Chapter Twelve

It was that dead part of the afternoon when—if she were in New York—Elizabeth would have gone to the coffee shop in the Met, had a cup and talked with colleagues. She would take her mind off her work, pass or receive some gossip, or even have a bite or two of the shop’s famed apple cobbler. A slight smile as she recalled those days.

But here in San Ignacio, Elizabeth had yet to establish such rituals and that lack gave her an empty feeling, a tightening in her throat.

Truth be told, she missed her work at the Met, but being here was worth it. Max desperately needed this change of scenery, a space to recuperate.

When Teddy dropped her off, she had felt a twinge of regret that their car was not in the drive, which meant Max was probably still working down his list of suspects. She hoped he was faring better with Hicks and Pinkus than she had with Martindale. Elizabeth sighed thinking of that interview, if you could even term it one.

But the more she thought about it, Martindale had seemed at sea when Chase provided her with an alibi for the twenty-third. If the food had been so memorable, why would she have forgotten it?

And why would Chase provide an alibi if such a dinner meeting had not taken place? And why not supply the name of the restaurant as she requested?

Maybe she’d outsmarted herself by making it appear she and Max were always on the lookout for a good restaurant, not wanting to appear to be pressing Chase. If the place had closed down as Chase told her, why would she need the restaurant’s name?

She shook her head. Still things to learn about questioning people.

Maybe she was making too much of it. Maybe it was just as he said: a late and wine-addled dinner at a restaurant that went out of business because of the war.

She was eager for Max to come home so she could share her information with him and see what he thought.

The phone rang. Suzy calling from the answering service. A surprise. Suzy normally would get in touch at the end of the day to let her know of any missed calls she needed to tend to. That Suzy was calling her now made her stomach churn.

“Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Byrns, but Sheriff McCall told me it was urgent. I’ve been calling for the last couple of hours.”

Suzy’s voice quavered and Elizabeth now struggled to hold her fears in check.

“Yes, Suzy,” she said calmly as possible. “Just tell me what it is.”

“Sheriff McCall said that you should come and collect your husband at the jail.”

“What?” She stiffened, eyes widening.

“He says…”

“Yes, yes, I heard. I just can’t believe what you said. When did McCall ring the service?”

“It was late morning or so. I’m not sure now. I was just too flustered to write the time down.”

“That’s okay, Suzy. I’m sure everything’s okay.” She could hardly get the words out. The receiver was shaking in her hand.

“I hope so, Mrs. Byrns. You going there now?”

“Damn,” Elizabeth said before she could hold it back. “Sorry, but it’s just that Max has the car.”

“I’ll call Hiram’s taxi service,” Suzi said.

“That would be nice of you, Suzy.” Her voice broke as she said it.

Hiram arrived and fifteen minutes later Elizabeth was at the county sheriff’s building. She stormed up to Betty Waller at the reception desk, hardly recognizing her old swimming competitor, and then gathered her wits as the woman smiled at her.

“Lizzy. Good to see you.” Then rolling her eyes toward the sheriff’s office. “He said for you to go right in when you got here. Sorry about this.”

“It’s not your fault, Betty. What in the heck is going on?”

Betty shrugged. “Beats me.”

Elizabeth tapped the edge of the desk. “Let’s get together sometime. After this is all cleared up.”

“That’d be great, Lizzy.”

Elizabeth entered McCall’s office without bothering to knock.

“What’s going on, Jed?” she demanded.

He remained seated, hands behind his head.

“Take a seat, Lizzy.”

She felt redness in her face. He had no right to use her pet name. Still the same stupid, adolescent infatuation from the old days. She put hands on her hips, her chin held high.

“Where’s my husband?”

“In the hoosegow, I’m afraid.” He grinned at her. “Ironic place for a hotshot policeman to be, don’t you think?”

She wanted to smash him in the face.

“Why the hell is he in jail?”

McCall shrugged. “A danger to the public and himself. Deputy Thompson saw him driving erratically out on Route 20. Nearly drove into the ditch before Thompson could pull him over. Then he responded damn strange to the deputy’s questions. Said to call the New York station and they’d tell him who he was. Thompson thought he was drunk, but couldn’t smell alcohol on his breath. Your husband take any drugs, Lizzy?”

She could not hold her anger in any longer.

“Listen you puffed up little Chihuahua, you let Max out right now or I’ll have lawyers crawling up your posterior. My husband suffered a trauma in the line of duty, taking a bullet for a fellow officer. It sounds like whatever your deputy did or said might have triggered that again. And yesterday somebody cut the brake line on our car. Whether they were trying to kill us or scare us off, it doesn’t matter. But the fact is Max’s investigation is ultimately going to keep you from looking like a fool. So you take me to my husband at once.”

McCall stood slowly, his nostrils white with rage.

“People do not talk to me in that manner.”

“I’m not people. I’m Elizabeth Schuyler Byrns. Do we understand each other?”

She had never before played the card of family influence and wealth, but now was no time for niceties. In San Ignacio, her Schuyler name still meant something.

McCall glared at her, hands fisted at his sides. She figured she had just made an enemy. Bad enough to have McCall still besotted with puppy love, worse to have him as a foe.

So be it.

“Shall we go?”

They left, the sheriff leading the way in a huff. Elizabeth raised her eyes at Betty as they passed and she shot big eyes back at Elizabeth, as if she’d been listening.

Knowing Betty, she probably had.

She followed McCall to the holding cells. Coming to the first one, at the sight of Max, hunched on a filthy bunk, arms on thighs and head bowed to the floor, she felt tears welling, a pain in her chest.

Then she noticed his shoes had no laces.

“How could you?” she hissed at McCall.

He did not bother to answer as he unlocked the cell.

“Your wife’s here, Byrns. She’ll take you home now.”

The words were neutral, but the tone was insulting.

Elizabeth’s hand was moving to slap him, but she stopped herself, instead pushing past McCall and putting an arm around Max’s shoulders.

“Come on, Max. Let’s get out of this place.”

He looked up at her, his face drawn. “Sorry, Lizzy. So sorry.”

She felt a lump in her throat, then clenched her jaw, refusing to get emotional in front of McCall.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, darling. We’ll talk about it later. Let’s just get out of here now.”

“Keys are in the car,” McCall said as they walked past him down the long hallway.

She ignored him, drawing Max close to her, a protective hug. Her thoughts were whirling and she prayed her wonderful husband would soon be whole again.

They were just leaving the downtown when Max spoke.

“It wasn’t McCall.”

“That bastard,” she said.

“Yeah. Well, he probably is. But it wasn’t him or his deputy who set me off.”

“Who, then?” She didn’t take her eyes off the road. Rain had started and the wipers were making visibility difficult.

“The goon at Hicks’s place. He pulled a gun on me, put it to my head.”

She jerked at this, swerving into the left lane, then righting it.

“We’ll have him arrested.”

“The gun was empty. He enjoyed seeing me squirm when he pulled the trigger.”

She was about to speak when Max continued.

“But again, it wasn’t on him. I was being a smart ass. Treating him with contempt. And I knew better. Knew it would set a guy like that off.”

“You don’t have to always be the martyr, Max. Bad people exist. You’re not the guilty party here.”

He sighed, slumping back in the passenger seat. Then he said, “Pull over, doll. I can drive. I’m not a complete sack of shit.”

“You sure?” She glanced at him out the corner of her eye.

“Yes. I’ll get over these nerves. Someday, somehow. It’s like being an alcoholic. It just comes over you”

She kept on driving.

“Really,” he said. “It’s okay. Pull over. I’d like to drive.”

She breathed easier, her body relaxing. That he insisted made it seem alright. Normalcy. She pulled over on a side street, turned off the ignition and scooted over on the bench seat as Max scurried in the rain and hopped into the driver’s seat.

They didn’t speak as Max drove through the rain, which was coming down hard now. He parked at home, the rain still pelting down. They both made a dash for the front door and almost reached it before noticing a lone figure on the front steps.

Max noted the flight cap, the leather jacket, the khaki pants, seeing only a tall, lanky soldier.

Elizabeth cried out, “Philip!”

And now Max too saw his son standing on the steps, rain dripping off his cap. His beautiful boy, now a man.

They rushed to each other, the three of them throwing arms around one another, embracing, oblivious to the rain. Max felt a glow in his body, a tingling and rush of energy that made him want never to let go.

After drying off, they sat around the table with red wine. Elizabeth got out some cheese and olives as well as saltine crackers. As he watched Philip do the simplest things—cut a chunk of cheese, finger-blot flakes of cracker off the table— Max felt his heart swell.

“Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?” Elizabeth said. “I could have made your favorite dinner.”

“I didn’t even know, Mom. Leave came in at the last minute. They got me out of bed in the middle of night and on an air freighter out of Honolulu five minutes before departure. I fell asleep and next I knew, we were landing at Fort Ord.”

She cupped her hand on his cheek; he twitched involuntarily.

“It’s so good to see you, Phil,” she said, removing her hand.

“Right.” He looked down at his food, not at his mother. “You too.”

“How’d you manage to find our place?” Max said.

“Uncle Teddy. I called here, but nobody home. It was transferred to your service and the gal there gave me Teddy’s number. By the way, she’s got a nice voice.”

He said it with false enthusiasm. And Max told his interior detective to shut the hell up and just enjoy this moment.

Philip added, “Teddy says you’re working on a case.”

Max shrugged. “We’re trying.” He was about to explain when Philip cut him off.

“He says you’re investigating the death of some old Jap.”

The word struck Max like a fist in the sternum.

“He was a friend,” Elizabeth said.

But Philip wasn’t listening.

“I don’t know if you civilians really understand, but we’re fighting for our lives with the Japs. They’re killing us, we’re killing them. It’s war. Bloody and violent war. What’s one dead Jap more or less?”

Max now couldn’t control himself, a white heat bubbling up. “He wasn’t a Jap!” he shouted. “Tadeo Suzuki was a fine man. One of the finest I’ve ever known. He was a friend and leader of his community. He built a life for himself and his family, hiring hundreds over the years to work his strawberry fields. You call him a Jap. Was your boyhood friend in New York a Jap, too?”

Elizabeth put a calming hand on his arm.

Philip sat in silence; the joyful homecoming now ruined.

Elizabeth moved closer to her son, putting an arm around his shoulder.

“Is it bad out there?”

He nodded, a muscle flexing in his jaw. “Pretty bad. They teach you to hate them, you know. It starts in boot camp. You’ve got to hate them, they tell you, in order to shoot to kill. To strafe, to drop bombs. Every Japanese becomes a Jap, a target.”

He let out a long sigh.

“Sorry son,” Max said, staring down at his hands, a heaviness in his chest. Then he looked up, nodding. “You’re right. None of us civilians knows what you soldiers are going through. But Tadeo was a good man. And somebody took his life. And that’s not right, war or no war.”

Over dinner of a quick tomato-sauce pasta, the tension dissipated. And more glasses of the local red helped, too.

Philip turned in early, and Max cleaned up. Elizabeth putting in time with the restoration. They had yet to talk about Philip’s unexpected arrival.

Philip called out to him as he was passing the guest room on the way to bed.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Should I read to you?”

An old joke. Philip had grown out of nightly reads early on, at seven or eight, but for years Max had kept on asking until Elizabeth pointed out that his son was reading just fine on his own.

“Think I got it covered,” Philip said. But then a hesitation, as if he wanted to talk.

Max went into the darkened bedroom.

“Mind if I sit for a while?”

“Be my guest,” Philip said from the bed.

Max sat on the edge. “We got off to a rocky start. My fault. I had a little episode today.”

Philip let out a low laugh.

“It wasn’t funny, I can tell you,” Max said. “Guy pulled a gun on me. I was so rattled afterward I almost drove into a ditch.”

“I wasn’t laughing at you.” Philip swallowed hard. “I had a friend. Chet. About my age. From Alabama always showing off this photo of the girl back home he was going to marry. Great pilot. So much better than the rest of us. He could fly without looking at the control panel.”

He paused, changing position, making the springs creak.

“Sounds like a good young man,” Max said. But he’d noticed the past tense: I had a friend.

“You know where this is going,” Philip said. “Three of us flying in formation on a bombing run on a Japanese-held island south of the Philippines. Suddenly out of the sun a pair of Mitsubishi fighters came at us. Chet in the lead peeled them off from us, taking them on and scoring hits on both before we could even nudge our bombers into firing position. And then one of the wounded Mitsubishis still above us… it just ploughed right into Chet’s plane. Blew it sky high.”

Max, sitting rigidly on the edge of the bed, said nothing.

Seconds passed; a bedside clock ticked.

“We completed the run, dropped our bombs, and made it back. But the weird thing was I could hardly get out of the plane for the pain. Like my whole body was on fire. They had to put me in an ice bath. But it was all in my head. My captain, he’s a good man. Educated, not professional Army, the one got me on the transport this morning. Told me to get some rest, it’ll be a long war.”

Then he let out another low laugh. “So, you see, it looks like we’re in the same boat, huh, dad?”

“Couple of basket cases,” Max agreed. “Maybe we can help each other out.”

“I’d like that,” Philip said. “Like that a lot. And now I’m going to make up for the sleep I’ve been missing for weeks.”

After his father left, Philip rolled onto his back, hands behind his head, staring into the darkness. He was still trembling, his body cold, a pounding at his temples.

This was going to be harder than the Captain had said, living a lie.

Having to look his dad, his mom, right in the eye and lie. To spin out stories about the tragic death of a non-existent friend. To use the insulting and demeaning word ‘Jap’ as if he meant it.

He didn’t know if he could do it, duty or not.