Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [136]
“Over here!” someone yelled, and we slogged to where one of the shovels had overturned a black nylon strap. Lifting carefully, we found it was attached to an old discolored day pack, barely recognizable as yellow.
“That belongs to Willie!” I shouted.
“Willie who?”
“The transient we interviewed on the Promenade! He knew Brennan!” I was pointing, using sign language over the scream of the wind.
I thought of Willie’s stained white beard, how he had painfully lowered himself in the doorway of the old bookstore. The sad, lost look in his flat eyes. With icy fumbling fingers I unbuckled one of the pockets. Inside was a handful of sparkly girlie hair clips and ponytail scrunchies, cheap beaded bracelets and dime-store rings.
“This stuff isn’t Willie’s!” I shouted. “It’s Brennan’s trophies. From his victims, like he said!”
“Where is Willie?” Jason shouted back. “Is he out here? Did Brennan kill him, too? Is he dead?”
I did not answer but watched as Jason, carrying the pack, lumbered through the blustery sandstorm to the van where Brennan was receiving first aid for the injury he had suffered by falling down on a rock.
I turned to the open desert, its monotone mauves blurred by rain.
“Willie!” I bellowed. “Wil-lie!”
And lifted my arms and stood up on my toes and felt the wind under me.
The house was near the Venice canals, in a funky working-class pocket. It was, amongst Spanish shacks and Victorian clapboards, a two-story remodel painted blue, with all sorts of adornments hanging off the eaves—whales and wind chimes and snowflakes and a whole school of angelfish. Carved into a wooden oar were the words Welcome to the Forresters. A boat was still hitched to a trailer in the drive. On the porch a table was laden with young plants in flats from a nursery; above them, an American flag. On top of a pole, like a totem, sat a pelican with head tucked. I wondered how they’d gotten a sculpture up there, but then the wind ruffled its feathers and I saw that it was a real bird.
“Who’s there?” Margaret Forrester demanded, impulsively opening the door before hearing a reply.
The air had a swampy, cabbage smell, which must have carried from the languid, slow-moving channels that ran beneath arched bridges to the sea. People who lived in the expensive houses on the canals kept rowboats and canoes. But that upscale neighborhood was several blocks away.
“Ana Grey, with the FBI.”
“I know who you are.” She stepped out. “What are you doing here?” Then she saw the police.
“We have a warrant for your arrest.”
She folded her arms and laid her weight back on one hip.
“Is this about the guava trees?”
“It’s not about the guava trees.”
“—Because I’ve had it up to here. Have you met my neighbors? Obviously you have. I’ve told them if the fruit falls on their side, keep it, what is the problem? These are the oldest continually producing guava trees in Venice!”
“You are under arrest as an accessory in the murder of your husband.”
The eyelids began to flutter, the eyeballs circling uselessly as if cut loose from their stalks. She whimpered like a child.
The police captain said, “Ma’am?”
Now there were sharp intakes of breath as if she had found herself in a gas chamber.
“I’m sorry. I was up until five a.m., working in my garden.”
The captain said, “What is it, a moon garden?”
“She has guava trees,” I explained.
“I’m going to read you your rights,” he began.
Margaret cried, “Andrew is the one who killed my husband. But he’s dead, too, so what is the purpose? Why are you doing this to me?”
“What did Detective Andrew Berringer have to do with the death of your husband?” I asked, although I knew.
I knew because during preparation for the trial, my attorney had obtained the coroner’s report on the death of Wes (the Hat) Forrester. He’d had it reviewed by an expert in tool and weapon