Beach Strip Read online

  I was sitting at the kitchen table, remembering that smile, when I sensed someone coming through the garden from the beach, as Gabe might have, and I held my breath until he reached the door. It was Mel. He wore his blue police windbreaker over a white cotton T-shirt that wrapped around his chest like skin on an apple, tight jeans, and white Reeboks. He stood staring at the garden shed, his hands on his hips, and I opened the door before he could knock. We looked at each other, not speaking. I was wondering how Tina knew Mel’s eyes would be blue.

  “How’re you doing?” Mel asked finally.

  “Surviving. My sister’s here. From Vancouver.”

  Mel looked over my shoulder.

  “She’s sleeping,” I said. “You want some coffee?”

  “No, it’s all right. I’m on my way to the station. Just dropped in to see how you were. And I’ve got news.”

  Two people going by on the boardwalk stopped and leaned toward each other, watching us and whispering. There’s the widow, I could imagine them saying. I didn’t want them seeing or saying anything about me.

  “Come in,” I said, walking back to the kitchen table.

  Mel closed the door and leaned against it, inside the house but not in the kitchen. “I called the station this morning,” he said. “The lab says that’s definitely semen from the floor of the garden shed. They’ll do a DNA analysis for identification purposes in case they come up with a suspect.”

  I didn’t want a suspect for perversion. I wanted a suspect for the murder of my husband. More than that, I wanted the murderer himself. I wanted Mel to help me find him and help me kill him. I honestly had that thought, staring across the garden at the boardwalk and the beach beyond, where Gabe had died.

  “Is it possible …” I began. I started over. “Is it possible that whoever killed Gabe—”

  “Josie—”

  “Let me finish. Is it possible that whoever killed Gabe might have hidden in the shed and followed him to the beach, into the bushes?”

  “The guy whose semen we found?”

  I shrugged.

  “First, we don’t know if anybody was in there at the time. And second, Josie, Gabe did it. It’s clear as hell—”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Mel looked up at the ceiling, rolled his eyes, and spread his arms in a gesture of defeat. “There’s something else,” he said. “The body … Gabe is being released today.”

  I sat staring at the wall, my chin on my hand.

  “They need to know what you want to do, Josie,” Mel said. “Have you made arrangements for burial? Have you chosen a funeral parlour, an undertaker?”

  “No.”

  “You have to.”

  “I’ll wait for Tina. My sister,” I added when he stood scratching an eyebrow and looking puzzled. “One of us will call later. Who do we talk to?”

  Mel removed his notepad, scribbled a name and telephone number on the top sheet, tore it off, and walked to where I sat, placing the paper in front of me. “I’m worried about you,” he said.

  “Good.” I reached for his hand. “So am I.”

  Mel said nothing. Then, “I’ll call later,” and he walked to the back door.

  “Do we need that damn yellow tape around the garden shed?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “You want me to take it off?”

  I nodded and followed him into the garden.

  Pulling the tape from the door, he called over his shoulder, “Walter Freeman’s arranging a ceremony for Gabe next week.”

  I told Mel I didn’t want one.

  “Doesn’t matter.” He carried the yellow tape to the trash pail. “A cop dies, there’s a ceremony for him. You can do what you want about a funeral, but cops like to have a ceremony.” He brushed his hands together and looked at me. “Even when it’s a suicide.”

  I told Mel it wasn’t a suicide.

  “I wish you’d see it that way. Anyway, he’ll want you there. For the services.”

  I told him to tell Walter if I wasn’t there he could start without me. Then I turned and went back into the house.

  I didn’t need a place to visit Gabe. I didn’t need a block of marble in a cemetery to tell me who and where and what he was. And I didn’t need an undertaker selling me a five-thousand-dollar coffin either. There would be no ceremony with me present. Walter Freeman could do whatever the hell he wanted. I would have Gabe cremated and scatter his ashes on the lake.

  TINA CAME DOWNSTAIRS AN HOUR LATER wearing a peach-coloured robe and L’Air du Temps. She walked to me without a word and placed her arms around me, more of an embrace than a hug.

  “You missed Blue Eyes,” I said when she straightened up and poured herself a coffee.

  “Who?”

  “Mel. He was here this morning. Gabe’s body is …” I swallowed the lump and started again. “They’re releasing Gabe’s body today. They want me to choose an undertaker. How the hell do you choose an undertaker?”

  Tina set her coffee cup down and asked where my telephone book was.

  I chose the funeral parlour nearest to the police morgue. That way, they wouldn’t have to drive very far. Maybe hearses have meters. I figured the shorter the distance, the lower the fee. It might be a silly reason for choosing an undertaker, but it was the only one I could think of.

  Tina was appalled. Tina likes ceremonies, including funerals. They are an opportunity to wear new clothes. I didn’t tell her what I planned. She heard it for the first time after driving me to the funeral home and listening to me inform the undertaker that I wanted Gabe cremated and the whole procedure done for the lowest price they offered. The undertaker, or at least the guy who took the orders at the office, was young enough to believe that his own mortality was merely a rumour. It was easy to picture him as the class nerd in high school, which was probably last year. He nodded, closed his eyes, and smiled when I said I wanted no ceremony, just cremation in a plain wooden box, and I could pick up the ashes myself if it saved a few bucks.

  “Returning the remains to you,” he said with his eyes still closed, “is included in our services.”

  I signed the order, used my credit card, and we left.

  “You’re just going to …” Tina said as we drove away and, after waiting for the courage to say it aloud, “… cremate him?”

  “He has no other family,” I said. “He was an only child and his parents are gone. I’m it. And I’ll remember him my way.”

  “But he was a police officer. Won’t they want to do something for him? I mean, when a police officer dies on duty, cops show up from all over the country—”

  “He didn’t die on duty. And the police have decided he wasn’t shot by somebody else. They’ll have some ritual. A bunch of out-of-town cops will show up, march around wearing white gloves and a serious expression, and spend the night at a Holiday Inn playing poker and telling dirty stories. Or maybe they’ll forget the whole thing, considering it was suicide.”

  “So you also think Gabe killed himself.”

  “No, I don’t. The cops do.”

  “Shouldn’t you have a funeral anyway?”

  “For you and me? Listen, Gabe and I talked about this last year, when an officer was shot while checking a warehouse. They really went overboard on that one, two thousand cops marching behind the hearse, tying up traffic all across the city. Gabe said if he was ever killed on duty I should comb his hair, dress him in a sweatshirt and jeans, and set him on a bench looking out at the lake.”

  “Men can never talk about death seriously.” Tina folded her arms and glanced at me. “That’s why they have affairs.”

  “To avoid discussing death with their wives?”

  “No, because they’re afraid of dying. They want one more lay before they go, and they think the next might be their last.”

  “You’re such a romantic.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Why do women have affairs?”

  “Because their men let them down.”

  That
hurt. Gabe never let me down. Well, maybe once.

  WE WERE OUT OF THE CITY and driving along the south end of the beach strip, the low-rent section studded with small cottages whose residents gathered at Tuffy’s Tavern on the days their welfare cheques arrived. Tina wrinkled her nose at the sight of people sitting on their front steps smoking and drinking beer out of long-necked bottles. “You really like living here?” she asked.

  “I love it.”

  “Will you love it without your husband?”

  “Not as much. But I’m staying anyway.”

  “Daddy always said you were stubborn.”

  And he always said you were a spoiled little bitch, I thought.

  “There’s a car in your driveway.” Tina looked apprehensive.

  I recognized Mel’s red Mustang convertible. When Mel was on duty, he drove brown and grey Chevrolets, but he refused to drive anything so mundane on his own time.

  “Don’t panic,” I said. “You’ll enjoy this.”

  I parked at the curb, and we walked down the driveway to the rear of the house and into the garden, where Mel stood looking out at the lake. I called Mel’s name and he turned and smiled. “Hey,” he said. Mel had a way of combining two expressions in one, his brow furrowing and his eyes narrowing as though he were somewhere between confusion and anger. He wore that expression when he wanted to make you feel good about him, or maybe just good about yourself for being near him. He wore it now.

  Behind me, Tina made a pseudo-orgasmic sound in her throat.

  “Mel, this is my sister, Tina. Tina, Mel Holiday.”

  Mel extended a hand large enough to lift a watermelon. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here to help Josie.”

  Tina said that’s what sisters were for, which caused my eyes to roll.

  “We just made arrangements for Gabe’s funeral,” I said.

  “I’ll be there,” Mel said.

  “Well, you’ll be the only one. There’s no ceremony.”

  “That’s how you want it?”

  “That’s how Gabe would want it. The force won’t send anybody if I ask them not to, right? Not as long as they believe he killed himself.”

  “The results came back from forensics,” Mel said. He glanced behind me at Tina, and I sensed the rest of his words were directed at her. “The bullet is from his gun. The guys in Toronto reviewed it, and they’re the best. So there’s no doubt about it. The paraffin test was positive, and there was alcohol in his blood—”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Zero point five, something like that.”

  “You can legally drive with that much.” I kicked at the garden shed door. “He could have been behind the wheel of his car, and you guys couldn’t have touched him. Don’t tell me he was so drunk he decided to kill himself, Mel. He had maybe a couple of glasses of wine—”

  “Josie—”

  “No suicide note, Mel. How do you explain that? Gabe would leave me a note when he went for a walk on the beach. Why doesn’t he leave me a note before he shoots himself in the head?”

  “It’s not me, Josie.” Mel was looking from Tina to me and back to Tina again. Tina—I know because I checked—was looking at Mel’s eyes. “Look.” He lowered his voice. “Everything you say is true. Nothing about this makes sense. But Walter and everybody else at Central, they look at what we have as evidence, and they believe he did it. There’ll be an inquest, but unless the coroner decides criminal action was involved, Walter’s not going to assign a bunch of cops to look into Gabe’s death. He’ll have no reason to. He’ll say that Gabe wouldn’t be the first cop to fold under pressure, and he’ll be right. Maybe Gabe was working on something that got him so damned depressed—”

  “Have they looked into that?” I interrupted. “What he was working on? Gabe never talked to me about the cases he had going, not until everything was settled and the trial started. So has Walter, has he and everybody else, taken a look at Gabe’s cases, the ones he was working on?”

  Mel dropped his arms and nodded. “They looked and I looked. They found nothing in his files. If Gabe killed himself, they don’t have a motive for what he did.”

  “No, they don’t,” I said. “But maybe we do, right?”

  I turned and began walking back to the house, then stopped and looked back at Mel. “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “We want the pervert who’s been sneaking into your garden shed,” Mel said. “These guys, they start with this kind of thing,” and he waved at the shed, “then move on to other things. Anybody standing at that window has a perfect view into the kitchen, and upstairs to your bedroom window.”

  “Yeah, well, apparently he liked what he saw.” I resumed walking back to the house.

  “What will you do?” I heard Tina ask Mel. “How will you catch him?”

  Mel said something about spreading crystals on the floor that would cling to the suspect’s shoes, and alerting bicycle patrols on the boardwalk. I didn’t hear the rest. I walked to the rear door, unlocked it, let myself into the kitchen, and had a good cry. A long one. I figured I had the time. Tina would stand out there and listen to Mel recite the entire police procedure manual if he chose, the sunlight on those damn deep blue eyes of his.

  9.

  Men want to be eagles. Women wish they were swans. I prefer cormorants. It’s my working-class upbringing. Gabe and I talked about this one day while sitting on the pier that extends beyond the mouth of the canal into the lake, the one with the lighthouse at the end. We were watching birds, a pleasant thing to do on warm evenings along the lake. We saw a vee of Canada geese fly over the strand, so lovely in the air and so crappy on the ground. We were always stepping into their droppings, and the damn birds would lunge at you if you approached during their nesting season. Geese, Gabe and I agreed, are best when served with sage dressing.

  Gulls flew past, all wings and noise. Flocks of these garbage birds hang around the drive-in restaurant at the far end of the strip and fly up to the canal when they get bored, which they are when they’re not eating. Gulls are the scuzzos of the bird world. Nobody would want to be a gull.

  I liked the little terns that scurried in and out of the water’s edge, snaring insects in the sand. Cute, like puppies, but not model material. Gabe liked the herons that lived in the marshlands to the north of the strip. Herons have a lot of class, but they’re ugly. Not just look-the-other-way ugly, but disgustingly ugly. I didn’t need to be a swan, but I refused to be a heron.

  That evening, we watched dozens of black birds flying toward the shore from the lake, looking as though they knew exactly where they were going, and why. With graceful necks and tapered wings, they appeared more independent than the geese, who flew in military precision, or the gulls, who would fly into a furnace if they thought food was there.

  “What are they?” I asked Gabe. I had seen the birds before but given them no thought.

  Gabe said they were cormorants, which sounded exotic. Gabe told me they flew out over the lake in search of food each morning. At the end of the day they returned to nest in trees along the shore of the bay, facing the fires of the blast furnaces and mills. Neither scavengers like gulls nor beggars like geese nor timid souls like terns, the cormorants took charge of their lives. Out of sight of shore, they dove underwater and became submerged predators, swimming after their food like feathered barracudas. When their workday was over, they gathered with their buddies and flew home to snuggle on their perch and watch the sun go down. Blue-collar birds.

  On summer mornings, I would step through the rear door of our house on the beach strip and into our garden and watch the cormorants fly east toward the sun, still hanging low over the water. The more I learned about the birds, the more I liked them. Cormorants work hard and mate for life. They’re not as pretty as swans, but not every man I slept with was Hugh Grant, either. They can dive into water cold as ice, they fly twenty miles back and forth to work each day, and they look good in black. To hell with swans.
I’d rather be a cormorant.

  Cormorants could not live anywhere else nearly as well as they do on the beach strip. Nor could I.

  I needed Tina to understand this, but I never tried to explain it to her. The only blue collar Tina knows about is the one on her Chanel jacket. And the only birds she can identify are flamingos. Seen at a distance. From a yacht in the Caribbean.

  HERE IS THE DIFFERENCE between Tina and me that you need to know: when we were kids, Tina wanted to grow up and marry a doctor, and she did; I wanted to grow up and become a doctor, and I didn’t.

  When Tina announced that she had met the man she was going to marry, after their first date, Mother said, “Tell me about him.”

  Tina met him while volunteering at a charity lunch in Toronto, probably raising money for underprivileged poodles or needy brain surgeons. She didn’t say, although she told me she had been wearing an absolutely stunning new Donna Karan suit and Anne Klein pumps that made her feel like Julia Roberts on a good day. Tina has always believed she resembles Julia Roberts, but only her mouth does. It’s her largest, most notable feature. A former boyfriend of hers told me that whenever he kissed Tina, he swore he heard an echo.

  Anyway, Tina raved about her new man, who got his medical degree at Harvard, trained as a surgeon at McGill, was next in line to become head of surgery at Vancouver General, won a provincial junior tennis championship while an undergraduate, drove a silver BMW 535, had a mild case of eczema on his right elbow, and wore a size 42 Tall suit.

  “And his name is?” Mother asked.

  Tina said, “Andrew Golden.”