by Dianne Emley
Vining made a face at the chemically imbued description. “Like you have a clue, Mom.”
Patsy was fifty-one but could pass for thirty-nine in the right light. She invested hard work in keeping her figure. Her voice on the answering machine had that life-of-the-party lilt she poured on in the presence of men or others she wanted to impress. She had never learned that she didn’t have to work so hard for the men. They’d come around anyway, at least until they got what they wanted.
Vining immediately felt guilty for having such mean thoughts about her mother.
“Patsy’s just being Patsy,” she said aloud. “She doesn’t really think you’re a slave that she bought and paid for by giving birth to you.”
Patsy went on. “Things are getting serious between Harvey and me. I’m even taking golf lessons. Me, a golfer. Can you imagine?”
Vining deleted the message before she’d heard it all. She put the cereal away and dusted her palms. She gave Granny a quick call to let her know she was okay. She’d call her mother tomorrow. She could delay no more than twenty-four hours before Patsy would call again and then keep calling.
In her bathroom, she hooked the hanger with her suit jacket on a towel rack, where the steam from her morning shower would freshen it. She threw her blouse in the hamper and examined her slacks to see if she could wear them once more before a trip to the dry cleaners. Using her fingernail to scratch something off the fabric, she decided she could and hung them beside the jacket.
Sitting on the bed, she unclasped her ankle holster and put the Walther PPK to bed, literally, beneath her pillow. She had once resisted being one of those paranoid cops who kept arsenals in their homes, loaded weapons at the ready. T. B. Mann had changed that. She’d grown accustomed to the slight, reassuring hardness of the Walther beneath her pillow. The princess and the pea. Only this princess would blow T. B. Mann’s head off if she had the chance.
She’d said as much, promised herself as much, dangled sweet vengeance in front of herself like chocolate cake in front of a diabetic—the very thing that would fulfill her would likely kill her. Yet over the past few months, she’d put her rage on ice. She’d let her incipient private investigation into other possible victims of T. B. Mann go dormant. She hadn’t even sufficiently followed the one promising lead she’d turned up: Johnna Alwin, a Tucson police detective murdered a few years ago under circumstances that were jarringly like Vining’s ambush.
Peeling off her panty hose, finally free of that cloying second skin, soaked with perspiration after the hot day, she carried them into the bathroom and shoved them into a net bag that already held several other pairs. She seriously had to do her laundry. She took off her bra and grabbed her light summer bathrobe from a hook on the back of the door.
Instead of hauling the laundry hamper into the garage to get a load started, another matter lured her attention. From the back of the dresser drawer where she kept her few pieces of good jewelry in satinette bags or boxes inlaid with squares of padding, she took out a box. From it, she withdrew a necklace, a string of pearls with a pendant. The pendant had a large pearl in the middle circled by glittering imitation diamonds. The pearls were imitation too, but good quality, and the necklace was well crafted. Only a trained eye could discern that the gems were not genuine.
Five years earlier, after Vining had fatally shot a famous man in a high-profile event that had taken on a life of its own, the pearl necklace had shown up in her home mailbox. A panel card was attached to it with a ribbon. She retrieved the card. The satin ribbon was still attached through a hole made with a paper punch. The ribbon was bloodred. The message had been handwritten with a fountain pen:
Congratulations,
Officer Vining
Through a bizarre chain of events distinguished by seemingly otherworldly influences, Vining had come to believe that the necklace was a gift from T. B. Mann. If so, she had attracted his lethal attention a full five years before he had attacked her in the house at 835 El Alisal Road. Pearl was the birthstone for June. It was not her birthstone, however. She was born in April, with the diamond as her birthstone. She and Emily had deciphered a different significance for the pearls. Both of the most deadly events in Vining’s life—the day she killed the celebrity and the day she was ambushed—had happened in June. Pearl was her death stone.
Leaving the necklace on the dresser, she proceeded with her nightly routine of making sure the house was secure. She closed and double locked the sliding glass doors and turned off the central air even though the house was barely cool. The electric companies had jacked up the rates during the power shortages a few years before. After the crisis, the rates had not gone down, but had only shot up further. Vining pinched pennies where she could. Wes contributed toward Emily’s support, but keeping up the other expenses was tough on Vining’s salary alone. She made sure Emily never went without, but she often did herself. She hardly noticed it anymore.
In her bedroom, she opened the windows a few inches each, only as far as they would go before hitting the wood dowels she’d set inside the window frames. She plugged her cell phone into the charger atop her night-stand. In case something happened to her landline, she’d still have her cell.
Such were the more obvious ways that T. B. Mann had changed her life. She’d resisted at first, and then decided she was being as stubborn as if she’d resisted treatment for cancer.
She quickly took a cool shower and put on a light cotton nightgown. She pulled back all the bedcovers except the top sheet.
The pearl necklace was still atop the dresser.
Without questioning why, she put it on, only the second time she’d ever worn it. The pearls gave a cool jolt to her feverish skin. T. B. Mann was, after all, the most important man in her life. He had jealously edged out anyone else. She’d tried many ways to manage him in her life, from blind obsession and overt challenges to attempts to put him behind her to living with the slow-burning rage in her belly, that crystalline bullet lodged within her, leaching its poison. Nothing worked.
She had no explanation for what she was doing now. She was working on instinct. Something was happening. Something had changed. She’d become aware of it at the murder house that morning. She and T. B. Mann were inexorably tied. He’d tugged on the invisible skein of spider’s silk and she’d felt it, as if he were a fly caught in her web. Or perhaps she was caught in his.
She wore the necklace to bed, risking it penetrating her dreams, in a gesture to say, “I hear you.”
She closed her eyes and quickly dropped off to sleep, faster than she would have thought possible given the day’s events. Right before she did, she swore she heard the wind chimes tinkling as if an invisible hand had brushed across them.
EIGHT
Happy Labor Day from Hello L.A. We’re glad you’re spending this lovely Monday morning with us. Hopefully later, you’ll be headed to the beach, the park, a movie, shopping, or someplace else fun and cool. By cool, I’m not just talking about making a fashion statement. It’s gonna be a hot one today. Remember to drink plenty of fluids. Right now, we’re gonna work on keeping you happy right here on Hello L.A. To help do that, I’m delighted to introduce a very special guest.”
Dena Hale was bright and polished, decked out in a peach skirt suit with a scoop-neck white top that showed off her tan, gams, and famous cleavage. She had pulled herself together in spite of the grueling events of the previous day and night. The media had descended on the murders like white on rice. News vans had lined up outside the gates of their home by the time she’d returned from the Pasadena police station.
The detectives had downplayed the tense interview as simply seeking information, but she knew they considered her husband and possibly even her suspects in a murder-for-hire scenario. She didn’t give their questions a second thought, knowing they were grasping at straws, but Mark had been in a state last night, convinced he was going to be arrested for the murders.
Dena had called Leland Declues, the attorney they used
for business and personal affairs, and he had been kind enough to stop by. He tried to calm Mark, reminding him that the police needed evidence in order to arrest him, evidence stronger than him having bitter arguments with his business partner. Big deal. Still, when Declues suggested the name of a good criminal defense attorney, Mark’s anxiety skyrocketed.
Dena understood her husband’s concern—she was concerned too—but found his distress disproportionate to the circumstances. But then, he’d been on a downward spiral before the murders. The negotiations with Drive By Media had really rattled him, making Dena wonder what was actually going on. She feared where this new development would lead.
Declues and Mark had polished off a bottle of pinot noir, with Mark drinking most of it. After the attorney had left, Mark started in on the vodka while Dena handled the phone calls that came in from concerned friends and family—and the voracious media.
She hated it when Mark drank like that and especially hated her kids seeing it. Her sobriety and his drinking had been a big problem between them ever since the old man, Mark’s father, had died. She and Mark had both taken the pledge after she’d crashed her car that night and emerged from a blackout in the Malibu–Lost Hills sheriff’s station lockup. That was a turning point in their lives. They’d both awakened to a new dawn and were delighted to become acquainted with their new selves. Mark had even stayed the course when he shut down his restaurant and joined his father’s business. But the old man’s illness and death had unhinged Mark, cut him loose from his moorings, and he had drifted back to the bottle.
Dena didn’t know whether Mark was more upset over Oliver’s and Lauren’s murders or the police interview. She knew that Mark had had nothing to do with those murders. For better or worse, she knew this man, and he didn’t have it in him. Behind his boisterous demeanor, he was reclusive and shy. He’d struggled with depression. He was not a man who lashed out. He sucked it in. It was his sweet, sensitive side that she loved the most. Unfortunately, lately, she’d seen that side less and less.
She knew full well it was pointless to ask what was bothering him again until he’d sobered up.
Last night, she’d gone to bed after leaving him in the media room with a cup of chamomile tea, watching a program about crocodiles on Animal Planet.
After one in the morning, she’d been awakened out of a sound sleep by her husband raging incoherently by the pool. She’d pulled on a bathrobe and run outside to find him with a bottle of Hennessey in one hand, a lit cigar in the other, tottering unsteadily by the edge of the water. She’d coaxed him inside and deposited him in his bed, then gone to her rooms in the opposite wing of the house, wondering how much longer she could keep up the ruse of her sham marriage.
Always a professional, Hale had arrived at work on time, prepared, and had left her personal troubles at the door. Only those closest to her would have noticed the slight deepening of the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and the subtle dullness of her normally sparkling blue eyes. They might have attributed it to fatigue, and that observation would have been partially correct. There was also a heavy dose of sadness and frustration. Trying to keep a marriage together while the other party’s time and interest were elsewhere was like one hand clapping.
Hale picked up a book and showed the cover to her audience. “You have undoubtedly heard about this wonderful novel, Razored Soul. I’m telling you, I couldn’t put it down. I could not put it down. Critics are calling it The Catcher in the Rye meets The Belly of the Beast. What’s especially remarkable about this book, the author’s first, is that he wrote it entirely while he was serving a seven-year prison term in San Quentin for voluntary manslaughter. The book immediately shot to the top of the bestseller lists. The author left prison only last month after completing his sentence. Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve probably seen the sexy photos of him in the current issue of Vanity Fair.”
Hale fanned herself. “Whoo! Oh, and there’s a wonderful interview in that issue too.”
The largely female audience laughed.
“We are so thrilled to have this man on our show to tell us about his astonishing and inspirational journey. Please welcome Bowie Crowley.”
Hale stood and clapped. The audience members got to their feet as well, enthusiastically whooping and whistling as Crowley walked across the stage. He cut a commanding figure as his long legs, clad in snug, button-front Levi’s, made short work of the distance. His body displayed the results of years of pumping iron in the prison yard. His trademark tight black T-shirt, tucked into jeans, hugged well-developed musculature underneath. Around his broad neck was a large crucifix on a heavy gold chain.
Uncomfortable with the attention, he tossed a nervous nod and a crooked smile to the out-of-control audience. Reaching Hale, he gave her a two-handed handshake and went to the chair as if finding a life raft. He pulled one ankle atop a knee and waggled his foot, clad in a well-worn, rough-hewn boot.
When the crowd quieted, Hale began. “Those photos, Bowie …”
“Yeah, those photos …” He retracted a corner of his mouth and diffidently shook his head.
“I hear they’re making one of them into a poster.”
He hiked his shoulders. “It’s been talked about, but the only posters I’ve approved are to promote the book.”
Crowley drew his hand through wavy light brown hair that reached his shoulders. His handlers had begged him to cut it. He had conceded to having it professionally styled after years of trimming it himself in prison. They also wanted him to wax his eyebrows, straighten and whiten his teeth, and wear something more contemporary than Levi’s 401 boot-cut shrink-to-fits and ragged motorcycle boots. He could have his choice of the hottest designer clothes for nothing. He said no thanks.
He insisted, “That photographer can make anybody look good.”
“And he’s modest too,” Hale pronounced.
He blushed.
Realizing she’d embarrassed him, that he really was modest, Hale felt bad.
“Let’s talk about your book. Razored Soul is a coming-of-age novel about a young man with a troubled childhood. A high-school dropout who hangs with a bad crowd. Drugs, booze, and the rest of it. He’s a classic ne’er-do-well, and his life is going nowhere. One day, in a drug-and-liquor-induced haze, he murders a man, a buddy of his. But that horrible event is the catalyst by which he turns his life around. This is a thinly disguised fictionalization of your life, Bowie.”
He nodded, pulling at his lower lip with his fingers.
“Why write a novel instead of an autobiography?”
“Because I like telling stories. Fiction gave me the freedom to tell this particular story in the best way possible. I felt the book would be more compelling and inspirational as a work of fiction.”
“Writing this must have been therapeutic for you.”
“It was. Worked out a lot of demons writing that book.”
“I know what it means to do something stupid and bad, something that you think is the worst thing that could happen to you, and it ends up being a blessing in disguise. When I had my drunken car crash, I thought my career in television was over. I thought my husband would leave. There was talk of my kids being taken from me.”
While Crowley listened, his restless hand moved from his face to his lap, and he slid his foot to the floor, the better to lean toward her. He took in every word as if they were the only two people in the room, not moving his deep-set, hazel eyes from hers.
Hale was impressed by the vulnerability in his face, which belied his powerful physique. She knew part of the reason the public found him compelling was the dissonance of trying to make the image of the sensitive artiste jibe with that of a cold-blooded killer.
“The worst night of my life ended up turning my life around,” she said.
Hale grimaced. The tears had begun their ascent and would shortly spill from her eyes. There was no turning back. She was known for crying on camera. Her detractors claimed the tears were calculated. I
f crying pretty worked for Oprah … But for Hale, not only were the tears never planned, she couldn’t always predict what would set them off. When thinking about the interview with Crowley, she’d decided to talk about how alcohol had nearly destroyed her life as a way to get him to open up about his experiences. The saga of her car crash was no secret, and she was usually able to speak of it with detachment. Yet here she was—blubbering.
She was tired and stressed, and fatigue and stress were triggers, but they weren’t the only things that had tipped her over. It had been a long time since anyone had listened to her with such sincerity, had really cared about what she was saying.
Crowley reached across the short space that separated them and laid his hand upon hers.
One could have heard a pin drop in the crowded studio, but what one heard instead was audience members snuffling.
“I’m sorry, folks. You know me.…” She wiped her eyes with her fingers. Someone sped from backstage with a box of tissues.
Crowley began telling his story, directing the cameras, which loved him, onto himself, giving Hale breathing space.
“Dena, you’re right. The hero in my book is a very bad boy. That was me. I was the kind of guy my West Texas grandmother would call a ‘no-account.’ I grew up in Central California near Lake Nacimiento. People have weekend homes there or come up for the day to use the lake for boating and fishing. But me and my buddies, we were lake locals. You mentioned I dropped out of high school. Dropped out … kicked out, more like.
“My uncle got me a job as a journeyman welder in the San Ardo oil fields. Every day after work, me and my buddies met under a grove of live oak trees by the lake. We’d sit on picnic benches there or on the beds of our trucks and we’d get drunk on the cheapest beer we could buy and smoke store-brand cigarettes, the cheapest ones we could find. The women would come for a while, but they’d take off early, having to deal with the kids, or they just got sick of us.”
