A Superior Death

markedly older than when Anna had seen her several days before. Her face was thinner and drawn, as if she’d not been eating or sleeping well. Her hair needed shampooing and her uniform shirt, usually worn like a flag of honor, was crumpled. Tinker noted Anna in the group with a disinterest that smacked of lethargy.

The nature walk seemed to pick up her spirits to some degree. Teaching distracted her perhaps from her private terrors. But Tinker’s usual joy, her religious reverence for the natural world, seemed blighted. Something was eating away at her.

After the walk, Anna returned to the Belle Isle and put on her uniform. Body armor came in all sizes and colors. The LAPD had bulletproof vests, Molly had Anne Klein suits, Anna had the green and gray.

At the lodge, she picked a table near a window. Sunlight flooded across the white cloth, splashed into the empty chair. Anna left that seat for Hawk: her back to the wall, the light in his eyes. Cliched TV choices, Anna thought with a smile, but making them gave her something to do. Stress management, Molly would call it. Dicking around, Anna said to herself.

Hawk was late. Anna flicked all the real and imaginary crumbs from the cloth, checked and rechecked her watch, went through the reasons Hawk might have chosen to stand her up. None of them were reassuring.

At ten of one the Loon, piloted by Tattinger, motored up to the near dock. Through the window, she saw Hawk jump off the boat, wave a thanks, and sprint up the quay. The sun caught his curls where the breeze ruffled them. Cold-blooded killer or not, Anna thought, he was lovely. She did not like to think of the man he would be after a few years in the federal penitentiary.

“Sorry I’m late. Couldn’t cadge a lift,” he said, smiling, folding himself into the chair opposite, whisking up the paper napkin and cracking it open as if it were made of linen. “Will you order for both of us?” Hawk was grinning wickedly. The waitress was standing at their table, pen poised, an interested expression pasted politely on her face.

“Two egg salads, two coffees. No dessert.” Handcuffs were dessert, Anna thought acidly.

“To what do I owe this honor? Is it to be: ‘About last night… I think the world of you but…’? No? Let me guess. You’re married.”

“Sort of,” Anna said. The conversation, planned and rehearsed so carefully in her head, had gotten away from her and was running amok.

“Ohmygod!” One word gusted out on a laugh. “Sort of? Sort of?”

“I’m married. He’s dead. Till death do us part,” Anna explained awkwardly.

“Only sometimes it doesn’t. Dead men are tricky. Memories are tough to beat. They only improve with age.”

“Dead people,” Anna echoed. “Let’s talk about Denny.” So much for smooth segues.

Hawk sobered. Like a light going out, the hazel eyes dimmed, the full lips stilled and thinned. “Okay,” he said evenly. “Denny.”

The waitress came then with two egg salads on white bread, bread-and-butter pickles on the side. Neither was tempted. Coffee came and got a slightly better reception. Hawk sipped. Anna pretended to.

“I went to see Denny’s mother,” she said. “She showed me the trunk in the spare bedroom. There’d been a suit of clothes there-a sea captain’s uniform. It was gone. Mrs. Castle said you and Molly had stolen it. ‘Wild children,’ she called you. Did you take it?”

Hawk thought over his reply. Took a drink of the coffee. “Denny thought a lot of that uniform. He said if he believed in previous lives-which he didn’t-he’d‘ve believed he’d once dressed that way. That’s how he saw himself.”

Not a yes, not a no. Like a character in a Greek tragedy, Anna pushed on with an unpleasant sense of the inevitable. “Denny’s corpse was found dressed in that uniform. No dry suit, no tanks, no mask, just that old sea costume. Mrs. Castle said she showed it to you and Molly around the time Denny died.”

“When did he die?” Hawk asked abruptly. “Exactly?”

“The autopsy will tell us-today, maybe tomorrow. Why?”

Hawk didn’t answer. It was as if he hadn’t heard. He pushed a bit of egg salad around his plate with the edge of a chip but didn’t look as if he was inclined to eat it.

“I saw Denny’s tank-the oversized single-on the Third Sister when Lucas and I came to tell you of the death. Yours and Molly’s were charged but Denny’s was down by nearly half. You’d not bothered to top it.”

“Why should we? Denny was dead.”

“How did you know? At the time you were filling tanks the body had not yet been discovered. And there was a bruise on the body. A mark like one that would be left by a dive harness. My guess is Denny was wearing the tank when he died, or just before.”

“Ah. Gotcha! That it?”

Anna waited, watched his face. Emotions flickered and flooded over the smooth brown skin but she couldn’t separate any one out as stronger than the rest. Unless, perhaps, it was sorrow.

“It’s crossed my mind,” she said, “that Denny was killed by two divers, divers who dressed him in that costume, who retrieved his gear, who stood to inherit his boat and his business.”

Hawk looked up from his plate. His eyes were hard. “The Third Sister has got a load of debt that should sink her. Collateral so we could buy gear for the squirrels. Do you think I’d kill Denny for a boat even if it were free and clear? I can build a damn boat.” The voice was so cold, had Anna not seen him speak she would not have recognized it as his.

“Maybe not for the Third Sister, but for your sister? For Holly.”

Hawk looked blank. “Holly loved Denny,” he said.

“And then there was Jo?”

“No. Nothing like that. Holly couldn’t love Denny like that. Never.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Anna said. A shadow fell across the table, drawing their eyes to the window. It belonged to Frederick the Fed, clad in a suit and tie reminiscent of a Mormon missionary witnessing door to door. He was heading for the lodge.

Instantly Hawk understood what the apparently coincidental arrival of the Bureau man meant.

“No,” he said hurriedly. “No.”

“Holly’s not gay,” Anna said. “I checked.”

“Gay!” Hawk laughed. “No.” The restaurant door opened. Anna could see Frederick looking around him in that vague half-blind way people seek a familiar face in a crowd. She started to raise her hand to signal him. Hawk caught it and held it. He leaned across the table, his face close to hers.

“There’s never been any man for Holly but me. Never any woman in my world but Holly.”

The truth jarred more deeply than Anna would have admitted, more deeply than if the man she’d slept with had been a murderer. “The vasectomy!”

“No half-wit children,” Hawk said bitterly.

“Why did you go to bed with me?”

“You for me; the three clotheshorse clients for Holly. Denny was our savior, our cover; after he died we tried to go straight. You were my best bet. But it was too lonely. Holly’s my other self. If, after I die, I burn in hell for it, I burn in hell. I won’t live in hell now.”

“Denny?”

“We found him,” Hawk said. “Two days before you did. Floating near the ship. His gear was on him, there was air in his tank. Maybe ecstasy of the deep. Stupidity. Accident. It doesn’t matter-not even if it was murder. We gave him the burial he wanted in the grave he would have chosen. We owed him at least that.”

“Howdy, howdy, howdy.” Frederick Stanton had arrived at their table. Somewhere along the way he had picked up a coffeepot, and proceeded to refill their cups. “Nothing for me, thanks,” he said when an irritated waitress steamed over to retrieve her pot.

Anna was too stunned to speak. Stanton flopped down in the chair beside Hawk and leaned back. His carefully blank eyes moved between the two of them. Anna doubted he missed a thing. Hawk began wolfing down his sandwich, his face burning red under the tan. Anna had lost what little appetite she had. The sight of egg salad nauseated her. So did the sight of Hawk.

Watching the boats come and go in the harbor, she stared out of the window. Nothing broke the silence but