Grave Endings

by Rochelle Krich

“No, ma’am. Which isn’t surprising. The Jaspers— that’s her folks—gave her a hard time about leaving Minneapolis to come out here and be an actress. Whenever she talked to them, which wasn’t often, they faulted everything she did.”

  “Don’t go blaming them,” Alice said. “They didn’t make her walk out that door.”

  “I know that.”

  “That’s what she did, walked out whenever things didn’t go her way.”

  The tension in the room crackled. “What about her friends?” I asked Creeley.

  “She didn’t have many. And she didn’t say anything to them about wanting out. Sue Ann was kind of closed. I figured she’d be back, you know?” he said with that same bewilderment. “I figured she’d run out of money and realize she’d made a mistake. She sent a postcard from Chicago and another one from Houston a month later. That was the last I heard from her. Well, except through the lawyer she hired to handle the divorce. He wouldn’t tell me where she was. A year later Alice and I married, and after a while Trina, that’s Randy’s sister, didn’t even ask for Sue Ann. But Randy—”

  “He never gave me a chance,” Alice said, those nostrils flaring again. I expected smoke to come out any moment. “He turned Trina against me, too.”

  “Trina loves you, honey.” Creeley placed his large hand over his wife’s.

  “I tried my best.”

  “No one could’ve done more,” Creeley said, and I knew they’d been down this particular road many times, had worn ruts that would never be filled. “Randy was pining for Sue Ann,” he told me. “They had this bond.”

  “A bond of green,” Alice said. “She only loved him because he was beautiful. He was her ticket to fame and fortune.”

  I disliked Alice. Maybe it was the spite that came out like pellets from a PEZ dispenser, or the small dark eyes that looked hard as onyx. Living with this tough, unbending woman couldn’t have been easy for Randy.

  “He was beautiful.” Creeley’s sigh tugged at my heart. “Everybody said so. He had buckets of personality. He was bright, too, so he didn’t need coaching. The casting people loved him. But then he got too old for commercials, and there are lots of kids and only so many movies with big parts for them.”

  “Like the kid from Sixth Sense,” Alice said. “He’s doing other stuff. But the one who talked about how much a brain weighs in Jerry Maguire? I haven’t seen him in anything lately, have you?” she asked her husband.

  “No, I haven’t.” His voice was taut with controlled impatience. “Every time Randy lost out on a role, Sue Ann’d shut herself in her room and wouldn’t talk to anyone for days,” he told me. “And then one day she left.”

  “She knew Randy wasn’t going to be a star,” Alice said. “She figured she’d cut her losses and start over.”

  I tried to imagine young Randy, a child burdened with having to win each role to hold on to his mother’s approval; a child who blamed himself for every failure that drove her into one of the temporary abandonments that foreshadowed a permanent one. He’d probably blamed himself for that, too. I felt stifled by his past, by this house, by the heat that was beginning to make me feel queasy.

  “I think she loved the kids,” Creeley said, braving the Dragon. “She just couldn’t handle things. I see that now.”

  “You bring children into this world, you take care of them.” Alice folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I can’t believe you’re soft on her.”

  “I’m not soft on her. I’m saying we don’t know why she left. Anyway.” Creeley shifted and left a space between him and his wife. “Randy started having trouble in school. His grades dropped. He was picking fights with kids, cheating on tests, playing hooky.”

  “She messed him up good,” Alice said, her venom at a woman long out of her life making me wonder if she was the one who had ripped the photo I’d seen of Randy and his mother. “Randy kept pushing Roland to find her. That’s why we did what we did.” She nodded at her husband. Go ahead, your turn.

  “I told the kids Sue Ann died in a boating accident and they never found her body,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “We hadn’t heard from her for over three years. Not a phone call, not a birthday card. Nothing. I figured maybe she was dead,” he added with defensiveness that reddened his complexion.

  “She might as well have been, for all the interest she showed her kids,” Alice said.

  “Did you ever hear from her?” I asked Creeley, wishing Alice would shut up. I suspected her husband shared my feelings.

  He shook his head. “I hoped Randy would let go. I hoped he’d be the young man I knew he could be. But a year later he got into trouble with the police. Small stuff at first, and then . . . But I guess you know all that.”

  “The police think he killed a woman around six years ago,” I said, forcing myself to sound casual about the event that changed my life and gives me nightmares. And what had it done to Aggie’s parents, who had lost their only child?

  Creeley bowed his head and sighed deeply. “It grieves me to think Randy came to that, that he took someone’s life.”

  I’d hoped for denial, outrage, anything to bolster my own wavering doubts. “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “Nothing about Randy surprises me,” Alice said.

  Anger flashed in Creeley’s eyes. “I loved that boy. But I can’t say I was proud of him. No, ma’am. I tried to teach him right from wrong, but he took what he wanted and lied his way through life. He was good at it, too. Then he got caught. I thought, Good. He’ll learn a hard lesson. But a couple of years later he was back in prison.”

  “You reap what you sow,” Alice said.

  Creeley’s cheek pulsed. “I’m not saying he didn’t deserve to do time. But he didn’t deserve to die like that. He was off drugs. He found God and peace. He asked my forgiveness a few weeks ago for the things he’d done wrong. He asked your forgiveness, too, Alice.”

  “Words are cheap,” she said. “He was playing you like he played you so many times before I can’t even count them.”

  I was liking Alice less and less, but I’d been thinking the same thing. “What about his girlfriend, Doreen,” I said. “Where did he meet her?”

  “One of his twelve-step meetings, or church?” Creeley looked at Alice. She shrugged, and for once didn’t have an answer. “He talked about bringing her by so we could meet her, but he never did. A couple of days before he died I asked him how things were going. ‘I’m doing fine, I’m clean,’ he said. He sounded hopeful.”

  Alice huffed. “He told his parole officer the same thing, and that was a fat lie. He went to those Narcotics Anonymous meetings and lied to everybody there, too.”

  Creeley pursed his lips. “I know when he’s lying, Alice. Someone killed him and made it look like he overdosed. I know that like I know my own name.”

  Alice rolled her eyes.

  “Go ahead,” he told her, his voice flinty with anger. “Roll your eyes. The police don’t believe me, either.”

  I scooted to the edge of my chair. “Why would someone kill your son, Mr. Creeley?”

  “Could be someone he wronged. I’m sure there’s a long list. Or maybe it had something to do with that woman the police say he killed.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “She was killed almost six years ago, in July. I know that’s a long time ago, but can you recall if Randy seemed upset then?”

  “July, six years ago . . . ,” he repeated. “That was about a year after Randy got out of prison. The couple of times we did see him, he was looking for a fight. I don’t know why.”

  “Ask Trina,” Alice said. “He told Trina everything, ” she added with a childish whine.

  I would be seeing Trina in less than two hours and I planned to do exactly that. “You didn’t see him often?”

  Creeley shook his head.

  “Because I told him what he didn’t want to hear,” Alice said. “Because nobody wants an ex-con liar and drug addict hanging around their daughter.”

  “Let him be, god
dammit!” Creeley seemed startled by his own outburst. He took a deep breath. “The boy’s dead, Alice. Let him be.”

  Alice turned her head aside, but not before I could see the red that had worked up her thick neck and that Creeley would undoubtedly pay for after I left.

  She pushed herself off the sofa. “I have things to take care of,” she said in a wounded voice.

  I would have bet money that Creeley would apologize and beg her to stay, but he said, “All right then,” and ignored the hurt, angry look she tossed him before she stomped out of the room.

  I pitied Alice Creeley. Sue Ann had walked out, but Alice was the other woman, scrabbling to maintain her position in this family, holding tight to the reins of her marriage, forever competing with the beautiful wife her husband couldn’t bring himself to hate and their beautiful son. I wondered if she lay awake nights, worrying that Sue Ann would walk back into their lives.

  “If he killed that woman,” Roland said when we were alone, “and I’m not saying he did . . . If he killed her, he tried to make up for it with good deeds.”

  My heart hammered in my chest. “Do you think Randy killed her, Mr. Creeley?”

  He examined his hands, as if they held the answer. Then he rubbed them on his knees. “Randy was troubled the last few months,” he said in a low voice that made me lean closer so that I could hear him. “He said it was something from his past he couldn’t fix. It filled him with despair—his word. I told him to talk to someone. I was afraid if he didn’t, he’d start doing drugs again. See, I think part of the reason he used drugs and liquor was so he wouldn’t have to think about what happened.”

  “So you think he killed her.” It wasn’t the answer I’d come for, but it was an answer.

  “The police think so. They came here to talk to Trina.

  Randy told them he’d been with her the night that woman was killed. Trina said that was so, but she would’ve said anything to help him, she loved him that much.”

  I was confused. From what Connors had told me, the police had linked Randy to Aggie’s murder through the locket they’d found in his possession after he’d overdosed. “Was this recently?”

  Creeley looked at me as though I’d asked him if the Earth was flat. “Not unless you consider six years ago recent.”

  “The police questioned Randy six years ago about Aggie Lasher’s murder?” I stared at him. “But why would they think Randy killed this woman? He didn’t even know her.”

  “I don’t know where you got your information. Of course Randy knew her. He was working at the same place she was. I forget the name.”

  My chest felt as though someone had stomped on it. “Rachel’s Tent?”

  Creeley nodded. “Randy was a handyman and driver. He did other stuff there, too. He liked her a lot, you know. He told Trina all about her. But I guess something went wrong.”

  thirteen

  MUSSO & FRANK GRILL IS THE OLDEST RESTAURANT IN Hollywood, a legendary Rat Pack hangout that, unlike the Brown Derby and Romanoff’s, has survived shifting economies and continues to be a favorite with screen-writers, actors, and other celebrities.

  The restaurant is a block from Frederick’s and just west of Cherokee. I parked my Acura up the street—I should probably claim a permanent spot, I thought— and passed through the back into the dimly lit front room (there is no front entrance) five minutes before noon. The few times I’ve been here I’ve come for inspiration and literary osmosis—F. Scott Fitzgerald ate (and drank) here, as did Raymond Chandler (he wrote The Big Sleep here), Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, and others, including Charlie Chaplin, who liked the martinis. That was the draw, along with the Postum, and the coffee that comes in small, individual pots, and the possibility of spotting a famous screenwriter creating magic on a laptop—David Mamet, maybe, or Anthony Minghella or Callie Khouri, none of whom I ever actually saw.

  Today my mood was dark and I wasn’t interested in stargazing. In any case, I didn’t recognize any of the occupants of the high-sided red leather booths along the black wood-paneled wall to my right, or anyone seated along the bar facing the opposite wall and a brick fireplace large enough to grill a steer.

  “I’m meeting a friend,” I told the red-jacketed waiter who approached, menu in hand. I had scanned the diners but hadn’t spotted Trina.

  “Perhaps your friend is in our other room,” he said, beckoning me to follow him to a far wider dining area where I saw a large mirrored bar on the left wall, but no Trina.

  “Can I offer you something while you wait?” the waiter asked.

  “Iced tea would be great, thanks.”

  I chose a booth instead of one of the small square tables in the center of the room. I generally carry a paperback mystery in my purse to keep me from becoming antsy while I’m waiting, but I didn’t need a diversion. I was trying to digest what Creeley had told me.

  Aggie had known Randy.

  They’d worked together at Rachel’s Tent.

  He’d liked her “a lot.”

  I have to admit that my first reaction to Creeley’s revelation had smacked of self-absorption: I was Aggie’s best friend. We’d shared everything—our hurts, our successes, our hopes, our fantasies, the intimate details of our lives. Why hadn’t she told me about Randy?

  Maybe there had been nothing to tell. Maybe Aggie hadn’t been aware that Randy liked her—and what, after all, did like mean? It wasn’t necessarily romantic. But if it was? And if Aggie hadn’t reciprocated, which of course she hadn’t, if she’d rebuffed his advances, if she’d angered an ex-convict who did drugs and drank?

  It had occurred to me, as I left the Creeleys’ Culver City home and drove to Hollywood, barely aware of my surroundings or Bobby Darin, who was crooning “Dream Lover” on my favorite oldies station, that this connection between Randy and Aggie was the other evidence Connors had alluded to. It explained why he’d refused to share the information with me, why the police were certain that Randy had killed Aggie, why Porter had been so irritable and evasive, why he’d wanted me gone.

  Why he’d hedged when I’d asked him where Randy had been working around the time that Aggie had been murdered.

  Rachel’s Tent.

  Wilshire had screwed up. Maybe Porter was nervous that if I discovered the truth, I would make it public: The LAPD had let a killer slip through its fingers six years ago. And what if he’d killed again?

  If I phoned Porter, which I had no intention of doing, he’d inform me in his snide way that Randy’d had an alibi. Some alibi, I’d tell him, his sister who adores him and obviously lied for him.

  Yesterday I’d wanted to talk to Trina to confirm my suspicion that Randy hadn’t killed Aggie. Now I wanted to find out why he had. He told Trina about her, his father had said.

  I wondered if Aggie’s parents were aware that Aggie had known her killer.

  And I still didn’t understand about Trina’s locket. That was another thing I hoped she could explain.

  It was five after twelve, not terribly late, but Trina had asked me to be prompt. I waited a few minutes before I retrieved the number she’d used when she’d contacted me last night. I placed the call, let it ring, and left a message.

  Maybe she’d set me up, pretended to be anxious, pulled a fast one on the nosy reporter. Maybe acting ran in the family.

  I finished my iced tea, declined a refill, and after another five minutes paid my tab and left.

  Jonnie recognized me when I entered Frederick’s. There was a wariness in her kohl-lined hazel eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday, and I suspected that whatever Trina had told her about me hadn’t been complimentary.

  “She’s not here,” Jonnie said when I asked for Trina. “She phoned and said she had to help with funeral arrangements for her brother.”

  So Trina hadn’t been playing me. I felt better but wondered why she hadn’t phoned to cancel our meeting. I checked my cell phone again but found no messages.

  Maybe she’d been overwhelmed with family and hadn�
�t had a chance to phone. Or maybe she’d changed her mind about talking to me, just as she had yesterday afternoon.

  When the truck backfired. I replayed the scene in my head, saw her jump at the sound, saw her sudden pallor, the fear that hadn’t registered because I’d been staring at her locket. The nervousness in her voice when she’d phoned last night and told me she had to talk to me, it was important.

  Feeling somewhat anxious myself, I returned to Musso & Frank. Trina hadn’t showed.

  “Would you like to leave a message in case your friend shows?” the waiter offered.

  “No, thanks.”

  Still thinking about Trina, I chugged halfway up the block to my Acura and was grateful to learn that it hadn’t been decorated this time. I decided to pay Gloria Lamont another visit.

  Someone was having a yard sale on the apartment building’s patch of lawn. The seller, in his mid-to-late twenties with a two-day stubble on his chin and bleached blond hair cut in a severe buzz that from a distance had made me think he’d done a Bruce Willis, was wearing baggy tan cargo pants with enough pockets to store a small wardrobe, a skintight black sweater that revealed his ribs, and several earrings in his left ear. He was slouched in a green-and-white-webbed beach chair surrounded by a six-pack of Budweiser and assorted junk. Books, a toaster, rolled-up posters, a stack of framed artwork, a Starbucks mug, shirts, DVDs, videocassettes, a piece of twisted metal I couldn’t figure out. His eyes were shut, his head was bobbing to music only he could hear through black earphones the size of Frisbees.

  “Slow day, huh,” I said.

  His eyes flickered open, a deep brown with long, thick, dark lashes that were wasted on a guy and that my double-action lengthening mascara doesn’t come close to achieving.

  “Kind of.” He took a swig from a can of beer.

  “I’m Molly. What’s your name?”

  “Mike.” He squinted at me with one eye. “You were here the other day, right? Asking about Randy. I saw you.”

  “Funny, I didn’t see you.”

  He grinned. “I’m the Invisible Man.”

  “Or maybe you saw me when you opened your door to listen in on my conversation with Mrs. Lamont.”