“It’s good to see you,” she said. “I left messages.”
“Thanks. This has been bad.”
They settled into the couch, the standard positions, Weir’s feet already yearning for the boots to be off, to be wanning from the fire. The answering machine picked up an incoming calclass="underline" a Proposition A proofreader at the print shop had just discovered fliers with the word public misspelled as pubic.
“I saw her early that night at the Whale,” said Jim. “Ray came by and Mom was there. She looked good and strong — a little thin, maybe.”
“I hadn’t talked to her for a few days.”
“How had she been, Beck?”
“I’ve been asking myself that question ever since I heard. It’s not as easy to answer as I thought it would be. Okay, Ann and I have been friends for what, thirty-plus years? We did everything from roller-skate together in pigtails to borrow each other’s doll clothes, to share our diaries, to take the same classes, have crushes on the same boys, to... everything. We were girls, then we were women, and we went through all of it together. Except for the few months she spent in France — what, fifteen years old or whatever it was — we’ve been like this.” Becky twisted her fingers in the wish-me-luck sign and stared from behind it into Jim’s face. “But back in November, something started to change. It was just before you left for Mexico.”
“I didn’t see it.”
Weir heard Becky’s silence accuse him: If you’d been paying attention to your family instead of getting ready to chase rainbows, you might have.
“It was subtle, Jim. I thought it was something just between us, so I didn’t really worry too much. Now, well, after what happened, everything has its own terrible resonance.” She drank, then set the glass down on the coffee table. “Ann was pulling back. She was putting something between herself and me and it bugged me.”
“What was it about her?”
“Smiles, mostly. Sometimes she was so... polite. It was like the smile was there to deflect me. She’d be so sunny, so comprehensively positive, so... fucking vague.”
“About what?”
“Everything. I’d call and ask her how she was and it sounded like a state-of-the person address, something she’d planned out and rehearsed. You know Ann. You could always rely on Ann for straight answers, straight talk. If Ann thought what you were doing was wrong, she’d say so. If she didn’t feel good that day, you’d hear about it. She was never evasive. But back in January, that’s what I felt. I ran into her at the market late one night — eleven say — and she’s picking up her groceries for the week. We’re standing in front of the soup and she actually stared through me for a second, then, she clicked in — big smile, this strained grimace she’s trying to pass off as a smile. I ask what’s wrong and she says, ‘Not a thing! I’m just tired out a bit tonight; that’s what I get for shopping without my make-up on!’ She pulls off a can of something and the whole stack falls over, all these red cans banging down to the floor. So I play along like I believe her, but I make a note of it. I called her a couple of nights later, and she sounded so giddy, so up. I swear to God, Jim, I wondered for a second if she was into the blow or something. We made a lunch date for the next Sunday and she seemed... not there. She held up her end of the conversation but she really didn’t bring anything to it. She left most of her food. Her mind was somewhere else.”
“You call her on it?”
“Of course I did. Annie laughed it off, turned it back around on me, like I was projecting my own usual neurotic character onto her. I almost bought it; I’m always ready to buy that one. We’d just gotten Prop A on the ballot, there was the march in Laguna Canyon to organize, I was trying to get my candidate’s apps finished up. So, well, you had your treasure and I had mine. But it just wasn’t her. I saw her a lot this winter, ran into her here and there, went by the Whale and had dinner in her station. Sometimes she seemed just like Ann. The other times — and there were several of them — she was somewhere else.”
Jim groped back to November to corroborate Becky’s story, but he couldn’t. Ann had seemed like Ann. He had been lost in getting ready for the Black Pearl off of Zihuat: dive gear and compressor, the air lance and water dredge, the winches and cables, the grid stakes and surface buoys, everything from a rebuild on the engine to spare regulator gaskets. I missed it, he thought, plain and simple.
“Did you talk to anyone about her? Ray, Mom?”
Becky shook her head. “With Ann, I always went straight to the source. Like I said, I thought this was all just between her and me. Friends fall out, waver, get back together. Sometimes you have to hold a match to the bridge just to remind yourself how strong and needed it is.”
They exchanged glances, mutual acknowledgement that such matches were held — all too often and by both parties — to their own bridge, but the result was not a warming reminder of value, but fire itself.
Becky drained her glass. “What can you share with me?”
“What do you want?”
“I got a copy of Bristol’s report, so I know the basics.”
“Small town.”
“It wasn’t hard — a former public defender has her networks.”
“I can’t add much. I saw where they brought her up, and I was at the crime scene this evening.”
“Innelman and Deak?”
Jim nodded. “Innelman’s a good man. I don’t know about Deak.”
“He’s young and cocky, but he’s thorough, too.”
“If you’ve seen the report, you know as much as I do.”
“Do I?” Becky looked at him sharply, then smiled. “Dennison must be twitching. If things played out just right, this could sway the election. Now he’ll really avoid a debate.”
Becky squinted her dark brown eyes, and offered up a satisfied little smile. It was a look far less impish than cunning. Weir had always hated it.
“What did Dennison want to see you and Ray about today?” she asked.
Jim made up a story about him getting the dive job for another search of the bay. It was fairly solid for a quick lie, something Poon would have been proud of.
“That’s Sheriffs jurisdiction.”
“That’s what I tried to tell Brian. Anyway, Harbor Patrol divers found a kitchen knife just a hundred feet from where Ann died. Six-inch blade, no hilt, unexceptional.”
“Then why would Brian want you to dive again?”
“He’s just being careful.”
“Make on the knife?”
“I didn’t see one,” he lied again.
“You’re getting rusty, Weir. And your hands are shaking.”
“I know.”
The telephone rang again, this time an invitation for Becky to speak to the Newport Beach Chapter of Women in Business. Becky made a note on the yellow pad. “They’ll try to skewer me. Know something? I liked life better when it was simple.”
Jim was quiet for a moment. Becky’s last statement had the ring of a can of worms about to be opened. Maybe that’s what we needed all along, he thought — get the bad things out so we could figure out what to do with them. One of Becky’s primary faults — which she was always the first to confess — was her penchant for doing a dozen things at once, but not necessarily right. He tried not to sound accusatory. “Well, looks like you have plenty of campaign work.”
She looked at him, then away. “It seems... appropriate. I decided not too long ago that liking your life isn’t everything. You’ve got to bring something to the party, make a difference... maybe that sounds naive. But I had the feeling I had to contribute rather than just take. Anyway, I was always impatient when I was with you, toward the end. Working as a PD got old fast. I’m just that way — I like to move on. Greener pastures maybe, I don’t know.”