by Jeff Shelby
“What the hell is this?” he growled.
“An investigation into your wife’s death,” I told him. “You asked if you could help.”
Randall looked at Carter, who had settled into his imposing-but-nonchalant stance. I thought Randall wanted to hit Carter, but the more I thought about it, that didn’t make sense because Randall didn’t seem like a dumb guy.
Randall looked back at me. “Leave—now.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
His right hand emerged from his pocket, his index finger pointing at me. “This is my wife’s funeral. You wanna fuck around with me? Fine. But not here, not today.”
“Then when?” I asked.
He jabbed the finger in my direction. “How about after I rip your fucking head off?” He spun on his heel and walked away from us.
I looked at Carter.
He adjusted his glasses. “How will you hear his answer if your head is detached?”
19
Carter left the funeral before I did, mumbling something about having to be somewhere. I didn’t ask where.
I hung around for a while, despite Randall’s threat. I scanned the crowd looking for people who seemed out of place, who maybe didn’t belong at Kate’s funeral, who looked like a walking clue.
I went zero for three.
I was heading for my car when I heard someone call my name. I turned around and saw Emily coming toward me.
“Sorry,” she said, as she reached me. “Didn’t mean to yell.”
“It’s okay. What’s up?”
She frowned, looking embarrassed. “I wanted to apologize for earlier.”
“Earlier?”
She nodded. “Walking away from you and Carter like that. I just got too upset.”
I watched the cars trickle out of the lot and down the hill. “I think you’re allowed to be upset, Em.”
“Well, thanks,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “But I don’t need to be rude, too.”
“You weren’t. It was fine.”
The corners of her mouth flared into a small smile. “Always the nice guy. Even after living through my family.”
“Even after.” I paused for a moment. “At some point, I’d like to talk to you, though. About what you told me.”
She turned and looked back at the church. “The thought of going back in there to help clean up isn’t exactly enticing.” She turned back to me. “How about now?”
“I didn’t mean we had to do it right away, Emily. It can wait a day or two,” I told her.
She waved a perfectly manicured hand in the air. “I’m fine. Really. I need to vent anyway. I’ll buy you a drink at George’s. Just let me grab my things.”
She hurried back to the courtyard and quickly reemerged with a sweater and her purse. She reminded me of a more sophisticated Kate. They were both attractive, but Kate had always been the little sister, looking up to her sister with a sense of admiration and awe. Emily had always been more into the fashion trends and a little more into risk taking, a very cool older sister who didn’t mind letting the little sister into her life.
I followed her BMW down the back side of Mount Soledad to the jammed up area at Prospect. La Jolla was a tiny strip on a cliff above the water, and traffic was ever present in the area. We parked up on Ivanhoe and walked back to the bluff-top restaurant at the northern edge of the La Jolla downtown district.
We walked out to the ocean terrace at George’s, a rooftop bistro that drew raves for both its food and coastal scenery, small tables with candles dotting the deck. The restaurant faced north, up along La Jolla Shores all the way to where the cliffs at Torrey Pines jut out into the Pacific at Black’s Beach. The sun looked tired, taking its time getting down in the west as we sat at a table near the railing.
“Pretty day for an ugly day,” Emily said, sighing.
“Agreed.”
The waitress appeared quickly and efficiently. Emily asked for a gin and tonic, and I requested a Jack and Coke. They were on the table in less than two minutes.
“So,” Emily said, twirling the small straw in her drink. “Pretty weird, huh?”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
She tossed the straw on the table, then sipped her drink. “I think I’ve gone through the emotional gamut. Sad, angry, irritated, confused, horrified, miserable. Did I miss anything?”
“Don’t think so.”
She shook her head, the sun reflecting off of the small pearls in her ears. “It just doesn’t feel permanent.”
I hadn’t seen Kate in over ten years, but I felt the same way. “I know.”
We sat there for a few minutes, nursing our drinks and watching the sun retreat behind the edge of the water. The breeze swept up off the ocean and felt cooler than normal. But maybe it was our mood.
“You didn’t believe me about Randall, did you?” Emily said quietly, setting her drink on the glass top of the table.
I shrugged. “Not that I didn’t believe you. I just didn’t get that feeling from him when we met. What you said surprised me.”
“He fools almost everyone,” she said, the disdain in her voice unmistakable.
“Even Kate?”
She laughed softly, sadly. “Especially Kate.” She finished her drink, pointed to it as our waitress walked by, and tried to smile. “The thing is, Kate was always the one you couldn’t get anything past. I’m the ignorant one. But this time, someone fooled her.”
I had never seen Emily as the ignorant one in the Crier family, but I knew firsthand how her parents could make you feel like something other than what you were.
“You said before that he was playing around from day one,” I said. “Kate told you that?”
The waitress set two fresh drinks in front of us and scampered away.
“About six months in,” Emily said, pulling at the napkin under the drink, “she started getting weird signals.”
I sipped at the drink, the bourbon snaking a hot path into my stomach. “Like?”
“Paging him at the hospital and he took longer than usual to return the page,” she said. “Some hang-ups at home when she answered the phone. He lost a shirt she had given him. Just very un-Randall-like things.”
“What did she do?”
“Nothing at first,” she said, her thin eyebrows arching slightly over her brown eyes. “She just blew it off as, I don’t know, paranoia. But then she drove his car one Saturday. I don’t remember what for. She found an earring in the passenger seat that wasn’t hers.”
The stupidity of spouses who cheat never fails to amaze me. You always get caught and it always ends badly. Always.
“She called me and told me that she’d found it,” Emily said, still pulling at the napkin on the table. “I said to call him on it. It seemed pretty plain to me. I always liked Randall, but it just didn’t sit right, you know?”
I nodded and sipped at my drink, the ice dancing off the inside of the glass.
She shaded her eyes from the bright explosion of the sunset. “So she did. And the asshole admitted it. No protests, no denials, no misdirection.”
“What did Kate say?”
“She hardly said anything because he promised her it wouldn’t happen again,” she said, the bitterness spiking in her words. “He swore it was just a one-time thing. And she bought it.”
The Kate that I had known wasn’t much for second chances with people. You were either honest with her or you weren’t, and you didn’t get a do-over if you weren’t. But Randall had apparently qualified for a do-over.
“But it happened again,” I said.
Emily nodded and emptied her drink. “Yep. Different girl, same story. Every time she caught him, he’d admit to it, then promise never again, then screw someone else.”
“Why’d she stay with him?” I asked. “She knew he was messing around. That doesn’t sound like Kate.”
“It wasn’t, Noah,” she said, looking at me. “It wasn’t like her at all. But she kept saying she
thought this would be the time he’d turn around. She didn’t want to get divorced.”
“Because she loved him?”
The waitress slipped another drink in front of Emily, who seamlessly grabbed it and held it to her lips, soft wrinkles forming at the corners of her eyes as she frowned. “That and she didn’t want to disappoint Mom and Dad. She enjoyed being the golden child.”
The waitress had slid another drink in front of me as well. It was clear from Emily’s tone that she viewed herself as the black sheep of the family. I had never gotten that impression when I’d been around the Criers a decade earlier, but I’d always been on the outside looking in. I wondered if she knew about Kate’s heroin use, but decided against bringing it up at that moment. She’d just buried her sister, and no matter how she viewed her status in the family, shattering Kate’s image might be too much for her to handle right now.
We watched the sun disappear completely, the ocean going from blue to black. All that was left of our view was the noise of the water kissing the base of the bluffs.
“I don’t know, Noah,” Emily said, shaking her head slowly. “I watched her get upset and angry. I became irate with her when she wouldn’t do anything about it. But I couldn’t make her leave him. There was something there and I never figured out what it was.”
“So it was always different women?” I said, focusing on my words, making sure the bourbon stayed quiet.
“Until the end, yeah,” she said, pushing her glass back and forth. “But the last few months, Kate gave me the impression that he might’ve developed a relationship with someone.”
“The impression?”
Emily wiggled her hand in the air. “She wouldn’t come out and say it directly. I think maybe it hurt too much. It was just the feeling that I had.”
“Do you think she knew who it was?”
Emily paused, staring at her glass on the table for a moment. Then she said, “Yeah, I do.”
We sat there, the breeze and fog surrounding us. I felt sorry for Kate, even though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I wasn’t able to help her or because it sounded like she’d gotten herself into a situation that she didn’t know how to get out of.
I had sympathy for Randall, too, but for him, I knew why. Because the next time I saw him, I was going to kick his ass.
20
Emily asked me to drive her home because the gin had worked its magic on her. The bourbon had tried to do its thing with me, but I was gallantly fighting it off.
Her town house was in Del Mar, several miles up the coast from La Jolla. We took Torrey Pines Drive north, canopied by the giant trees, past the Scripps Institute and through the UCSD campus, and then fell onto Camino Del Mar, a thin strip of the old Pacific Coast Highway that let us glide right next to the moonlit water.
“When did you buy the town house?” I asked, guiding the Jeep over State Beach.
“Two years ago,” she replied, shifting uncomfortably in the seat. “Nearly got married and then after we called it off, I dumped what little money I had into it.”
“Why didn’t the wedding happen?”
“We both chickened out two days before,” she said, smiling ruefully. “It was the right thing to do. Neither of us wanted to be married. We were going through the motions more for show, I guess. Got caught up in the whole process and then didn’t back out when we both knew we should’ve.”
I changed lanes. “Your mom pissed?”
She laughed and tucked her blond hair behind her ear. “Mom came out of the womb pissed. I have only been able to add to it.”
I remembered Kate having said something similar in high school, but I couldn’t recall her exact words. There was always conversation about how her mom was regularly angry and unsatisfied.
Emily directed me off Camino Del Mar and up Carmel Valley Road to a cluster of stark white town houses perched at the top of a small hill just north of Torrey Pines State Beach. The homes were square and angular, something you might see above the Mediterranean.
“Come in for a second,” Emily said. “There’s something I want to show you.”
I parked the car in the alley next to her garage. We took a narrow and steep set of stairs up to her door, which allowed me to notice that Emily possessed very nice legs.
I told the bourbon to shut up.
Her home was bright and modern. Blond wood served as the floor, an expensive-looking cream rug covering a portion of it in the middle of her living room. A black leather sofa rested against the one wall, affording a great view of the water to the west through floor-to-ceiling windows. A glass table centered the room, two tall bookshelves decorated with books and pictures resting on either side of the sofa.
“Another drink?” Emily asked, kicking off her shoes and heading toward the black-and-white kitchen that opened into the living room.
I knew that I shouldn’t. I already felt awkward, a result of being at Emily’s place and stealing glances at her legs.
“I think I’ve got some bourbon in here somewhere,” she said, opening a cabinet.
Dammit. “Sure. That’s fine.”
I walked to the sliding door. A small terrace extended off the windows, two chairs and a table looking lonely on it.
“This is a great place,” I said, watching the water roll under the moon.
“I bought it from a friend who moved to Boston,” Emily responded, setting two glasses on the kitchen counter and filling them with ice. “She had to get rid of it quick. Only way I could’ve afforded it.”
I walked over to look at the bookcases. Several pictures of Kate looked back at me. One was of her wedding day, Emily the maid of honor. Kate looked remarkable in a brilliant white gown with a matching smile. Randall stood next to her, tall, handsome, confident. It was the first picture of Kate that I’d seen in eleven years, and I couldn’t rid myself of this tremendous sense of loss.
“Here,” Emily said, coming up next to me and handing me a glass. She nodded at the picture. “Seems like a million years ago.”
“I’ll bet.”
“She mentioned you that day.”
I took a sip of the drink, the bourbon smoothing its way down my throat. “Her wedding day?”
Emily nodded. “Yeah. We were getting ready. I was helping her fasten her necklace and she said she wondered what you were doing.”
It was an odd thing to hear, and I didn’t know how to respond. I stared at the picture again.
“She should’ve called me,” I said quietly.
“Noah,” Emily said, putting a hand on my arm and reading my thoughts. “Do not for a second think any of this could be your fault.”
I took another sip of the drink, thinking exactly that. “I don’t.”
She looked at me for a moment, her eyes at work, trying to discover if I was being truthful.
“I almost told her about that night when you came over,” Emily said.
I shifted uncomfortably, guilt immediately seeping into my gut. “But you didn’t?”
She shrugged. “I thought about it. Felt like I needed to come clean with her. But then I thought it was stupid, nothing really ended up happening, so I kept my mouth shut.”
Standing in front of Kate’s picture, I couldn’t get myself to talk about it, as if she’d jump out of the photo and take a swing at me for nearly hooking up with her sister.
“You wanted to show me something,” I reminded her, uncomfortable under her stare.
She paused for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Hang on.”
She disappeared down the hallway. I took a deep breath, then finished my drink. I felt warm and fuzzy.
Emily reappeared, a small silver key in her hand. She held it out to me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A key.”
“Thanks. I mean a key to what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Kate spent the night here the first night she got into town because the hotel was full. I found it in the bedroom she slept in.”
I la
id it on the glass table and sat down on the sofa. “A stray key isn’t a whole lot. Not unless you know where to stick it.”
“I wish I could give it back to her,” Emily said, rightfully ignoring my attempt at humor. “I know that’s stupid but I just wish I could.”
She leaned back into the sofa with me and we sat there quietly, each of us staring at the key on the table. I heard Emily’s breathing start to chop up, then her hands went to her eyes, the tears spilling out over them. Her body shook, the sobs racking her and shaking the sofa.
I reached my arm around her and held her. She pressed against me and cried harder.
Finally, the tears stopped.
But neither of us moved.
I felt her head shift against my chest and against better judgment, I looked at her.
Her eyeliner had smudged at the corners of her eyes and her cheeks were flushed, bright red. Her blond hair was tossed over to one side.
We stared at one another, knowing what was coming, but not sure what to do about it.
Maybe not caring.
Maybe going back in time to finish something we had started a long time ago.
I don’t know what the right thing to do would’ve been. I probably should’ve left. Or started talking, rambling on about anything. Ordering a pizza might not have been a bad idea.
But I didn’t do any of those things.
Instead, we did other things.
21
The night after Kate ended our relationship on Catalina, I’d gone to the Criers’ house. I’m not sure what I planned on doing there. I wanted to see Kate, but I didn’t know what I was going to say to her. Probably something petty and immature. But I knew I wanted to see her.
Only she wasn’t there.
“Noah,” Emily said, opening the door. “Didn’t expect to see you.”
Emily had intimidated me in high school. The older, sexier sister who could flirt effortlessly without meaning anything by it.
Or so I thought.
“Is Kate here?” I asked.
