“I meant covering my hair. Don’t read into this, Zack.”
He put his cup down. “You could’ve told Trina you’d meet another time. You believe that Randy killed Aggie, but you’re still going to his funeral and Rachel’s Tent.”
I felt hurt that he’d doubted my feelings, guilty that I’d given him reason, alarmed that I was ruining the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“Trina sounded nervous, Zack.” I sat down. “She had something important to tell me. So yes, I forgot about Galit. I’m sorry. And the funeral . . . I’m not sure why I’m going. If you’re upset, I won’t go.”
“And Rachel’s Tent?”
I had no answer.
“Go to the funeral,” he said. “Go to Rachel’s Tent. Do what you have to do. Just be honest with yourself, Molly.”
“Here’s honest,” I said, leaning forward and brushing the wisps of someone else’s hair out of my eyes so that he could read what was in my heart. “I love you. I want to marry you. I want to make babies with you and grow old together, and I am so, so sorry if you thought otherwise for even one second. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“But I need to do this, Zack. I still have questions. Can you understand that?”
He nodded. “Sometimes it’s better not to ask questions, Molly. You may not like the answers.”
fifteen
Thursday, February 19. 10:13 A.M. 10800 block of Jefferson Boulevard. While at the customer service desk of a department store, a woman placed her wallet on the desk. When she was finished, she walked away without the wallet. She did not report the loss for three days because she was out of town for a funeral. (Culver City)
ROLAND CREELEY HAD CHOSEN LILIES AND WHITE CARNATIONS for his son’s service, which took place in a small chapel darkened by stained-glass windows that filtered the light from this morning’s crabby sun.
Between last night and this morning I’d changed my mind half a dozen times about attending the funeral. In the past year I’d paid my final respects to two people I’d hardly known because their stories had drawn me, and because I’d suspected foul play and had hoped to observe something that would help identify a murderer. A word spoken or omitted, a nuance, a telling glance, an unexplained presence or absence. It’s what homicide detectives do, in real life as well as fiction. With Randy, I had accepted that there was probably no foul play, and I doubted I’d learn anything. But a little before ten I was in my car on the San Bernardino Freeway, headed for the downtown interchange that would take me to the Pomona and Downey.
I had arrived early and taken a seat toward the back of the chapel so that I could observe people as they entered. Creeley and his wife were both somber and stiff in black. Trina, in a pale blue suit and matching heels, had pulled her hair into a knot that exposed her face and the shadows under her eyes. I was relieved to see her. Since her no-show yesterday, my mind had presented me with several dire possibilities, none of which I’d really believed, each worrisome enough to make me contemplate phoning the Creeley home. I hadn’t phoned—I’d felt foolish and hadn’t wanted to intrude. Now I was glad.
Mike, the yard salesman, clean-shaven and wearing a brown sports jacket and slacks, sat with Gloria Lamont across the aisle from the Creeleys with ten or twelve men and women of varying ages who had walked in as a group. Probably Randy’s friends, from one or more of his programs or his church group. A middle-aged man in a well-cut gray suit approached Creeley and rested his hand on the grieving father’s shoulder before taking his seat a row behind him.
The photo of Randy and his mother from the copy of Alcoholics Anonymous was in my purse. Taking peeks at the photo, I tried aging Sue Ann two decades, but I’m no sketch artist, and I didn’t see anyone who resembled her among the middle-aged blond women who passed by me. I also kept my eyes open for someone who matched Mike’s description of Doreen. I noted a number of tall, skinny young women but none with spiked black hair.
One woman, around five-eight, with straight auburn hair that reached the middle of her slender neck, wore a coppery brown suit almost the same color as the eyes behind her black-framed glasses. She glanced around her when she entered, maybe hoping to sit with someone she knew, and took a seat in the middle of a pew across the aisle from me and a few rows up.
There was something about her. . . . I studied her, and when she bent her head, I realized she was wearing a wig. A good wig, but if you live in a community where women wear them all the time, you can tell.
Tall and skinny with a wig didn’t mean she was Doreen. But if it was Doreen, why had she disguised her appearance?
I had been watching the redhead and was unaware of Connors until he was looming over me. He looked like a handsome imposter in a navy sports jacket, striped tie, and dark slacks instead of his trademark jeans and boots.
“Okay if I join you?” he asked.
It wasn’t okay. Another time I would have welcomed Connors’s company, but he’d withheld the truth about Randy. I didn’t know if I was more angry or hurt. Scooting to the middle of the pew I’d had to myself, I gave him a wide berth and a cool glance.
“Still looking for Randy’s murderer, huh?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m curious to see if Randy’s mother will show.” I wasn’t about to volunteer my suspicion about the redhead. Connors had pooh-poohed my interest in Randy’s girlfriend. He could do his own detecting.
“You’re assuming the mother’s alive,” he said. “And that she knew about Randy’s death and the funeral.”
“There was a piece about him in yesterday’s Times.”
“Doesn’t mean she saw it, especially if she doesn’t live in the L.A. area.”
He was right, of course. That annoyed me. “There’s been nothing in the media linking Randy with Aggie’s murder. Strange, don’t you think?” I watched him to see his reaction.
Connors shrugged. “I guess they have bigger stories than a six-year-old murder.”
More likely, the police had killed the story to avoid embarrassment. “So why are you here, if the case is closed?”
“Keeping tabs on you,” he said, treating me to a lazy smile that ordinarily I would have found cute. “Creeley keeps calling, insisting Randy couldn’t have overdosed and what are we doing about it. I figure it’s worth a couple of hours of my time if it makes him feel better.”
“He’s in denial. Randy probably killed himself because he felt guilty about Aggie.”
“What happened to your Randy-was-framed theory?” I was tired of the games. “I know he worked at Rachel’s Tent, Andy. I figure you didn’t tell me because you didn’t want to get Wilshire in trouble, but I have to be honest, it hurts.”
Connors scowled at me. “You figured wrong. Wilshire went by the book. Randy had a solid alibi.”
“His sister,” I said, accompanying my sarcasm with a snort. “How convenient.”
“The prayer vigil started at nine. Randy and his sister went to an eight-thirty movie. He was able to tell the detectives details of the plot. He ordered the tickets by phone. With his credit card. He had his ticket stub, she had hers.”
“She could’ve gone with someone else and given him the other stub,” I said, pointing out the obvious. “Did they even bother to check him out?”
Connors gave me a withering look. “An ex-con who knew the victim? What do you think?”
“I think someone obviously screwed up.” I lowered my voice, though no one was within earshot. “Why didn’t you tell me he knew her, Andy? Why let me go on thinking it was a random mugging?”
“Like I said, it wasn’t my case. And the truth isn’t always helpful. Are you happier knowing that your best friend had something going on with her killer?”
I winced as though he’d slapped me. Anger flamed my cheeks. “You don’t know that.”
The organ music began. I edged away from Connors and faced forward. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him open a psalm booklet that he’d removed from the back of the pew. A moment later he
put it back.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “I think you need to hear it. But it’s just between us, understood?”
I nodded, though I couldn’t imagine what he could tell me that would make a difference.
He moved closer to me. “We found the locket in a mailer addressed to the Lashers, along with a letter saying he was sorry.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“He talks about how much he loved her, how she changed his life, made him want to be a better man. He says he hated her for making him think they had a future when all along she didn’t think he was good enough for her. He wishes he could undo what he did.”
I’d been shaking my head while Connors talked.
“Who’s in denial now?” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It explains why he kept the locket, Molly. I know it’s tough, finding out there was a side to your best friend you didn’t know anything about. I had a partner who was on the take. Even when they showed me the proof, I didn’t want to believe it.”
“I’m sorry about your partner, but that has nothing to do with Aggie. She would never lead anybody on, Andy. She was kind to everyone, caring, affectionate. Randy obviously made it into something else. He says so himself.”
“Maybe.”
“She would have told me, Andy. We told each other everything.”
“The way you talk about her, you had her on a pedestal. Maybe she didn’t know how to climb down. Or maybe she was going to tell you, but then she was killed.”
“There was nothing to tell.” I frowned. “You don’t have to tell her parents about the letter, do you? It would upset them for nothing.” From the expression on his face I could tell he already had.
“You’re not the only one who needs answers, Molly.”
The music stopped, and the minister stepped up to the podium. I was agitated but I forced myself to concentrate as he spoke with heart about a life tragically cut short. I sensed that he’d really known Randy, that he wasn’t going through the motions. He was followed by Roland Creeley, who didn’t cry but had to stop several times while he talked about the son he had loved and would miss terribly, the young boy with the golden hair and golden future, the troubled teenager, the adult who had worked hard to turn his life around.
Aggie’s father hadn’t cried at her funeral, though unlike her mother, he hadn’t been sedated. I think he was numb. I think he hadn’t absorbed the reality of his daughter’s violent death two days earlier, or the further violation of her body and Orthodox law through the autopsy that the coroner’s office had insisted on performing, despite entreaties from prominent members of the Jewish community.
Aggie’s father didn’t cry, but I could hear the heartache in his voice, the disbelief, each word dropping like a heavy stone into the absolute stillness of the auditorium that couldn’t accommodate the more than two thousand people who came to hear him tell what they already knew. That Aggie was a loving daughter, an only child God had given them after they had stopped hoping; that she had brought joy into the life of everyone whose path she crossed; that she exemplified chesed, loving-kindness, in her interactions with her family and friends and with those less fortunate, with whom she’d worked every day at Rachel’s Tent, people to whom she’d tried to give hope, people whose lives would be emptier now that she was gone.
“She was Rachel,” the rabbi who spoke after Aggie’s father told us, using the Hebrew pronunciation. “Rachel mevaka al baneha. Rachel is crying over her children who are in distress and will not be comforted. Like Rachel, Aggie cried over those in distress. Like Rachel, Aggie would not be comforted until they were helped. And now we cry for Aggie, for the young woman who will never stand under a chuppa with her beloved, for the children she will never hold, whose tears she will never dry. And we ask ourselves why. Why Aggie? We have no answer. Only Hashem knows, and we have to accept His decree and trust in His eternal wisdom. But if Aggie were here, I think she would tell us: Do more chesed. Open your hand and your heart to those who are troubled. Use soft words and shun loshon hora, because gossip is a neighbor of the ayin hora that, once aroused, disrupts the order of the world and brings calamity. I think that’s what Aggie would tell us.”
I didn’t realize Roland Creeley had finished speaking until I heard the organ music. I looked to my right. Connors was gone, and so was the redhead. Slipping out of my pew, I joined the queue filing out of the chapel into the foyer and tried to find her, but the room was too crowded.
I joined the end of a long line of people waiting to sign the guest book and found myself in front of a large floral arrangement with a note card attached to one of those long-handled plastic forks. I flipped open the card:
With deep sympathy from the Horton Family and all of us at Rachel’s Tent.
Sooner or later the media would link Randy with Aggie’s murder. I imagined that the Rachel’s Tent people who had chipped in for this offering would be filled with horror when they realized they’d sent flowers to the man who had killed one of their own.
It was my turn to sign the guest book. I wrote a short message and would have liked to check the other signatures, but the woman behind me cleared her throat several times, signaling her impatience, so I stepped aside.
The Creeleys emerged from the chapel and stopped to accept condolences. The man in the gray suit took Roland Creeley’s hand in both of his, said something about Rachel’s Tent, and introduced a man in his late twenties with thick dark hair and a serious, dutiful expression. I didn’t hear the name, but Creeley looked almost pathetically grateful.
The younger man said something to Trina and put his hand on her shoulder. She nodded and gave him a wan smile. She was tense, her red-rimmed eyes darting around the room, her hands clenched. When I tried to make eye contact with her, she stared at me without recognition.
I roamed the foyer, and seeing no sign of the redhead, I returned to the guest book, which I now had to myself. Paging backward, I scanned the signatures and messages. Three people had written that they were from Rachel’s Tent. Of course, there was nothing from Doreen or Mom.
Mike had signed, and so had Gloria Lamont. I saw Connors’s signature and a few pages before that a name that raised goose bumps on my arms:
B. Lasher. “Our prayers are with you.”
There was undoubtedly more than one Lasher in Los Angeles. And who said this Lasher was local? And the B wasn’t necessarily for Binyomin, as in Aggie’s father, who went by Benjamin outside the Orthodox community and whom I hadn’t seen in the chapel. I wondered what Connors would think if he assumed that Aggie’s father had attended the funeral of the man who had killed her.
A tap on my shoulder startled me. I turned around and saw Gloria Lamont.
“That was a nice service, wasn’t it?” she said. “I feel for Randy’s daddy. He sounds like a good man what did his best for his son, which wasn’t easy, considering he had to do by hisself. But you never know how your kid’ll turn out, do you? There’s so much temptation in this world, and Satan works hard to put it right in your face.”
I told her I agreed.
“I was gonna call you,” she said. “The other day you asked me about Randy’s ladies? There was this woman.”
My heart lurched, though I don’t know why.
“I wouldn’t of seen her, but I was waitin’ up for Shirrel to come back with Jerome. She was worried ’cause he was runnin’ a high fever and cryin’ something fierce, so she took him to the emergency? Anyway, one in the morning it was still hot as hell, I didn’t have air-conditioning then, so I was sittin’ on the stoop to get me some air, and up walks Randy with this woman. He didn’t look happy to see me, unh-unh, whisked her inside before I could say how are you. She must’ve left after a few hours ’cause I didn’t see her leave the next morning.”
Not Aggie, I told myself. Someone else, another one of Randy’s many girlfriends.
“I asked him about her the next day,” Gloria said. “ ‘Is your lady friend marr
ied that you have to sneak around with her?’ He gave me a hard look that said mind your own business, but an hour later he knocks on my door, asks me to promise I won’t tell no one about the woman ’cause it would put her in a heap of trouble and Randy, too. ‘Who’s gonna ask, her husband?’ I said, but Randy said, just promise. So I did. The next few days and for a long time he was in a bad state, all tucked into himself, so I guess she decided to end it, or he did.”
My tongue seemed to be stuck to my palate. “This woman,” I said. “What did she look like?”
It couldn’t be Aggie, because Gloria hadn’t recognized her when I’d showed her the photo; because Aggie told me everything, good or bad, the same way I told her; because that’s what best friends do, they have no secrets.
“She had her head down, so I didn’t get a good look at her face,” Gloria said.
Aggie would never have gone to Randy Creeley’s apartment. Aggie had planned to marry an Orthodox Jewish young man and cover her hair and live the life that I had temporarily thrown away.
“She had dark hair, I remember that,” Gloria said. “Long and curly. Like your friend’s, the one whose picture you showed me? And she had this locket. I didn’t see a locket in that picture, but that’s who you think it is, don’t you, honey? Your friend, the one the police think Randy killed. That’s why you look like someone just stepped on your grave.” The woman clucked. “Poor thing.”
I don’t know whether she was referring to Aggie or me.
sixteen
GLORIA PATTED MY ARM AND SAID SOMETHING COMFORTING, but I couldn’t tell you what, because the room was intensely noisy and cloying, so many people talking at once, the overpowering scent of the flowers making me queasy and aggravating the dull pain that had started at my right temple and was gripping my skull in a vise. I found the restroom and used cold water from the faucet to splash my face and chase two Advil tablets.
Grave Endings Page 10
