But the cops don’t seem impressed. In fact, they seem really annoyed. “Get her out of here,” the first officer barks.
“Ma’am, come with me,” Officer Gray says, and Vera frowns but does as Officer Gray says.
On her way out, Vera turns to the first officer and calls out, “I haven’t move anything, Officer. Everything just the way it was before this man is murder.”
One of Officer Gray’s eyebrows rises. “Murder? What makes you think it’s murder?”
Vera sighs at Officer Gray. Why is she asking such an obvious question? “It just . . . I can sense the aura, can’t you? Very bad aura. Ah, maybe your generation will know it as ‘vibes.’ ”
“Because the victim has . . . bad vibes?” Officer Gray says.
Vera has the feeling Officer Gray doesn’t believe her. Why be a police officer when you can’t even count on your instincts? This is why these officers need her tea. She lifts her tray up higher, hoping Officer Gray will be able to smell the delicious tea. “Come, you drink this tea now. You need it. It will clear your mind and improve your memory.”
“Ma’am.” Officer Gray sighs. “Stop trying to make us drink tea. Put that tray down and come outside with me. Now.”
Vera is aghast. She’s old enough to be Officer Gray’s mother, for god’s sakes. Officer Gray should not be talking to her elders like this. Still, they are police officers, so Vera supposes she needs to follow the law or whatever, but as a sign of rebellion, she keeps hold of her tray as she walks out of her teahouse. She can’t believe she’s being shooed out of her own teahouse. Given that the man died in her teahouse, one would think that she has the right to follow every step of the investigation and offer up her many theories on what might have killed him. (Her current favorite theory is that he and his would-be killer had come to Vera’s for a nightcap and, upon finding the shop closed, had been so disappointed that one was driven to kill the other. Hey, if people can kill each other over road rage, why not tea rage?)
Outside, Vera is disappointed and surprised to see that there are no additional cops. Where is the CSI team? Where are the blood-spatter guys with their huge, bulky cameras and hazmat suits, and the bright yellow-and-black police tape, and the curious crowd pressing in, eager to see the murder victim? Where are the young and voracious reporters disguising themselves as detectives so they can steal into a crime scene?
But no, her street is just as quiet as ever, with the exception of—ugh—Winifred, whose head is peeping out of her cake shop. Every time Vera calls Winifred’s shop a “cake shop,” Winifred is quick to correct her.
“It’s a patisserie,” Winifred would say primly. “Insisting that I can’t call it a patisserie just because I’m not French is racist, Vera.”
“It’s not because you’re not French, Winifred; it’s because you don’t serve French pastries. Your cake shop serves Chinese pastries.”
“Many of them are French-influenced!”
“Just because you call your taro bun petit pain au taro does not make it French influenced.”
Anyway, now Winifred is watching from her definitely-not-French cake shop and Vera can just imagine what must be going through Winifred’s mind. Hah! Well, she can wonder all she wants; it was Vera’s teahouse that the man chose to be murdered in and not Winifred’s faux patisserie.
“Ma’am?”
It takes Vera a moment to realize that Officer Gray’s asked her a question. “Yes?”
“I said, can you tell me exactly what happened, starting from what you were doing before you found the body.”
“Yes, of course.” Vera is prepared for this. “So, at four thirty this morning, I wake up as usual. No alarm clock, you know. I wake up at four thirty exactly every morning, this is call discipline. What time you wake up every morning?”
Officer Gray closes her eyes for a moment. “Ma’am, this isn’t about me. Continue, please.”
“Hah.” Vera sniffs. “You young people always waking up late, is very bad for your health.”
“So you woke up . . .” Officer Gray says, waving her hand with what Vera thinks is more impatience than is called for.
“I wake up, then after I brush my teeth, etcetera, I go to the kitchen and first thing I do is drink a big glass of water. Every morning I do that. It cleanses the kidneys, you know, and—”
“Right, drank a glass of water, and then . . . ?”
“I put on my visor—you know, California sun is so strong, no sunscreen is enough, not even SPF 90 sunscreen is enough. You must wear a hat, you understand? Protect your skin from the sun, otherwise you will get cancer.”
“Wear a hat, yes, got it. So as you were saying?”
“Then I go downstair, and that is when I see dead body.”
“Do you know the identity of the deceased?” Officer Gray’s pen hovers over her notepad.
Vera shakes her head. “Never see him before. But judging from his face, I think he is in early thirties, or maybe he is actually older. Asians have very good skin, you know. Yes, I would say maybe late thirties.”
To Vera’s immense disappointment, Officer Gray doesn’t write any of this down.
“Aren’t you going to write that down?”
Officer Gray ignores the question. “So you don’t know the deceased.” This she writes down. Not all of Vera’s wisdom, but Vera’s lack of knowledge about the victim. “Did anything strike you about the body?”
“Well, yes.” By now, Vera is desperate to be of help.
Officer Gray perks up.
“It was dead, for one,” Vera says wisely.
Officer Gray deflates. “Yeah, that’s . . . yeah, I got that. Anything else?”
“I leave it alone. I don’t touch it, because I know you will be wanting to check for DNA and fingerprints and all that,” Vera says with a touch of pride. She cranes her neck and looks pointedly around them. “Speaking of DNA, where is your CSI team?”
Officer Gray’s mouth thins into a line. “I’m afraid we don’t actually work like that, ma’am. God, I hate those shows,” she mutters. “Right now, my supervisor’s looking for signs of foul play, and forensics will be called in if he finds any signs.”
“What?” Once again, Vera is aghast. Everything she watched on TV has prepared her for nothing short of a small army of hazmat-suited professionals. “Well, there is clearly sign of foul play.”
“Oh?”
The tray of tea in Vera’s hands stops her from pointing, so she jerks her head at her front door. “Look, the killer break the glass!”