Love Kills

by Dianne Emley

  He walked out the door and she closed it, also feeling as if she were closing the door on her years as a single divorcée. She was with Jim Kissick now. She knew that that fact had not been hazy for him, but it had been for her. That was no longer the case.

  She called Desiree Peck, one of the two LAPD detectives investigating the Vince Madrigal and Trendi Talbot murders. She reached her right away and told her about finding Madrigal’s signature wiretaps at her mother’s town house and Catherine Engleford’s home.

  “He had a listening post set up in the back of a North Hollywood nightclub that a mob-connected buddy of his owned,” Peck said. “Someone cleaned out all the video and audio recordings and computers in the early morning after Madrigal and Trendi were killed. Madrigal’s Beverly Hills office was cleaned out too. Computers, cameras, files. Everything.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Do you have any idea why Madrigal bugged your mother’s place?”

  “No.” That was mostly true.

  “We’re trying to find a friend of Trendi’s, a woman named Cheyenne Leon,” Peck said. “She worked for your deceased woman, Catherine Engleford. Do you have any idea where she is?”

  Vining told a white lie. “We interviewed her yesterday morning. We haven’t eliminated her as a suspect in Mrs. Engleford’s death. We don’t know where she is now.” She left out the information about Carmen Vidal promising to make Cheyenne available. Cheyenne didn’t like talking to cops, and Vining didn’t want to sic the LAPD on her and have her disappear.

  “The way our investigations overlap, working together we’ll close them that much more quickly.”

  “Absolutely.” Vining didn’t feel too bad lying to Peck.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Kissick pulled into the parking lot behind the Transformation Bookstore on South Lake Avenue. When he got out of the car, the aroma of cooking meat wafted toward him from Burger Continental a few doors down. A wooden staircase led to the Yoga Kingdom studio above the bookstore.

  California Pharmacy, a longtime local Pasadena business, was shuttered. Its customers’ prescriptions had been transferred to the new Walgreens across the street. It was another gong of the death knell for small businesses in Pasadena, slow erosion that was largely going unnoticed except by its graying residents.

  The cooking smells made Kissick realize he was starving. He entered Burger Continental from the parking lot through the back, crossing a tented outdoor space with tables and plastic chairs. There were a few tables in the front and on the sidewalk, but on the weekends, the action was in the back, where musicians played Armenian songs, and a belly dancer who was getting up in years shimmed for tips around the regulars at this family-owned eatery.

  Kissick polished off a lula kebab of ground spiced lamb and beef on pita with French fries and a wedge of baklava.

  Leaving the domain of savory meats, he entered a world of incense in the bookstore. Wind chimes were displayed on a hat rack. There were yoga clothes, mats, crystal balls, candles, and even voodoo dolls. Bookshelves divided the space into nooks. Calligraphy signs designated the topics: New Age Spiritualism; Eastern Philosophy; Western Philosophy; Occult; Diet and Health.

  Two young women with no discernable body fat and yoga mats in cases slung over their shoulders were looking over the incense display. When Kissick approached, they looked at him, their eyes bright and faces calm, as if they were still blissed out from their yoga class and on another plane.

  While the yoga gals seemed to be walking in the light, the clerk was drawn toward a darker world. Her hair was dyed jet black and asymmetrically cut, with tendrils like spiderwebs against her face. Her eyebrows were plucked into a clownish arch. Among her many piercings was a piece of silver shaped like a tiny dagger through her lower lip. She wore a white starched blouse with ruffles down the front and on the sleeves, the ruffles nearly covering her hands.

  A winsome smile framed by black-cherry lips was incongruous with the dark image she sought to create. She stood from her chair and asked, “Can I help you?” She wasn’t very tall, and her round figure was on display in a pair of peg-leg jeans.

  He saw the yoga gals glide from the store as he handed the clerk his card. “I’m Detective Jim Kissick with the Pasadena police. I was hoping you might be able to help me with some items that might be related to the occult.”

  “Sure. I can help you.” Her ease in his presence told him that she’d not been in trouble with the law or had negative experiences with cops. “I’m a practicing witch,” she informed him.

  “Oh…Great.” Just when he thought he’d heard everything. “What’s your name, please?”

  “Magick with a K.”

  “Last name.” He jotted on his spiral pad.

  “Just Magick.”

  “And your given name?”

  “I don’t need it anymore.” She made a motion with both hands, as if parting the waters and putting the past behind her.

  She observed him with the same calm, open gaze as the yoga gals, as if she could see through him. It was a technique he’d mastered.

  “You know how us cops are, by the book. Could I have your given name, please?”

  “My parents named me Sarah Meacham.” She shrugged as if the name was of no consequence. “What did you want to ask about?”

  He took out the originals of the papers with the weird symbols that Vining had put in the Baggies and set them on the counter.

  “Sigils,” she said. “Nice ones.”

  “Sigils?”

  “It’s a type of spell-casting from combining symbols and letters. Each person builds their own. No two are alike. They’re designed to convey a specific intent. Something the person wants to manifest. This one looks like it’s drawn in blood.” She picked it up and held it in the light.

  “Does that mean anything?”

  “Sigils are often anointed with blood or sexual fluids to increase their power. These two are burnt. Burning a finalized sigil is a way of charging it or imbuing it with power.”

  Kissick still thought that Cheyenne had burned these papers to destroy evidence. Even though he thought this witchcraft business was nonsense, he found it ironic that perhaps Cheyenne had inadvertently given power to Tink’s wishes by burning them.

  “What would a person want to manifest, for example?”

  “Any of your heart’s desires. Love is a big one. Looking for love in general or wanting someone in particular to fall in love with you.” With her finger, she outlined the symbol on one of the burnt pages. “Or it could be something mundane, like, ‘Heal me from the flu,’ or ‘Guide me to the right new car.’ If you want to find out what these mean, why don’t you ask the person who drew them?”

  “She’s deceased.”

  “Oh.” Magick looked at the sigils more intently. “Murder?”

  “Her death is under investigation.”

  “I see.” She compared the three pages. “These look like variations of the same message.”

  “Can you read them?”

  “No, but I can see that the style is similar.” Magick stepped from behind the counter. “We have books on sigilry.”

  He followed her as she went to a cubbyhole between bookshelves in the Occult section. She took down a large paperback and carried it to the counter.

  “There are lots of ways to create sigils.” She flipped through the pages and then held the book open on the counter.

  “Here’s one way. You start by writing your intention in a single line. Let’s say it’s: ‘Guide me to the right new car.’”

  She grabbed a notepad and wrote the sentence in block letters.

  “Then you cross out all the vowels.” She drew slashes through the vowels. “Then you cross out any letters that repeat. You have a few letters left.”

  She rewrote the letters that she hadn’t crossed out on a new line.

  “Then you lay the letters on top of each other, transforming them, moving them…You can make them masculine, with no curves and all angles. Yours l
ook feminine with all the circles and curves.”

  Taking a fresh piece of paper, she started drawing her set of letters, overlapping the edges, forming a W on the back of an N, tacking a C atop the N’s arm. “You follow your intuition.”

  “When is it finished?”

  “When you feel that it’s finished. You should draw the finished form only once and put it in a sacred, secret place. Some people have tattoos done of their sigils.”

  “Do you have any idea of the message in these?”

  Magick shook her head. “They’re like snowflakes. This magic belongs to that individual.”

  He gathered up the sigils. “Thank you. I’ll buy this book.”

  While he took out his wallet, she picked up a deck of tarot cards and started shuffling them, pulling the deck apart and weaving it back together. She tapped the cards against the counter and slid the deck toward him. “Would you cut the deck, please?”

  He reached toward the deck without thinking but stopped before he touched the cards. “Why?”

  “It might guide you in your quest.”

  Against his better judgment, he cut the cards.

  She put the two halves together and slid off the first card. “The Queen of Swords. A courageous, smart woman who’s suffered deep sorrow or loss.” She slid off the next card and placed it beneath the first card. “The Ten of Pentacles. Signifies wealth. Family fortune.”

  When she turned over the next card, she hesitated before setting it sideways below the other two. “The Devil. Its position means uncontrolled ambition. Greed. True evil.”

  She moved her hands away from the cards and lowered them to her sides. “While I was shuffling the cards, I tried to manifest the intent of the person who created those sigils. I would say that it’s a woman. Someone of wealth and intelligence, and she’s mixed up with evil.” She looked somberly at Kissick.

  He picked up the book. “Thank you, Sarah…er, Magick. You’ve been very helpful.” As soon as he was outside, he muttered, “What a crock.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Vining arrived to meet Vicki Hotchkins at Jones Coffee Roasters, which was tucked into a small industrial park on South Raymond in Pasadena. Vicki was ensconced with her laptop in an overstuffed chair, sitting with both legs tucked beneath her gauzy skirt.

  A coffee bar and a wall of Plexiglas dispensers stocked with roasted beans were across from the seating area. In the back was a giant stainless steel roaster. The shop’s beans were grown on family property in Guatemala. During roasting times, the aromatic fumes wafting from the rooftop chimneys scented a several-block radius.

  On a couch, a young man in a shirt and tie was manically tapping his thumbs on a PDA that he held between both hands. His head of spiky gelled hair moved in time with his efforts.

  Vicki reached for a large container of coffee on an end table and noticed Vining coming in. She set the laptop aside, unfurled her legs from beneath her skirt, slipped her feet into sandals, and rose to greet her.

  Vining was amazed that Vicki could sit comfortably with her legs twisted beneath her—something she couldn’t do, especially after years of police work had taken its toll. Unlike her mother and Tink, who both dieted relentlessly to stay rail-thin, Vicki had eased into comfortable acceptance of her middle-age spread.

  “Hi, honey.” Vicki gave her a warm hug. She’d stopped dying her hair back to brown in her forties when the gray became overwhelming, and switched to a silvery blonde that made her gray roots less obvious. She wore it in a short, chic style, long on top and feathered at the sides. Her eyes were bloodshot, betraying the Ramona Girls’ late-night slumber party and reacquaintance with Boone’s Farm.

  Her necklace of multicolored beads matched her skirt. Her earrings, with a shower of small beads, and her beaded bracelet matched her necklace.

  Vining reflected that this generation of women loved their matching jewelry. She lingered as she returned Vicki’s hug, enjoying this affectionate embrace from a woman her mother’s age who embodied qualities that Vining longed for in her mother: warmth, wisdom, fairness, and fierceness. She needed such a hug right now, after having done what she’d long dreaded, but knew she’d have to face eventually—pulling back the veil on Patsy’s life.

  Vicki held her at arm’s length, smiling with her lips closed. With her high-heeled sandals, the top of her head was eye-level with Vining’s eyes.

  “Oh, honey…” Vicki saw the distress in Vining’s face and hugged her again, stroking her back. “This must be so hard on you. Tink drowning. You just don’t get any peace, do you?”

  “Seems that way sometimes.”

  “How about a coffee? I could use a fresh one. What would you like?”

  “Just a small black coffee. Thank you.” Vining understood why Vicki was a much-beloved high school principal. There was warmth, but the strength behind it came through too.

  Vicki returned with the coffees and handed one to Vining. She slipped her feet from her shoes, again tucked them beneath her as she sat, and smoothed her skirt over her legs.

  The steam from the coffee felt good against Vining’s face. “How is Tink’s mother?”

  Vicki pursed her lips. “She has moderate Alzheimer’s. Tink moved her into an assisted-living facility in Pasadena. Gorgeous place. We told her about Tink. We explained what happened and she understood. She cried. Her short-term memory is gone. Actually, by the time we’d left about an hour later, I don’t think she remembered why we’d come. We girls were talking after and decided that it could be a blessing to forget certain things.”

  Vining pulled back a corner of her mouth, thinking she could be right. “Did Tink have any other relatives?”

  “Her brother Greg. Tink’s relationship with him and his longtime girlfriend was cordial but distant. He lives on a houseboat in Sausalito in San Francisco Bay. Gets by as a housepainter. He had little contact with Tink, and I don’t think he’s called his mother for years. When I called him to tell him about Tink, he was more upset about being left in charge of his mother than he was about Tink’s death. Bastard was relieved when I told him that Tink made me her mother’s guardian. I’m also executor of Tink’s will. She made her final wishes clear. The funeral will be at the Church of the Angels with Father Bob officiating. She’ll be buried beside her son and husband in the Engleford plot at San Gabriel Cemetery in the dress she wore when she married Stan. After, there’ll be a reception at Annandale with mariachis.”

  “Mariachis?”

  “Yep. That’s what she wanted.” Vicki smiled and shook her head.

  Vining thought about the conflicting picture she had of Tink. There was Tink the socialite party girl. There was responsible and generous Tink, raising funds for good causes, taking care of her mother, and making sure her final wishes were taken care of. And there was Tink’s dark secret side. For Vining, it called to mind her experience at the Le Towne mansion. All the gaiety and joking in Gig Towne’s office was undone by the sight of a very troubled Sinclair LeFleur.

  “Nan, have you found out what happened to Tink or can you say?”

  Vining took a sip of coffee before saying, “The autopsy is complete. The medical examiner said she drowned. No evidence of a physical event, like a stroke, that would have caused her to topple into the pool, but she was slightly drunk. The toxicology workups take a couple of weeks, so the coroner won’t issue a final report until then.”

  Vicki suddenly lost her composure, looking away with her hand over her mouth and her eyes pressed shut. After a few seconds, she said, “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I miss her so much. It hasn’t really sunk in, that I can’t pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, Tinker Bell.’ And she’d say, ‘Hey, Stinky. What’s shakin’?’”

  “Stinky?”

  Vicki waved off discussion. “Don’t ask. And I’d say, ‘Too much is shakin’.’”

  They both laughed.

  Vicki rested her coffee cup against her thigh. “In Tink’s will, she amply p
rovided for her mother. She left Mary Alice a painting she’d admired. Left me one also and a portrait of her when she was twelve that her mother had painted. It used to hang over the fireplace in her parents’ home. She was very generous with your mother too. She left her nearly all her jewelry. It’s appraised at close to a million dollars, Nan.”

  Vining gasped.

  “I was surprised, too. In her will, Tink said she was leaving Patsy her jewelry because Patsy had helped her get through the black times after her son and husband had died. We have to give your mom credit for what she did to help Tink hold it together. She got Tink out of bed. Made her put on clean clothes and brush her hair. We all helped, but Patsy really stood by her. Tink said she was leaving Patsy her jewelry because Patsy had admired it and had always wanted beautiful jewelry of her own.”

  “I’m speechless. Does my mother know?”

  “Not yet. I need to go over the documents with Tink’s attorney. Tink kept a few pieces of jewelry that she wore a lot at home, but the rest is in a safe-deposit box.” Vicki set her coffee cup on an end table. “She left most of the rest to charities, her church, and her schools. Ramona Convent and Notre Dame are each getting seven figures. She left money to more than a dozen charities. The way Tink lived and breathed Georgia Berryhill, I had a nightmare that she’d leave her everything. I hoped that Tink had better sense and I was right, although she did leave two million to Georgia’s Girls.” Vicki smirked. “Tink’s bequest is set to fund a new Engleford Wing in the dorm.”

  “Where is the Georgia’s Girls facility?” Vining asked.

  “It’s on the grounds of the Berryhill compound. Big white house. Tink showed us around during our girls’ weekend there. I guess it’s all right. I just don’t like the whole slick Berryhill thing.”

  Vining thought about her mother and Vince Madrigal. “Vicki, are you sure my mother didn’t know about the jewelry Tink was leaving her?”

  “I don’t think so. Unless Tink told her, but I doubt that. You know your mother can’t keep a secret. We all would have known about it.”

  Vining wondered if somehow Vince Madrigal had found out about Tink’s large bequest to Patsy. “Did Tink ever mention someone named Vince Madrigal?”