by Dianne Emley
“Granny, it’s me.”
“Heavens to Betsy.” Granny put a hand to her chest. “You scared me within an inch of my life.”
“I’m sorry I startled you, but the television’s so loud, you couldn’t hear the prealarm.”
“Say again?”
Vining repeated what she had said, almost yelling, ending with, “Where’s your hearing aid?”
“The battery’s dead.”
Vining released an annoyed sigh.
“I’ll get one tomorrow.”
“I don’t want you driving like that.”
“Stop worrying about me.” Granny grabbed Vining’s hand and patted it, grinning broadly. Her false teeth looked oversize in her mouth. She was shrinking, but the teeth remained the same size.
“We’ll go to the drugstore tonight after we eat. I picked up a pizza. I know it’s late for dinner.”
“I like pizza anytime. The crust is a little hard for me to chew, but I can eat the toppings.” Granny scooted to the front of the chair seat, put both hands on the chair arms, and hoisted herself up, rejecting the hand that Vining offered. “I can get up by myself. I’m not that decrepit yet.”
Vining thought she looked thinner. “Why can’t you chew pizza crust?”
“My dentures are bothering me.”
“Why don’t you get them fixed?”
“I need to have new ones made.”
“So … ?”
“My insurance only pays for part of it.”
“Granny …”
She walked past Vining and through the doorway into the kitchen. “Don’t worry about me so much. Your old grandmother can still take care of herself.”
Vining wasn’t so sure. Granny had been a mountain in Vining’s life, a forceful, dependable, larger-than-life figure. While her mind was still sharp, over the past year, she’d become frail. Vining felt guilty. Had the stress of her attempted murder sucked up the last of her grandmother’s vitality?
Granny leaned into the doorway off the kitchen that led to Emily’s room downstairs. With her bejeweled hand against the side of her mouth, she shouted, “Emily, your mother’s home.”
Now that the television was off, Vining could hear hip-hop music emanating from downstairs.
Before Granny could yell again, Vining halted her with a hand on her arm. She unhooked her cell phone from her belt and pressed the speed-dial combination to call Emily’s cell phone. “Hi, sweet pea. I’m home. I picked up a Tarantino’s pizza.”
Granny shook her head and went to the cupboard. “Kids today.” She took out four plates and set them around the dinette table. Then she took out four place settings of flatware.
“Granny there’s just three of us.”
Emily stepped from the staircase into the kitchen. Since Em had started her new school, she’d taken to wearing black. The outfit she wore now had to have been enabled by her stepmother, Kaitlyn, who loved to take Em shopping. Her black, skintight, cigarette-leg jeans were crumpled where the hems reached her black tennis shoes. On top, she wore a sheer black T-shirt with a lacy purple camisole beneath it. Both were lower-cut and tighter than anything Vining had seen Emily wear before. Emily had the figure for it. That was the problem. When Emily had started her new school, Vining had allowed her to start wearing a little makeup, but today Em was wearing copious black eyeliner and smoky eye shadow.
With her nearly black hair, which reached the middle of her back, and her alabaster skin, the dark clothing created a dramatic effect, but Vining didn’t care for it at all. Emily insisted the shadowy garb wasn’t a sign that she was into the Goth scene. Her motives ran deeper.
“Black is the absence of color, Mom,” she’d testily explained, barely managing to keep her annoyance in check. It was an attitude that was new for Em, but that Vining knew well from her own adolescence. Mothers were totally clueless. “I don’t know what my colors are going to be yet, and until I do, I will wear black.”
Vining had looked at her daughter then as if a doppelgänger had taken her over. Right now, in spite of her grim attire, Em looked calm and happy. Today the gods of adolescent hormones were smiling.
Vining would talk to Em about the revealing clothing later. She walked with her arms outstretched to greet her daughter, but stopped short when she saw Lincoln Kennedy Zhang walk up the stairs behind Emily.
“Mom, this is my friend Ken from school.”
“Hello, Detective Vining. Nice to see you again.” He smiled and extended his hand. He was polite, but uncomfortable.
“Hello, Ken. This is a surprise.” Vining quickly returned his handshake, smiling stiffly. She remembered the new BMW parked in front of the house.
“I told Emily how I saw you at the Hollenbeck Paper building,” Ken said. “Have you found out who killed that guy?”
“We’re working on it. When you said that Em was in your class, I didn’t know you were such good friends.”
Emily said, “We’re doing a project together for our digital photography class. We’re going to take panoramic shots from downtown L.A. Ken’s mother is friends with the owner of the new Mandarin Palace Hotel. He’ll let us on the roof to take pictures.” She beamed.
“You’re going to have some pizza with us, aren’t you, young man?” Granny finished setting the table for four.
“Thank you very much, but I have to get home.” Ken snagged the opportunity to escape. “Nice to see you again, Detective Vining. Or, should I call you Mrs. Vining?”
“Detective is fine.”
“Oh, okay. So, I’ll see you tomorrow, Em.”
“I’ll walk you to the door.”
Ken stepped back to let Emily walk ahead of him.
Vining saw the look in her daughter’s eyes and knew it well from her own experience. She and Wes had started sneaking around when she was not much older than Emily. Before long, they were having sex. Sometimes, they used condoms. Often, they didn’t. She was damn lucky she hadn’t gotten pregnant. When her mother discovered what was going on, she didn’t tell Vining to stop. She took her to the doctor for oral contraceptives.
Vining had grown up too young. It was the last thing she wanted for her daughter. Emily had changed so much in the past year. Vining wondered if, like the changes in her grandmother, Emily would have experienced the same metamorphosis without T B. Mann. Would her sweet girl still be spouting that she was the absence of color?
“He’s a nice, polite young man.” After making sure that the kids were out of earshot, Granny said, “We used to stay with our own kind, but I guess times have changed. He seems like a good boy.”
“You don’t know his family.” Vining slipped into the entryway to try to hear them.
Emily was giggling, then there was silence.
Vining risked poking her head around the corner. They were kissing. This was no peck on the cheek, but a full-on soul kiss. Her heart dropped into her stomach.
Em lingered, hanging on to the open door, until Ken got inside his car, waving as he drove off. She floated down the entryway, where she saw Vining, who’d stepped from the shadows.
“You’re spying on me.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Can’t I have any privacy?”
“When you’re an adult, supporting yourself, and living out of my house, you’ll be free to do whatever you want.”
Emily gaped at her.
“Em, you don’t invite a boy into your bedroom.”
“That happens to be where my computer is. We’re working on a school project. And he’s not a boy. He’s a friend.”
“A friend who you were kissing on the lips.”
“So what? I’m not going to do anything stupid, Mom. I know better than that.” She spun on her heel and stomped into the living room.
“Emily, I’m not finished.”
Em wheeled to face her mother, her arms tightly crossed over her chest and her lower lip punched out.
“You’re too young to be kissing a boy that way. Especially that boy.”
/> Em shrieked, “That boy. What do you mean by that boy?”
“I know enough that I don’t want you involved with him.”
“You don’t even know him. It wasn’t his mother’s fault that that guy got murdered on her property. She doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Emily, since you’re talking to Ken about my investigation, why don’t you ask him where his mother got the money to be smuggled out of China? How did she go from being penniless to constructing buildings? Who’s his father?”
“His father is American and lives in Hong Kong. He does import/ export. Why are you asking that? You don’t know who your father is and you’re not a criminal.”
Touché, Vining thought.
“You don’t like him because he’s half Chinese. Is that it? I didn’t take you for a racist, Mom.”
Vining put a hand on her hip, aghast. “Emily, stop with that smart mouth right now. Ken’s family has long ties to Chinese organized crime. His cousin is a convicted murderer. His mother withheld information pertinent to the homicide investigation.”
“She was scared.” Emily flung her arms and stomped away as if she was too frustrated to stand still. She spun around and nearly shouted, “And Ken’s not in a gang. He would have told me.”
The intimacy implicit in Emily’s statements gave Vining pause. She took a second to compose herself, feeling dangerously close to losing control. Calmly, she asked, “Are you having sex with him?”
Emily widened her beautiful green-gray eyes, which, in Vining’s view, she’d marred with the excessive makeup. Tears began to flow. “No!”
Granny found them and shouted, “Time for you two to sit down and eat. You can fight later.” She retreated into the kitchen.
Emily turned to go, muttering, “She’s really gotta get her hearing aid fixed.”
Vining smiled and Em did, too. She gently took her daughter’s arm. “Emily, you would tell me if you were becoming physical with Ken, wouldn’t you? You know you can tell me anything.”
She met her mother’s eyes. “We’re not having sex, okay?”
Vining wondered how she defined sex.
“Mom, can I eat now? I’m starving.”
Arguing with her daughter was painful for Vining. She opened her arms and hugged her. After at first responding stiffly, Emily softened and returned her mother’s hug with sincerity. Vining kissed Em’s forehead, which was at lip height. Only yesterday, it seemed, she used to be able to kiss the top of her head.
“Mom, I can’t breathe.”
Vining released her a little, but still held on.
“Mom … Don’t worry so much, okay? Please? It makes it hard all the time.”
Vining felt tears well in the corners of her eyes but forced them back down, the way she forced many impulses back down. She stroked Em’s hair. She prayed that they would never grow so far apart that they wouldn’t be able to find each other again.
Emily struggled away. She wasn’t as successful at fighting the tears as her mother. Eyeliner-blackened rivulets trailed from her eyes.
Vining reached into her slacks pocket. Beneath the pair of latex gloves that she always carried, she found tissues and a couple of lint-covered Altoids mints. She handed Em the tissues.
“Em, listen to me. You’re only fourteen—”
“Almost fifteen.”
“You’re too young to be spending time alone with any boy. Do you understand me?”
Emily pouted and finally said, “Yes.”
“Get some pizza,” Vining said. “I was going to put out bagged salad, if you want any. I think there’s a tomato and a cucumber.”
“I threw out the cucumber,” Emily said. “It was slimy.”
“Eww … We seriously need to go to the market.” They fell into an easy normality for which they were both desperate.
TWENTY-SEVEN
AFTER THEY’D EATEN, VINING AND EMILY FOLLOWED GRANNY’S car and went to look for a new hearing-aid battery at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy. They then followed Granny to her home. The old woman drove painstakingly slowly, nipping a curb, and almost blowing through a red light.
Em voiced what Vining had been thinking. “Should she be driving?”
Vining reflected that one thing that Granny hadn’t lost was her feistiness. “Taking her car is going to be a challenge.”
“Who’s gonna drive her around?”
Vining already knew the answer to that. Then she remembered, “You’ll be driving soon.”
“I don’t want to drive that big gas guzzler.”
Vining didn’t respond, thinking that Granny wasn’t the only one who was presenting a challenge.
They went to the market and stocked up on groceries, including raw meat and vegetables. Vining decided they needed to improve their diets. After Emily helped her put everything away, she went to bed.
Vining was exhausted, but still too wound up for sleep. She cleaned and chopped carrots, celery, onions, and potatoes, which she’d throw into the crock pot the next morning with beef stew meat, salt, pepper, a bay leaf, and thyme. She dragged out the crock pot from a corner in a low cabinet and washed off the dust and kitchen grime. If her life wasn’t anything near a Betty Crocker dream, she could at least pretend. If she couldn’t pretend, she and Em would at least have a hot, home-cooked meal in their bellies.
Even after the days of nonstop activity and her late-night Susie Homemaker efforts, she was still restless. She took the cure. She put on her favorite light cotton nightgown, made a mug of chamomile tea, grabbed a box of vanilla wafers, and curled up on the Lay-Z-Boy It was too warm for the chenille throw, but she draped it over the chair arm, liking the cozy way it felt. The classic movie channel cooperated by broadcasting a crime movie, Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Shortly after James Stewart rescued Kim Novak from the San Francisco Bay, Vining fell fast asleep.
SHE AWAKENED IN THE MIDDLE OF A DREAM. SHE COULDN’T QUITE GRAB the story thread, but someone was pelting her head with pebbles. When she opened her eyes, the classic movie channel was broadcasting one of the silent flicks they played in the dead of night. An actress’s eyes were thickly lined with kohl, and it made her think of Emily.
She heard the sound of a pebble hitting glass. This was no dream. Someone was outside, throwing pebbles at the sliding glass door off the living room. She clicked off the television. Sending the box of vanilla wafers flying, she got to her feet. Barefoot and in her nightgown, she left the lights off as she slipped into the kitchen. She retrieved her service Glock from the empty box of Count Chocula and a magazine from a drawer behind the tea towels.
The sliding glass door was open a few inches, stopping where it hit the wooden dowel she kept inside the frame. The drapes were open the same amount as the glass door. She peeked around them into the darkness. She heard the sound again but didn’t see anyone and didn’t know why the motion light hadn’t turned on.
“Who’s out there?” she demanded.
“It’s me. Jim.”
She pulled out the dowel, opened the sliding glass door, and stepped onto the terrace. She saw him standing in her ragged backyard in the moonlight.
He said, as loudly as he dared, “I drove straight back from Morro Bay.”
She was wondering why when he added, “I got your message.”
Now she remembered. “Right. My message.” She sucked air through her teeth.
“You meant that you wanted me to come over, didn’t you?”
“I did … I don’t know. Emily’s here.”
“I take it the moment has passed.”
She sonorously exhaled.
“Guess I should have called,” he said.
“No, no … I’m glad you came. I’m happy to see you. Come up.” She frowned at the darkened floodlight attached to the side of the house. “Why didn’t my motion light go on?”
“It went on. I unscrewed it. I didn’t want to alarm your neighbors. You need to move it higher up.”
While he was making his way around the house, sh
e turned to head back inside, only to stop at the sound of the wind chimes ringing in the still air. She recalled Auntie Wan’s admonition, “The ghost is hungry. You don’t take care of the ghost.”
She looked at the chimes and silently commanded, Stop.
They didn’t.
WHILE HE WAITED AT THE FRONT DOOR, SHE RAN A BRUSH THROUGH HER hair, gargled mouthwash, sniffed her armpits, and smeared on deodorant. She put on a robe and slippers and ran to open the door, feeling her heart flutter.
His shirt was wrinkled, his tie askew, his hair mussed, and he needed a shave. He looked adorable to her. He stepped across the threshold and into her arms. The second soul kiss of the night occurred in that doorway.
SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, HE FINISHED THE LEFTOVER PIZZA WITH A Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that had been in the back of the fridge since he’d brought over a six-pack when they’d watched Fourth of July fireworks off her terrace.
Her small amount of sleep had energized her and she recounted the events of her day almost without taking a breath. She concluded with her arriving home to find Em with Ken Zhang and their subsequent argument. Simply describing it distressed her enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Washing down the now-chewy pizza crust with a swallow of beer, he slid his hand across the table to take hers. He pulled the backs of her fingers to his lips.
She told him of her concerns about Granny. He empathized and offered his help.
When it came time to talk about his day he sketched the barest outline of his interviews with Zeke Denver and Marilu Feathers’s mother.
“Did you ask them about the necklace? Did you show them mine?”
“Nan, I’m not prepared to go into details right now. Today I’m going to Colina Vista and meeting with Chief Betsy Gilroy I’ll call the lieutenant in Tucson about Johnna Alwin’s murder to cover our bases. Then I’ll prepare my report.”
“Why do I have to wait for a report when you could just tell me?” She picked up his plate and glass and put them in the dishwasher.
“I need the freedom to work this thing my own way. To follow my nose.”
