The First Cut

by Dianne Emley

  “No. But she was totally coming on to him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Took his beer out of his hand and finished it. Then she walked back, strutting, flaunting attitude. Nearly shoved me out of the way going through the door. She was big and she was not feminine.”

  “Police uniforms, Kevlar vests, and thirty-pound equipment belts do that to women.”

  Chastened, Laura said, “I wasn’t talking about all policewomen.”

  Vining moved past it. “He didn’t walk in with her.”

  “No. I went over to see if he wanted anything else and he was still watching her walk away. He handed me twenty bucks for a six-dollar beer, and left.”

  “She messed it up for you.”

  “She did. Women like men in uniforms. Maybe it’s the same thing in reverse. I still say that she wasn’t all that. If that’s what he was after, that is not me.”

  “We found her body by the bridge earlier this week. Maybe you heard.”

  Laura blanched. “That was her?”

  “That was her.”

  Vining handed Laura her card and told her to call if she thought of anything more. She left, satisfied with the waitress’s reaction to the bomb she’d dropped. She felt protective over Frankie Lynde and was tired of people talking trash about her.

  John Lesley and Frankie had met at the luncheon and flirted. Flirting seemed second nature to him. Frankie was at the end of one bad relationship and was heading into a worse one. She already heard Kissick’s response. “So what, Nan?”

  T W E N T Y - S I X

  V INING HEADED WEST ON THE 210 FREEWAY THAT TRAVERSED THE foothills. It was sparsely traveled compared to the always clogged arteries to the south. She was doing eighty and piqued drivers still passed her. The haze the locals called June gloom hung in the air, muting the edges of the rolling Santa Susana Mountains that had not fully recovered from the last series of fires. She found the barren hills beautiful, their sparseness calming, having the same effect on her as the ocean.

  The freeway demographics changed the farther from L.A. she drove. There were fewer imported sedans and more pickups. Flatbed trucks were piled with bales of hay. Craggy sandstone outcroppings appeared in the soft hills. The landscape looked like the background in a western movie, as it should, since many were filmed here. Science fiction, too, the rugged landscape standing in for Mars or the moon.

  In Simi Valley, she took the 118, the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Thousands of people had lined that winding road to watch the hearse carrying the body of President Reagan pass by. She’d never been to the library. One Sunday, Wes and Kaitlyn had taken Emily, followed by lunch at an old stagecoach stop that had been turned into a restaurant.

  They’d invited Vining to go with them, but she’d used the day to collect overtime. She remembered indulging in reverse arrogance at the thought of Wes and Kaitlyn playing while she had to work. Truth was she didn’t have to work. The extra money had probably gone to pay a bill or to buy something Emily wanted that Vining would have managed to take care of somehow.

  Why did she have to be so tough all the time? Why couldn’t she relax? If she hadn’t worked overtime that day, T. B. Mann wouldn’t have attacked her. She wouldn’t have started on this bizarre path where corpses spoke and strange houses reduced her to an infantlike state. Emily wouldn’t have taken on her unhealthy hobby of tracking ghosts. None of it would have happened if she’d been able to enjoy life. If she’d puttered in the yard that day or cleaned out a closet or just taken a walk.

  It’s not your fault.

  With one hand on the steering wheel, she pulled the pearl necklace over her head, opened the glove compartment, and chucked it inside. “T. B. Mann, to hell with you. I’m done. You have no power over me anymore. It’s over. Finished. Kaput.”

  She felt freer. She guessed the feeling wouldn’t last, but it felt sweet for that moment.

  She exited the freeway. Signage gave directions to both the Reagan Library and the landfill.

  Maybe she’d have to accept that T. B. Mann might always be out there. She imagined his face on a helium-filled balloon, a caricature drawn in black marker. She mentally released the balloon and watched as it rose into the sky, higher and higher, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared.

  It was done.

  You think it’s that easy.

  “It is. It is because I say it is.”

  She opened the glove compartment again, grabbed the necklace, rolled down the car window, and threw it into the meridian, losing it among mounds of oleander abundant with white blooms, thriving in the arid soil.

  SIMI VALLEY WAS A COP-AND-FIREFIGHTER TOWN. MANY LIVE IN THE QUIET communities to the north and east of metropolitan L.A. where housing prices are more in line with their means. For the cops, affordability wasn’t the only motivation. There they were less likely to run into scum they knew from the streets, people they’d arrested or jacked up, while shopping at Home Depot with their families in tow.

  Big-box shopping centers lined both sides of the thoroughfare. She crossed Easy Street and after a mile found the development where Lieutenant Kendall Moore lived. It was a long-established neighborhood of ranch-style homes and cul-de-sacs, built for families, bicycles, and unleashed dogs. The street names were Greek-inspired—Socrates Street, Hercules Court, Plato Court, Aristotle Street—in that oddball juxtaposition that Southern California had mastered. Old glory was everywhere—painted with house numbers on curbs, decorating pinwheels stuck inside flower beds, hoisted on full-size flagpoles in front yards. Powerboats and RVs were parked in extra-wide driveways.

  She turned onto Sparta Court and found Moore’s home near the end. The driveway held a new SUV, a powerboat draped with a tan tarp, and a motorcycle. A bicycle lay on the small lawn of St. Augustine. Daylilies bloomed across the front, yellow flowers brightening the green spears. A hibiscus bush as tall as the gutter bloomed pink. An American flag drooped from a post on the front porch. Beneath the flag was another printed with bright flowers that said “Welcome Friends.” The porch was furnished with a pair of rocking chairs and a small table of plastic woven to look like wicker. An ashtray had no cigarette butts but retained a residue. A wreath of bent twigs entwined with ribbon and fake berries decorated the front door.

  As soon as Vining stepped onto the cement path that led to the porch, two large dogs of indeterminate breed bayed from behind a gate across a side yard. She rang the doorbell.

  There was sufficient cuteness to put Vining in mind of Wes’s wife Kaitlyn, who had to hold a record for the greatest number of cloyingly adorable decorative items per square foot. Vining didn’t detect any obvious themes here. Kaitlyn collected replicas of frogs. They were everywhere inside and outside her and Wes’s manse. Emily once threatened to buy Kaitlyn a real frog as a gift. A disgusting horned toad. Vining would have liked to have seen that, but talked her daughter out of it.

  The eyelet curtains moved over the windows off her right shoulder.

  Vining held her shield toward the window and then to the peephole in the door.

  When a woman opened the door, the fear in her eyes conveyed she expected Vining had come to deliver bad news about her husband.

  “Mrs. Moore?”

  “Is Ken okay?”

  Vining temporarily put her at ease. “Nothing’s happened to your husband. At least as far as I know.”

  She exhaled with relief.

  She was not Lolita, although Vining never really thought she would be. Rhonda Moore was three or four inches taller than the strip club description of Lolita and likely fifty pounds heavier. Her hair was done in a curly bob with a reddish rinse, probably to cover gray.

  “I’m Detective Nan Vining with the Pasadena Police Department. Do you have a couple of minutes?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions. May I come in?”

  “Does this have to do with Frankie Lynde?”

  “Yes.”

 
; She nodded, as if expecting the visit. “Come in.”

  Those innocuous two words. The generous gesture of opening one’s house to a stranger. This would be the second home Vining would enter since she’d returned to work. Her first, Iris Thorne’s home, didn’t go well, but that house had put her in mind of the place on El Alisal Road. This house was like the ones she’d grown up around. She understood this house and its people. She felt okay. Had she been in control the entire time? Was that all she had to do to release T. B. Mann and set herself free?

  Houses have karma. Lives have karma.

  She was going to be fine.

  Her conscience again taunted her. You think it’s that easy?

  She stepped over the threshold and looked around, noting the doors and windows, places where people could hide.

  “By the way, I’m Rhonda. I was so startled to see you there I forgot my manners. It’s never good news when a police officer shows up on your doorstep, especially when you’re the wife of one.”

  She was friendly but not warm.

  Breakfast smells hung in the air. Fried eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “That sounds great. Thank you.”

  The kitchen opened onto a family room dominated by a huge television. It was tuned to a talk show in which four female hosts were badgering a male guest. Rhonda must have been sorting laundry as piles of linens, towels, and clothing were on the floor.

  Vining was sure Rhonda cared less about being hospitable to her, but it gave her something to do while she postponed the purpose of Vining’s call.

  She went about making coffee while Vining strolled around the family room.

  There was a coating of dust on an exercise bike near the television. Family photographs covered the walls and flat surfaces. The Moores appeared to have two boys and a girl. There was a wedding photograph. Moore was in a tuxedo, looking about the same but younger and with more hair. Rhonda was in white lace and considerably thinner.

  Vining picked up a recent family portrait. The five of them were on the beach, all dressed in blue jeans and white shirts. They were an attractive family. Vining could see Rhonda having the photo made up into Christmas cards she’d mail out with a chatty letter that would state the facts but not the truth. Moore stood in the rear, overseeing his brood. His smile was confident and controlling. The man.

  You disgusting rat.

  How much did Rhonda know and how long had she known it?

  “How old are your children?”

  The coffee drained into the pot, filling the air with its homey aroma.

  “Sixteen, fourteen, and our girl is twelve.”

  “I have a fourteen-year-old girl.” Vining didn’t quite know how to get Rhonda where she wanted her, but talking about family was a place to start.

  “Ken adores our daughter, but it’s true what they say about boys being easier than girls. Especially lately. Our Meghan has become a handful.”

  “Emily and I have our power struggles, now more than ever.”

  The chitchat had superficially broken the ice.

  “How do you take your coffee?” Rhonda poured coffee into mugs decorated with teddy bears.

  “A little cream or milk and a scant teaspoon of sugar.”

  That was Rhonda’s theme: teddy bears. Now that Vining had gotten it, she saw teddy bears everywhere. Cute and cuddly and nothing like real bears. In reality, they are predators. They kill and eat people.

  Vining sensed the tension in this house. Her presence had added to it, but it was there before she had set foot on the front path. The children felt it. Rhonda lived it. And Moore…He did whatever the hell he wanted.

  Rhonda went to a cabinet for the sugar. She tore open a packet of Equal for her own coffee. She carried the mugs to the family room, set them on coasters on the coffee table, and clicked off the television with the remote. She sat in a deep leather chair and brought her mug to her lips, blowing on the coffee to cool it. She glanced at Vining then back at her cup.

  Vining sat on the matching sofa. “Good coffee.”

  “It’s Peets. Ken likes it better than Starbucks. I think they’re both too expensive, but I buy it for him.”

  Rhonda’s hair was neat, her makeup carefully applied, her clothes clean and pressed. She wore several pieces of gold jewelry. Her hoop earrings were enameled in a color that matched her outfit. Her figure might have filled out and her husband chased around with other women, but she still made an effort to keep herself up.

  “Rhonda, did you know Frankie Lynde?”

  “I met her a couple of years ago. Frankie started out in the Van Nuys precinct. One of the guys had a barbecue. Memorial Day. She was there.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Must have been…maybe two years ago. Terrible what happened to her. Made me sick when I heard about it.”

  She remembered too well a distant, casual encounter that should have been forgotten. It was clear to Vining that Rhonda knew about her husband and Lynde.

  “Was that the only time you saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  Vining sensed she was lying. “Why do you remember her? You just saw her once a long time ago.”

  “I’m sure you’ve been to backyard cop parties. The wives hang around together and the men stay with the men and the female officers stay with the men. That’s where Frankie was. After all, she worked with them and didn’t know us. Me and the other wives, we noticed Frankie. She was the kind of woman people notice.” Rhonda looked up from her coffee. “Ken was having an affair with her.”

  Vining reined in her surprise. She hadn’t expected Rhonda to come out with it.

  “Detective, now you look like you’re the one who’s had a scare. When I heard about Frankie’s murder, I expected one of you from Pasadena to show up. Frankie wasn’t Ken’s first, but she might have been his longest. No, I don’t intend to divorce him. His chasing around doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t make me feel good about myself, but he’s a great father and provider and a halfway decent husband. I have three kids…”

  She let the last comment dangle, an underscore to the rest. That summed it up.

  “Was he seeing anybody in addition to Frankie?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you so certain?”

  “Because I’ve followed him from time to time.”

  Vining wondered if Rhonda had friends that fit Lolita’s description. They’d focused the investigation on searching for a male/female couple. What if they should be looking for two women? Two women could have beat up Frankie and made it look like a brutal rape. It was farfetched but not impossible. They could have somehow set Frankie up.

  Vining took a sip from the teddy bear mug and knew she was dreaming. This woman did not lash out. This woman bit the bullet and had another piece of cake.

  “How long were they together?”

  “I think it started before that barbecue, but not much before.”

  “How did you determine that?”

  Rhonda slitted her eyes. “The wives have ways of keeping tabs on the husbands.”

  “Do you know if Ken gave Frankie jewelry or money?”

  “Jewelry or money? You have to be kidding. We have trouble managing our bills as it is. I keep track of the household finances. If he bought anything, I would have known. She had jewelry and money?”

  Vining didn’t respond.

  “If you’re thinking Ken stole to give to her, you’re wrong. Ken’s an honest cop. Check his records. He’s had several commendations. He loves being a police officer. He’s third-generation LAPD. He would never do anything to discredit his profession or his family.”

  Rhonda took in Vining as if seeing her for the ogre she was. She was standing by her philandering husband. Lieutenant Kendall Moore was a jerk, but he was her jerk.

  “Ken might be a lot of things, but he’s not a murderer. My husband would never do what was done to that woman. He doesn’t have it in him. I know that ma
n. I know him inside and out.”

  Vining made her next comment not to make Rhonda feel better but to grease her enough to keep the woman from shutting down. She could sense Rhonda circling the wagons, withdrawing. “At least he never left you for a bimbo.”

  The other woman could have a PhD in quantum physics, but in the minds of jilted wives everywhere, she was always a bimbo. The edges of Rhonda’s face softened but they wouldn’t be grabbing a coffee at Peets together ever.

  “Not like my husband, leaving me for a nineteen-year-old hairdresser at Supercuts.” That wasn’t precisely what happened, but Vining embellished the saga for dramatic impact.

  Rhonda tried to gauge if Vining was telling the truth.

  After Vining hummed a confirming “Um-hmm,” Rhonda made a small moan of sympathy. She then revealed something that Vining had not expected.

  “Ken wasn’t even seeing her when she disappeared.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He was home when he was supposed to be. When he said he was with his buddies, he was. There’s a cop-friendly bar in town. The Maverick. I’d cruise by and see his car parked in front. Sometimes he’d be out on the porch, smoking a cigarette, and see me.” She shrugged. “And he was more interested in sex with me.”

  “When do you think it was over with Frankie?”

  “About two months ago. It was my daughter’s birthday, that’s why I remember. We had a little party. After, I expected Ken to take off because I knew Frankie wasn’t working that day. I knew her schedule because I’m friendly with an officer who worked with her. Ken would usually leave after dinner to have drinks with the boys, he said. I knew he’d have one drink and take off, then wouldn’t come home until late. That night he stayed home and sulked on the couch. Wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. Said he was tired. After that he was always where he was supposed to be. And in a bad mood…”

  Rhonda winced with the recollection. “I just put up with it. I was happy to have him home.”

  “When is your daughter’s birthday?”

  “April fifteen. Ken and I joke that she’s our little tax deduction.”

  “How’s Ken been acting lately?”