Love Kills

by Dianne Emley

  “Just because she put a little extra salt in her casserole? I’ve done that. Haven’t you?”

  Vining tilted her head at her mother and looked at her with dismay. Patsy, who was Granny’s middle child, had never come to terms with her troubled relationship with her mother.

  “Granny covers up a lot. You know how proud she is. We need to find out what’s really going on with her. Go call your boss and pack an overnight bag.” Vining hated handling her mother the same way she’d handle Emily, but that was reality.

  “All right.” Patsy’s attitude didn’t help her case. She stood and dragged herself like a recalcitrant teenager toward the stairs that led to the two bedrooms and bath on the upper floor.

  “Mom, can I look around your town house?”

  Patsy turned. “Why?”

  “Those LAPD detectives might come back with a warrant. I want to protect you.”

  Patsy continued up the stairs, saying, “Go ahead and look. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  When she was gone, Kissick stood. “Should we get started?”

  Vining reached inside her mother’s purse, which was on the dining room table, and took out her cell phone. “I’ll come back when she’s gone.”

  “That’s why you wanted to get her out of here.”

  Vining nodded as she looked through the phone’s call log. “Her story checks. She placed a call to Tink’s cell phone yesterday at two-fifteen. They talked for eleven minutes.”

  She returned the phone to Patsy’s purse and quickly rummaged through it. “When we’re at Granny’s, remind me to pick up her car keys so my mother’s stranded there. My mom suddenly has extra cash to blow. Now we find out she was involved with Vince Madrigal. Something stinks. I want to find out what it is before the LAPD does. I need to work fast before Sarge takes me off this case.”

  TEN

  Kissick drove while Vining turned to look at her mother in the backseat of the Crown Vic. Patsy was examining the sheets of parchment paper with the strange symbols that Vining had found at Tink’s house. Vining had put each one into a Baggie from Patsy’s kitchen.

  “I don’t know what these are, Nan.”

  “Mom, was Tink interested in the occult? Witchcraft?”

  “When we were teenagers, sure. Tink maybe more than the rest of us. She studied astrology and did our charts. She had tarot cards. At slumber parties, we tried to conduct séances. And the Ouija board. Tink had one and we were mad about it, scaring ourselves until we couldn’t sleep. My mother wouldn’t allow it in the house. Tink really had the touch with the Ouija board. When she put her hands on it, it moved all over the board like crazy.”

  “What moved?” Vining asked.

  Patsy leaned forward and put her hand on Nan’s seat back. “You never played with the Ouija board? Well, I guess it was the Age of Aquarius back then. The Ouija board is supposed to be a mystical oracle with power to connect to the spirit world. You sit facing your friend with the board on your knees and your fingers on a plastic slider thingy. You ask a question, close your eyes, and concentrate. We’d ask about who we’d marry, which guys at John Bosco liked us. That was an all-boys Catholic school. The slider moves and points to the answer. Sometimes it would spell out an answer. Very strange.”

  “It moved because you pushed it?” Kissick asked.

  “No. That was the creepy part. The spirit world moved it.”

  “And you believed this?” Nan asked with a chuckle. She couldn’t resist batting that ball one more time.

  “I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you, Nan. You just think we were stupid girls.”

  Vining didn’t respond but agitatedly shifted in the car seat.

  Kissick sneaked his hand over to touch her thigh.

  “Did anything it tell you come true?”

  “Well, it told me I’d have two children that I’d raise alone. It told Tink she’d be rich. So you tell me who’s crazy. One time, we really scared ourselves. Tink and Vicki were using the Ouija board, asking questions about the future. It spelled out ‘war’ and ‘death.’ Tink freaked out and threw it off her knees.”

  “War and death?” Vining said. “The only thing the mystical oracle forgot was taxes.”

  Kissick had to laugh.

  “We were teenagers, Nan.” Patsy looked out the window and pouted. “I don’t know why I’m talking about things like this to a couple of cops. How do you know there’s not something else out there, just because you can’t prove it?”

  Vining was the last one to argue against the existence of ghosts.

  Patsy huffed out air and became thoughtful. “Poor Tink. When her son got killed, it nearly destroyed her. Then Stan died too. Vicki, Mary Alice, and I wondered if the old Tink was gone. She wasn’t that different, but it was like she was playing at being Tink, if that makes any sense.”

  Patsy again looked at the hieroglyphics from Tink’s. “If these are part of some sort of witchcraft, I wouldn’t be surprised. Look at how involved she was with the Berryhill Method and all that stuff. What’s their slogan? ‘You can make magic happen in your life.’”

  “We found a lot of Georgia Berryhill’s books at Tink’s house,” Vining said. “Inscribed by Georgia with personal messages.”

  Patsy sniffed. “Georgia Berryhill should have given Tink solid-gold books for the amount of money that Tink dumped into that whole Method crap.”

  Kissick said, “I thought the Berryhill Method was about diet and vitamins and positive thinking.”

  “That’s the Berryhill that Georgia sells at Costco and Wal-Mart,” Patsy said. “Once you get really into it, there’s this whole advanced program. MBS—Mind, Body, Spirit—where you integrate all the parts of yourself, especially your astral shadow or shadow self or whatever. You need to get to know it to be complete or something.”

  “Tink bought into this?” Vining asked. “I thought she was more level-headed than that.”

  “Tink loved fads. From the Ouija board to disco dancing. She knew how to do the Hustle before any of us. Georgia Berryhill is hot right now. Can’t turn on the TV without seeing her on one of the talk shows.

  “At dinner with the girls one time, Tink talked about taking lessons at Berryhill to meet her astral shadow. Vicki and I thought she’d lost her marbles. Mary Alice, our artist, defended Tink. After that, Tink only talked to us about going to the Berryhill compound like it was a spa retreat. She no longer mentioned her studies.

  “Then Tink treated us to a girls’ weekend at Berryhill. Vicki wondered if she did it to prove to us that it was just a nice restful place to go. Tink’s favorite Berryhill treatment was the MBS Tune-Up. You’re on this diet of juice and herbal tea, and you spend your days meditating and doing yoga. She claimed she felt so much clearer after. I told her, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’”

  Vining squinted at her mother over her shoulder. “Where is the Berryhill compound?”

  “Off Malibu Canyon Road, before you go up and over to the ocean. It’s tucked back into a canyon. You wouldn’t know it’s there. It’s lovely. Woods, rolling hills with a lake in the middle. Good food.”

  Kissick shot a question to Patsy over his shoulder. “What’s an astral shadow?”

  “Your guide in the spirit world. It’s this whole Berryhill philosophy. They preach that everyone has these different shadow selves that we have to get to know before we can be whole…A complete person. Achieve nirvana. ’Course being rich or a celebrity gets you into Nirvana at the top of the hill more quickly.” Patsy snorted.

  “In the compound there’s an actual place called Nirvana?” Kissick asked.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s like a gated neighborhood within Berryhill. No one there admits that Nirvana is for the rich and famous, or just plain rich. Or just plain beautiful. They claim that to get inside you have to progress through seven steps. Tink told me with a straight face that Georgia had put her on the fast track to Nirvana. That’s how she got in so quickly. I told her, I could work those steps my entire life and the onl
y way I’d get through those gates is if I won the lottery.”

  “Couldn’t Tink get you in?” Vining asked.

  “Oh, no, honey.” Patsy angled her mouth, halfway sneering. “It was like the domain of the ancient Hawaiian kings that I visited on the Big Island. A commoner would be killed if his mere shadow crossed the boundary. When Tink took the girls there, she got us each a small cabin. She stayed in one too.”

  “How many times did you go to Berryhill?”

  “Just that one time last summer. It’s not in my budget. I can drink organic apple cider and herbal tea on my own. I can even buy the Georgia Berryhill brand. When I was there, I had a Shadow Symmetry evaluation, to see if I was in tune with my shadow self.”

  “And?” Vining asked.

  “They told me I didn’t have one.”

  ELEVEN

  Kissick got off the freeway and headed toward Granny’s house.

  “Jim, can you pull into that Ralphs over there?” Vining pointed to a large supermarket. “Can’t be sure that Granny has anything in her refrigerator.”

  “Good Lord, yes,” Patsy said. “Let’s buy the old lady some groceries before I spend the night there. I’m sure she hasn’t changed the sheets in the guest room since the last time she had overnight guests, which was probably when I stayed with her after your incident, Nan.”

  The incident. That was how Vining’s loved ones still referred to the creep’s knife attack on her. She hated how that situation continued to define her in everyone else’s eyes and was still foremost in their minds. Not hers. She’d sent it into exile to the furthest reaches of her psyche. Not from fear, but with full will and knowledge. She’d exercised the most primitive formula known to humanity: an eye for an eye. Primitive yet eminently satisfying, emitting the clear, resounding chime of justice.

  Patsy began, “Nan, I never asked you this…”

  Vining didn’t know what was coming. She felt herself hunkering down.

  “The three days you were in a coma…Did you know we were there?”

  Vining found it interesting that this stuff related to her stabbing and the long aftermath was coming up now. Did her loved ones feel safe because the bad guy was gone for good?

  From the time that she lay comatose, she recalled half-comprehended words, the sensation of hands and sometimes lips against her skin, and lights and shapes beyond her eyelids. Sort of sadly funny for her to think of Tink dropping a bundle of cash in the search to connect with her shadow self. Vining had been in a shadow world. It wasn’t anyplace she could even begin to describe, much less someplace she wanted to explore. She lied. “I don’t remember anything after he stabbed me until I woke up.”

  She opened the car door before Kissick had set the parking brake.

  Patsy also got out. “I need to pick up a few things, too.”

  Vining quietly groaned. She needed a break from her mother and her dramas. She yanked on a cart to free it from a row of nested carts in front of the store. As she did so, Patsy yelped, “Wait!” with such alarm that she nearly reached for her gun.

  Patsy dashed toward her waving an antibacterial wipe she’d pulled from a container near the grocery carts. “Nan, don’t you know that the handle of a shopping cart is one of the filthiest things there is?” She wiped down the cart’s plastic handle. “Give me your hands.”

  Vining complied, letting her mother clean them, feeling again like she was four.

  “Mom, how can you be a germaphobe and sell cosmetics?”

  “I’m not a germaphobe.”

  “Whatever.” Vining wheeled the cart through the automatic doors.

  Patsy said she was going to make her meat loaf recipe, so in addition to yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, bread, lunch meat, cereal, and fruit, into the basket went ground beef, ground pork, onion, garlic, and carrots.

  While Vining was standing in line to check out, Patsy disappeared, returning with a cardboard carrier full of six bottles of chardonnay.

  At a glance from Vining, Patsy became defensive. “They’re on sale. If I buy six, I get an extra ten percent discount. You’re the one who wants me to stay with Granny. I’m gonna need some help.”

  “Did I say anything?”

  “You didn’t need to.” Patsy cocked her head to look at the cover of People magazine in a holder at the checkout counter. “Speak of the devil. There’s Georgia.”

  The magazine’s headline screamed: BEST FRIENDS AND PREGNANT. Pictured were Georgia Berryhill and the gorgeous young actress Sinclair LeFleur. Mugging between the pregnant women was Sinclair’s husband, Gig Towne.

  Vining picked up the magazine, flipped to the article, and read aloud. “Georgia Berryhill, her husband Stefan Pavel, and Le Towne all await their blessed events in April.” She winced. “Le Towne?”

  “Sinclair LeFleur and Gig Towne,” Patsy said. “Get it?”

  “Cuuute,” Vining deadpanned. She continued reading with drama, “Pavel, Georgia’s younger French husband and the genius behind her Berryhill Method empire, says, ‘We called Gig and Sinclair to break the news only to learn that they could hardly wait to tell us their news.’ Energetic, forty-eight-year-old Georgia still had time to pen her latest bestseller, The Berryhill Method of Pregnancy and Childbirth.”

  Vining made a face. “Wow. She’s already an expert.”

  Patsy shook her head. “Tink was so excited about these babies. She knew Gig and Sinclair socially. Met them at Berryhill. All she could talk about is how happy Georgia and Stefan were to be finally pregnant after all the years of trying.”

  “Listen to how the blessed events are going to take place.” Vining read, “‘Gig and Sinclair are taking it easy at their La Cañada Flintridge estate, where Sinclair will have the baby in a pool of body-temperature water assisted by a midwife. Georgia and Stefan have prepared an identical birthing room at the Berryhill compound in Malibu Canyon.’”

  She added, “These women obviously haven’t had children before.”

  That brought a laugh from the African-American checker, whose name tag said that she was Adele and that she’d been with Ralphs for twenty-two years. She was ringing up a customer in front of them.

  “Gig Towne is totally into the Berryhill Method,” Patsy said. “That’s what having the baby at home is about. Hospitals have bad karma. Death and sickness. The baby’s self and shadow selves are just being formed, and it’s important that they control the baby’s environment.”

  “And Tink, who was no stranger to hospitals and plastic surgery, agreed with that?” Vining asked.

  “Yep. She drank the Kool-Aid.”

  “I didn’t know this.” Vining scanned the article. “Gig Towne spent time in prison for running over a homeless man. He says, ‘I was lost before I discovered Georgia Berryhill and The Method. Georgia and Stefan turned my life around. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have met Sinclair, the love of my life.’ Gig, forty-four, lovingly gave his beautiful twenty-eight-year-old wife a smooch on the cheek.”

  She crushed the magazine between her hands, clasped it to her chest, and let out a dreamy sigh. “How romantic. I’m going to buy this, by the way,” she said to the checker, who had started scanning her purchases.

  Patsy took the magazine from Nan and continued reading the article aloud. “Gig Towne’s recent erratic behavior on a TV interview has Hollywood players wondering whether he’s lost not just his edge but his wits. He was once one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, hitting it big twenty years ago with his first movie, the iconic comedy Stupid Is. His attempts to change his funny-man image and take on meatier roles have not been met warmly at the box office. His last three mega-budget movies have flopped, while his wife’s, Sinclair LeFleur’s, star is soaring.”

  Adele the checker weighed in. “He only married Sinclair to stop the rumors about him being gay. My cousin is best friends with Sinclair’s hairdresser. She said the marriage is a business deal. Gig promised to make Sinclair a big star.”

  “I liked him when his movies were f
unny,” Patsy said.

  Kissick found them and walked to stand at the end of the aisle by the young man who was bagging the groceries, unconsciously assuming an at-ease position with his legs shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped behind his back.

  The checker spotted him. “Can I help you, Officer?”

  “I’m with them.” He inclined his head to indicate Vining and her mother.

  Adele gave Vining a closer look and just now noticed her gun and badge beneath her jacket.

  “I don’t like Gig Towne’s slapstick, gross-out humor,” Vining said.

  “That’s great stuff,” the teenaged bag boy opined. He was tall with thick dark hair, glasses with rectangular black frames, and patches of acne in the hollows of both cheeks. “The ‘Gig giggle.’ That’s hilarious.”

  “Gig giggle?” Adele said.

  “My youngest son has that nailed,” Kissick said.

  “I can do it.” The teenager took a step back, as if to prepare, inhaled deeply, and emitted a laugh that sounded like the bastard child of Woody Woodpecker and Elmer Fudd.

  Kissick laughed. “That’s good. That’s the Gig giggle, all right.”

  Vining wished the bag boy was paying better attention to packing the groceries. It looked as if he’d just set a cantaloupe on top of the carton of eggs.

  “They say that Sinclair’s baby isn’t even his,” Adele said. “That the whole pregnancy is a sham.”

  “My friend thought that was ridiculous,” Patsy said. “She knew them, Le Towne and the Berryhills.”

  “Yeah?” Adele asked. “Is she in the movie business?”

  “No.” Patsy’s shoulders slumped as she tossed the magazine onto the conveyer. “She was just a woman who was always searching for answers and found comfort at Berryhill. She just passed away.”

  Vining paused as she held her store rewards card over the reader, always surprised by her frequently daffy mother’s moments of wisdom.

  “I’m sorry,” Adele said.

  “Thank you.” Patsy brushed away tears, then put out her hand to stop Vining from running her debit card through the reader. “I’ve got it, Nan.”