“Mrs. Dartmouth?” I asked pleasantly.
No response. More pruning.
I said her name louder and took a step closer. I was beginning to see how a murder could indeed happen across the street without her knowledge.
But then she finally turned and caught me out of the corner of her eye. She gasped and whipped the shearing knives around, ready to shear the hell out of me. Although thirty feet away, I stepped back, holding up my wallet and showing my private investigator license. A hell of a picture, I might add.
“Jim Knighthorse,” I said. “Private investigator.”
“Good Christ, you shouldn’t sneak up on people around here, especially after what’s happened.”
“Yes, ma’am. I represent Carson and Deploma. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
She stood. “You’re representing the boy?” she asked, her voice rising an octave. Not representing the young man. But the boy. She also sounded surprised, as if I were an idiot to do so.
“Yes.”
She thought about that. She seemed to be struggling with something internally. Finally she shrugged.
“Would you like some iced tea?” she asked.
“Oh, would I.”
At her patio table, she served it up with a mint sprig and a lemon wedge, and I suspected a dash or two of sugar. We were shaded by a green umbrella, and as Mrs. Dartmouth sat opposite me, I noticed the shears didn’t stray far from her hand. Didn’t blame her.
“Great tea.”
“Should be. I put enough sugar in it.”
She wore a lot of lipstick and smelled of good perfume. Her hair was in a tight bun, and she watched me coolly and maybe a little warily. Again, I didn’t blame her. I was a big man. A big handsome, athletic and sensitive man.
“Have you talked to many people about Amanda’s murder?” I asked.
She brightened. “Lordy, yes. Reporters, police, attorneys, everyone. I’ve been over it a hundred times.”
She sounded as if she’d enjoy going over it a hundred more times, to anyone who would listen. Probably served a lot of this iced tea in the process. And the sugar kept them coming back for more.
“Well, I won’t ask you anything that’s not already on the police report.”
“Fine.”
“You knew Amanda personally?”
She nodded. “That poor dear. Such a sweet child.”
“Did you know Derrick Booker?”
“No,” she said. “He never dared show his face here. I understand that Mr. Peterson didn’t take a liking to him.”
“Were you aware of Amanda having any other boyfriends?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a nosy person.”
I smiled at the lie. “Of course not. How well do you know the family?”
“I babysat Amanda when she was younger. But as she got older I saw less and less of her. They always forget about us old fogies.”
“When was your last conversation with Amanda?”
She took a sip from her tea and watched me carefully. “Two years ago, when she was a freshman in high school, after she had quit the school marching band. She played an instrument. The flute, I think. She loved music.”
“Why did she quit?”
“I hardly think this is relevant to her murder of a month and a half ago.”
“Just fishing, ma’am. After all, like my dad says: you never know what you’ll catch.”
“Well, I do. They caught that boy. And that’s good enough for me.”
“It’s good enough for a lot of people,” I said. “Mrs. Dartmouth, what would you do if your daughter dated a black man?”
“What a silly question to ask.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t have a daughter.”
“I see,” I said. “You were the first to come across the body.”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
I waited a moment. “At one a.m.”
“Yes. I was walking. I do that sometimes when I can’t sleep.”
“And at the time of the murder, you saw and heard no one?”
She raised her finger and waggled it in my face. “Nuh uh uh, Mr. Knighthorse. That’s all on the police report.”
I produced one of my business cards and placed it on the glass table. In the background on the card was a photo of the sun sinking below the blue horizon of the Pacific Ocean. The word keen always comes to mind. In one corner, was my smiling mug.
“Should you remember anything, please don’t hesitate to call.”
I set my card on the glass table; she somehow managed to not lunge for it. I finished the tea in one swallow and, leaving the way I had come, picked the mint sprig from my teeth.
Ah, dignity.
7.
The field was wet with dew, and a low wispy mist hung over the grass. The mist made the morning look colder than it really was. Sanchez and I had been doing sprints along the width of Long Beach State’s football field for the past twenty minutes. Sweat streamed down my face, and I probably had a healthy, athletic glow about me. I tried desperately to ignore the pain in my right leg. But the pain was there. Persistent, throbbing and threatening to become something more serious. But I pushed on.
“You’re pretty fast,” I said to Sanchez. “For a cop.”
“I’ve got to work off the donuts.”
We finished another set of sprints and were now standing around, sucking wind like we had done at UCLA years earlier, when we had both been young and not so innocent. When the world had been my oyster. Before I had shattered my leg, and before Sanchez had become an LAPD homicide detective.
There were now two female joggers circling the track around us, dressed in long black nylon jogging pants and wearing white baseball caps. They moved spryly, their identical ponytails swishing along their angular shoulder blades.
“Sooner or later we’re going to have to run to the other side of the field,” said Sanchez. He spoke with a slight Hispanic accent when he wasn’t careful, or when he was tired. He was tired. He was watching the two joggers. “Unless you prefer to watch them all morning long.”
“Worse ways of spending a morning.”
“How’s the leg holding up?”
I shrugged.
Sanchez grinned. “That good, huh?”
We ran back to the other side of the field, just in time to meet the two women again, who swished past us with a casual glance or two. One of them said something and the other giggled.
“They’re laughing at you,” said Sanchez.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said. “By the way, I beat you this time. Bum leg and all. How does that make you feel?”
“Maybe I should shoot myself.”
“Got a gun in my gym bag.”
