Hymn Read Free Page B

got burned. What does that have to do with me?’
    â€˜Do you know Ms Celia Williams, sir?’ asked Detective Gable.
    Lloyd was baffled. ‘Sure I know Ms Celia Williams. She’s my fiancée. But she’s in San Francisco right now, giving a course of music lectures.’
    â€˜She’s in San Francisco?’ asked Houk, glancing at Gable with unconcealed surprise.
    â€˜Sure. She left at the weekend. I don’t expect her back until Saturday afternoon. She called me last night . . . I don’t know—it must have been twelve, half after twelve.’
    Sergeant Houk massaged his bony, unshaven jowls. ‘Mr Denman . . . I don’t know how to start saying this, sir. But as far as we can tell, Ms Celia Williams was the woman who burned to death in front of McDonald’s today.’
    Lloyd stared at him, and then laughed. The idea that Celia had been outside McDonald’s today, only six or seven miles away from La Jolla on Rosecrans Avenue, was so patently absurd that he wasn’t even upset. ‘Sergeant, that’s impossible. That’s totally impossible. Celia’s in San Francisco. She was giving a lecture this afternoon at the Performing Arts Center.’
    â€˜Did you speak to her today?’ asked Detective Gable, sniffing, and wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
    â€˜No, not yet. She usually calls me around midnight, when the restaurant’s emptying out.’
    â€˜And you’re expecting her to call tonight?’
    â€˜Of course I’m expecting her to call tonight. She’s my fiancée. We’re going to be married come September.’
    Sergeant Houk reached into the pocket of his creased Sears suit and produced a transparent plastic envelope. He held it up, so that Lloyd could see what was in it. A white credit card wallet, badly charred at one end, and a gold charm bracelet.
    â€˜Mr Denman, do you recognize either of these two items?’
    Lloyd stared at him. ‘She’s in San Francisco. If you doubt my word, you can try calling her. She’s staying at the Miyako. Listen—do you want the number?’
    A small spasm of panic. The wallet’s clasp was curved and gold, in the shape of the Chinese symbol for yin and yang; just like the clasp of Celia’s wallet. And although he hadn’t looked closely at the charms, the charm bracelet looked startlingly like the one that he had given Celia when she had first moved in . . . and to which he had added a new charm each month. A treble clef, for the day she had graduated as a doctor of music; a house, for the day they had moved into 4884 North Torrey; a heart, for the day he had proposed to her.
    â€˜Mr Denman,’ Sergeant Houk told him, with heartbreaking professional gentleness, ‘do you want to sit down and take a look at these things? The wallet contains a social security card and credit cards belonging to Celia Jane Williams, as well as business cards from this restaurant, and two photographs of a man who I now recognize to be you.’
    Lloyd looked mechanically around, and then dragged over a rattan chair, and sat down. Sergeant Houk handed him the wallet, and then the charm bracelet. Detective Gable coughed uncomfortably, and sniffed.
    This can’t be real, thought Lloyd. Something’s slipped, something’s gone haywire. This is not me, this is somebody else. Or maybe I’m still asleep, and this is nothing but a dream. But I can feel the wind. I can hear the gulls crying. And there’s Waldo, staring at me pale-faced through the tinted glass window, and Waldo wouldn’t stare at me like that, so apprehensive and so sorrowful, if this weren’t real.
    He opened the wallet. He stared inside. The embossed label said F. David, Del Mar. He knew it was hers. He had been with her at the Flower Hill Shopping Center when she had bought it. He didn’t have to look at the credit cards, but he did. Sears, Exxon, American Express.