“Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, stop it immediately and call me on my cell. There’ve been two murders at that beauty school you were telling me about. I hope you were smart enough not to waste your time with that, but I can’t seem to find you anywhere and I’m worried about—”
Damn thing cut him off with a beep. Where was she? Goode had wanted to move to PB from his cottage in La Jolla to be closer to her, but she’d said no. She liked having him close, but not that close. Goode told her he needed to save money so he could buy a house, but she didn’t believe him. He didn’t tell her he was still paying off credit card bills the ex- had racked up.
Sometimes it was tough, but he usually tried to cut Maureen some slack, considering how the two of them grew up. She’d always wished that their father had stuck around, and so had Goode. He didn’t mind looking out for his little sister, but he could have used a male role model himself. Maureen had grown up quite a bit in the last few years, but he still worried about her. For one thing, he didn’t trust her roommates, Chris and Mitch. Goode had known them since junior high school, and frankly, he’d rather she live with strangers than let those guys eyeball her getting out of the shower. She said she could take care of herself, especially after all those Tai Kwon Do classes. When Goode tried to encourage her to move in with female roommates, she told him to “Get a wife.”
Goode smacked his hand on the steering wheel. He’d forgotten to ask Stone one very important question, so he called him back. “Hey, one more thing. Any word yet on that white powder from Tania’s coffee table?”
“Funny you should mention that,” Stone said. “I got the paperwork right after we hung up, but the lieutenant walked in and wanted a full report first. You know how that goes. There was pretty high quality cocaine on one corner and some of the purest methamphetamine the lab has ever seen on the other. Looks like the little lady was connected to some people who could supply her with a smorgasbord of high-end stimulants.”
“That is very interesting,” Goode said.
“Gotta run,” Stone said. “That’s the chief on the other line. Call me after the service.”
The test results were helpful, but Goode still had no clear motive and still no direction to follow other than the drugs. The problem was, people don’t act rationally when they’re high on stimulants, so that always made it difficult to find reason in their behavior. He figured Seth brought the drugs to Tania’s, but it was also possible that Tania had her own stash, or even that Keith was her supplier and that’s how he knew where she lived.
Goode quickly packed his bag and drove away from the pathetic excuse for a hotel. He’d planned to leave earlier, grab some breakfast and show up at the funeral half an hour early so he could watch people arrive. But with all the phone calls, it was too late to stop for anything other than a donut.
His stomach started gurgling around nine thirty as he entered Beverly Hills, where he couldn’t afford to buy any food anyway. What he really wanted was a meatball sandwich with hot peppers and mozzarella cheese, doused with oil and vinegar. After parking near the church, he leaned over and opened the glove box, just in case he’d left something to eat in there.
“C’mon,” he said, rifling through maps, wadded-up papers and empty gum wrappers. He found a flashlight, a dead battery, some breath mints and a half-eaten package of tropical fruit LifeSavers.
“Excellent,” he said, popping one of the mints into his mouth. It was soggy, but he was so hungry it almost tasted good. He kept the LifeSavers for the service.
Shifting the seat back, he propped his feet up on the dashboard, and watched the people walking toward the church. A tall guy in a black shirt and pants walked past the car, but Goode couldn’t see his face. The guy had a very determined gait, even though he had a slight limp. Goode made a mental note to ask Alison if she knew which of Tania’s friends had a limp. The fact that he was wearing black at a funeral certainly wasn’t going to help identify him.
A few minutes later, the street was full of Mercedes, competing with the BMWs and Jaguars for parking spaces. Goode wondered how all these people were going to fit into the church. There were more men than women, walking solo, or in twos and threes. A black Ferrari almost mowed down Seth and Keith as they crossed the street. Turned out the driver was Gary Bentwood, who parked illegally down the block.
Goode headed over to the church to find Alison and picked her out of the crowd pretty easily. She was standing alone on the front steps, pulling on her dark purple velvet dress. She smiled as he got closer. But before she could say anything, he put his finger to his lips and shook his head. He didn’t want her calling out his name or talking about the investigation; he wanted to remain incognito.
She took his arm, and the sweet scent of gardenias greeted them as they entered the church together.
“Gardenias were Tania’s favorite flower,” Alison whispered, pointing to the glass bowls of them, floating in water, that were placed around the spacious room.
“Follow me and we’ll stand in the back,” he whispered as they joined the throng of mourners filing in. The way people were dressed, black and fashionable, and chatting each other up, they could have been at a Hollywood party or art gallery opening. He headed for an open spot along the rear wall.
“I recognize some of these guys from photo albums Tania showed me,” Alison whispered. “She sure had a lot of old boyfriends. She said she stayed friends with a bunch of them.”
“Any of them stick in your mind?”
“She was seeing some married guy at the ad agency where she used to work, but that ended at the beginning of the summer. I didn’t meet her until orientation, which was about a week before school started, so I’m sure there were others.”
“Did she date anyone once she moved to San Diego?”
“She may have, but Seth is the only one I saw her with. Her next-door neighbor, Paul, tried to date her, but he wasn’t her type. We’d see him trying to hide in the parking lot, taking pictures of her. Kind of creepy, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Goode said. “Did anything happen between them?”
“He asked Tania out a few times, but she always said no. Then he started getting weird. You know. Knocking on her door late at night without being invited, and asking if he could come in. The usual stuff guys in love do.”
“So how did Tania handle that?”
“She tried to be nice, but firm. She didn’t want any conflict with a next-door neighbor. I guess he didn’t really get the message.”
“When was this?”
“She told me it started as soon as she moved in.”
“Anything else unusual about him?”
“Ummm. . .Yeah. He walks with a limp. A bad motorcycle accident or something.”
Goode perked up, but before he could say anything a couple of bruisers pushed past them, jostling Alison.
“Hey. That’s weird. That’s him right there,” she said, pointing to a guy at the front of the line of people waiting to pay their respects at the casket. “I can’t believe he would drive all the way up here. Well, yeah, I guess I can.”
He hadn’t noticed Paul limping the day he’d interviewed him. But then again, the weirdo had barely stepped outside the apartment to talk to him, curling around the front door like a cat.
Goode watched Paul look up at the huge white cross on the church wall. Then, as if the sight of it pained him, he dropped his eyes to the casket, which he touched for a moment, then pulled his hand away quickly, as if it had burned him. He tried again, tentatively, then rubbed his fingertips along its edges. Finally, he kneeled and laid his head on the wood.
Chapter 20
Helen
The morning of her daughter’s funeral, Helen Marcus awoke from a dream in which she was wearing the same pink suit that Jackie Kennedy had worn the day JFK was shot. Helen walked into her everyday closet and scanned the tightly packed rows of blouses, skirts and dresses, each encased in its own clear plastic bag. The gowns were in a
separate closet. She loved to buy pretty outfits, but she’d had fewer and fewer occasions to show them off in the past couple of years. Today, she didn’t care much about looking pretty. She just wanted to wear something black that wasn’t too short or too tight.
She finally decided on the modest dress that she’d bought as a way to get herself back to church. It was still new because she’d never worn it. Wrapping her head in a black silk scarf, she applied some opalescent lipstick. The sunglasses weren’t just for show. Her eyes were bloodshot and the bright light streaming through the bedroom curtains burned something fierce.
Helen knew she should try to eat, but she couldn’t even get a piece of wheat toast down with her coffee. Her head felt like a block of lead.
Tony didn’t do much better. He ate a couple bites of English muffin and pushed the plate aside. They didn’t have much to say to each other. Helen waited until Tony was in the shower to have a Bloody Mary. She knew he wouldn’t approve.
The air was heavy in the kitchen. She and Tania had always gabbed away before a big party at the house, preparing hors d’oeuvres and drinking white wine. Tania would arrange cold cuts on the glass platter, moving from deep red salami to rose-colored ham. But a wake was not your ordinary party and Helen didn’t have her daughter to keep her company. Her throat tightened and the tears came again.
Helen wiped her eyes with a tissue as she examined her cold-cut plate in the refrigerator. She just didn’t have Tania’s touch. She envisioned her daughter’s ivory hands with their red fingernails, making up the dessert plate. She would bake muffins, slice pound cake and then Tania would arrange them, laying the slabs like fallen dominos. But this time Helen didn’t feel like sweet stuff so she didn’t bake anything.
Helen bought two cases of Zinfandel for the guests. She saw her daughter as a sacrificial lamb and the wine as a symbol of Tania’s blood. Just like Jesus and communion. Not that her daughter was a saint or anything, but she was so young. Her murder seemed so senseless, so random and so wrong. Her death had to have a purpose, didn’t it? Maybe she had died so others could live. That’s how Helen wanted to see it anyway. She would toast to Tania’s spirit and goodness at the wake; she could feel it in the air around her already.
She’d planned to talk to the minister about Tania’s death but she hadn’t had a chance. She wanted to tell him about the lamb and the wine and the sacrifice, but she wasn’t sure he would understand, comparing her daughter to Jesus and all. Maybe she would take him aside while the guests drank their wine and ate their paté de fois gras on French bread and ask how she could ease the pain that wracked her soul and made every joint ache. Maybe he could offer her some guidance.
As she and Tony drove up to the church in the black Mercedes, she couldn’t believe how many people had come to the funeral. They were milling around on the lawn and filing slowly into the building. Feeling feverish, as if she had the flu, she wished she’d had another Bloody Mary before they left.
“Tony, for God’s sake, look at them. They’re all dressed to the hilt, like this was a damn cocktail party. I don’t know if I can face this.”
Helen had been dreading the ceremony. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye to Tania. And if that weren’t enough, she had to face a long afternoon at the wake with her relatives, who had insisted on flying out from Iowa.
Thank God they had the courtesy to stay at hotels.
Tony circled the block several times and still couldn’t find a parking spot on the street. The neighborhood was so crammed with cars he had to create his own space between two garage doors in an alley. He offered her his arm, and after considering the possibility of how it would look if she didn’t take it, she held onto the crook of his elbow.
They walked slowly, together, each being careful of the other as they stepped from the curb into the street. Tony seemed so beaten down that she felt she needed to try and overcome the usual distance between them. But with her frayed nerves, it was going to be difficult. Then she remembered the flask she’d put in her purse that morning. She squeezed his arm and he smiled down at her.
Helen sighed as they approached the church and all those people. As the two of them pushed their way through the crowd, people kept touching Helen on the arm and tsk-tsking.
“She was so young,” they said.
“Such a shame.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
Helen felt somewhat shielded by her sunglasses, and managed to nod stiffly at them.
Please, please don’t ask me a question. Don’t make me have to say anything.
She did not want to break down in front of strangers. Not before the ceremony at least. They’d all be watching for her reaction. Helen had heard from a friend at the club that she’d frustrated many women who had tried to invite her to dinners and parties with the girls. After three rejections, the friend told her, they wrote her off as a bitch. Helen hadn’t felt like socializing much the past few years, making pathetic small talk with women who knew their husbands were running around on them. Most of the time, she wanted to be left alone to watch movies and read her magazines in peace. Occasionally, she’d venture out to play some tennis or have a drink at the club, but she never really enjoyed it much.
Now, just like before Tania was born, Helen would have to deal with these women alone. As she and Tony crossed the threshold, Helen could hear her Aunt Martha’s voice behind her. “It’s so sad,” Martha was saying. “She was just getting started.”
Once they stepped inside the church, Helen needed to stop a moment so her eyes could adjust to the dim lighting. They slowly made their way to their reserved seats at the front, nodding at a few friends. Within a few minutes, though, Helen felt so claustrophobic she thought she was going to explode. It was another one of those damn panic attacks.
Helen’s throat was so dry she couldn’t swallow. And that made the panic worse. What if she couldn’t swallow again?
“I can’t swallow,” she whispered.
Tony rubbed her upper arm. “Try and relax,” he said.
But it didn’t work. Her throat was constricting. She had to get something to drink. “I’m going to find a bathroom,” she said.
“You want me to come with you?” he asked, starting to follow her.
“No, I’ll be fine,” she said. “Why don’t you find our seats?”
Helen turned sideways and pushed through the people as she searched for the bathroom. She hoped it was deserted. It just had to be.
People turned to see who was shoving them, but she didn’t stop to apologize. She was on a mission. She tried again to swallow, but the walls of her throat would not meet.
I can’t stand all these people pushing up against me.
Finally, she was alone in a hallway, but none of the doors was marked. She looked side to side, searching for the bathroom, but couldn’t remember where it was. She tried to turn one doorknob, then another. She still couldn’t swallow. She tried to gather some saliva in her mouth so she’d have something to wet the back of her throat. But nothing would go down. As soon as she saw the door she was looking for, almost without effort, she swallowed. It was such a relief. After pushing the door open, she practically dove into one of the stalls, her chest heaving for breath.
Safely inside, she quickly pulled out the antique flask, dropping the purse in her haste. Helen took a couple of long slugs of scotch, which went down as if she’d never had a problem swallowing. They coated her throat as the calming heat swept through her chest. She breathed in deeply and exhaled. Her heartbeat began to slow and she felt herself begin to relax.
The flask was engraved with a monogram, GTL. She’d come across it at an estate sale and fantasized about its former owner. It had to be a man. She’d originally bought it for Tony, but she liked it so much that she kept it for herself. As she took another big sip, that familiar warmth crept over her, like a lover’s embrace. She sighed.
Helen lingered in the stall a little while longer, not really knowing how much time had passed, onl
y that a number of other women had found the bathroom, too.
“The line outside is all the way down the hall now,” one of them said, primping at the sink.
“Yeah, it’s almost as bad as a concert,” another one said.
Helen pulled her hair away from her face, straightened her dress, and pushed open the stall, staring straight ahead. The girls smiled awkwardly at her and gave her their condolences as she washed her hands.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, attempting to smile.
She forced herself into the hallway, wobbling a little, and found her way back to the pews. The sharp staccato of voices had quieted into a more comfortable allegro, or at least it seemed that way to her. The rough edges of the crowd had ebbed away. Her mind felt numb again.
Thank God.
The pews had filled up so it was standing room only along the rear and side walls. She knew her daughter was popular, but she had no idea that Tania had had this many friends. As Helen approached Tony in the center of the front row, she saw him looking at a young woman wearing a purple velvet dress that hugged her rather large breasts.
What kind of dress is that to wear to a funeral?
“Who is that?” Helen asked as she sat next to him and placed her purse on the floor underneath the bench.
“Who is who?”
“That girl you’re staring at.”
“I don’t know. Must be one of Tania’s friends.”
Helen settled back as much as she could, rearranging her dress so it didn’t bunch up on one side. She watched a young man, dressed in a black shirt and pants, limp past her. He was staring straight ahead, his face tight and pale. He had hollowed eyes. She nudged Tony.
“Look at that strange boy,” she whispered. “Isn’t that Linda Henry’s son?”
Tony shook his head and shrugged, shifting his attention to the white cross in front of them. He seemed pretty distracted. Agitated even. A few minutes later, Helen saw a single tear trickle down his face. She took his hand and squeezed.
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