Through the night and early morning, the cops sifted through the ashes for metal tips and bits of arrows. They searched lover’s leap for the evidence they didn’t really hope to find: footprints, tire prints, dropped belongings. The archer had been neat and careful, sweeping his tracks with a broom of pine needles.
“Nothing,” Geof paused long enough to say about 4 A.M. And then a couple of hours later, “Nothing.”
“At least he didn’t do real damage,” I said. “The only total loss is the architect’s shack. And Goose can build him another one in the time it takes to nail together a few boards. It’ll probably take him longer to replace his tires.” I peered into the face of the weary policeman who stood before me. “What does all this mean, Geof?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” He shrugged.
By nine that morning, we were at police headquarters. Nobody seemed to object to the presence of the tall blonde in the red shorts and white T-shirt who was following Detective Bushfield around the station, so I remained with him.
After bad coffee and worse doughnuts, we dropped off Geof’s collection of ashes and burnt arrowheads at the evidence room, then walked two flights down to the police garage.
My rubber thongs flapped noisily against my heels.
Geof was even more out of uniform, even for a plain-clothes cop. He wore the only clothes he’d taken aboard the Amy Denise: yellow boxer swim trunks, a Mexican shirt that hung loose to his hip bones and ratty old deck shoes. He would have looked more at home doing undercover drug work in Cancun.
When we walked into the garage, a black face appeared from under Ansen Reich’s pickup truck which was up on a hydraulic lift.
“Detective,” said the young mechanic, and flashed a shy smile at me. He dived back under the truck as if further conversation was too much for him.
“Belzer,” Geof replied. I decided that was the fellow’s last name, and not some arcane police greeting. He said to me, “You sure you want to stay, Jenny? This could take a good long while.”
“I’m sure.” I opened the door of a 1952 two-tone blue Chevy and sat on the front seat. Geof followed me and leaned against the car’s back window.
“Wonderful old car,” I remarked, killing time. I stroked the cloth shoulder of its front seat. “What’s it in for?”
Geof smiled. “It was an accessory to a felony. Claims not to have known why it was waiting at the curb when the liquor store was robbed. We’re hoping it will turn state’s evidence.”
I patted the car’s dashboard. “Well, be gentle with her. With an understanding judge and a good probation officer, she might yet be rehabilitated.”
The mechanic appeared again. This time, with an air of finality and satisfaction, he wiped his hands on a grease rag.
“You can’t be done,” Geof objected. “You just got started.”
“I’m finished.” Belzer spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him. “It’s the brakes.”
Geof gave me a knowing look, and said, “Failed?”
“You could” say that,” Belzer replied, and smiled at the floor. “You better look at ’em.”
Geof examined the car where the mechanic told him to. When he looked back at Belzer, both pairs of police eyes held knowing expressions. “I’ll be damned,” Geof breathed. “So that’s how it was, Belzer. Jenny, come look at this.”
I looked where he pointed.
“What am I looking at?” I said, feeling abysmally ignorant.
“The brake line,” Geof said.
“There’s a hole in it,” I observed.
“All his brake fluid drained out of that hole, Jenny,” Geof said. “That’s why his brakes went out on him.”
I peered more closely at the aperture, then caught my breath.
“Yes,” Geof said. “It was cut.”
I came out from, under the car and stared at the two men. “You’re saying somebody did this on purpose, that he died because somebody tampered with his brakes and they failed just when he was driving down that hill toward the ocean. But there’s no way somebody could know that would happen, is there? I mean, how would the person who did it know the brake fluid would all run out just when Reich happened to be on a hill which just happened to lead to the bay? It’s not possible to predict a thing like that, is it? It seems to me those brakes might have failed at any time, not just at that one particular time. Hell, Geof, they might have gone out on him at a stop sign, or when he was driving on a flat road, or even in his own driveway. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” Geof said, and Belzer nodded.
“So it would not necessarily have resulted in his death,” I continued. “He might not even have been injured. Am I right, or not?”
“You’re right,” Geof agreed. “It might have been a practical joke that went terribly wrong.”
“Practical joke,” said Belzer unexpectedly. “Ha.”
“Or,” Geof continued, “it might have been someone who wanted to scare Reich for some reason. Maybe well get a rash of these incidents and well find out that some garage in town is staging brake failures to drum up business.”
“I’ll ignore that pun,” I said, and Belzer grinned at the floor.
Geof smiled. “It wouldn’t be the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, you know. At any rate, whatever the cause of the brakes failing, the final effect is the same.”
“Homicide,” I said.
“Sure. He’s dead, whether somebody meant to kill him or not. If they didn’t, the only difference will be in the nature and severity of the charges we bring against them.”
“You may have other charges to bring against them, too,” I suggested. “In the last twenty-four hours, the foreman of the project is killed, the project itself is torched, and somebody slashes the tires on the builder’s vehicles. Murder, arson and vandalism. I get the feeling somebody has a grudge against Liberty Harbor!”
“Looks that way,” Geof said, “although you’d be the first to tell me how, supposedly, everybody loves the place.”
“Still, it’s a whale of a lot of coincidence that these events occurred on the same weekend—when the harbor has no previous record of any trouble at all.”
“Well, we will investigate them as separate incidents, with an eye toward linking them. All we need is a motive,” he said ruefully. “All we need is to find somebody who doesn’t love Liberty Harbor.”
“He ought to stand out,” I said, “like black on white.”
But Geof had turned back to the young mechanic. “Good work, son,” he said, “I’ll send Ailey Mason down to get your full workup. Make it fast, will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Geof put a hand under my elbow to steer me toward the door. I smiled a goodbye at Belzer, but he didn’t notice. He was lovingly stroking the chassis of the ’52 Chevy, sharing his moment of glory with something that would understand.
The door closed behind us. We stood once more in the stairwell.
“Son?” I said.
“He brings out the paternal in me, I guess.” Geof paused, started to say something, paused again. “For lack of someone shorter and whiter who looks like me.”
I stared at his back as he led the way upstairs.
Well, I thought, here’s a new twist: children.
But I said nothing, acutely aware of his awareness of my saying nothing. At the first landing, I tugged at the bottoms of his swim trunks. “This being homicide,” I said, “I won’t be seeing much of you for a while.”
He stopped, turned and looked down at me.
“Know one of the things I love most about you? About our, for lack of a better word, relationship?”
I shook my head.
“I like it that I’m going to be gone days and nights until we solve this Reich business, or don’t solve it. And that you’ll miss me, but not much.”
“Some men would be insulted by that.”
“Some men are little boys who still want to be the center of Mommy’s universe. It gives me a fine free feeling to know you can live without me.” His smile grew lopsided. “Whether or not I could live without you, though, that’s a question to which this detective does not have a clue.”
“Well, that’s one case we don’t have to solve today.”
He leaned down, gripping my shoulders and pulling me toward him. He pressed my head against his belly; I felt the damp heat of his body through his shirt. He said, pulling me up to a higher step so that my face was closer to Ms, “But when this is over, Jenny, then we face it, I mean it. I’m not willing to play house with you forever. I want to make a home.”
He kissed me. I returned it forcefully.
We drew apart. “I thought I already had my answer last night,” he said, “but that kiss makes me wonder if you know your own mind.”
“It is,” I admitted, “sometimes a stranger to me.”
But I had nothing more to say then. When he saw that was the case, he turned and recommenced our silent trek back to his office.