The other man had been in my garden shed, because the door that I knew had been tightly closed when I left barely an hour ago was now wide open. I walked out the back door and crossed the garden, unwrapping the new padlock and considering the best place to hide the keys. I had little intention of entering the shed in the future. I just wanted to ensure that the guy who went in while I was gone wouldn’t be there again.

I was wondering just who this might be, since Wayne Honeysett was already dead, when I reached the open door and realized I was a little late in keeping somebody out. Because somebody was already there, glaring at me from inside the shed, holding an axe in his hand.

16.

I think I screamed. Not one of those screams that stop trains and break crystal, but the scream I might make if I saw a mouse run across the kitchen floor. I took a step backwards, unsure about what was more menacing—the axe, which Gabe had bought to break driftwood he collected on the beach for our fireplace, or the expression on Walter Freeman’s face.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. I kept walking backwards into the middle of the garden, where I knew people passing on the boardwalk behind the house would have an unobstructed view of me confronting a chief of detectives and potential axe murderer.

Walter slapped the face of the axe into his palm. “I wanted to ask you that down at Central,” he said, in a voice that reminded me of wet gravel. “What the hell were you doing there?”

“It’s a public building, Walter,” I said. “This, on the other hand, is private property. That’s a big difference, right? And why are you threatening me with an axe?”

Walter stared at me, wearing his Bad Cop face before looking at the axe and tossing it into a corner of the shed. “I wasn’t threatening you,” he said. “I was moving things, looking around. Threatening you? Me, threaten you with an axe?” He pointed a finger at me. I hate people who point fingers at me, but in this case I thought it was better than the alternative, which would have been the weapon inside Walter’s jacket. “You really are nuts, aren’t you?”

“Go to hell,” I said. Then, “Better still, go back to Central and leave me alone.”

“Why don’t we just go inside and have a talk?” Walter said.

“Not bloody likely.” Now that the axe was out of his hand, and assuming his finger wasn’t loaded, I was getting my courage back. “You want to talk, we can talk here.”

“Or down at Central. You seem to enjoy visiting there.” He nodded in the direction of the war memorial. “My car’s parked just down the beach. You want to come with me, or you want to ask me inside for a glass of water? Christ, it’s hot in there.”

WALTER SAT AT MY KITCHEN TABLE, looking around the room as though searching for something he might have left behind on a previous visit. I didn’t want him there, but I knew he could find one reason or another for getting me into Central Police Station and, for all I knew, behind the bars of the lock-up cells if he really wanted to. You learn these things living with a cop. You learn what they can and can’t get away with, and the higher you are in the pecking order, the more you get away with.

I dumped some ice from the refrigerator into a glass, filled it with water from the tap, plunked it in front of Walter, and stood back to watch him drink the whole damn thing. When he finished, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and examined the glass as though he wished it were full again. “Damn it’s hot, ain’t it?”

“You want to talk about the weather?” I asked. “Did you bring a warrant with you to talk about the weather?”

“No,” Walter said, setting the glass on the table. “I want to talk about a really smart detective I knew who was married to a really stupid woman.”

“Look, if you’re upset because I insisted on looking at Gabe’s investigation reports …” I began.

Walter twisted in his chair to look at me. It was one of those up and down looks that men give women when they’re either undressing them in their mind or intimidating them with their power. I hoped it was the latter, in Walter’s case. “Why did you lie to me?”

“About what?”

“About the ring you now say Gabe gave you.”

“Why is it any of your business what Gabe gave me? I gave him gifts too. You want me to go upstairs and show you the cufflinks I gave him for Christmas? Or how about the plaid jockstrap I got him for his birthday last year?” This was true. I found it in a shop specializing in Scottish wear. A bright orange Buchanan plaid jockstrap. Gabe loved it.

“Did you buy the ring for yourself, maybe say Gabe bought it for you?”

“Why the hell would I say that?” Only later did I understand what Walter was getting at.

He ignored my question. “How do you explain that the man who gave the ring to you and the man who last had it in his possession are both now dead?”

I sat in the chair. I didn’t want to argue with Walter, which would be a losing proposition for both of us, and I didn’t want to talk about Gabe being dead either. “You forgot to mention that both of them supposedly committed suicide,” I said.

“Supposedly?”

I shook my head and shrugged. I decided I would rather listen to Walter than talk to him.

“Any more gifts like that one that you and Gabe might have bought?”

“No.” I began examining my fingers. I needed a manicure.

Walter seemed to think about that for a moment. Then, “If I find out you’re not telling me the truth, I’ll charge you with obstructing justice. I can always come back with a search warrant and tear the place apart, you know.”

“Trust me, Walter,” I said, still studying my fingers. “I don’t want you here now, and if it kept you from ever coming back here again, with or without a warrant, I would swear the sky was orange, the world was flat, and that you have all the charm of George Clooney but you’re better-looking.”

Walter shook his head. “You don’t seem to be the least bit interested in learning why I’m asking about Gabe or you having extra cash.” He tipped the glass back and dumped most of the ice cubes into his mouth.

“You want to know why, Walter?” I said over the noise of him chewing the ice cubes. “Because the only reason you would ask is if you suspected Gabe of taking bribes or stealing evidence. Well, Gabe didn’t do that. He would never do that. The idea is so ridiculous that I’m insulted you would even suggest it. You knew Gabe, and you know what he was like.”

He sat chewing the ice cubes and, I assumed, turning my words over in his mind. “I liked Gabe,” he said when he finished crunching the ice cubes with his teeth as though they were potato chips. “I don’t like you. Never did. Gabe deserved a woman with more class than you’ve got.”

“If this is an attempt to seduce me, it’s not working,” I said.

“See, that’s what I mean. Try to have a conversation with you, talk about something important, and you make a joke about it. And you toss in sex, as well. That’s the kind of woman you are. Gabe could’ve done better.”

“Walter—” I began.

Walter interrupted. He had a way of interrupting that was impossible to ignore. “I know about you,” he barked. “I did some investigating. Learned a hell of a lot about you. You could never keep a job for more than a year or so. Why is that?”

“Because I can’t stand spending my days in the company of jerks. Which reminds me. Kindly get the hell out of my house now, or I’ll call a cop and then I’ll call a lawyer.”

Walter smiled at that. He tilted his head back, dumped the remaining ice cube into his mouth, and chewed it like the others. When he finished, he stood up and ambled his way to the back door. “You should put that lock on your shed,” he said over his shoulder. “Anybody can go in there.”