certificate in the crabbed and almost illegible handwriting of a
physician, presumably the old man’s doctor, was “natural causes,” with
“coronary thrombosis” added in brackets. And maybe it was only that.
The deceased had made no unusual purchases; his only longdistance calls
were to Newfoundland and Toronto. So far, no traction. Maybe she’d
find the answer in Halifax.
Or maybe not.
She was intoxicated by the same strange brew of hope and despair she
always felt at the beginning of a case. One minute she knew for sure
she’d crack it, the next it seemed impossible. This much she knew for
sure: the first homicide in a series she investigated was always the
most important. It was the benchmark. Only if you were thorough, if
you turned over every rock, did you have any hope of making connections.
You’d never connect the dots unless you saw where all the dots were.
Anna was wearing her travel suit, a navy-blue Donna Karan (though the
cheaper line), and a white Ralph Lauren blouse (not couture, of course).
She was known around the office for dressing impeccably. On her salary
she could scarcely afford designer labels, but she bought them anyway,
living in a dark one-bedroom apartment in a lousy part of Washington,
taking no vacations, because all her money went to clothes.
Everyone assumed she dressed so nicely to make herself attractive to
men, because that was what young single women did. They were wrong. Her
clothes were body armor. The finer the outfits, the safer and more
secure she felt. She used designer cosmetics and wore designer clothes
because then she was no longer the daughter of the dirt-poor Mexican
immigrants who cleaned the houses and tended the yards of rich people.
Then she could be anyone. She was self-aware enough to know how
ridiculous this was in rational terms. But she did it anyway.
She wondered what it was about her that rankled Arliss Dupree more–that
she was an attractive woman who’d turned him down, or that she was a
Mexican. Maybe both. Maybe in the world according to Dupree, a
Mexican-American was inferior and therefore had no right to reject him.
She had grown up in a small town in Southern California. Both her
parents were Mexicans who’d escaped the desolation, the disease, the
hopelessness south of the border. Her mother, soft-spoken and gentle,
cleaned houses; her father, quiet and introverted, did yard work
When she was in grade school she wore dresses sewn by her mother, who
also braided her brown hair and put it up. She was aware that she
dressed differently, that she didn’t quite fit in, but it didn’t bother
her until she was ten or eleven, when the girls started forming iron
cliques that excluded her. They’d never associate with the daughter of
the woman who cleaned their houses.
She was uncool, an outsider, an embarrassment. She was invisible.
Not that she was in a minority–the high school was half-Latino, half
white, the lines rarely crossed. She got used to being called “wetback”
and “spic” by some of the white girls and guys. But among the Latinos
there were castes, too, and she was at the bottom. The Latino girls
always dressed well, and they mocked her clothes even more viciously
than the white girls did.
The solution, she decided, was to dress like all the other girls. She
began to complain to her mother, who didn’t take her seriously at first,
then explained that they couldn’t afford to buy the kind of clothes the
other girls had, and anyway, what was the difference, really? Didn’t
she like her mother’s homemade clothes? Anna would snap, “No! I hate
them!” knowing full well how much the words hurt. Even today, twenty
years later, Anna could barely think about those days without feeling
guilt
Her mother was beloved by all her employers. One of them, a genuinely
rich woman, began donating all of her children’s castoffs. Anna wore
them happily–she couldn’t imagine why anyone would throw away such fine
clothes!–until she gradually came to realize that her clothes were all
last year’s fashions, and then her ardor cooled. One day she was
walking down the hall at school and one of the girls in a clique she
very much wanted to join called her over. “Hey,” the girl said, “that’s
my skirt!” Blushing, Anna denied it. The girl stuck a probing finger
under the hem and turned it over to reveal her initials inked on the
tag.
The RCMP officer who picked her up at the airport, Anna knew, had spent
a year at the FBI Academy learning homicide investigation techniques. He
was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, she’d heard, but a good sort.
He stood outside the security gate, a tall, handsome thirtyish man in a
blue blazer and red tie. He flashed a pearly smile, seemingly genuinely
happy to see her. “Welcome to Nova Scotia,” he said. “I’m Ron
Arsenault.” Dark-haired, brown-eyed, lantern jaw, high forehead. Dudley
Do Right, she thought to herself.
“Anna Navarro,” she said, shaking his hand firmly. Men always expect
women to shake like a dead fish, so she always gave them her firmest
handshake; it set the tone, let them know she was one of the guys. “Nice
to meet you.”
He reached out for her carry-on garment bag, but she shook her head,
smiled. “I’m O.K.” thanks.”
“This your first time in Halifax?” He was obviously checking her out.
“Yeah. It looks beautiful from above.”
He chuckled politely as he guided her through the terminal. “I’ll be
liaising with the Halifax locals for you. You got the records O.K.?”
“Thanks. Everything but the bank records.”
“Those should be in by now. If I find them I’ll drop them by your
hotel.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure thing.” He squinted at something: contact lenses, Anna knew.
“Tell you the truth, Miss Navarro–Anna?–some folks back in Ottawa
can’t quite figure why you’re taking such an interest in the old geezer.
Eighty-seven-year-old man dies in his home, natural causes, you gotta
expect that, you know?”
They had reached the parking lot.
“The body’s in the police morgue?” she asked.
“Actually, in the morgue of the local hospital. Waiting in the fridge
for you. You got to us before the old guy was planted, that’s the good
news.”
“And the bad news?”
“Body had already been embalmed for burial.”
She winced. “That might screw up the tox screen.”
They got to a dark blue, late-model Chevrolet sedan that screamed
“unmarked police vehicle.” He opened the trunk and put her bag in.
They drove for a while in silence.
“Who’s the widow?” she asked. It wasn’t in the file. French Canadian
too?”
“A local. Haligonian. Former schoolteacher. Tough old biddy, too. I
mean, I feel bad for the lady, she’s just lost her husband, and the
funeral was supposed to be tomorrow. We had to ask her to put it off.
She had relatives coming in from Newfoundland, too. When we mentioned
autopsy she wigged out.” He glanced over at her, then back to the road.
“Given how it’s evening, I thought you could settle in, and we can get
started bright and early tomorrow morning. ME’s going to meet us at
seven.”
She felt a pang of disappointment. She wanted to go right to work.
“Sounds good,” she said.
More silence. It was good to have a liaison officer who didn’t seem to
resent an emissary from the U.S. government. Arsenault was as friendly
as could be. Maybe too much so.
“Here’s your inn. Your government doesn’t exactly spend the big bucks,
hey?”
It was an unlovely Victorian house on Barrington Street, a large wooden
building painted white with green shutters. The white paint had been
soiled to a dirty gray.
“Hey, so let me take you out to dinner, unless you’ve got other plans.
Maybe Clipper Cay, if you like seafood. Maybe catch some jazz at the
Middle Deck … ?” He parked the car.
“Thanks, but I’ve had a long day,” she said.
He shrugged, his disappointment obvious.
The inn had a faintly musty smell, as from a baseboard dampness that
never quite went away. An old-fashioned carbon was made of her credit
card and a brass key provided; she was prepared to tell the beefy guy at
the front desk that she didn’t need help with her bags, but none was
volunteered. The same slight mustiness pervaded her room, on the second
floor, which was decorated in floral patterns. Everything in it looked
worn, but not objection ably so. She hung her clothes in the closet,
drew the curtains, and changed into gray sweats. A nice run would do
her good, she decided.
She jogged along the Grand Parade, the square on the west side of
Barrington Street, then up George Street to the star-shaped fortress
called The Citadel. She stopped, panting, at a newsstand and picked up
a map of the city. She found the address; it wasn’t far at all from