But even as she said it she was giving me one of her loving smiles. She knew it had been harder for me to keep faith because my engineering training had taught me to rely on logical thinking rather than blind faith or intuition.
Lisa came to my rescue. “That’s not quite fair, Mary; Bill was the one who covered up our mistakes for us, took our dirty wet clothes away before the sergeant could find them and get the wrong, I mean right, idea. So it’s to Bill more than anybody that we owe lifelong gratitude.”
“Really it’s to George, who staked his reputation and risked being struck off the rolls by advising me to do the dirty work.”
“That’s correct,” said George in his best yes-your-worship fashion. And then with a smile, “Though I doubt if doing some washing for a neighbor in distress could be considered a crime.”
“The certain thing is this — we all owe you an eternal debt of gratitude,” said Hansie. “You have no idea how much more confidence we had going into the inquest, knowing that the good sergeant wouldn’t be springing our dirty linen on us. The thing that worries me, Bill, is this: what made your nasty, suspicious mind — correction, your alert, inquiring mind — send you rooting in Rina’s washing basket?”
“Just that — my alert, inquiring mind. When we first saw the rock lying in the river, I wondered why. Everybody else was quite happy to believe the rain had brought it down, and sure, there had been a flood and the water had been lapping the rock and no doubt eroding a little of the supporting earth away. But that earth is hard, impervious clay, and the water would have lapped the rock for only a little while. Still, there has to be the point of overbalance somewhere. Then I saw something that startled me and sent me prodding around in the water with my walking stick. There was a fence standard some twenty or so yards upstream from the rock. It had been there more or less forever, and at one time it supported a fence running north and south. Now it seemed to me it would be for an east-west fence. You may think that pretty sharp of me, but I’d been looking out for such a stake and while I was at the party I had tried to see if it would come out easily. It certainly would not, it would have needed somebody much stronger than I to shift it. Yet here was the afternoon sun showing up the holes in the web. So I looked in Rina’s basket, found wet clothes, and put two and two together. And made five! Sergeant Vermeulen moved about the scene of the crime, as he called it, and took lots of snapshots but not one of the pole, so I felt it safe to assume he hadn’t even noticed it was there. I thought I’d pinch it before it set in the ground again and before it might arouse his interest. Nobody will find it now — it’s holding up Mary’s sweetpea fence that fell down the day of the party. I don’t suppose you want it back, do you?”
“Hell, no. I don’t even want to think about it!” Hansie looked at me and shook his head, “It’s going to be the devil having you for a neighbor, Bill, if I should ever decide to embark on a life of crime.”
“Don’t worry, old man — I’ll probably catch you out, but George will be sure to get you off.”
And so we left after a lot of hugging and kissing and protestations of lifelong friendship.
And now, three years on, nobody talks about that terrible night. I suppose it’s best forgotten, but I can’t help thinking of poor Dirk, who got so little sympathy. What a tormented soul he must have been — insanely jealous of his pipsqueak brother who failed at nothing while he, Dirk, a real man, was unable to father a child. And at Hansie’s, after the bridge party, did it leak out that Lisa was pregnant? Was that the last straw that drove him to madness?
A Worthless Old Man
by Brenda Melton Burnham
I do not make a habit of entertaining guests at six forty-two in the morning, but the knock at the back door was demanding, peremptory. When I opened it, a big black man wearing faded army fatigues stared through the screen.
“Scrapper, what is it?”
He thrust a piece of paper at me; a two-week-old inside page of the Golden City Courier, folded into permanent creases. I opened it and read the short article circled in ink: “Man Found Shot.”
“The body of an elderly man was discovered this morning in Cascadia Park by an early jogger. Police have identified the victim as Rudolph William Gateley, 72. He had been shot twice in the upper abdomen. Police are investigating.”
I finished reading and looked up at my caller.
“He was my friend,” Scrapper said.
“You’d better come in and have some coffee.”
Scrapper lives in the garage on my Aunt Lottie’s property. His appearance is disreputable, his livelihood nil, and his demeanor unsettling. But he had been a great help to me a few months ago when my aunt was ill.
Needless to say, I did some checking on him at the time. Betty, who cleaned this house for my mother and was still cleaning it for me, summed things up best. “He was always a little strange, and after he come back from Vietnam, things got worse. Didn’t like bein’ around people, you know? Made him real nervous. Couldn’t hold a regular job. His momma frets about him, but he’s a good boy really. Just not like ever’body else.”
I don’t mind people who are not like everybody else.
Scrapper poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the countertop.
“What is it you want?”
“Nobody cares what happened to an old black man.”
I made a dismissing gesture, which he ignored. “You’re accusing the police department of not doing its best?”
He shrugged.
“What about his family? I’m sure the officer in charge has been in touch with them.”
“Didn’t have no family.”
“What makes you think I can do something about it?”
He blew on his coffee and took a sip. Communication is not one of his skills.
“What makes you think I will do something about it? I don’t believe in ‘causes,’ you know. Why don’t you gather some friends and march on City Hall. Isn’t that the way it’s done these days?”
He didn’t even glance my way. We drank our coffee in silence.
“All right. I’ll call Chief Wilkerson and see what I can find out.”
He nodded.
“I can’t do it now. He won’t be in his office for a couple of hours at least.”
Scrapper finished his coffee, rinsed the cup, and set it on the rubber mat to dry. “I’ll come back at ten,” he said.
“Miss Cavanaugh,” Chief Wilkerson’s jovial voice boomed. “What can I do for you?” The Cavanaugh name counts for something in Kern County. Always has, always will.
“I was wondering how the investigation of the Gateley murder was coming along.”
“Gateley... Gateley...?”
“The old man who was shot in Cascadia Park.”
“Ah yes, certainly. I don’t know if you realize it, ma’am, but that park has fallen into disrepute these last few years. Not like it used to be when we were young.” What a ridiculous remark. Everyone knows that I was born following the 1929 crash and one week after my father hanged himself. Chief Wilkerson was a World War II baby. “I wouldn’t be going around there if I was you, Miss Cavanaugh.”
“I wasn’t planning to ‘go around there.’ I was asking about Mr. Gateley.”
“I’m just saying robberies aren’t uncommon in that section of town. Even shootings. Golden City may not be a big metropolis like Kansas City or Tulsa, but we have a lot of the same problems.”