Body and Soul Food, page 5
That put my mind in a swirl.
What did that mean? That Reef hadn’t been murdered? Because Detective Daniel Chow letting everyone leave had to have meant he’d come to that conclusion. He wouldn’t have done that if a homicide had been committed, would he?
Or did it mean that there had been a murder and there was a murderer among us, but he just couldn’t figure out who it was?
I didn’t know if what Koby thought about Tessa Chaiken and Jason Holiday ever crossed Detective Chow’s mind. But he must not have pinned any one of us for the deed, and it appeared that none of us, including Koby, had said anything in the interview to make him think any one of us was involved.
I think that was good, though. No need to jump to conclusions. Best to wait until after the autopsy.
When we left the train, Koby kept walking out of the station. Knowing that I needed to catch the next one to get home, I wanted to stick close to him. My brain was foggy, and I needed time to reset, so I followed him. He walked two blocks to a bus shelter and sat down. We had passed a few bus stops along the way. Wasn’t sure why he’d picked that one.
He probably needed to clear his head, too.
“I’m going to call for an Uber,” he said after we had sat quietly for a few moments.
“Okay,” I said, and paused. I pulled out my phone and showed it to him as a gesture. “I could do it from my app.”
“It’s okay. I gotta get back home after I drop you off. I don’t want you to have to pay for that.”
“Get back home? You going to Timber Lake?”
“I have to get you home.”
“I don’t think you can do that in an Uber,” I said.
“You can be one of my stops. You get three stops.”
“Oh wow,” I said. “That will be an out-of-the-way stop, going all the way to my house.” I shook my head. “Really. You don’t have to do that. I’m good once I get in the car, Koby.”
“Just lost Reef.”
He didn’t say anything else and neither did I. It was probably going to cost him fifty bucks round-trip. But I knew he was feeling he needed to protect those he loved, and right now, that was me.
“What did you say to Detective Chow?” I asked. I wanted to let him know I wasn’t going to fight him wanting to see me home. That I understood.
“I don’t trust the police,” he said.
“Uhm. Captain Hook is your friend.”
“He’s different. He was always there to help.” He turned and looked at me. “I told you that.”
He had.
While I was growing up, I lived in the family-friendly, upper-middle-class neighborhood of Wallingford. There I spent afternoons practicing the violin and reading. I spent my weekends either in the air with my father, who owned and piloted a Cessna 414, or among the stacks of books at the University of Washington library, where he worked. When my mother could pull me away from my dad’s shirttails, she and I would go to the symphony or have lunch in trendy South Lake Union. And as a family, we traveled all over the world.
My brother, he had told me, spent his childhood getting into trouble with other boys from the group home or whatever foster family he was in at the time. Not any trouble that landed him in the care and custody of the legal system, thank goodness, and he attributed that to one Seattle police officer, Avery Moran.
Officer Moran, so the story went, had a mission to make sure those kinds of kids didn’t get “lost in the system.” Because of that term, Koby and his band of foster brothers started describing themselves as the Lost Boys. Moran became their Captain Hook.
After I heard the story from Koby with admiration in his eyes, I asked my brother if he realized that Captain Hook was the Lost Boys’ enemy. They wanted to kill each other. There was nothing helpful or good in that relationship.
He told me not to “kill his vibe.”
I had respect for Detective Chow and his approach. He wasn’t accusatory and he seemed to be methodical. Maybe because his questions reminded me of ones that my mother would ask her patients.
But then again, he hadn’t made an arrest . . .
Maybe Reef died because he’d had a cerebral hemorrhage. Or a heart attack? He had just told us that he’d stopped drinking. He had set an alarm on his phone to remind him to take vitamins.
But was it for vitamins?
I thought about it. At first, he had said pills. Then he had changed to the word vitamin. My mother would say that was a Freudian slip.
Maybe Reef was already sick? He did say he was trying to be healthier. Maybe what was wrong with him was what killed him and not someone on the train.
Our Uber ride pulled up, and I got up and followed Koby over to the car. His shoulders were slumped, and he wasn’t moving with the energy he usually did. Koby held the door open for me. I climbed in and confirmed my address with the driver.
I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to bring up all what had happened, but I couldn’t get it out of my brain why Koby had jumped to murder. And how did he decide who was involved in it and who wasn’t?
Only I didn’t know how to start the conversation questioning his thought process. So, I decided to ask about the latter.
“How did you make those assumptions about the people in the train?” I sucked my tongue. “You know, how you said who was or wasn’t involved.”
“I never said any of them were involved. Because I don’t know.”
“Well, you said who wasn’t.”
“When you have to move from house to house, person to person, and have to live in the streets, you learn how to read people, you know?” He turned his head to look out of the window. “And you have to make that assessment pretty quickly if you don’t want to run into trouble.”
“Oh,” was all I could say.
I had no idea how that was. I’d had such a good childhood. And it hurt me to know my brother had had such a hard time growing up. Although with his good heart and caring spirit, he had learned not to let those times define him.
I decided not to talk about what happened to Reef anymore. Not until we got more information, because at this point, it was all speculation. I didn’t like to jump to conclusions without all the facts anyway (although I had let Koby’s comment about murder earlier do just that). I was going to wait until I had a conversation with Detective Chow after the autopsy. I knew, though, I wasn’t going to be able to keep how sad I was about losing a friend intact much longer.
I was looking forward to getting home and curling up in a ball.
We didn’t say much while riding, but as we got closer to home, I looked out of the window in anticipation of seeing the store.
Books & Biscuits was mostly dark with one or two interior lights on. The place looked quiet, settled and locked up tight. I couldn’t see if Pete had gotten everything on the list I had left him completed, but from what I could see, it didn’t make me worry that he’d done something detrimental to our new business.
We pulled up to my small Craftsman bungalow, and Koby told the driver to wait for him. I thought he was only going to get me to my door. Nope. When I pushed the door open, he stepped in first.
Roo, my Siamese cat, leapt off a bookshelf on the back wall. It didn’t faze Koby. It made me jump, though. Luckily, I composed myself in time to catch her before she got out of the door.
Koby went through each room, turned on the lights and opened closets, cabinets and room doors. I followed behind him, questions all over my face. I didn’t have time to voice them, he was moving too fast. What exactly he was looking for, I didn’t know, and after a second thought, I was afraid to ask. I didn’t want anything more to think about after I was left at home by myself.
After he left the kitchen, I cuddled with Roo, leaning against the sink.
“Is this how brothers act?” I asked her.
“Eeeoww.”
“Do you have any brothers?” I cradled her in my arms, stroking her fur. “Aww. I guess if you do, you were separated from them when you were young, too.”
I gave her a hug. “I’m glad I found mine.”
A few minutes later, Koby came back into the kitchen.
“You find what you were looking for?”
“I need some water,” was his answer.
He grabbed a glass from the cabinet, and I watched as he filled it from the faucet and guzzled it down.
“You want some ice?” I asked, although it was a little late for that.
“Nope, I’m good,” he said, setting the glass in the sink.
“How about an orange or something? I for one am hungry.” I let Roo spill out of my arms and went to the fridge. Opening it, I bent down to look into it to see if I had any food I could offer that he could take with him. We’d eaten a mess of tacos, but that had been a long time ago.
“I’ve got a car waiting for me, remember?”
“Yep. I remember.”
“Unless you want me to stay over?” He came over to the fridge and looked at me. “I can do that if you don’t want to be alone.”
That surprised me. He didn’t like staying too long at my place because I didn’t have a TV. He didn’t know how people could get along without them. He loved that I had a backyard for Remy, but an hour or so romp for exercise for his favorite pal was about the longest he stayed.
“Nope. I’m good.” I turned back to looking in the fridge. I felt tears coming and didn’t want him to see them. “See you in the morning?”
“I’ll be there.” He bent down to stroke Roo. “I gotta see about Remy. He’s been home by himself a long time.”
“I’m sure he needs to go out,” I said, still pretending to search the fridge for food.
Koby stood up straight and put his hand on my back. I looked up at him, eyes widened, asking was it something else he wanted to say.
Instead he blew out a breath. “Later,” he said, and walked out of the room. I didn’t hear the front door close right away. Maybe he did another sweep . . .
But I was sure he turned the lock and checked it before he got back into his Uber.
I turned back to the refrigerator and pulled out a covered plastic bowl of blueberries and strawberries and a container of Greek yogurt. I found thinly sliced almonds in one cabinet and got a spoon and a bowl.
I sat down at the table and spooned out some yogurt and berries into my bowl, and that was all it took for the tears to come spilling out. I pushed the bowl out of the way and put my head down on the table and I just let the grief pour out.
I missed Reef. He made me laugh. He made my heart race and my cheeks blush. It was because of him that my brother was led to looking for me. He had been part of Koby’s family for a long time. And now he had been part of mine. He had been the first one of Koby’s extended family I’d met.
Even though Koby stayed cool from the time he burst through the back door of the train car until now when he brought me home, I knew he had to be hurting.
After I felt like I couldn’t cry anymore, I got up, went to the bathroom and unraveled at least a yard of toilet paper, balling it up. I blew my nose and wiped my face. Then I dug my phone out of my purse and called my mother.
The consummate psychologist, I knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to ask how Reef’s death made me feel. The wad of tissue I was holding on to should give the answer to that question. That evidence wouldn’t matter, though. She’d feel it necessary to inundate me with a plethora of open-ended questions so I could “work” through my feelings.
That was going to drive me crazy, but I was going to suffer through because I needed to speak to my mother. She and Koby were my best friends (and so was Roo), which probably didn’t say much about my sociability scale.
“What’s happened?” she asked as soon as she picked up. I had FaceTimed her, and seeing her face made me feel a little better. She moved toward the screen and squinted. “You look awful.”
Okay. Maybe not.
“Thank you, Mother.” I knew she’d comment on my sarcasm.
“Don’t hide what you’re feeling behind sarcasm.”
I inhaled.
“What is going on with you?”
“Reef died today.”
“Reef? Koby’s friend?”
“My friend, too.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is that what has gotten you looking like you do?”
“Yes,” I said. I felt a tear roll down my cheek.
“Do you think you may be projecting Koby’s friendship with Reef onto yourself? Overexaggerating your reaction to what has happened?”
“No.”
I didn’t tell her that I had been thinking that Reef could be more than a friend. She would have, I’m sure, a whole other set of questions for that.
“How did he die?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “I found him on the train. Koby thinks it was murder.”
“What do you think?”
There she went. Her questions posed to clinically evaluate my emotions instead of valuing them. What I needed—wanted—was sympathy. A little empathy. What I was getting was the benefit of her seven years of formal education and nearly thirty years of practice. I was going to have to wade through that to get through to her twenty-three years of mothering.
“I am reserving my decision until after the autopsy.” I swiped the tissue across my eyes. I was sure she’d like that answer.
And I knew I probably did need to talk about what happened. To help me get through the grief I was feeling. “There were five people in the car with him when it happened,” I continued. “The police questioned us but didn’t arrest anyone.”
“Do you feel someone should have been arrested?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Wasn’t sure if he’d even been murdered by any of them. Or maybe he had been by all of them.”
“All of them?” She seemed momentarily taken aback. But she reacquired her doctor demeanor and continued. “How does that make you feel?”
“Sad.”
“Sad because no arrests were made or because you were not able to ascertain exactly what happened?”
Putting my head down, I started crying again. “Both” came out between sobs.
“What can I do to make you feel better?” Her voice softened.
I looked into the camera on my phone and smiled at my mother. Psychologists ask their patients what they themselves can do to make them feel different. Better. Because, ultimately, only you can do what it takes. But now she was asking what she could do.
Now she was being a mommacologist.
“I’ll be okay,” I said.
“I know you will.” She gave a curt nod. “But I’ll bring you some of your favorite cookies.”
“I’m going to bed,” I said. I was happy she’d taken on the mom role, but if she came over, I couldn’t be sure that her Dr. Rutledge persona wouldn’t reappear.
“Not tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow. You’re going into the store?”
“Yes. I’m going. Store is opening in five days.” I looked at the time on my phone. Almost midnight. That meant four more days. “I have to be there to get it ready.”
“Then I’ll bring them there.” I saw her reach for her calendar. She still kept a paper one. Flipping through pages and landing on the one she needed, she said, “I have an appointment at ten and not another one until two.” She started writing something down, just like Detective Chow had. “I’ll bake them tonight and bring them to you between appointments.” She looked back up at me. “That’ll make you feel better, I’m sure. And a hug. I have one of those for you, too.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I chuckled. “I gotta go. See you tomorrow.” I blew her a kiss. “I love you.”
“Love you more.”
I looked at the bowl of yogurt and fruit that I’d made. “Ugh.” I’d forgotten all about it. I grabbed it and stuck it in the refrigerator, getting a saucer first to cover it, otherwise it wouldn’t be any good tomorrow.
I was tired and decided to just call it a night. Only I wasn’t sure if I could fall asleep after all the things that had happened today. We hadn’t gotten off that train until nearly ten p.m. I wasn’t one to routinely stay up late unless it was to finish a book. But I felt I might just toss and turn the night away if I turned in.
I wandered into the living room, thinking that reading might just be what I needed. All the lights were still on from when Koby had gone through the house.
The shiny, honey-colored wood floor felt cool under my feet as I ambled over to the built-in bookcase. It covered an entire long wall in my living room, broken up only by the archway that led into the dining room.
I ran my fingers across the spines of the books. I knew just which one I was looking for. Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.
Along one row, then down another, and I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I usually could put my finger right on the book I wanted. I had a system. Not the Dewey decimal kind I’d been taught while getting my master’s in library science. It was my own homemade one, the same one I was using in my bookstore. But tonight, it was failing me.
Roo slunk into the room and did a figure eight around my legs. “Have you seen my book?” I asked her. She had, after all, been on the bookshelf when we came in.
“Erreow.”
“I’m going to take that as a no,” I said, stooping down to pick her up. “Because I wouldn’t want to think you’re pilfering my stuff.” I blew out a breath. “I guess it’s for the best. Shouldn’t fill up my brain with any more thoughts of murder. I’ll end up having nightmares.”
I walked to the other side of the bookcase. “This one,” I said to Roo, “is one of my favorites.” I pulled Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng from the shelf, tucked Roo under my arm and headed up the stairs to my bedroom.
“Instead of murder, I’ll read about a kid burning down her family’s house.” I held my cat up to my face and gave her a kiss. “I wonder what my mother would say about that.”
