On the drive to the park, Caleb sat leisurely in the front seat, his. large thighs spread out across the seats like thick rolls of dough. An enormous cloud of blue smoke ringed his head as he puffed at his pipe and, despite the open window, it seemed to coil around in the car, increasing the already stifling heat. It was as if it had become a part of him, this tumbling blue smoke, a swirling, indefinable cloud that marked and identified him like his own personal badge.
“She said she’d be near the playground,” Caleb said as Frank turned the car onto Grant Street, then made a right and headed into the park. “She’s wearing a bright yellow dress,” he added with an appreciative smile. “That’s something that hasn’t changed much about Beatrice.”
The bright yellow dress was visible from a great distance, and Frank saw it almost immediately. He guided the car slowly over to the curb and glanced toward the playground.
“That her?” he asked.
Caleb’s eyes were already on her, and they seemed to soften as he looked at her. “Oh, yeah, that’s her,” he said, almost in a whisper, “sitting by the swings.” He looked at Frank. “You might say she always did love things to be in motion.”
It was well past noon, and as he got out of the car and headed down the small, bare hill toward the playground, Frank could feel that the steadily building summer heat had already turned everything dull and slow and sluggish. Even the children who dotted the playground moved ponderously through the thick, pulsing air. They hung like overripened fruit from the climbing dome, or swung slowly back and forth, as if moving through layers of gelatin.
“Hey, Bea,” Caleb called as he walked up to her.
The woman looked up immediately, saw Caleb, and smiled sweetly as she looked at him. “Didn’t think you was coming back.”
“I said I would,” Caleb told her.
She shrugged. “Well, you know what I’m used to.” She leaned gently against the tree, as if it were a source of cool air. A wave of dark perspiration swam out from beneath the arms of her dress. Another hung in an almost perfect crescent over her upper chest.
“Kids still getting to you?” Caleb asked.
Beatrice smiled languidly. “They more than I can take, Cal.” She waved her hand over her face. “And this heat. I almost forgot what it was like down here.”
“You’d get used to it, if you didn’t rush back up North,” Caleb said, as if he were trying to persuade her to linger in the city.
Beatrice shook her head. “Naw, I got to get back.” She glanced at Frank, but said nothing.
“This is Frank Clemons,” Caleb told her. “He’s in charge of the case.”
Beatrice grinned at him. “Top man, huh?” She winked at Caleb. “That’s good. I like working with the man on top.” She laughed. “Hey, Cal, you tell this white boy about me?”
“I got nothing to hide, Bea,” Caleb said somberly. “You know me when it comes to things like that.”
“So he told you I was once a working girl?” Beatrice asked Frank.
“Yeah.”
“Way back when, though. Long gone from now.”
“You work with computers these days,” Frank said.
“Right, computers,” Beatrice said. “Them other times is passed me by.” She nodded toward Caleb. “He was skinny as a rail back then. Wasn’t you, Caleb?”
I was, yes.
“Handsome, too,” Beatrice said. She shook her head despairingly. “But so thin. Lord, you could just about see through him.” She leaned forward and patted his belly. “Look like somebody done knocked you up, Cal.” She glanced back at Frank, and he saw the wildness in her eyes. “But he could go all night back in them days.” She turned back toward Caleb and smiled affectionately. “Could ’bout wear a girl out, couldn’t you?”
“With the right help, I could,” Caleb said, and the two of them laughed softly.
“I understand you’ve been staying at a house near Glenwood?” Frank said.
“That’s right,” Beatrice told him. “I been takin’ care of my sister’s kids. She on her honeymoon. I never figured she’d get married again, but she done it, so I come down to see after the kids.”
“Caleb says they keep you up at night?”
“That’s right, too,” Beatrice said. “They don’t got much sense, them two. They run all over me. Like wild animals.” She pointed toward a small dirt hill. Two children were tumbling down it, spewing waves of dry dust into the air. “See ’em. Like monkeys.” She shook her head. “Shit, if I’d acted like them two, my mama would have nailed my bare feet to the kitchen floor.”
Frank took out his notebook. “So you were up early on Tuesday morning?”
Beatrice nodded, her eyes looking closely at his face. “You had a talk with the wrong guy, looks like.”
“More than one,” Caleb said.
Beatrice smiled. “’Member when them two got after you that time? You was all busted up.”
“Tuesday morning you were up, is that right?” Frank repeated.
“Till the break of dawn.”
“What did you see?”
“Well, they ain’t much traffic on them sidestreets that time of the morning. So, I heard a car, and I looked out the window, sort of hoping it was my sister. It was a crazy thought, like maybe she done got tired of that fat bastard and left him on the beach. It was a crazy thought, but you know, when you want something bad, it does things to your mind.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“Fancy car,” Beatrice said, “like you don’t see much around here.”
“Do you know what kind it was?”
“It was a red little thing. What they call a ‘coupe,’ I think. It looked like a foreign car.”
“Did you happen to notice what model it was?”
“I don’t know models much. Used to, I did. Back when they was just a Buick and a Ford. They got too many of them foreign cars now.”
“Was it new?”
“Oh yeah, it was new. Real shiny. Red as a rose. Only brighter. Bright red.”
Frank wrote it down. “Which way was the car coming?”
“Up from Glenwood,” Beatrice said, “going sort of slow.”
“So you were facing the headlights?”
“Yes,” Beatrice said, “shined right in my eyes. But then he flashed them off, and it was black night again.” She looked at Caleb. “Black as my old ass, right, Caleb?”
Caleb took out his pipe. “Double or single headlights, Bea?”
“Two of them,” Beatrice said. She looked scoldingly at the pipe. “So you still smoking that thing?”
“Just like always.”
“How’s your poor wife stand it?”
“Just like always,” Caleb said, and again they laughed together.
“Where did the car stop?” Frank asked.
“’Bout halfway up the street,” Beatrice said. “It circled a time or two. Then it pulled up to the curb right by that empty lot. Then the lights went off.”
“Could you see the car clearly?”
“It was pitch black, except for that one streetlight down on Glenwood.”
“But you’re sure about the color?”
“Yeah, I could see it good enough for that.”
“Could you see any people in the car?”
“One guy. He was behind the wheel.”
“Could you describe him?”
“You mean his face?”
“Yes.”
“Naw, he was too far away for something like that,” Beatrice said. “He waited a while before he got out, just set there behind the wheel. Then he got out and sort of looked up and down the street.” She smiled. “White guy, though. I could tell that much.”
“Could you tell what he was wearing?”
“Work suit, something like that,” Beatrice said. “You know, one of those one-piece things that sort of go on like my daddy’s overalls used to.”
“Did he just stand by the car?”