Tuffy’s opened in 1890 as Tiffany House, a dining spot for the wealthy summer people in their turreted cottages. When the summer residents wished to sample Tiffany’s boneless pheasant, tournedos Rossini, or whole suckling pig in the privacy of their own summer digs, Tiffany’s dispensed waiters in white tie and tails, driving an all-white carriage pulled by a team of white horses, to deliver the food and set the table for dinner or luncheon or picnic, complete with crystal stemware and British silverware. That’s how rich the people who lived on the beach strip were back then. That’s how well they lived in a place that was once a small paradise.

When the wealthy moved out and the blue-collar, sometimes-working class moved in, the immigrants and labourers melted Tiffany’s down to Tuffy’s, and it stuck. The imported claret was replaced with local beer, the British waiters with sullen students, and the white tie and tails with T-shirts and jeans. The closest the kitchen gets to pheasant these days is Buffalo-style chicken wings. Gabe told me he’d heard that an aging hooker had once worked out of an upstairs room in the back, which produced a bunch of jokes about suckling pigs, I’ll bet. Still, most people appreciate Tuffy’s for its honesty. It doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. Do not ask for a latte at Tuffy’s or expect the furniture to match. The beer is cold, the chicken wings are hot, the cheeseburgers are greasy, the walls are green, and the clientele mind their own business. I love Tuffy’s.

In Tuffy’s, a woman can order a beer without stirring fantasies among the men shooting pool or watching the SportsChannel on television screens hanging from the ceiling. When I walked into Tuffy’s, the pool players, the beer drinkers and the TV watchers looked up, then away. Guys who are basic and direct, like the men who favour Tuffy’s, recognize body language when they see it. Mine said Leave Me Alone. And they did. I chose a table as far from the bar as possible and ordered coffee.

Mel came through the door about ten minutes later, wearing a light grey windbreaker over a blue T-shirt and jeans, the line of his shoulder holster visible beneath the jacket. Pausing near the bar, he removed his sunglasses and stood waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the light. By the time Mel spotted me and walked to my table in the far corner, near a window giving onto the beach, every guy in the place had identified him as a cop.

“You look good,” Mel said when he sat down.

“You look like a cop,” I said. “They all made you as one. In case you care.”

“That’s why I can’t do undercover anymore.” He swivelled in his chair and signalled the guy behind the bar that he wanted a Coke, then turned back to me. “You all right?”

“You always ask me that when you know I’m not,” I said.

Mel sat silent for a moment. “What was it like there, last night?”

“It was horrible. What I saw was horrible.”

“What the hell were you doing there, anyway?”

“Spreading Gabe’s ashes. I wanted to spread them in the lake, but there was an onshore breeze … never mind.”

“But what made you go under the bridge? Hayashida said you went down there with the bridge operator.”

“He said something to me.”

“Who? The bridge operator?”

“No. The man whose … the man who was killed. At least, I think it was him. The bridge operator said he’d been living under there for days. He told me he had seen something.” No, that wasn’t right. I closed my eyes, remembering his words. “He said that he knew what happened.”

“What was he talking about?”

“Gabe’s death.”

“Did he say that?”

No, I realized. He hadn’t. I shook my head. The waiter arrived with Mel’s Coke, and I waited for him to leave before asking, “Is it in the papers today?” I hadn’t seen a newspaper, hadn’t turned on the radio or television. “It must be all through the press.”

“No details,” Mel said. “Just that a man was found dead under the bridge. That’s all.”

“Nothing about how he died?”

“Not if we can help it.” He leaned toward me. “You don’t want this kind of stuff out. Suicide stuff.”

“Why not?”

“Copycats. It gives them ideas. Depressed people can walk around for weeks thinking about killing themselves and never do anything about it. Then somebody commits suicide in some spectacular way, and it’s as though the other people get permission to do the same thing. So they don’t give out that kind of information unless there’s a reason for it.”

“How about murder?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“This guy … what’s his name again? He knew me. I’m sure it was him. He called me Mrs. Marshall. They told me his name but I forget.”

“I saw the report this morning. His name was Honeysett. Wayne Honeysett. He was a nutcase.” He lowered his voice. “He was also a peeper.”

He waited for that to sink in. A peeper? What, a little bird that shows up on your windowsill in winter? “A pervert?”

Mel nodded.

“My pervert?”

“Pretty sure of it. They’re doing DNA testing now on what we scraped off the floor of the shed, comparing it to his.”

“Are all perverts nutcases? I mean, I guess there’s a connection, but some of the perverts I’ve met in my day seemed like pretty sane men on the surface.”

“Honeysett was certifiable. He used to be a jeweller. Had a store on Barton Street—”

“Honeysett’s,” I said. “That’s where I’ve heard the name before. That’s him?” Radio stations in the city once carried commercials for Honeysett’s Credit Jewellers. I remembered the white marble storefront, the big neon sign, the inane jingle—Honeysett’s has the diamond for your honey … for even less money … than you think. I hadn’t heard it for years. “Does he still have the store?”

Mel shook his head. “Couple of saleswomen said he assaulted them in the backroom. Nothing serious, just copping a feel. He tried to keep it quiet, but they started to press charges, took civil action, and he had to close the business. He moved …” He angled his head toward the front door of Tuffy’s. “You know that old place up the way, next to the empty church? Big round turret, painted dark red?”

I pictured the house. The blinds were always lowered, the grass uncut, the roof sagging. “I thought it was abandoned.”

“Honeysett moved there, alone. His wife died a couple of years before the thing with the saleswomen, and he bounced around in that old place, finally moved into the basement. We’d catch him now and then, outside houses on the beach strip at night, hiding in bushes near windows—”

“Or in garden sheds?”

Mel nodded. “He seemed harmless. He’d get a warning, his family would ask that we give him a break, let him stay with them, and the judge would agree. Then, a couple of months later he’d be up to his old tricks. Getting nuttier all the time. Last month, the city seized the old house for back taxes. He moved out. We didn’t know to where, but apparently he was sleeping under the lift bridge. Which just proves how nuts he was.”

“That doesn’t mean he was suicidal.”

Mel looked annoyed with me. “You an expert now?”

“I’m getting to be. Hayashida tells me you’re becoming sceptical about Gabe shooting himself, right?”

Mel took a long swallow of Coke and set it down. “But not Honeysett. That’s suicide, not murder.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t kill somebody by holding his head on a piece of concrete while a bridge comes down on it.” He frowned and looked down at the table, as though blocking the picture from his imagination.

“Then how insane do you have to be to climb up there and do it yourself?”

“People can be that crazy, Josie. People can be that desperate.”

Perhaps they can. But I could not believe anyone would be capable of either act. So I stopped trying, and said, “Who’s Grizz?”

Mel breathed twice—I counted them—before answering. “You don’t need to know.”