The voice of the Garmin need not have announced that we had arrived at our destination. Payton’s home was the most quaint and charming on the short dirt road. The rows of dead potted plants made it the saddest, too.
The driver’s window of the car parked in the driveway seamlessly rolled down. The man asked us our names, then handed Carly the key and started to drive away. He stopped and backed the car up, jumped out and opened the back seat door.
“I almost forgot,” he shook his head. “Mrs. Doukas wanted you to have this. She’s allergic.”
The man handed me an animal carrier. Inside, Teddy sat huddled in the far corner.
“Just great,” I said, as the man screeched all four wheels out of there, leaving behind a blanket of dust. I turned to Sterling.
“Don’t look at me. I don’t do animals except under the covers, and Carly is a dog person.”
Carly unlocked the door and shuffled inside. I preferred to stand for a moment on the small flagstone patio. Taking it all in. Shoring up my spirit. I couldn’t help but smile as I looked at the colorful Mexican Talavera pots that lined the entry, in spite of the small fact that all the plants and flowers and vines were scorched and dead.
When I stepped inside Carly sat at the kitchen bar, her eyes swollen with wannabe tears she held on to with all her strength. She mumbled, “I don’t know why we’re here.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come along,” I said.
“No, I’m glad. But why?” she urged me. “We have to believe the sheriff’s department has already looked around.”
“But they didn’t know her like we do. Maybe we won’t find anything, but I have to believe maybe we’ll feel something here.”
Carly cocked her head in disbelief. A last minute lift of her chin told me of her willingness to help.
“Let’s look around,” I said, placing the animal carrier near the door. Maybe there’s something they missed. It wasn’t a big investigation, Carly. Cut and dried, for them. I think we need to look for signs. Maybe signs that can affirm she did commit suicide and at least we’ll know why. Let’s look for anything financial that might tell us she was in over her head. Look for stock market records or certificates. Maybe something from the Paris Bourse.”
“Paris?” Sterling asked.
I explained the wild goose-chase to see if by chance Payton had certificates through the Parisian CAC-40.
“That girl barely got by financially. Can’t imagine why she’d look to overseas market indexes.”
“Just a thought, while we’re here. Or maybe she was having an affair that went sour and we didn’t know about it. I’ll check the medicine cabinet. Maybe she was sick—really sick, and didn’t want anyone to know.”
Sterling was already riffling through Payton’s jewelry. Payton’s mother had clearly instructed us to take anything we wanted. It was Sterling’s nature and her business, and I found nothing wrong with it.
“She still had a few good pieces,” Sterling sighed, “in spite of her brother.”
“He took her for a lot of money,” Carly said.
“He borrowed a lot of money before he went missing,” I said.
“But she still loved him. She loved everything about him. When he disappeared I thought we were going to lose Payton, then and there.”
I walked into the study. Although scoured clean, I could see every drop of blood Payton might have lost. I smelled the distinct smell of blood—copper. I could almost hear the gunshot.
“Wait a minute. Her computer is gone,” I said, disappointment and frustration lacing my throat.”
“Oh. Her mom has that,” Sterling called from the other room. “She thought maybe she could learn how to use it.”
We scoured Payton’s house for almost two hours. Nothing affirmed a suicide. Nothing screamed otherwise. Sterling made a list of the few items of jewelry with any value. She thought she could contact Payton’s mother and offer to sell the pieces for her. The only object we walked away with, and yes, I took it, was a large inlaid mother-of-pearl box holding Payton’s sadness. The box was stuffed with small objects and papers that evidenced Payton’s relentless search to find her missing brother, Mike.
Oh, and the cat. Teddy was going home with me.
Chapter Fourteen
A Sticky Situation
THE ALARM ON MY CELL sounded at five. Sleeping in the double King suite, Sterling groaned in the bed next to me. I grabbed my phone to silence the shrill ringtone. An early start would be the only way we could make a Sonoran desert hike in August and survive.
“Let me get this straight, because it doesn’t sound like the Lauren Visconti I’ve known since grade school,” Sterling whined, “We’re supposed to start hiking somewhere in all this desert and assume we can find something, but we don’t have a clue where to start or what we’re looking for?”
Payton’s last email to anyone was to me, and the words still made no sense to me.
Saguaro National Forest. CAC Trail. 3 skeleton. Import
Carly scrutinized the trail map. “Look here,” she said. “In her email to you Payton wrote ‘CAC Trail’. It might not be the same, but here’s a trail named the Cactus Canyon Trail.”
“It clearly wasn’t a trail of paperwork from the Paris Bourse, so we have nothing. That’s something. Let’s go hiking!”
We’d picked up some cat food and made sure Teddy had plenty of water, then we hit the road.
We missed the trailhead three times. When finally we parked our rental car and laced up our boots, I had a single goal. If we were on to something, we were looking for the next part of Payton’s email. Three skeletons.
“Do you actually think we’re going to find three dead bodies up here?” Sterling moaned.
“Of course not. For one thing, it’s been too long. Someone would have seen them. But maybe it’s something like a skeleton. And maybe it’s not human,” I said.
“Still,” Carly added, “I think we should look for lumps in the grounds.”
“You mean like graves,” Sterling whimpered.
“Hell, I don’t know what I mean,” Carly said. “But Lauren’s right. Payton was smart. Damn smart. There are other definitions of the word skeleton.”
“Yeah, right. Like what?” Sterling picked off cholla cacti that had already jumped onto her legs.
Carly stopped walking. “Supportive structures. Like frames. You know, bare bones means the essential parts are left. There might be some old out-buildings up here from early homesteaders.”
Sterling resumed the hike, hollering back to us, “Now you’re talking. I prefer to think we’re not up here looking for cadavers.”
We hiked up a section of loose rocks, all of us with our eyes on the ground in order to see unstable earth and rocks, icky desert critters, piercing stickers, and to prevent falling on any three mounds of human remains.
“Skeleton could me something very thin. Like, skeletal.”
“Are you kidding me,” Carly said. “There’s a billion skinny looking cacti up here.”
“So we look for a grouping of three,” I said, trying to keep the faith. Trying to make sense of it all.
Carly did a quick, “Pffft,” but lead the way. “Still, there’s a billion Three Musketeers up here,” she said.
Three and a half miles seemed manageable, but after the first mile the terrain grew steeper. Luckily, we prepared for the harsh climate with plenty of water.
We stuck to the trail, assuming Payton wouldn’t have ventured off it. Having lived in the desert for so many years she knew about the dangers of reptiles and wild cats more than any of us dared imagine. I only mentioned watching out for rattlesnakes and Gila monsters once, when Sterling fell out from taking the lead.
“I didn’t even know Payton liked to hike,” Carly said.
Payton had never mentioned hiking to me, either.
Carly stopped to take a gulp of water and her vaporous eyes fixed on mine. “If we’re even close to the where, just what are we looking fo
r?”
“I don’t know, but we all agree it must be important.”
“Yeah. Maybe that’s what she meant when she typed the word import. Nothing she’s importing, but it’s important,” Carly said.
Sterling fiercely nodded her head in agreement, pulling out a clip to secure her long blond hair off her neck.
Every time we spotted an obvious cluster of three cacti or bushes, we hiked over to them for a closer inspection. We’d root around at the base of them, look across the horizon from where they stood in case something jumped out at us. Nothing jumped out at us but for the cholla cacti.
Carly cursed at the spines of the fuzzy cactus now piercing through her boot.
Using leather gloves we’d picked up at the hardware store, we took turns trying to reach inside some of the lower holes animals had carved into the giant saguaro. I quickly deduced no one would hide anything that way unless they didn’t want it to be discovered for a hundred years, when maybe the cacti would finally topple over.
There was nothing. No outbuildings. No mounds. No aha moment. No epiphany. No catharsis to bring us hope. We left the national park grimy, sweaty, and emotionally stifled.
Exhausted, we headed back to the hotel.
“What do you make of the last word in Payton’s email to you, Lauren?” Carly asked.
“Fuck that. We don’t even know what she meant by the three skeletons,” Sterling bitched from the back seat.
I glanced in the rearview mirror at the glamorous Sterling, now reduced to sweat and stringy hair. “I think maybe she was writing the word important. Then again maybe imports, like we said. It just confirms to me that because we are trying to figure it out—because we know there is something to figure out, we all agree Payton didn’t kill herself.
“Remember she always signed off on her emails with a big BFF. One click on her computer to include a signature. She ran out of time. And that wouldn’t have happened if she was holding the gun to her own head.”
Maybe we were wrong. Misguided friends unable to admit they weren’t there for another in time of need. In time of life, or death.
On the way back toward Tucson Sterling cried out, “Stop!”
“What?” Carly asked as I already slowed the car.
“It’s a tattoo parlor.” Sterling reached both arms up toward the front seats and pressed them firmly on our shoulders. “Remember our plan with Payton?”
We did, and we stopped. An hour or so later, after enduring the pain of what felt like a knife attached to a jackhammer, all three of us walked back to our rental car with identical tattoos on our right ankles. The artist told us they were the Chinese symbol for friendship.
We had agreed, when there were four of us, that we would stain our skin in friendship under the needle of a tattoo artist. Without Payton, I suppose the entire idiotic act was of a permanent gesture. Like blood sisters. And for Payton.
We really had no idea if the symbol was authentic. It could mean walking slut, for all we knew.
With stained skin, we returned to L.A. Lala Land. With Teddy onboard.
Chapter Fifteen
Questionable Motives
The man behind the counter at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX looked at me, his face registered with surprise and maybe, suspicion. “This claim check’s pretty old.”
“Well, yes. My trip was extended. I forgot all about it.”
He grumbled something and disappeared behind the doors. Moments later, which seemed like an eternity and long enough for me to feel like a thief and a fool, he returned with a long travel case.
“Golf isn’t my game, but you’d think you would remember your clubs” he barked.
Golf wasn’t my game, either.
CARLY RETURNED HOME to the mayhem of packed and stacked boxes. It was time for her to move. Her heart leaped with excitement, tempered with a strong dose of worry. But who didn’t worry when making a big move?
STERLING LEFT THE AIRPORT in a white stretch Hummer limousine. Something about a football player.
HARLAN COAL SAVORED ONE more evaluating look at himself in the mirror, donning his sunglasses before walking out onto the grounds. His assistant, Armand, crossed the play area to meet him.
“That’s it,” Armand said. “I delivered the keys. That’s the last one.”
“Sold them all in three weeks. I guess we should celebrate.”
“Baseball?”
“Absolutely.”
The two men disappeared behind one of the only locked doors on the entire compound where four lines of cocaine had already been cut out on the table.
GABRI SENT OUT invitations to her dinner party. Following etiquette, the more formal the invitation and the earlier it went out, the more elaborate the event. She didn’t want to compete with the CoverBoy opening coming up in two weeks. Most of her dinner guests would likely be on that guest list. She decided it would be a hoot to follow the CoverBoy event with an even more memorable evening. She knew real estate and she knew how to schmooze. Hand in hand.
Gabri got off the phone with Sterling Falls after thanking her for the new referral to handle Carly Posh’s house closing. Sterling seemed surprised. She didn’t know Carly was moving?
Stabbing at the Posh Possessions’ envelope with her silver letter opener, Gabri pulled the papers out in front of her. She read the documents page by page.
“Sonuva bitch,” she said aloud.
For the first time in her life, Gabri Criscione questioned grabbing a quick commission.
Chapter Sixteen
The Gala
GEOFF RECEIVED a call from his mother. It wasn’t good news. His mother heard the voice of her dead Jamaican Obeah mother, and the living all better be listening. After ending the call, Geoff knew that Lauren was in danger. And Lauren’s refusal to admit it would make it more evil. So he had been warned. And the number six. The number six was satanic, and all around Lauren Visconti. When and how could he tell her?
IT WASN’T SUICIDE. It wasn’t suicide. It wasn’t suicide. This is what I knew. But what could I do? How was I to react but in numbness, blinded after my futile attempts to get at any truth. I had a life to live. I had to be and live amongst the living.
The CoverBoy gala was in good hands. With an applauded caterer at the helm, I knew all I had to do was dress and show up. And that might be asking a lot.
I remember feeling thankful to be there, although I still knew my footing was uncertain in Lala Land.
The nagging did not cease. It wasn’t a suicide. The anonymous note? I didn’t take it as a threat, or even a warning. It only confirmed what I knew in my heart. Suicide did not become my friend’s nature. She was too damn feisty to not go down without a devil of a fight. Any fight.
I was in the middle of big changes in my life. What do they say causes the most stress? I’m pretty sure death, moving, and a new job all make the top of the list. Add that my new job was my own company, and I now had over thirty persons relying on me for their livelihood.
Baby steps were huge for me. I was wearing the gown I had bought for my wedding rehearsal dinner. A few more steps and I’d walk out of my private office into the main lobby for the opening gala for CoverBoy. A party. No rehearsal needed. I glanced in the mirror to make sure my dress hadn’t turned to paper.
“Lauren, you look scrumptious,” Brock called out from the crowd ahead of me.
I hadn’t seen Brock since the night of my arrival in L.A. He understood I was busy; I understood he was a dickhead for going to bed with my good friend within 24 hours of screwing me.
“Glad you could make it,” I uttered.
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it!”
“Excuse me,” I said. “I need to greet some other guests.”
Sterling found herself already surrounded by an entourage of men. I guess I was glad Brock wasn’t one of them.
“You aren’t ignoring me, are you?” Sterling asked.
“Of course not.” I always grew a little jealous aro
und Sterling. She was breathtaking, as usual. Her blond hair, thickly braided and pinned on top of her head, allowed my eyes to follow down her neckline to the diamond necklace dangling in chunks more dazzling than all the ice sculptures in the room.
“C’mon. You’ve been here for a couple months and we haven’t had one drink together. You didn’t even ask me to borrow a bibelot or two to wear tonight.”
I reached up to touch the small necklace around my neck. A gold circle with my engagement diamond mounted in the center. “Look around. I’ve been a little busy,” I defended myself.
Carly interrupted, making an appearance in a vamp Eddie Bauer look only she could pull off. After Hollywood kisses, she said, “I have to run, but just wanted to say hi.”
“You just got here,” Sterling protested.
I knew differently. Carly had been on-site since the early morning setting up the last minute furnishings and handling a hammered woodworker who was getting a little too creative with his tools.
“Does Carly ever come with a date?” Sterling asked.
“Not her thing,” I said as casually as I could. “You know that.”
“You’re telling me she’s gay?”
“No. More like A.”
“A?”
“Come on, Sterling. How long have we all been friends? Carly isn’t interested. For now, at least, I think she’s Asexual.”
Sterling choked back her drink. “Sounds like she needs serious therapy.”
“She’s in therapy. But I don’t think it’s about her preference for abstinence.” I was surprised I knew more about Carly than Sterling. Although we were all supposed to be best friends I instantly regretted saying anything, afraid I’d betrayed a confidence.
Sterling’s eyeballs rolled toward the ceiling. She burst out in a hearty roar of laughter that even took the nearby goggling men by surprise. Diamonds bounced and toppled as she hunched over the table. I could tell she was now immersed in a new subject as I watched her zero in on her night’s prey. He was a tall, athletic looking blond and as yet unaware that Sterling would win him for the night. Daddy’s virgin little daughter would score with a stranger, again.
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