other man.

“What are you doing here, Hank?” she asked. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“My baby,” he sobbed, and threw his arms around June. She winced, then embraced him and patted him on the back like a child who needed soothing.

Dirk, the second husband, started towards them, but a shake of her head over Hank’s shoulder stopped him.

“Get your father a cup of coffee, Ringo,” she said, then led the man to a pair of armchairs in the corner of the large room farthest from the coffin. They sat down, and conversation, which had stopped again, picked up, loud and embarrassed. Jeff and I left, unnoticed.

It was pouring rain. We ran to my rental car, splashing through puddles. Jeff slammed the door and slumped in the passenger seat.

“I hate that stuff,” he said.

“Which particular stuff do you mean?”

“Coffins. Strangers. People crying.”

“Oh, that stuff,” I said. “Not my favourite, either, but it’s not too bad. You get used to it.”

“What do you make of the father?”

“The hippie? He looks pretty screwed up. I bet there’s an interesting story there, though.”

“The stepfather is a different kind of dude altogether,” Jeff said. “He’s so straight.”

“I guess June didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Only a fool marries a poet twice.”

“What makes you think he’s a poet?”

“June said Lucy’s father was a writer. Assuming that’s the guy, he doesn’t look like he writes copy for the Chamber of Commerce. Maybe he’s a songwriter, but I put my money on poet.”

“Or the Great American Novel,” Jeff said.

“The first chapter, max. He’s probably blown his attention span away with drugs and booze. I doubt that discipline is one of his virtues. I’ll have to check him out.”

“Where are we going?”

I looked at my watch.

“I’ll drop you off. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour with a guy from the
Sentinel
.”

“The local rag?”

“He knows where all the bodies are buried.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Jeff said.