Junior had a sullen look on his face. It appeared that his grandmother’s death weighed on him, but he was doing his best to take his mind off it for the moment.
“You okay, Junior?” I asked.
He ignored me. “I wish I could talk to girls like you do, Uncle Harold.”
“It’s a gift,” Harold said without the slightest hint of irony.
Harold seemed fine, like his mother being gone mattered little. That said, everyone handled death in their own way and life really did go on. I’d laughed and cried alternately in the days after Evelyn’s death, and I often wished my mother would go away. Maybe it was a relief to be free of that maternal shadow, particularly when it was as large as Francine Bacon’s.
What really irked me was that Junior was asking Harold for a lifeline, a way for uncle and nephew to connect by having his uncle teach him a life lesson: how to get chicks into bed or at least to go out with you. Harold showed no interest. He watched Teysha saunter away, then eyed some of the other people, nodding hellos between sips of Coke. So, this was the real, real Harold. The persona that appeared when he was in a comfortable surrounding where he belonged. The alpha-male of the St. Thomian archery set.
“Hey, Junior, I’m happy to take you out or help you to meet women.”
“Nah, that’s cool, Boise. I’m good.” He punched his uncle in the shoulder. “Hey, man, can we shoot?”
Harold looked at me. “Who do you need to talk to?”
“Anyone you think could legitimately make that shot through those bushes and into my office.”
He pointed at one group in the middle that a bunch of other archers were watching. “Boom. The best ones are right there. We got some others scattered about, but these are the best.”
“Then let’s talk them up,” I said.
We walked over, Junior trailing behind us. I’d never loved crowds. The place reminded me of recess back in grade school. People standing around, talking, laughing, playing games. Only here, everyone played one game: shoot a target with a deadly weapon. Who were these people kidding? They practiced the art of killing. Archery was not some country club sport like polo or golf. Archers trained day in and day out so they could kill things. Three archers turned, the same bulbous arrowheads held in their hands. They all grinned at me and their teeth were iodine red, like wolves after a kill. I blinked and their teeth turned white again.
“Hi,” one of the women said. Her wolf eyes narrowed.
I tapped Harold on the shoulder and told him I was going to the restroom. After he pointed the way, I slipped into a stall and tugged a small flask of vodka I kept for intense encounters out of my pocket. The vodka felt hot going down, but then it settled in like an epoxy seal. My frayed nerves calmed. Since I’d walked into this den of wolves, the bloody tip of Kendal’s murder weapon repeatedly flashed in my vision. Why all of a sudden? I didn’t really care about Kendal. Roger’s photo from his grandmother’s album snapped into my vision, adding a macabre slideshow.
People died all the time. I’d solved Roger’s murder months ago. It was a done deal, so why was that black space haunting me at this moment.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Hey, Boise! You in here?” Harold shouted.
I followed him out into the superficial sunshine after dousing my face with water.
“I thought you’d fallen in,” he said as we trudged through the crowd. He crumpled the can of Coke and threw it into a wastebasket. The faces blurred in a fog of people. A dark bedroom, droning soap operas and solitude beckoned.
“Hey, everyone, this is the guy,” Harold said as we approached the group. “He’s the one who wants to know if any of you shot and killed a reporter last week.”
“How many points we get for that?” a wise-guy hollered. A few people chuckled. Others looked serious.
“You a cop?” someone asked.
I cleared my throat. “Uh, no, I’m trying to find out what happened for the family.”
What was Harold’s play? Did he just like the attention? This was not helpful to the investigation, but I’d make the most of it. I started interviewing each of the archers, one-by-one while the others kept at their reindeer games. These people found the questioning exciting, even alluring. A couple of the women offered to give me their numbers after seeing my card that said, “Private Eye.” Some kind of romantic notion from Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain of the dark, dangerous investigator and his seamy existence tripped their wire. If nothing else, I might get a couple dates out of this, but most of the women weren’t my type, whatever that was.
One woman gabbed on and on about how she could make the shot I’d described. She had a blonde and green weave in her hair. A peacock, although she was not alone. Several of the women wore wild clothing. More attention-seekers.
“That shot. That shot is through a door and up a floor you say?” She had a slight British tint to her West Indian accent. Probably from Tortola or Jamaica.
“Yes. What do you think of that?”
“Piece of sweet potato pie.” The words buzzed out of her mouth like bees making honey. “Watch this.”
She nocked an arrow. Her equipment was also peacock-ish with swirls of color splattered over the shaft and head. Every feather was a different color. Horizontal primary colors striped the bow from pole to pole.
Her chest rose and fell twice, and I sensed her heartbeat easing into idle. Hand against the corner of her lip, sideways stance, elbow up, all the things Harold had demanded in our short lessons. Then one queer movement.
The arrow flew straight and true to the inner circle, only slightly off a dead-center bullseye. I gave a golf-clap. She bowed.
“When did you first take this up?”
“I saw a competition on YouTube one
