I nodded as if this was significant information, and we went into the kitchen. I parked at the table with an empty cereal bowl for an ashtray. Hoffman had come over wearing a coat and hat, one of the black watch cap ones, and she removed them both before sitting down. She had on a Lewis & Clark sweatshirt, and a turtleneck beneath that, black. She was wearing faded Levi’s, and short black boots, and she had that aura that some PNW women get, the very healthy ones who are fit and stay fit and spend summer weekends windsurfing in the Gorge and winter ones skiing or snowboarding Mount Hood.
“Bet you rock climb, too,” I said.
“Do I have granola in my teeth?” She smiled at me, and I understood she was making an effort to get us started on good terms, both with her manner and her words.
“Call it a lucky guess.”
I waited for her to take the seat opposite me, expecting her to get out a pad and a pen. She draped her coat over the back of the chair, after stuffing the cap in a pocket, then sat down.
“You’re not going to take notes?”
She tapped her forehead. “Like a steel trap.”
“You want a cigarette or some coffee or something?”
“No, I’m fine.”
I shrugged and lit one for myself. She looked me over as if trying to find clues, then pushed the bowl a little closer to me, so I wouldn’t have to reach. Her fingers were long, like Joan’s. On her right thumb was a ring, a simple silver band with an inlaid and intertwined repeating symbol. I stared at it a second before recognizing the letter as Greek.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “I get it now. You’re a dyke.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “Sure. Aren’t you?”
“What? No!”
Hoffman’s head came back a little bit, and her expression plainly was asking me to give her a break.
“I’m not,” I said.
“You speak queer.”
“Passing queer. Pidgin queer. Not fluent queer.”
“I’m not here to out you.”
“I’m not gay. God, Chapel thinks I’m gay, too. I’m not, see, what I am is single. You’re confusing images. I’m the Quiet One. Van’s the Sexually Adventurous One, the Possibly Bi One, the Maybe a Confused Lesbian One.”
“Van’s not gay,” Hoffman said, matter-of-factly. “Everyone who is knows she isn’t. There are people in the Black Hills of South Dakota who haven’t come out to themselves yet, they know Van in Tailhook is straight.”
“So I’m the Gay One?”
“I know a lot of women who will be very disappointed if you’re not.” She looked me over, as if appraising. “Or see it as a challenge. Don’t tell me this is news to you.”
“It is news to me. You’re telling me that I now not only have to fear that every man I meet has seen naked pictures of me, I’ve got to include women, too?”
“Not all women. One in ten to one in four, depending whose study you believe.”
“That makes it so much better.”
“You’ve got a huge lesbian following, you didn’t know that? I thought you celebs tracked things like that, where you’re getting coverage. You practically have a column devoted to you in Curve.”
“Now you’re just yanking my leg.”
“Maybe a little. But you do know what Curve is.”
“I know what Soldier of Fortune is, too, that doesn’t make me a mercenary.”
She smiled again, then said, “You still willing to answer some questions for me, Miss Bracca?”
“Mim. One dyke to another?”
“That had been my intent, but I’ll settle for closeted dyke to out dyke, if you like.”
I blew some smoke off to a side, shaking my head. “Go ahead.”
“Do you have a drug problem, Mim?”
I was getting tired of having to answer that question, and maybe that was why I surprised the hell out of myself by saying, “Yeah, I drink too much.”
“That’s all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Alcohol is legal.”
“If I tell you about the illegal stuff, you gonna slap cuffs on me?”
She shook her head. “You don’t do coke or heroin or anything like that?”
“None of those things. Chapel asked me this stuff, too, when I went to see him about the pictures.”
“He was asking for a different reason. He was asking to spare you embarrassment, maybe to anticipate possible blackmail. You’re saying you’ve used?”
I held up a hand and ticked off controlled substances. “I’ve done coke, pot, X, shrooms, dropped acid, and even eaten opium. That was when we were in Hawaii.” I brought the hand down. “Once each for all of it, and only ever on the tour. Look, I know what you’re thinking, and I’ll say it again. Mikel never sold me drugs, never gave me drugs. He hated the fact that I drank, and he didn’t like me smoking.”
“Both your parents drink, or just your father?”
It was like being in the Larkins’ dining room all over again, except this time there was no Mikel, and Wagner was being played by a woman. I didn’t answer, but she waited me out.
“Both,” I said.
She leaned back in her chair, thinking. I finished my cigarette and crushed it out. Her eyes were on something past my shoulder, and I guessed this was what detectives looked like when they were trying to crack mysteries.
“Can I ask you something, Detective?” I said.
She came back. “Tracy.”
I needed a second, and then another, before I started laughing. “Detective Tracy? Dick Tracy? A lesbian Dick Tracy?”
She smiled, more amused at me than at the joke. She’d probably heard it a lot before.
“Sorry,” I said.
“What were you going to ask?”
“Is Tommy still a suspect?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Are you looking at any of Mikel’s friends?”
“We’ve talked to his friends. Their alibis check.”
“If you think it’s Tommy, why’d you let him go?”
“We didn’t have enough to charge.”
“So you don’t have evidence that he did it, but you think he did.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Mim. I’m saying he’s still a suspect, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because your father’s got three hours he can’t account for, roughly from the time your brother was murdered until the time he called in the nine-one-one.”
This was news. “Tommy’s the one who reported it?”
“He called from the condo to say his son had been shot. The first unit found him there, took him into custody. He was drunk, he blew a point one-nine on the Breathalyzer. To put it in perspective, you blew a point one-three when we picked you up.”
“I told you he’d been drinking—”
“No, you told us you thought he had, because your brother didn’t, and you’d seen bottles and cans throughout the condo.”
“You’re saying that my father shot my brother, then left long enough for me to come by and discover the body, and then he came back, got drunk, and called the police?”
“If I thought you were lying about the bottles, yes. But I know you’re not. That’s where it falls apart.”
“Only there?”
She ignored that. “We didn’t find a weapon anywhere, we didn’t find gloves, and Tommy’s GSR test came back negative.”
“GSR?”
“Gunshot residue.”
I remembered that they had swabbed my hands after they’d brought me in, too. Then I wondered how seriously they’d looked at me for my brother’s murder.
She turned in the chair, showing me her profile and raising her right hand, as if shooting my microwave. With her other hand she made sprinkling motions over her right hand and forearm. “When you fire a gun, traces of the charge get absorbed into the skin. The test is very simple, very accurate. Both you and your father tested negative.”