Skies of Ash

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Dread gripped my insides and turned everything to ice. Maybe the conversation about a baby would’ve been better.

  The last talk between Mom and me about Tori’s ashes had occurred in my living room. After finding Tori’s remains in the basement of Crase Liquor Emporium, after forensic anthropologists and the coroner confirmed that the bones were those of Victoria Starr, and after we had approved cremation, I had suggested to Mom that we divide the ashes between us.

  Mom had gone wild-eyed. “Why would you want to separate her like that? And why does she need to be sprinkled or shoved into somebody’s box? I just got her back. How could you be so cruel?”

  Back and forth like that. Tears, accusations, and screaming.

  Greg, returned from Japan for just a week, had been upstairs packing (I had kicked him out after he’d confessed to his two-timing). But after Mom stormed out of the house, he came downstairs to find me sobbing on the couch. Over the three days of Mom and me not speaking, he held me and assured me that I wasn’t being cruel. And then he asked for another chance. Weak as I was, and feeling so very alone, I had said yes.

  After Mom and I had drifted back into speaking again, I swore to myself never to mention Tori’s ashes to her again.

  But now here we were.

  Mom gazed at me with sad eyes. “How much will a small memorial service cost?”

  I managed a one-shouldered shrug. “Don’t worry about the price—I’ll take care of that.”

  She gave a small nod, then stared into her cup. “She liked Griffith Park and the horses. Maybe we could have something near there. Remember how we would go all the time?”

  “And then,” I said, “after the horses, we’d go to the zoo, and Dad would…” Blood drained from my face, and I jammed my lips together—talking about Victor Starr could “poof” him into the kitchen à la Rumpelstiltskin. Worse, I didn’t know whether I wanted that to happen or not.

  Silence washed over the house. Then, birds in the backyard chirped. The neighbors’ sprinklers tcheted-tcheted-tcheted.

  “Do you think…?” Mom inhaled, then slowly released that breath. “Would it be too soon to have the service on New Year’s Eve?”

  I blinked at her.

  “As a celebration,” she explained. “A letting go.” Her hands fluttered in the air like butterflies until they finally settled on her chest. “And on the next day, January first, we all start the new year and…” She tugged at her earlobe. “She loved wearing those silly New Year’s Eve party hats, remember?”

  “If that’s what you want to do, Mom.” My voice sounded thirteen and small and uncertain—as though she was going to lose it again and then disappear for good and forever.

  She let out another breath. “I’ll make a guest list. Won’t be too long. Maybe you can ask Lena to handle the catering? Maybe Syeeda could write something real nice for the obituary? Will you ask them?”

  I reached for her hands. “Okay.”

  “And you’ll say something?” Tears in her eyes shone like crushed diamonds. “And maybe you can…” She slid off the bench and headed to the drawer filled with Important Stuff. She pulled out a pink plastic sleeve and returned to the nook. “You can read this,” she said, handing me the sleeve.

  I plucked a doily from the plastic and immediately recognized my big sister’s handwriting. The backward tilt of the V and the big dots over the lowercase i. It was a poem titled “I Love My Mom.” The organ in my chest twisted—I was having a heart attack.

  “I know it won’t be Valentine’s Day,” Mom said, “but she wrote this back in third grade and she gave it to me and I kept it and so I thought…”

  If I had to pick a Mom

  It would be you.

  If I could buy something for you for Valentine’s Day

  I would be happy.

  But Mom you always say I got all I need… you.

  I just want to give you something

  So I give you love.

  Happy Valentine’s.

  Love, Tori

  I wanted to swallow, but my constricted throat wouldn’t let me.

  Mom came to stand over me. She placed her hands on my shoulders and rested her chin atop my head. “You’ll read it for me?” she asked, sounding strained.

  A tear slipped down my cheek. “Yes.”

  She kissed the top of my head. “You’re a good girl, Elouise.” She slipped over to the sink and gazed out the window. “Next year this time… Wonder what we’ll be talking about?” And she prattled on about the neighbor’s new parakeet and the rising cost of gas.

  I closed my eyes.

  Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

  My heart. It was still there. It was still working.

  Why did it feel broken?

  26

  ADELINE ST. LAWRENCE LIVED IN CORONA, FIFTY MILES EAST OF LOS ANGELES, IN A California-style, two-story behemoth with columns and arched windows. Her tract home resembled every other tract home in that cul-de-sac, only St. Lawrence’s stucco exterior had been painted buckwheat instead of sandstone.

  Before I rang the bell, a woman with café au lait skin and sea-green eyes opened the door with a cell phone trapped between her right shoulder and ear. A lit cigarette from the hard pack of Parliaments she clutched dangled between her fuchsia-painted lips. The calla-lily hair clip held a lock of long blond weave behind her left ear. Glitter sparkled in her eyeliner but paled in comparison to her bejeweled ankle boots and military-style studded jacket.

  As I stood there with her, happiness chirped in my heart like a bluebird on the first day of spring.

  She was Too Much of Everything.

  “I’m on my way out,” she told me, phone still to her ear. “I’m not buyin’ nothing, I don’t need you to paint my curb, and I already know Jesus, thankyouverymuch.” The three-carat diamond on her ring finger no longer twinkled—all that acid tongue and cigarette smoke.

  I badged her.

  The woman cocked an eyebrow, then yanked the cig from her mouth. “You the cop working on Juliet’s case?”

  I nodded. “You Adeline?”

  She nodded. “We talkin’ today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought I said tomorrow.”

  “And tomorrow is today.”

  Adeline tossed the cigarette to the ground and smashed it with the toe of her boot. She slipped the phone into her jacket pocket and stomped back into the living room. Her hips and ass, clad in black satin leggings, were as wide as a mule deer’s but not as firm.

  My heart cartwheeled again.

  Too. Much.

  The house boasted nine-foot ceilings, a fireplace, and a series of covered patios. But there wasn’t much furniture. A glass coffee table there, three floor plants there, there, and over there. A wobbly-looking dining room table with two matching chairs, as well as a mahogany sideboard. Sparse. Not out of style, but out of economics. Out of living one’s dreams and still being unable to afford that dream’s furniture.

  Adeline plopped on the love seat.

  I sat on the adjoining couch.

  “Them boots is givin’ me life,” she said, eyeing my footwear. “Prada?”

  “Jimmy Choo,” I said. “And yours?”

  “Custom-made. I own six boutiques. You should come in and let my girls dress you.”

  “Maybe I will. Thanks.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Well?”

  Guess that was my cue that sartorial solidarity had ended. I pulled my notepad from my bag. “Anything you’re able to tell me about Juliet and Christopher—”

  “Including what I know about her money?” she asked.

  “Well—”

  “So her beneficiaries: the kids in one policy and her parents in the other. She wasn’t gon’ leave him shit. Fuck him—that’s what she told me. But before we really get started, Detective, I wanna put somethin’ out there.” St. Lawrence grabbed a gold cigarette case from the coffee table and pulled a smoke from the five there. “Write this down in your little notebook: Christopher Chatman
is a sociopathic son of a bitch who thinks he got everybody fooled. But he ain’t got Addy St. Lawrence fooled. And if he thinks he’s gon’ get away with killing her best friend? He needs to think again. Quote. Unquote.”

  By now, I’m sure my mouth hung open. I shifted on the couch to grab control of my interview. “So how did you and Juliet—?”

  “We all went to UCLA,” Adeline interrupted. “Jules, Christopher, Benji, and yours truly. Jules and I were roommates all four years. Back then, she had this awful feathered haircut, and her clothes… Woo, woo, woo! That girl was tacky. So she and Christopher started goin’ out, and at first she was like, why does he like me? Cuz homeboy was caught up with her. Obsessed, in my opinion. Back then, though, Jules thought I was bein’ dramatic. Hmph. Guess who was right? Me, that’s who.”

  Five minutes in and my underarms were already prickly with sweat.

  Adeline hopped up and stepped over to the sideboard. She grabbed a photo album from the top shelf and returned to the couch. “Lemme show you somethin’.” She flipped through pages that stuck together and smelled of cigarette smoke and old glue. She stopped at a picture and tapped it. “I took this on their first date. See how he’s lookin’ at her?”

  In the photograph, Juliet was smiling, closed mouth, tiny and dowdy with that feathered hair and an ill-fitting ruffled blouse. Christopher Chatman, not as small, quietly handsome and big-eyed, did not look at the camera. Instead, he smiled down at her. Although I couldn’t see his full face, I did see awe in his expression. He was, as St. Lawrence said, caught up.

  “Dude was crazy, even back then,” she said.

  “Crazy in love, maybe,” I said.

  She smirked. “I see he got you fooled, too.”

  My cheeks warmed. “But I’m sure you’ll straighten me out.”

  She tapped ashes into a Grand Canyon ashtray on the coffee table. “I was like her big sister. Took her to get her eyebrows waxed the first time. Took her to Vegas for her first legal drink. Told her the truth about men and sex—somebody had to since her momma wouldn’t. I was the one who begged Juliet to slow down and to date other guys but…”

  She took a drag, then peered at me through tendrils of smoke. “Christopher paid for everything. Juliet’s books, her meal plans, sometimes some of her tuition. She thought he was bein’ nice and generous. I thought he was being a control freak, makin’ her dependent on him, buyin’ her love.” She turned a page in the album, touching every other picture of the Chatmans’ Once Upon a Time. Pictures of Christopher and Juliet together were almost always the same—Juliet facing the camera, Christopher looking down at Juliet.

  And I thought of other pictures I’d come across in the investigation—in almost every shot, Christopher was looking at Juliet. But she never looked at him.

  “When did things get serious between them?” I asked.

  Smoke curled from Adeline’s nostrils. “He proposed to her in the middle of our junior year. She turned him down. Told him that they were too young to get married. That was true. Then, he asked her again at the start of senior year. She said, ‘not yet, still too young.’ ” The woman dumped more ashes into the ashtray. “That wasn’t true.”

  “Because?” I asked.

  She smirked. “Juliet didn’t wanna marry him cuz she was in love with somebody else. And she ended up in the other dude’s bed, and he got turned out cuz I taught her every trick in the book.”

  My eyes bugged, and I almost forgot that I was working a case and not catching up on gossip with a college girlfriend. “So who was this other guy?”

  Adeline smoked but said nothing.

  “Everything you tell me is confidential,” I said.

  “For how long?”

  “Until the court case. So when did Juliet finally accept Christopher’s proposal?”

  “On Valentine’s Day, senior year. By now, the other guy had told her that he didn’t feel that way about her, that it was just about sex. So Juliet, rejected, went back to Christopher, heartbroken. He took her to dinner at Monty’s Steakhouse at the base of campus and gave her a sapphire and diamond engagement ring. She never took that ring off.”

  That ring now sat in a coroner’s cabinet, in an envelope with her wedding band and diamond stud earrings.

  “She did love Christopher,” Adeline continued. “Hated him but loved him until the day she died.” Mouth set into a frown, she studied the photograph she had snapped on her friend’s engagement night.

  “Did he ever cheat on her?” I asked.

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Who’d want his scrawny, weak ass?”

  “So Juliet never expressed concern about him and Melissa Kemper fooling around?”

  “Jules woulda told me if she suspected that he was screwing around. Hell, he could barely get it up with her.”

  So another “no affair” in the Melissa Kemper column.

  Adeline snorted. “Melissa Kemper. That woman was a hot. Ass. Mess. She was too busy tryin’ to get up in Benji’s bed. You meet Mr. Oliver yet?”

  I nodded.

  She lifted an eyebrow.

  “Okay, yes, I have met him and yes… Yes. Did he and Melissa…?”

  She snorted again. “Not even in her dreams. And she sure as hell don’t want Sarah comin’ after her. Lady Lawyer got that man under lock and key.”

  Adeline continued to talk as she set out a plate of Lorna Doones and bottles of Snapple. She told me that everyone had graduated from college; that Juliet, a biology major, had failed to get into medical school and decided to become a pharmaceutical rep instead; that Christopher had been accepted to UCLA’s Anderson School of Management; and that Juliet kept postponing their wedding. It had been Maris Weatherbee who had forced her daughter to pick a date and stick with it. “The thing with that…” St. Lawrence paused with the mouth of the Snapple bottle touching her lips.

  When she didn’t continue, I said, “The thing with… what?”

  Adeline blinked, then sat back. “I just remembered somethin’.” She waggled her head, and placed the bottle on the table.

  “Is it something I should know?”

  She let out a long sigh. “Jules was a drama queen.”

  Just like her best friend.

  The woman shook her head again. “Nothin’. Never mind.”

  I leaned forward. “Addy, please tell me.”

  She stared at me, deciding whether or not to talk. “Jules didn’t…” She poked her tongue against the inside of her cheek. “She, umm… She was unhappy, so she took a bunch of pills, but she didn’t mean to kill herself. She was just…” Her lower lip quivered. “I swore to her that I’d never… It was all a mistake. Can we…?” She took a deep breath, then held it.

  “Juliet quit working,” I said, taking a new direction.

  “Right before Chloe was born,” Adeline confirmed. “She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. She was old-fashioned that way.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “But?”

  “But she got bored.” Adeline sighed, gaining confidence again. “How many times can you do laundry and make macaroni and do playdates and play patty-cakes in a day? So she got pissed off a lot because now she had time to pay attention to her marriage and to that house.”

  “Did her dissatisfaction… lead her elsewhere?”

  Adeline smirked. “Like to a motel?” She grabbed the bottle of iced tea, screwed off the top, and sipped.

  I waited, but the woman didn’t speak. “Did she have an affair?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “With?”

  Adeline shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Cuz shit gon’ get twisted and that hobbit motherfucka will get to twist shit some more and Juliet ain’t here to defend—”

  “That’s my job, Addy,” I said, touching her wrist. “I will speak for her and for the kids. I will keep shit from twisting as much as I can. But you need to tell me shit straight. So who did she see?”

  “Jules wouldn’t tell me their real nam
es,” she admitted.

  “Why not?”

  Adeline shrugged. “Guess she enjoyed keeping some stuff to herself, this… secret life she led.” She stared at the Snapple label as she thought. “Jules was unhappy. She was depressed, and she was ashamed that she’d gone outside her marriage. And she stayed that way, ashamed, even though she tried to hide it. But I saw it. We went to lunch last week, and I saw it. She thought she could hide it behind eye shadow and diamond earrings, but she had that cocaine confidence, ’cept it was wine and not blow.” Adeline shrugged. “I saw just how… messed up she was. I didn’t like it.”

  “Was Juliet…? Did she ever attempt suicide again? Or even talk about being tired and just ending it? I ask because we found a strange letter that could be taken as a suicide note.”

  Adeline wedged the bottle between her knees.

  “Was Juliet Chatman—?”

  “I heard your question,” she snapped, fire in her eyes.

  “She was?”

  Adeline shook her head.

  “She wasn’t?”

  She shook her head again.

  “So she marries Christopher,” I said, pissed that I drove all the way to effin’ Corona to be cock-blocked by a chick wearing a fake flower in her hair. “Were they happy for the most part?”

  “At first,” Adeline said, “but the last nine years she was always stressed about somethin’. The kids, the house, him. She found out… He was… This is all just…” Her jaw tightened, and the vein in her forehead bulged. Boom! A sob broke from her chest, and then another sob followed, and soon she was fully weeping into her hands.

  My mind whirled as she bawled—Juliet was stressed about what? She found out what? He was what? This is all just what?

  Juliet was a suicidal type. Juliet was an adulteress type. And this coming from her best friend, who was now whispering, “I’m so sorry,” and, “Thought I was through crying,” as she dabbed at her eyes with napkins until another wave of anguish knocked her down.

  Five minutes later, and all cried out, Adeline took a deep breath and released it through pursed lips. She squared her shoulders, then said, “Okay. Okay. What…?”

  “We were discussing their marriage,” I said. “And there’s no need to rush.”