A truck horn beeped at a Rollerblader racing down the Strand, keeping pace with the morning traffic, oblivious in his headphones. A trio of high-school-age girls cut through the alley and started down a beach-access path, their voices high pitched and eager, birdlike. That was the route Heather Grimm would have taken that day. One of the girls was blond like Heather, with a Hawaiian Tropic sun visor and folds of baby fat edging out of her thong. She carried a folding beach chair, stumbling slightly now as she shifted it to the other shoulder, then looked around, afraid that someone had noticed her awkwardness. He wanted to call out to her, remind her that it was Friday and she should be in school. He shook his head. Getting old, Jimmy.
Brimley should be here anytime now. He was back from his fishing trip and probably tired but was making the drive down from Ventura anyway, saying he felt he had promised Jimmy. It was a kind thing to do. Yeah, Sugar was a real angel, always ready to lend a hand-that's what Lashonda had told him as she fielded calls to her psychic hotline. That should have been good enough for Jimmy, but it wasn't. There was just something about an off-duty detective grabbing a disturbance call that bothered him. He hadn't caught Brimley in any lies. The man had told the truth about how he afforded living at the Blue Water Marina: The management did waive half his moorage fees and all his utilities. The boat itself carried a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar mortgage. Maybe Lashonda was right, but yesterday, after turning in his profile of Luis Cortez, Jimmy had driven over to Brimley's former apartment.
The old neighbors said Brimley had kept his TV down and moved his trash cans back off the street as soon as they were emptied, and he liked passing out fish that he had caught. Detective Wonderful. It was only on the drive back to the office that Jimmy realized that Brimley's apartment was north of the Hermosa Beach police station, and Walsh's cottage was south of it. The newspaper accounts of the murder all said Brimley was on his way home when he heard the noise complaint over his radio, said he had been just a few blocks away. So what was Brimley doing in Walsh's neighborhood when the call came in?
"Sorry. I'm late," Brimley said from behind him, hurrying along a the path that cut from Hermosa Avenue to the Strand, flip-flops rustling with every step. The beefy man was wearing shorts and a faded Bimini Tarpon Derby T-shirt. Instead of his field notes, he carried a box of Kreamy Kruller doughnuts, grinning. "Had to stop for supplies. You got to try one."
"No, thanks."
Brimley handed him one anyway, the doughnut the size of a bath sponge. "Go on."
Jimmy took a bite, and warm maple cream squirted into his mouth. It was delicious.
Brimley pulled out a doughnut for himself. "They don't have any Kreamy Kruller stores in Ventura. Probably a good thing too-I'd be the size of a walrus." He glanced at Jimmy's car. "Keep track of your time. The meter maids here got no heart."
Jimmy took another bite. He tried to see Brimley as he was-not as an amiable retiree but as the man who might have helped frame Walsh for murder. Who better to use for a setup than the arresting officer? "How was your fishing trip, Sugar?"
"Didn't catch a thing. Guess they saw me coming." Brimley squinted. "Your mug looks pretty good. You heal quick. That must come in handy in your line of work."
Jimmy darted across the street as the traffic broke, and Brimley humped along after him.
"There it is." Brimley pointed at Walsh's old beach house, a wood-frame cottage with a sagging front porch. "Walsh turned it over to Mrs. Grimm in a civil suit, if I remember right."
"She had to split it with his attorneys. It's been sold and resold since then." Jimmy nodded at the thick bushes circling the house. "Was the hedge that high at the time of the murder?"
"Higher. It was technically a code violation, but we're pretty kick-back around here. Unless there's a complaint."
"So the hedge would have muffled the noise from inside the cottage. Makes me wonder how somebody walking past would have heard anything."
"You and me, we think alike." Brimley licked his fingers. "When nobody stepped forward to take credit for the nine-one-one, I came back here a couple days later, same time as the original call came in. Early evening. Traffic was light. Loud music might have been ignored, but the caller had said there was a woman screaming inside. I stood there, and I figured you could hear that from the sidewalk."
Jimmy started toward the beach, Brimley beside him, the box of doughnuts tucked under one arm, the two of them trudging through the soft sand. Jimmy stopped after a few steps and took off his sneakers, barefoot now. The beach was dotted with groups of people lying on towels, high-schoolers mostly, a few families too. Frisbees arced across the sand. Teenagers paraded along the waterline, toes splashing, checking one another out. A volleyball game was in progress, and a hunky guy was doing a chestplant in the sand trying to get a hard serve. His girlfriend brushed him off as he got back up.
"Pretty, aren't they?" said Brimley. "I don't think I was ever that young."
Jimmy stopped on the surf side of the cottage, trying to see what Heather Grimm had seen that day. The deck extended out from the house about ten feet, surrounded by a waist-high wall.
"That wall is new," said Brimley. "Walsh liked an unobstructed view from the deck. He had a couple of lawn chairs out there, so he could check out the action."
"It would have worked both ways. From the beach you could see right into his place."
"Long as the curtains were open. They were pulled tight when I got there that night." Brimley felt around in the open box. "I made a few phone calls," he said idly, then finally selected a doughnut and looked up at Jimmy. "Turns out you weren't completely honest with me back at my boat. I'm a little hurt."
Jimmy's stomach felt like he was in Danziger's glass elevator again, riding it straight to the bottom.
Brimley took a big bite, red filling oozing onto his chin. "Remember when I said I had read about you, something about you saving a cop's life, and you waved me off, said you were just in the right place at the right time?" He flashed a raspberry grin. "Horsefeathers. You didn't just save a cop's life-you killed a man to do it. Huge fella too, almost three hundred pounds of pure meanness, from what I heard." He put his arm around Jimmy. "I never even fired my weapon in the line of duty. Not once. Only discharged it on the police range, and even then I only managed minimum competency, and here you are saving a cop's life."
The breeze off the ocean kicked up sand. Jimmy looked around, avoiding Brimley's gaze. "These cottages are close together. In your interviews, did anyone mention seeing anyone hanging around Walsh's house that night? Someone who didn't belong there?"
"Like who?" Brimley rooted around in the doughnut box but didn't pick one. "You think someone was checking out the house from the beach? A witness that I missed?" He thought about it. "I guess it's possible, but, I don't know if it matters." He plucked another doughnut out of the box. "We didn't need witnesses. Heck, we hardly needed forensics the way Walsh kept confessing. I read him his rights, and he kept talking anyway. Told me how sorry he was all the whole way to the station."
"I'm not criticizing. I give you a lot of credit. You had just finished a full shift when you heard the dispatcher on your radio. You must have been eager to get home and kick your shoes off. Most cops would have just kept driving. It wasn't your call. So don't worry, Sugar-you're not going to be the bad guy in the piece."
A glob of chocolate cream dripped from the doughnut onto Brimley's T-shirt. "Can you keep a secret?"