After Misaki left, I surfed different channels for news, but they had all moved on to their regular programming, which seemed to involve a lot of true-crime shows. Had the entire world gone mad?
Who needed true crime? I was living it. And getting nowhere trying to solve it.
When I stood to take the empty wine glasses out to the kitchen, Steve Narduzzi’s business card caught my eye, protruding from the bestselling book where I had been using it as a bookmark. I had been asked to endorse the paperback edition and had been grappling to find the right words. ‘Gripping’ for a book which had lost my attention on page ten didn’t seem fitting, but I owed the author’s editor a favor, so I was determined to plow ahead until I could find something to praise. There was always the good old standby ‘page-turning’, if the best I could manage was to flip through the pages to read the end.
Misaki’s parting advice was – again – to call Narduzzi, and I knew she was right. With any luck he wouldn’t be in the office by now and I could leave a message.
He picked up on the second ring.
‘Detective Narduzzi.’
‘Oh! Hi. Yes, hi. This is Augusta Hawke. I’m the neighbor – one of the neighbors – across the back from the Normans’ place. We spoke earlier. With your sergeant. In my townhouse.’
‘Right. Sure.’ I heard the sound of paper crinkling and guessed I’d interrupted him in the middle of a Big Mac dinner at his desk.
‘You said I should call if I remembered anything.’
Definitely the sound of a hamburger wrapper being crumpled. I heard a soft ‘ding’, and pictured him tossing it into a wastebasket across the room.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner,’ I said. ‘I don’t even think this is important.’
‘Everything is important, at this stage.’
I braced myself in case I was going to be scolded for not saying anything before. I began babbling, weirdly overcompensating with word salad.
‘It’s just that, well, we are all living cheek by jowl here, you know. Worse than Japan, where they’ve learned all these social rules so they don’t just go crazy, you know. They rarely look each other in the eye or stare at people and so on. They have women-only train cars, did you know that?’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m really—’
‘Yes, yes, you’re busy! OK. Anyway, so here in Kildare we’ve likewise learned to ignore everyone’s little peccadilloes. Unless they involve parking in someone else’s space. There is no social rule that covers that, and it’s the sort of outrage that can never be forgiven, really. God help you if you block someone’s driveway. Seriously.’
‘You’re calling to tell me about the Normans’ car?’ he asked.
‘No! No, of course not. I don’t know anything about the car.’ Yet. I hadn’t heard from Kent about what his police source might know, which was not exactly information I could drop into this conversation, anyway. ‘It was just an example I was giving you. In case you wondered why I didn’t mention it before. Actually, I forgot. Sort of. I just, you know …’ I wondered if they recorded calls to the station as a matter of course. Naturally, they would. I had to get a grip. At this rate he’d think I’d kidnapped everyone in the courtyard.
‘What,’ he said flatly. Just the thin edge of rudeness creeping into his voice. It had no doubt been a long day at HQ.
‘OK. Here’s the thing. I saw them fighting. Quarreling. Words, not fists. In case you were getting the idea it was one hundred percent bliss over there … But it was just the once. All couples quarrel. I don’t think they were any worse than most. My husband and I used to quarrel sometimes, you know. And I really regret it now he’s gone, even though he was … But I thought I should tell you.’
‘Uh huh.’ He didn’t sound particularly interested, which was good. It meant I hadn’t wrecked the investigation by keeping things to myself.
At the same time, I felt he should be treating my eyewitness testimony with a bit more respect. Maybe telling him about the yelp I overheard would do it.
‘There’s more,’ I said. ‘I think I heard Zora cry out in pain once.’
‘Really?’ Again that blasé attitude. I could picture him scrolling through his phone or something when he should have been paying attention to me.
‘Yes, really. They were on the back patio one night and I heard this, like, yelp.’
‘Uh huh. You’re sure it wasn’t Niko?’
I tried to think back to the moment.
‘No,’ I said with more certainty than I felt. ‘It was higher pitched.’
‘You’re sure it was Zora?’
‘Well, no. I’m only sure it was coming from their patio.’ To be honest, I wasn’t even sure of that now, but I felt I’d lost quite enough ground with him already. He was probably thinking some smart-aleck attorney would make mincemeat of me on the witness stand.
He was probably right.
Since we had inched into a slightly new phase of our relationship, however, I thought I’d chance a question or two.
‘So …’ I said. ‘Any leads? I mean, does anyone have any idea what happened?’
‘I can’t tell you more than what you’ve heard on the news. Niko’s car has been found.’
What? ‘That was on the news?’
‘Channel Four,’ he said.
Damn. ‘I was watching Channel Eight. You were good, by the way.’ I reached for the remote. Channel Four was doing another true-crime show. I’d have to wait for the real news at ten.
‘Channel Four has better turnaround,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a bigger staff and they can send out a scrum of reporters for a story like this.’
‘Apparently. I’ll remember that next time. We were only watching Channel Eight because a friend of mine thought they’d show the interview they’d done with her.’
‘Who’s your friend?’
It sounded like an idle question, but I wasn’t sure why he would ask. ‘Well, sort of a friend. She’s a member of the Kildare HOA board so the reporters thought she might know something. Which she doesn’t, I’m sure. I mean, the entire focus of the board tends to be on what wattage of bulbs to use in the courtyard streetlamps.’ I was hoping to discourage him from asking for Misaki’s name. I already felt like I was ratting her out. Besides, I wanted to be free to discuss the case with her, my own neutral sounding board.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Oh. Well, It’s Misaki. Jones. Misaki Jones.’
‘Right, we’ve already spoken with her. You’re right, she doesn’t know anything.’
That sounded vaguely insulting, so I said, ‘She knows a whole lot but not about this. I mean, you must understand, this has upset the entire community. And that’s basically, I’m sure, what she told the reporter. That she was upset. Naturally.’
‘Of course. Do you have something more to add to what you’ve told me about the quarrel you witnessed?’
‘Not really, no.’ I could feel I was losing him – his French fries or whatever were undoubtedly getting cold – so I rushed on: ‘So you found Niko’s car. But not Niko.’
Silence.
‘And not Zora? No trace of Zora?’
‘Mrs Hawke, you know I’m not at liberty to—’
‘Yeah, I know. And it’s Ms Hawke. Hawke is my maiden name. Can you at least tell me where it was found? The car?’
‘Since this was on the news, sure. Someone had driven it into Dyke Marsh. It was found buried up to its hubcaps in mud, we’ve had so much rain this year.’
‘You’re kidding. That’s, what, only seven miles from here.’
‘Less.’
‘Wow.’
‘Tell me more about this verbal altercation,’ he said. ‘What was said?’
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me.
‘I couldn’t hear them. I could just see gestures. Facial expressions. You know.’
I proceeded to tell him basically the same story I had told Zora’s mother, with a heavy emphasis on how much jetlag had impaired my memory.
He listened to the end, perhaps taking notes. For whatever reason, he seemed to be less dismissive than he’d been at the start of the call. He said, ‘And that’s all? That’s all you saw, just the one time?’
This gave me the opening I needed to establish I wasn’t the sort of woman who would snoop on her neighbors just for something to do. I parsed his question literally – he was asking what I saw.
‘That was the only time I saw anything for sure amiss over there,’ I said. ‘I’m almost always in my office, which faces the other way. South. I think I told you that already, you and your sergeant. I’m really too busy to keep tabs, even if I were inclined.’
‘That’s too bad,’ he said. ‘In an investigation like this, ears on the ground and eyes on the prize are extremely valuable.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Of course, if I can be of any help.’ Part of me knew he was bullshitting me, and part of me knew I really could be of help. If I saw anything.
Like what? I wondered. Like Niko sneaking back into the house late at night because he’d forgotten his toothbrush? Even if that weren’t unlikely, the police must have a watch on the place.
Overall, this did not seem the moment to tell Narduzzi I was thinking of going to Niko’s office under false pretenses. In my own defense, let me just say I hadn’t fully decided I was going to go that route. I wasn’t at all convinced I wouldn’t get caught. I could probably portray an outraged wife well enough, but there was every chance in the heat of the moment I’d forget what my name was supposed to be unless I wrote it on my inner wrist. And whatever Misaki said, I wasn’t sure about that blonde wig. Perhaps hair extensions?
‘Of course,’ I repeated. ‘I wish I could tell you more. It really is awful, this happening. Here.’
‘You don’t seem to have been Facebook friends,’ he said. ‘You and Zora.’
It was at that moment I realized how bad I was at this investigative thing. It was one thing to dream up preposterous plots for my books but here, in real life, I had fallen at the first hurdle. Not once had it occurred to me to look the Normans up on Facebook. The most basic step in law enforcement these days, I’m sure. All those hours of watching Investigation ID had been wasted time, with nothing learned except, ‘Don’t ever let the bad guy get you into his car.’
And obviously, the obverse was true as well. Narduzzi had been checking up on my friend status. Surely inconclusive, whether or not he’d found a bond there between me and Zora, but it did make my skin crawl a bit. I was as under investigation as anyone else who happened to be in the Normans’ orbit, intentionally or not.
‘No, we weren’t. There’s rather a large generation gap. We don’t – didn’t – do lunch. It was just not that sort of relationship. Around here you’re grateful if people are friendly, and mostly, they are. She was. Is.
‘Hopefully, still is.’