He moved toward the door to let the guy in while I turned and squinted at him. Act normal. Why wouldn’t I act normal? I am normal.
On the back step, I could hear the uniformed police officer’s murmured introduction. Chester ushered him into the kitchen. “I appreciate your coming out. This is my neighbor, Kinsey Millhone. Officer Wettig,” he said, using this phony Mr. Good Citizen tone of voice.
I glanced at the officer’s name tag. P. Wettig. Paul, Peter, Phillip. This was not anyone I knew from my dealings with the department. Gutierrez and Pettigrew had always handled this beat. Despite my skepticism, Chester’s conspiracy theory was apparently having an effect, because I was already wondering if his 911 call had been intercepted and an impostor sent instead. Wettig was probably in his late forties, looking more like a lounge singer than a uniformed patrolman. He wore his blond hair long, pulled into a little pigtail in back; brown eyes, short blunt nose, round chin. I pegged him at six three, weighing in at 210. The uniform looked authentic, but wasn’t he a little old to be a beat cop?
“Hi. How are you?” I said, shaking hands. “I expected to see Gerald Pettigrew and Maria Gutierrez.”
Wettig’s look was neutral, his tone of voice bland. “They split up. Pettigrew’s on Traffic now, and Maria moved over to the county sheriff’s department.”
“Really. I hadn’t heard that.” I glanced at Chester. “You want me to stay? I can hang around if you like.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can call you later.” He glanced at Officer Wettig. “I guess I better show you the apartment.”
I watched as Chester and the officer walked down the back steps and across the concrete drive.
As soon as they were out of sight, I moved down the hallway and peered out the front. A black-and-white patrol car was parked at the curb. I found the telephone, which was located in what looked like a little prayer niche in the hall. I pulled out the telephone directory and dialed the regular phone line for the Santa Teresa Police Department. Someone in Records answered.
I said, “Oh, hi. Can you tell me if Officer Wettig is working this shift?”
“Just a second and I’ll check.” She clicked off, putting me on hold. Moments later she clicked back in again. “He’s on until three this afternoon. You want to leave a message?”
“No, thanks. I’ll try again later,” I said, and hung up. Belatedly I blushed, feeling slightly sheepish. Of course there was an Officer Wettig. What was wrong with me?
4
After I left Bucky’s, I came home and took a brief but refreshing nap, which I suspected, even then, was going to be one of the highlights of my vacation. At 4:57 I ran a brush through my hair and trotted down the spiral stairs.
The lowering cloud cover was generating an aura of early twilight, and the streetlights winked on as I locked my apartment. Even with the late afternoon drop in temperature, Henry’s back door was open. Raucous laughter spilled through the screen door, along with a tantalizing array of cooking smells. Henry was playing some kind of honky-tonk piano in the living room. I crossed the flagstone patio and knocked on the screen. Preparations for Lewis’s birthday dinner were already under way. For his birthday, I’d bought a sterling-silver shaving set with a mug and a brush that I’d found in an antique store. It was more “collectible” than antique, but I thought it would be something he could either use or admire.
Lewis was polishing silverware, but he let me in. He’d taken off his suit coat, but he still wore dress pants, a vest, crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Charlie had one of Henry’s aprons tied around his waist, and he was in the process of putting the finishing touches on Lewis’s birthday cake. Henry had told me Charlie was becoming self-conscious because his hearing had deteriorated so much. He’d had his hearing officially tested about five years before. At that point, the audiologist had recommended hearing aids, for which Charlie had been fitted. He’d worn them for a week or so and then put them in a drawer. He said the ones he tried felt like someone had a thumb in each ear. Every time he flushed the toilet, it sounded like Niagara Falls. Combing his hair sounded like someone walking on gravel. He didn’t see what was wrong with people talking loud enough for him to hear. Most of the time, he had a hand cupped to his right ear. He said, “What?” quite a lot. The others tended to ignore him.
The cake he was working on had listed to one side, and he was using an extra inch of white frosting to prop it up. He glanced up at me. “We don’t let the birthday person bake his own birthday cake,” he said. “Nell does the layers, unless it’s her birthday, of course, and I do boiled frosting, which she never seems to get right.”
“Everything smells great.” I lifted the lid to a covered casserole. Inside, there was a mass of something lumpy and white with what looked like pimento, hard-boiled egg, and clumps of pickle relish. “What’s this?”
“Say again?”
Lewis spoke up. “That started out as potato salad, but Charlie set the timer and never heard it ring, so the potatoes cooked down to mush. We decided to add all the regular ingredients and call it Charlie Pitts’s Famous Mashed Potato Salad. We’re also having fried chicken, baked beans, coleslaw, deviled eggs, and sliced cucumbers and tomatoes with vinegar. I’ve had this same meal every birthday for the last eighty-six years, since I was two,” he said. “We each have something special, and the rule in our family is that the siblings cook. Some are better than others, as it turns out,” he added with a glance at Charlie.
I turned to Charlie. “What do you have for your birthday?”
“What’s that?”
I raised my voice and repeated my question.
“Oh. Hot dogs, chili, dill pickles, and potato chips. Mother used to fuss because I refused to have a proper vegetable, but I insisted on potato chips and she finally gave in. Instead of birthday cake, I always ask for a pan of Henry’s brownies, which he usually has to send halfway across the country.”
“What about Henry?”
Charlie cupped a hand to his ear, and Lewis answered for him. “Country ham, biscuits with red-eye gravy, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cheese grits. Nell, now she insists on meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, and apple pie with a big wedge of cheddar cheese on top. Never varies.”
William came into the kitchen in time to catch Lewis’s last remark. “What doesn’t?”
“I was telling Kinsey about our birthday dinners.”
I smiled at William. “What’s yours?”
Lewis cut in again. “William always begs for a New England boiled dinner, but we vote him down.”
“Well, I like it,” he said staunchly.
“Oh, you do not. Nobody could like a New England boiled dinner. You just say that because you know the rest of us would be forced to eat it as well.”
“So what does he end up with?”
“Anything we feel like cooking,” Lewis said with satisfaction.
We heard a tap at the back door. I turned and saw that Rosie had arrived. The minute she and William saw each other, their faces lighted up. There were seldom any public displays of affection between them, but there was no doubt about their devotion. He was undismayed by her crankiness, and she took his hypochondria in stride. As a consequence, he complained less about imaginary ailments and her sour moods had diminished.
Tonight she was decked out in a dark red muumuu with a purple-and-navy paisley shawl, the rich colors adding a note of drama to her vibrantly dyed red hair. She seemed relaxed. I’d always thought of her as someone abysmally shy, ill at ease with strangers, overbearing with friends. She tended to be quite flirtatious with men, barely tolerant of women, and oblivious of kids. At the same time, she tyrannized the restaurant staff, paying them the lowest wages she could get away with. William and I were forever trying to persuade her to loosen up the purse strings. As for me, she’d bullied me unmercifully since the day I’d moved into the neighborhood. She wasn’t mean, but she was opinionated, and she never seemed to hesitate in making her views known. Since I’d begun eating most of my dinners at the restaurant, she’d routinely told me what to order, ignoring any tastes or requirements of mine. Though I like to think of myself as hard-assed, I’d never had the nerve to stand up to her. My only defense in the face of her dictatorship was passive resistance. So far, I’d refused to get a husband or a dog, two (apparently) interchangeable elements she considered essential for my safety.