Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2)

by Gillian Roberts

  But Tracy would still be dead.

  She had to call her sponsor, talk this through, get through the night. This wouldn’t last, she told herself. She’d been okay for so long. This would go away. She tried to remember how it was not to feel like this, but she couldn’t. The wanting had clogged every pore and there was no space for anything else.

  She stood and took a deep breath, and then another, and finally, dialed a number. “Clare?” she asked as soon as she heard a voice. “It’s Veronica. I need—” But it was the answering machine. A message. A promise to get back within minutes. Which she had in the past, Veronica reminded herself. She had, even though that had been a long time ago. A year. More.

  “It’s Veronica,” she repeated numbly, her voice flat. And she hung up, sat back down with the phone next to her, and waited, clutching her knees, taking deep breaths, trying to remember what she used to see outside and inside. What used to make up a day and a night.

  The phone rang and she nearly wept with relief. “Clare?” she said. “Oh, God, Clare, I’m—” But she stopped, aware of some wrong quality on the other end. No breath, no consoling sounds, no rushed assurances that she was no longer alone, that help was there for however long she needed it.

  Nothing except silence, and then a throat-clearing.

  “It’s you,” Veronica said. Her free hand trembled. “It’s you again. I thought— What do you want?”

  The silence threatened again.

  “Say something!” she screamed. “Stop doing this, she’s dead! You killed her, what more do you want? You want to kill me, too? Why? I didn’t do anything, it was her decision!”

  She thought she heard him clear his throat or cough. Him. Robby Lester. Murderer. Playing with her because he could, because he was loose, on the streets, a free man and a sadist.

  Because Tracy had chosen her, loved her, Veronica, and not him. “Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop it right now and don’t ever—”

  He said something, his voice so muffled and distorted she couldn’t make out the word.

  “I can’t understand you!”

  “Wannit.”

  “Want it? Want what? What is this? Who is this?”

  “You know. Proof!”

  She felt as if she were going crazy, being toyed with by a gigantic catlike creature. His words sounded partial, as if he were speaking through a rug and only parts of his sentences were coming through. “I don’t care!” she screamed into the receiver. “Stop these calls, stop it!”

  “Coming for it.”

  “Don’t you come anywhere near me!”

  “Soon.”

  “I know who you are you murdering son of a bitch! I know what you did. We talked about everything, I know all about you!”

  “Have it ready so you won’t get hurt.”

  She would not cry. She would not let Robby Lester the son of a bitch hear her cry, know how he terrified her with his threats.

  “Go to hell—just go to hell and leave me alone!” She slammed down the phone. She wouldn’t answer it ever again, wouldn’t let him into her life, wouldn’t let him get to her.

  Had to leave, though. What if he came tonight?

  What did he mean about getting hurt? Rape? Murder her, too?

  What proof?

  He didn’t know about her sister. She could get someone to feed the animals. A day or so. Then she’d think of something else.

  The phone rang again.

  She recoiled, as if it had reached out for her. “No,” she said, staring at it, and now she trembled all over. “NOOOO!”

  But Clare—What if it was Clare?

  But what if it wasn’t, if it was him, again—

  She let it ring, watching it, rocking back and forth, sat there, arms wrapped around herself, holding on for dear life.

  Eighteen

  Billie admired funky Fairfax for sticking to its guns. It had enjoyed the sixties and intended to remain there, no matter how gentrified and smoothed down its home county became.

  And Robby’s default spot looked as if nobody’d touched, polished, or replaced one splinter, and possibly not one customer, for at least four decades.

  Billie felt instantly like the stranger in town. Her getup had lost its humor, and she didn’t feel comfortable tarted up—to use another of her mother’s expressions.

  She stood uncertainly in the front section, the bar, checking the small tables, the bar stools. She peered through the window at a covered area where smokers congregated.

  Then she moved toward the back section. A quartet of Hawaiian-shirted musicians were backing up a woman holding a glass and singing “Angel Eyes.” Her enthusiasm far exceeded her talent, but a group of middle-aged women in pastel pantsuits nodded, hummed along, and lifted glasses to her.

  Billie turned back to the serious-drinking section of the place, searching for Robby Lester. She’d seen the newspaper photo of the grieving husband. And she’d seen him on the local news, vowing revenge on Gavin Riddock and all the “crazies roaming our streets.” He was a beefy, attractive-enough guy who looked like he might have played football in high school and watched sports since then. A beer drinker. A solid citizen with cemented-down opinions.

  She didn’t see him yet, so she sat down at the bar. “Anchor Steam,” she said when asked. She didn’t particularly like beer, but this was not a place to ask to sample the wine cellar.

  She’d barely taken her first sip when Robby Lester walked out of the back room, from the men’s room or pay phones, she assumed. He wasn’t staggering, but he looked less than sober.

  A drinker, she thought, wondering why nobody had mentioned it.

  He seated himself a few bar stools away. She glanced at him, then away, gave him time for his beer to arrive, all the while looking at him in brief quizzical glances. Then, when he was drinking his beer, trying to look as if he wasn’t looking back at her, she spoke.

  “Forgive me if I’m wrong, or if I’m intruding,” she said, “but you’re Robby Lester, aren’t you?”

  He looked wary, then he nodded, grudgingly.

  “Remember me?” She smiled.

  He let the chip on his shoulder slide a bit and looked at her with less of a scowl.

  “Audrey!” she said. “Audrey Miller, from high school. Drake, right?” The newspaper had quoted a “former Drake High School classmate” of both Robby and Tracy’s. She smiled again, and when he said nothing, cleared her throat and said, “Sorry. Guess I was mistaken, although you look so much like him. Forgive me.” She waved, erasing the air in front of her. “Won’t interrupt any more.”

  He moved a bar stool closer. “No. Sorry. I thought—People have been recognizing me for the wrong reasons lately. I thought…Audrey Miller…?”

  Dear, nondescript Audrey Miller from a high school thousands of miles away. Forgettable Audrey Miller whose face Billie herself couldn’t recall. Personality like a pillow, too. She didn’t understand why Audrey always came to mind when she needed to put on a mask or adopt an alias, but she knew Audrey wouldn’t mind a personality infusion. “I was a cheerleader,” Billie said. “That help?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  He hadn’t said that he was on the team, so she left it at that. “So you obviously still live in the neighborhood,” she said. “Could practically walk to Drake from here.”

  “Pretty long walk,” he chuckled as if vastly amused. “But yeah,” he said. “Still in the old neighborhood. I like it. Haven’t seen you here before, though.”

  “I just moved back. I’ve been in LA since high school.”

  “Movies?”

  She shrugged. “In my dreams. More like waiting tables. Lots of auditions, one commercial, a walk-on in a sitcom. So…here I am, again.”

  “What’ll you do now?”

  “Wait more tables, probably. I might have to move away, to where I have a chance of paying the rent. Can’t stay with my mom forever, and I have a son.” The best way to lie is to tell as much truth as possible, somebody had told he
r. It’ll sound real because it is, and you won’t get tangled up wondering what you’d said.

  She wondered who had given her the advice. Surely not Emma, who never bothered to tell her anything that would actually be helpful.

  “You married, then?” Robby asked with studied casualness while he signaled for two more beers.

  She put her hand on top of her glass. “I’m fine,” she said. “And no. Not married, not anymore. I don’t even know where the bastard is.” God, but the truth stunk.

  He shook his head in sad agreement with the sorry state of the world.

  “And you?” she asked. “What do you do?”

  “Contractor.”

  “Things must be good for you. Wherever I look, if a house isn’t for sale, then it’s being remodeled.”

  For the first time he grinned as he nodded. “Can’t complain about business. Believe it or not, I’m working on a million-dollar teardown, and not my first one. This buyer paid one million three to level the place.”

  “Dot com guy?”

  “Dot com gal.” He fiddled with the napkin that had arrived with his new beer.

  “I told you about me,” she said playfully. “So how about you since high school?”

  “Told you. I’m a contractor.”

  “C’mon. You have more of a life than that.” She winked at him. “Hey, I’m trying to find out…well, about you. Are you married? Have kids?”

  He looked at her quickly, then away. “I was married. No kids.”

  “Well, judging by my experience, that’d make the divorce easier,” Billie said. “No kids, I mean. Less complicated.”

  “No. It wasn’t like that. My wife…died.”

  “I’m so sorry!”

  “Killed.” He looked teary- or glassy-eyed. Billie couldn’t decide whether he was reacting from grief or from alcohol.

  “My God! That’s so—”

  “I can tell you’re just back, or you’d know. It was in all the papers, and the TV…”

  “Oh, my God—the girl in Tiburon?”

  He nodded, his attention completely focused on the glass in front of him.

  “My mother told me, but I don’t think she said her name or I didn’t recognize it and…” She reached over and touched his arm. “I’m so sorry I brought up something so painful.”

  “S’all right. You didn’t mean to. Besides, it’s not like it’s a secret, or that I forget about it.”

  “Terrible.” Billie could feel his eyes on her, studying her as she stared at her half-full beer glass. Maybe he was still trying to figure out who she was. “What a horrible shock to you, too. What a loss.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she went on. “But at least they caught the guy. That must be a relief.”

  He still said nothing.

  “Isn’t it? I mean, I’m thinking, by your silence, you’re saying it isn’t. Or am I out of line here?”

  “What was she doing with a retard?” he said. “Why’d she spend so much time with him? It wasn’t just about the running. Besides, we belonged to a gym. Why?” he said. “That’s what I can’t stop asking. Why him for a friend? You don’t know them, the people we marry. You think you do, but you don’t. Or they change.”

  “Don’t I know,” Billie said, although her ex hadn’t actually changed. He’d just grown to be more so. And most unfortunately, the parts that grew exponentially were the same traits that initially attracted her to him. Those differences, the parts that felt exotic, necessary to fill in her spaces, morphed into unbearable problems. A wild sense of adventure became irresponsibility; his joie de vivre, unreliability; delightful irreverence, callousness. And so forth and so on.

  “An’ I’m not saying it just because we were going through a…rough spot when…the thing happened. It wasn’t because of Gavin, except she didn’t need him as her friend. She could have told me whatever…she could have talked to me.”

  “Um,” Billie murmured, encouraging him on.

  He sighed and drank deeply of his beer. “Do you believe in separate vacations for married people?” he asked.

  Billie believed in anything that worked for anybody, but doubted that Robby did. So she tried to look puzzled and generally doubtful, with room for approval, if that turned out to be what Robby felt. “Never had to think about it,” she said. “My marriage being one long separate non-vacation, that is.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “But her goddamn job…I told her she didn’t even have to work. I’m doing good.” He shook his head, then signaled for another beer.

  The backroom boys and their singer were doing “Georgia” which, till now, had been one of Billie’s favorite tunes.

  “I don’t care if she had to know about the cruises and the places so’s she could sell them better,” Robby said abruptly. “It wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Nothing was the same when she came back from that cruise. That damn job ruined my marriage. And now, there’s no chance to make anything better.” He pulled a bandana out of his pocket and blew his nose, then cleared his throat.

  Interesting what theories we make up, Billie thought. We are such a pathetic species. Anything to explain how it was possible for somebody to stop loving us.

  He drank half his beer before he turned to her with an intense and serious expression, about to reveal ultimate truths. “It was all about money.” He nodded in agreement with himself and drained the rest of his beer.

  She couldn’t believe he could still sit upright. Or at the very least, wasn’t charging back to the men’s room. She hadn’t needed to dress this way, or any way. Robby wasn’t looking at anything except beer and his sad story. “Why money?” she asked. “What about it?”

  “That’s what she always wanted. Bottom line: she was up for the bucks. I’m doing real good, but not good enough for her. She loved clothing, jewelry, living big. Those cruises she booked? Told me she wanted to live like she was always on one of them. She had new clothes after that trip, and she acted different. Talked different.”

  Billie still couldn’t figure him. Was he sincere? If so, then where was the bully Veronica described? Even drunk, or borderline, he seemed pathetic more than aggressive. But then, she wasn’t challenging him or leaving him. “What do you think changed her?” she asked softly.

  “Money,” he repeated. “Some guy on that cruise. And my fault. I was finishing a big job, I couldn’t go. She had to, anyway.”

  “So she went alone.”

  “I blame myself for the whole thing. The ship, the guy and…what happened. I was too emotional about everything.”

  “About—She told you about this other person?”

  He drank some, then exhaled loudly. “Didn’t have to. Married long enough, you don’t have to spell things out.”

  Billie imagined his thoughts like pale moths in a dark place, bumping around, looking for the light, going nowhere directly.

  “I heard her once,” he said. “On the phone. I heard her say she couldn’t anymore. She felt too guilty. It was too risky.”

  His voice was taking on a lurching quality, as if he was stepping carefully from idea to idea.

  “She said his name. Jimmy. ‘I can’t do it anymore, Jimmy.’” He wiped at his eyes. A drunk’s tears, Billie decided.

  “Then,” he said, “she tells me it’s a telephone solicitor, a guy selling credit card insurance.” He shook his head. “Jesus. How dumb did she think…”

  “Then you think this Jimmy did it, then?” she asked. “Killed Tracy?”

  He looked mildly surprised, as surprised as a man pickling himself in alcohol can be. “The retard did it.”

  “Then why did you say you blame yourself about what happened to her?”

  He sighed heavily. The waiter, without being asked, placed a fresh beer in front of him. She hoped his house was in walking distance. “I was mad at her. Maybe too mad. That’s gotta be why she told her secrets to the retard. I…I drove her away. I wanted to meet her, do right by he
r, that was all. Talk. Make things better. She wouldn’t come.”

  “Meet you here? You mean like after work?” He seemed oblivious of his wife’s new partner, of her living arrangements—unless of course, Michael Specht was the one who was off-base.

  Robby drew a circle in the condensation on the bar top. “We weren’t living together then. She…moved out a while after the cruise.”

  “Oh, man,” Billie said, hoping it sounded sincere. “I know how that is.”

  He nodded. “I can tell you do.”

  “So did she move in with that—Jimmy?”

  “With a girlfriend. A goddamned farmer.”

  “So you wanted to meet Tracy here. The night before…”

  He nodded. “She said there wasn’t anything to talk about. And the next day…gone. I said something about Jimmy, and she kept crying and saying I didn’t understand her or anything, so see, I drove her to him. I think she went and told the retard about falling in love with Jimmy and that made the retard flip out.”

  “Gavin Riddock? Why?”

  “He was in love with her. You could see it on his face; he isn’t good at hiding how he feels. I thought it was funny, nothing to worry about, but look how wrong I was.”

  She patted his arm again. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “Sometimes fate…”

  “Screw fate,” he said, and she could suddenly see a different kind of drunk. A belligerent, dark, aggressive drunk. A murderous drunk?

  “I want Gavin Riddock to fry,” he said. “I want to be there to watch his execution at Quentin. Jimmy, too. And whoever else—her crazy farmer friend who helped her leave me, her, too—everybody who made this happen to Tracy. I want to see every one of them dead.”

  Nineteen

  Emma reread the letter. Better than coffee to jolt one into a new work week.

  Whenever she thought nothing could surprise her, up went the ante and did. And here it was, a letter from an entertainment company that wanted PIs to help with a new “reality” show about “actual cases of adultery and infidelity.” Folks caught in the act. Cinema verite. The letter wanted to know if she would be part of their referral base and/or had leads she’d like to offer.