Love Kills

by Dianne Emley

  After eating a slice of cold pepperoni pizza while standing, Vining tried to escape from dancing, but the other women wouldn’t let her. The album scratched when Patsy picked up the needle to start “I’m a Believer” over again. Someone shoved a plastic cup into Vining’s hand. She set it down.

  “Come on, Nan,” her mother said. “You’re off duty.”

  “Yeah, Officer Nan,” Maria Alicia said.

  Vining smiled. “That’s Detective Corporal Nan.”

  “Wait, wait, wait…” Vicki had slipped into the kitchen and returned with more plastic cups. She responded to Vining’s glance when she handed a cup to Emily. “That’s orange soda, Miss Police Lady.”

  Maria Alicia leaned toward Em and said, “I thought I had it hard growing up.”

  “I heard that,” Vining said.

  “Ignore Mary Alice, Nan,” Vicki said. “The old Marxist socialist. She still has a poster of Lenin leading the proletariat in her house.”

  “Times are a-changing.” Maria Alicia raised her plastic cup. “You’ll see.”

  “Maria Alicia,” Emily began, using her preferred name that her old friends wouldn’t use either out of forgetfulness, habit, or spite. “Someone has to get the bad guys.”

  Vining put her arm around Em’s shoulders. “That’s my girl.”

  “Yeah, Mary Alice,” Vicki said. “Weren’t you bitching about your studio being broken into and you called nine-one-one and you were pissed off when the police didn’t show up for five minutes?”

  “Because they were probably out busting some homeless guy sleeping in a doorway.” Maria Alicia took a drink. “No offense, Nan. The police usually do a good job.”

  Vining shrugged. “Fresh doughnuts had probably just come out of the oven at Winchell’s.”

  Vicki bent over, laughing, nearly spilling her drink.

  “Ladies!” Patsy shouted. “Set aside your petty squabbles for two minutes.”

  Vining thought the noise in the place was so loud, she wouldn’t be surprised if the neighbors called the cops.

  Patsy held her cup high. “Ramona Girls and honorary Ramona Girls, let’s raise a glass to our friend Tink.”

  Everyone shouted. “To Tink!”

  Vicki added, “She was the only one out of all of us who thought Mike Nesmith was cute.”

  Maria Alicia yelled, “Even at thirteen, she picked the rich one.”

  The three remaining Ramona Girls laughed and wiped away tears.

  Vining made a face when she took a sip of the contents in the cup. “What is this?”

  “Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill,” Patsy said. “They still make it.”

  “I’ll never get through my day tomorrow if I drink this.” Vining walked into the dining room and set the cup down on the table, where there were more plastic cups, many with dregs of wine, margaritas, or flat soda. Spread across the table were open shoe boxes crammed with mementos, piles of faded color snapshots, photo albums, and yearbooks from Ramona Convent School.

  With trepidation, she continued into the kitchen, hoping that Vicki and Maria Alicia hadn’t gone in there. She was happy to find it clean. Not spotless, but as clean as the tired linoleum floor and cracked tile counters could get. The air smelled of Raid. She opened the refrigerator door and saw that it had been emptied of rotten food and scrubbed.

  She turned to see her mother behind her.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Patsy carried an empty pizza box and shoved it inside a large green garbage bag on the floor near the back door. “I spent the whole day cleaning. I wasn’t going to let Vicki and Mary Alice see it that way. Give them something else to gossip about in relation to me.”

  Vining was glad to see the house looking good, even if her mother had made the effort out of vanity rather than concern about Granny’s well-being.

  “Come and join the party, Nan. Whatever you have in mind, it can wait.”

  Her mother had guessed correctly. She had been thinking that she needed to interview Vicki and Maria Alicia about Tink. Patsy was right. It could wait until tomorrow.

  “Just so you know,” Patsy began, “they’re not driving home. We’re having a slumber party, like the old days. Vicki’s taking tomorrow off from her job at the high school. Tomorrow is my day off and Mary Alice doesn’t work. I mean that ceramics stuff she does. It’s not like she has a real job.”

  “The way you women snipe at each other…I’m amazed you’re still friends after all these years.”

  Patsy looked at her with surprise. “Still friends? We love each other.” She tugged Vining’s arm. “Come on, Nan. ‘Daydream Believer’ is playing. That was my favorite Monkees song. Davy Jones sings.”

  She scooted from the kitchen, pulling Nan by the hand. In the living room, Maria Alicia and Vicki were arm in arm and drunkenly swaying as they sang along. Emily sat cross-legged on the carpet, reading the liner notes of Cream’s album Disraeli Gears. Granny had thrown in the towel and was asleep in her recliner. Seeing her, Vining was envious. It had been a long day.

  Patsy joined her friends, breaking into the middle between Vicki and Maria Alicia, swaying and singing.

  Vining leaned over and asked Em, “Ready to go home?”

  The Ramona Girls followed them out the door, sending them off with heartfelt if inebriated hugs and kisses. As Vining and Em got into the car, they watched the Ramona Girls with their arms across one another’s shoulders, doing a strange sort of synchronized marching across the front lawn, swinging their legs stiffly up and around to the right and then to the left.

  “This is the Monkees’ walk. They used to do this on their TV show,” Patsy said in response to her daughter’s and granddaughter’s surprised expressions. “We did too, when we were younger than you, Emily.”

  “Go, Grandma,” Emily said.

  The Ramona Girls broke up laughing, and the impromptu chorus line ended. Maria Alicia and Vicki said good-bye again to Vining and Em and headed into the house.

  Patsy remained in the front yard with a loose grin on her face.

  “You okay, Mom?” Vining stood with her hand on the open driver’s door.

  “I’m fine. Makes me feel like a teenager again, when I had my whole life ahead of me.” She looked up at the moon.

  Vining saw her mother become wistful.

  “Lots of water under the bridge.” Patsy looked at her daughter and granddaughter. “I bet you girls think you know everything there is to know about old Patsy.” She leaned her head back and laughed at the moon. She straightened, too quickly, taking a step to steady herself. “You just might be surprised.”

  She jokingly saluted and turned to go back inside. Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was playing. She put a Motown groove into her step.

  At home, Vining took out the autographed DVD from Gig Towne.

  Emily sneered, “That freak.”

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “Like him? He’s old. He’s strange. I think you like him.”

  “I don’t think he’s so old, but he is strange. You don’t want this?” When Emily shook her head, Vining opened a drawer in the dining room china cabinet that had turned into a receptacle for odds and ends and shoved the DVD inside.

  “’Night, Mom.” Emily started heading downstairs to her room.

  “It’s not that late. Do you want to watch some TV with me?”

  “I was going to go on YouTube and look for videos of The Monkees. I like their clothes, the Nehru jackets and the long scarves and that knit hat with the pompom that Mike, the rich one, wore. Vicki told me his mother invented Liquid Paper. Can you believe that?”

  Vining put on her pink thermal-weave pajamas that were printed with a snowflake pattern and her fleece robe. While the temperatures were inching up during the day, the nights were chilly.

  She made a mug of chamomile tea. She was still hungry, so she foraged through the Easter dinner leftovers, making a plate of roast lamb and Kissick’s creamed spinach. She didn’t take any
of Granny’s too-salty corn casserole. She didn’t have the heart to put it down the garbage disposal while Granny was helping her clean up. She’d scoop it out of the Pyrex casserole tomorrow.

  Sitting at the dinette table, she felt lonely. It wasn’t a feeling she had often. She was usually too busy. Em used to take a lot more of her time. The teenager’s new independence was bittersweet. She thought about her mother and her friends. Vining had never been one to have a lot of friends. She had a few, mostly women she’d met at the PPD. Tara Khorsandhi, the Forensic Services Supervisor, was her best female friend. She realized that Kissick was her best friend.

  She finished her food and put the plate and fork in the dishwasher. It was so quiet in the house, she heard the kitchen wall clock clicking off the seconds.

  She grabbed her cell phone and sent Kissick a text message: In PJs. Not typing my reports! Hope all is well.

  She didn’t expect him to respond right away, as he would be in the middle of observing Tink’s autopsy, but he did, texting: Good for U. Relax. Love U.

  Smiling, she texted back: Love U 2. Nite.

  Now, she no longer felt lonely.

  She put more hot water into her mug of tea and took it into the TV room. On her La-Z-Boy, she pulled up the chenille throw, and clicked on the classic movie channel. They were broadcasting North by Northwest. It was one of her favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies, in which Cary Grant plays an advertising executive who is mistaken by bad guys for a spy.

  She made it to the part where Grant is at a hotel bar and he inadvertently stands up at the same time the bad guys have the spy paged. She clicked it off and went to bed.

  TWENTY

  The next morning, Vining arrived early at her cubicle. The three-story police department was on the corner of Garfield and Walnut in the city’s civic center. Kissick’s cubicle was next to the windows and larger than Vining’s, in accordance with his seniority, and gave him a view of the pretty, Spanish Renaissance–style Central Library across Walnut Street. At least hers was close enough to the windows so she could see sunlight.

  She grabbed her favorite coffee mug to head for a refill. The mug had been a Mother’s Day gift from Emily five years ago. It was decorated with a photo of toothy ten-year-old Em and Vining with their heads pressed together and Em’s hand-painted: “I love you Mom.” When she stood, she saw Kissick, who was just arriving.

  “Morning, Jim.”

  “Good morning, Nanette.” He winked at her.

  She gave him a warm smile. She was always happy to see him, but lately, her first glimpse of him in the morning had made her heart leap on little wings.

  She followed him to his desk. “I called over to Granny’s, and the Ramona Girls are moving slowly. Maria Alicia was making breakfast. She said they’re going to see Tink’s mom, who’s in an assisted-living facility. That gives me at least until noon to search my mom’s place. I called in a favor with a buddy who runs a spy shop who’ll meet me there and sweep for bugs.

  “I talked to Maria Alicia about Tink. She didn’t have any new information. She hadn’t seen or talked to her since the girls last had dinner a few months ago. Vicki was close with Tink. She’s going to meet me at Jones Coffee Roasters later. Want to take a drive out to the Berryhill compound after that? That is, if I’m still working the case.”

  “You might have dodged that bullet for now. Just saw Caspers in the hall. He’s due in court again today. Sproul was on-call last night and was sent out to investigate a suspicious death. Found a dead guy sitting in a desk chair in the middle of Colorado Boulevard.”

  “Have a feeling that will be my case. Did you find out anything at Tink’s autopsy?”

  “She had water in her lungs. She drowned. No evidence of heart attack or stroke. Her blood-alcohol content was point zero seven, so she was tipsy, but not drunk. The toxicology reports will tell us more when they’re completed in a few weeks. Forensics tested the liquids in Tink’s inkwell. One is ink. The other is blood, but not human.”

  “Creepy,” Vining said. “I’m surprised Tink was involved in that woo-woo stuff.”

  “Woo-woo?”

  “Witchcraft, occult, whatever…”

  “You think that’s creepy, listen to this,” he said. “Remember the LAPD detectives said they found cremated remains in the motel room where Madrigal and Trendi were killed? I did some research on the Net and found out that cremated human remains are used in witchcraft to cast spells. The dead person’s spirit is used to help solve someone else’s problem.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Get this. The remains’ former human entity can be brought to bear on problems in the earthly plane.”

  “Translation, please?”

  “Say you’re having legal problems, you’d steal the cremains of a lawyer. If you’re having family problems, you steal a therapist.”

  “If you’re having car problems, you steal a mechanic?” she joked.

  “I guess. Witchcraft stuff seems contrary to Madrigal’s cowboy image.”

  “Maybe they were Trendi’s.”

  “Possible,” he said. “I also did research on symbols drawn in blood. Didn’t turn up much of anything.”

  Vining held up her index finger. “There’s that bookstore on Lake that specializes in mystical stuff.”

  “That’s a great idea. While you go out to your mom’s, I’ll take Tink’s symbols over there and see if someone knows what they are.”

  “Sounds good. I’m going to get more coffee before I head out to my mom’s.”

  While she was in the small coffee room, pouring Irish Crème–flavored Coffee Mate into her coffee, Alex Caspers came in.

  “Morning, Nan.” He pulled a molded foam cup from a stack and filled it with coffee.

  “Hi, Alex. How are you?”

  “Livin’ the dream.”

  She laughed.

  “What?” He grinned, a mischievous look behind long curled eyelashes.

  “Hey, guess who Jim and I ran into yesterday over at Gig Towne’s and Sinclair LeFleur’s place in La Cañada Flintridge?”

  “John Chase? He’s got a nice off-duty gig there.” He stirred his coffee. “FYI, Chase keeps that on the QT around here. I mean it’s perfectly legit, it’s just that…Working for Le Towne and all. Such big stars, he doesn’t want people asking him to get autographs and stuff.”

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “Once. I met Gig and Sinclair.” He bobbled his head, mocking the significance. “That place is something, isn’t it?”

  “It is. I wonder what goes on behind the scenes.”

  “I wonder too. Gig Towne’s supposed to be kind of a nut.”

  “Is that what Chase told you?”

  “That’s what I see on TV.” Caspers made a noise through his teeth. “The Chaser can’t talk about what happens with those people. Confidentiality agreement.”

  “You guys are buddies. He doesn’t even say anything to you?”

  “Nope. He won’t talk about it other than to say that it’s a good gig and they treat him well.”

  “Why is he working two jobs? He’s not married and raising kids.”

  “He’s paying off student loans. He went to USC for his B.A.”

  “They have a criminal-justice program there?”

  “John studied ancient history.”

  “Ancient history?” Vining was surprised to learn that about the first-on-scene, throwing-them-down young cop.

  “The Chaser is a real egghead.”

  “Huh.” Vining sipped coffee and lingered for a moment. “When we saw him yesterday, he seemed like he was in pain from a headache or something. Do you know anything about that?”

  Caspers shrugged. “Maybe he did have a headache.”

  “Alex, are you holding back?”

  He looked at her. “He doesn’t talk to me about stuff like that, Nan. We’re men.”

  Vining took a sip of her coffee and nodded. “You’re right.” She left the coffee room, vowing to bring the issue up to
Chase’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Terrence Folke.

  She met Kissick walking the other direction.

  “Guess who’s in the lobby?” He didn’t wait for her response. “Kingsley Getty.”

  Vining raised her eyebrows. “That was easy.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Vining and Kissick took the stairs to look for King Getty. The open staircase gave them a view of the lobby, where a few people were waiting on the Mission-style benches against the wall. King Getty was easy to spot standing in the middle of the floor. Vining thought the tall, broad-shouldered, silver-haired man would have stood out anywhere.

  His stance was relaxed, as if he owned the place, yet there was something formal and vaguely military about him, to Vining’s eye. He spotted them right away and smiled easily, his white teeth bright against his tanned face, as he watched their descent. His light gray suit and silver-blue tie complemented his silver hair.

  Vining thought of the press clippings about her that she’d found in his nightstand drawer, making his sharp gaze feel disturbing. He was smiling at both of them, but Vining felt that he was especially scrutinizing her. Mike Rahimi, the assistant manager of his building, had probably told him that she’d gone through his apartment. Did Getty suspect that she’d searched his nightstand?

  When she and Kissick reached the lobby floor, she was disappointed in herself for feeling reticent when Getty stuck out his hand.

  He shook Kissick’s hand first. “Kingsley Getty. You must be Detective Kissick.” He turned to her. “And Detective Vining.”

  He surprised her by grasping her fingers and pulling her hand to his lips. Once she saw where this was heading, she tried to pull back, but he held on more tightly and planted a kiss on the back of her hand. She saw his eyes glint over the scar there where the creep who had ambushed her had sliced her.