Maggie and the Mourning Beads

by Barbara Cool Lee

  Jasper grinned at her in the rearview mirror, with a look that said he was more contented than she'd ever seen him. Look at me with my boy, Jasper's expression said. This is how things should be.

  She hoped it would last. A boy and his dog headed for a week of play at the beach was a lot safer than the world of celebrity that threatened this child as much as it had his father.

  Chapter Ten

  "You can do it," Maggie said.

  Jasper gave her a big, open-mouthed smile. He took another step down the beach stairs that led from Casablanca to Carita Cove's white sands.

  "Just a few more."

  He wagged his tail, showing how happy he was to be finally spend a morning at the beach.

  It took them a long time, but they finally reached the sand. She sat with the dog for a while on the bottom step, giving him a chance to rest.

  She patted his back through his blue T-shirt, and he leaned against her, almost knocking her sideways.

  But soon he got up and started pulling on the leash to let her know he was ready to go on.

  They turned right, heading toward the north end of the sandy stretch that fronted The Row, the string of luxury houses on the oceanfront cliff above them.

  It wasn't long before they came to the beach volleyball courts that were permanently set up on the sand. A casual pick-up game was going on, but the players were really good, and several people had stopped to watch them.

  Maggie stopped there to let Jasper rest, and then pulled out her phone. She scrolled through text messages to see if she'd gotten a notice from the delivery company. Nope. No shipping notices, no delivery notices. She was getting worried that the new volleyball charms wouldn't arrive in time.

  "They're great, aren't they?" someone said.

  At the same time, she felt a big tug on her arm as Jasper lunged to the end of the leash. "Hey!" she said, trying to pull him back.

  She turned toward Jasper, and saw he was prancing and sidestepping against a big German Shepherd dog, who stood still as if above such nonsense.

  "Hendrix!" she said happily, and he looked to his owner, then, when she gave him a nod, he stepped forward to be petted.

  Jasper slobbered all over him and kissed him. Hendrix took it well, with the dignity of an older dog who'd passed his Canine Good Citizen Test with flying colors.

  "Oh, Jasper! Settle down," Maggie said, laughing at his joy at seeing his buddy.

  "And how are you?" Lauren Douglas said. "You holding up okay?"

  She was wearing her pearl necklace with the onyx angel, its crystal wings sparkling in the sunlight. "You finished your memorial necklace," Maggie said, and Lauren nodded, her smile vanishing suddenly as she touched it. She still didn't say more about it, but it seemed to give her comfort to hold it, and Maggie felt happy that the class had done at least one person some good.

  "I need to finish mine," she said to Lauren. "I had a beginner class right after the mourning beads class, and then…."

  "And then you found a dead body," Lauren finished. "I heard."

  "Right," Maggie said. "You probably learned about it just after I did." Lauren worked as a records clerk for the police department, so she was always up on the latest police news.

  "So how are you?" Lauren asked. "You holding up okay?"

  Maggie nodded. "I had bad dreams last night," she said honestly. "But I'm over it today. Jasper and I are moving on with our lives now."

  They started to walk on the beach, away from the crowd at the volleyball net. The two big dogs kept bumping each other, so they let go of the leashes and let them play a bit, though Maggie kept an eye on Jasper to make sure he didn't hurt himself.

  The boys romped down to the surfline, splashing in the water and getting their thick coats soaked. Jasper's limp was much less noticeable, but he was excited, and Maggie figured it would catch up with him later. But he needed to stretch his muscles, so she let him go.

  "He's doing a lot better," Lauren observed.

  "Yeah. He has no trauma about the injury. He's just working his way back into shape as it heals. It's amazing how resilient they are."

  Lauren gave her a pointed look. "And you?"

  "I'm feeling a bit less resilient than my dog, if that's your question."

  "When they catch those two you'll be able to relax," Lauren said.

  "Those two?"

  "Willow and Grey."

  Maggie shook her head. "We don't know they did it."

  Lauren gave her a skeptical look. "We? Who's we? The police are pretty sure they did it. That girl even joked about strangling her mother with the mourning necklace, Maggie."

  Maggie stopped walking. "I didn't tell the police that. Oh," she added. "You were there when she said it."

  "Yeah. Ibarra was a bit surprised when I told him what Willow had said."

  "Surprised?"

  "That you didn't mention it to him when you gave your statement."

  "I… forgot," Maggie said.

  "Sure you did, Maggie."

  "So that's why he called me yesterday." Lauren gave her a curious look and Maggie explained that Ibarra had called her to ask her yet again if she knew where the kids were.

  "I'm not surprised he did that," Lauren said. "You've had two days to remember Willow threatened her mother and somehow it slipped your mind."

  "I just wasn't thinking about it," Maggie replied. "Really. I've been dealing with other stuff. And anyway, I am so sure Willow's not a killer that I wasn't thinking about clues that could make her look guilty."

  "I get it, really I do. But feeling sorry for them doesn't make the situation better. They need to be arrested before it gets any worse for them."

  "You sound so positive they did it. Why are you so sure?"

  "Willow's fingerprints were on the murder weapon—"

  "—but I saw her put her hand on the knife when her mother was slashing the paintings. I told the police that."

  "Right. When you saw them screaming at each other. Right before she joked about killing her mother."

  "That's all circumstantial. Don't you think people ever get railroaded by circumstantial evidence?"

  Something flashed across Lauren's face—doubt, maybe. Then she shook her head firmly. "I heard what she said. And you did, too. And they disappeared. No one has seen them now for two days after her mother was murdered. Do you think they just happened to run away at the same time she was killed? Get real."

  "I just don't believe it," Maggie said. "It seems too simple."

  "Sometimes murder is that simple. Somebody gets mad, and snaps, and kills someone. It's not always a great big mystery, Maggie."

  Jasper came up to Maggie and bumped against her hip, sending her sideways. He was soaking wet, and her jeans got all damp from his bumps, but he was too happy for her to scold him.

  She grabbed onto his leash, though. He strained against her a bit, but she gave him the heel command and he stopped pulling and walked reasonably well by her side, probably because he was too tired to yank her off her feet.

  Lauren gave a hand signal to Hendrix, and the dog made a crisp U-turn to come to her side and sit primly. She picked up his leash and with another hand signal, he began to walk nicely beside her on a loose lead.

  "I need to work on our training more," Maggie said. "Jasper still thinks obeying is optional."

  "That's because you're not firm with him. He wants to please you, but he needs to know that ignoring you doesn't get him the reward he wants."

  "Like treats?" she asked.

  "Your attention," she replied. "That's really what he wants from you. Knowing he's a good boy and is doing what you want makes him happier than anything else."

  Maggie leaned over to give Jasper a big hug. "You know you're a good boy, don't you?"

  He licked her face.

  Chapter Eleven

  After Lauren and Hendrix left, Maggie helped Jasper up the stairs from the beach. "Only a few more, pup. You can do it."

  Jasper was game, and climbed each s
tair one at a time. On the landing halfway up they paused to catch their breath. She rubbed his back and praised him lavishly. "You are so good," she said. "You're doing great."

  He grinned at her and wagged his tail, then got up and took the next stair on his own. She followed slowly, letting him set his own pace. Unlike a person, he made no excuses for being weak. He just kept trying.

  "Good boy," she told him with each step. "Just a few more."

  When they got closer to the top of the stairs, Maggie realized there was an eerie wail coming from Casablanca.

  It was a droning sound, like a low-pitched engine straining to climb a hill.

  When they reached the top she let go of Jasper's leash, and he limped over to a man kneeling on the lawn overlooking the pool. The man knelt at the foot of the rusted wave sculpture, deep in meditation. It had been his rumbling om noises that she had been hearing.

  The sculpture echoed his voice with a metallic clanking of its own every time the breeze brushed through the rusted rebar, but he didn't move.

  Jasper licked the man on the face, and he calmly opened his eyes and smiled.

  Most people would be startled by a huge dog suddenly licking them while their eyes were closed, but not Eddie Zimmer.

  "Hello," he said serenely, first to Jasper and then to her.

  "Hi, Eddie."

  With remarkably little effort, he got to his feet. Eddie was a short man with dark curls and lively brown eyes. And he had the look of someone formerly famous—like you knew you'd seen him before somewhere, but couldn't quite place him. His eyes held a calmness that was almost intoxicating, like a deep, still pool.

  "Waiting long?" she asked.

  He stretched, apparently not the slightest bit sore from kneeling long enough to leave an indentation in the grass.

  "Time is just an artificial construct," he said softly. "After all, what is time?"

  "I don't know, Eddie. I just know I don't have enough of it."

  Jasper came back over to her and bumped her. She stroked his long nose absently.

  "We have all the time we need," Eddie said. He went over to the patio table, his very slight limp a reminder of the car accident he'd survived eleven years ago. There was a thick portfolio on the table. He got out his phone and checked his messages.

  "How are the kids?" she asked.

  He gave her that same peaceful smile. "They're wonderful." He was the former rock star who had married Paige, the yoga teacher. They had two little girls, Lotus and Serenity, who were adorable and filled with the same calm and generous spirits as their parents. Last time she'd seen the children they were rescuing bugs that had fallen into their cat's water dish. They fished the insects out and then placed them on a rock in the sunshine to recover from their near-death experience, watching over them fretfully until they gathered enough strength to fly away. "All life is sacred," little Lotus had told her when she'd asked what they were doing.

  "Can I get you anything, Eddie?" she asked him.

  He shook his head. "I'm meeting Reese here. I need to head him off so he doesn't go to the board meeting downtown this afternoon."

  Eddie had started a foundation to fight childhood hunger around the world, and Reese provided most of the behind-the-scenes support. "Head him off?" she asked.

  "Olivia is going to be there."

  "Oh?" she replied. "That's interesting." So Olivia had come to Carita the moment her little scheme to intimidate Reese hadn't worked. "It must be hard to juggle," she said, "with the two of them both on the charity's board of directors."

  He shrugged. "Reese is the main financial backer for the organization, of course. But Olivia is a hustler—"

  "—In more ways than one," Maggie said wryly.

  "Yeah. And she brings a lot of attention to the cause. So as long as I can keep them from strangling each other, the children win. And that's all that matters."

  No Drama Eddie. Being around the Zimmers was always so relaxing. Maggie wondered if she could ever reach that level of Zen herself, and decided she was never going to get there.

  "Would you like some coffee while you wait?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "I have water, thanks."

  Of course he did.

  He got out his bottle of water and took a big drink.

  The water had probably come from a remote mountain glacier or something, and was filled with organic minerals that had been collected in a just and compassionate manner by well-paid native workers who had a good retirement plan.

  Eddie was one of the truest of true believers in a natural, healthy existence. His family was totally devoted to a pure lifestyle of clean living and good deeds.

  She couldn't really fault Eddie on his extreme pursuit of goodness, though. He was almost unrecognizable now in his new identity as a healthy New Age guru. A dozen years ago he had been a gaunt, sallow-faced rock star who shot up heroin and stumbled out of nightclubs at dawn with groupies trailing in his wake.

  His life was an amazing transformation, as dramatic as Reese's own had been.

  Reese and Shane got home then, and came out to the backyard.

  "Hey, squirt. You've gotten tall." Eddie ruffled Shane's hair, getting a smile from the boy in return.

  "Hi, Uncle Eddie," Shane said, showing more enthusiasm than he had at seeing his own father.

  "You remember me," Eddie said. "I'm glad."

  "Yeah," Shane said. "I remember lots of stuff."

  Reese pursed his lips and Maggie wondered if that was a dig at his father, but then the moment passed, and Reese and Eddie said hello.

  The two men hugged as they greeted each other, like fellow soldiers reuniting after a battle.

  Not a bad analogy for what they'd been through together.

  Somehow they'd remained friends through it all, in a way only life-scarred veterans could.

  "What?" Reese asked when he caught her smiling at them.

  She shrugged. "Nothing. Just thinking about the dog." She grabbed Jasper's leash and took him back to her tiny house out front.

  She helped Jasper up the stairs into the trailer, and he immediately went to sleep on the floor, finally worn out by all the exercise.

  She made herself a cup of coffee, and put her feet up on the daybed, and thought about Reese and Eddie.

  Eddie had always been an enigma to her, but now that she was spending more time around Reese, she was beginning to understand him.

  It all went back to Deep Creek. Both the little town in the farthest corner of northeastern California, and the band of the same name that had come from there.

  The men had been country boys from a high desert town in the middle of nowhere. Two pairs of brothers had started a band in high school: Eddie and his brother David, and Reese and his brother Frank.

  Success had struck them like a lightning bolt, and they'd spent years wrestling with the drugs, fame, and sycophants.

  And then it all crashed down when Reese, in a drugged stupor, drove his car into a tree and killed Eddie's brother, a gifted guitar player known as "The Zim" to fans, but to Reese simply as his best friend, David.

  The Zim became sanctified in death as a rock-n-roll legend. A million people visited his guitar-shaped headstone at Mount Sinai in LA each year. That legacy was a lot for anyone to survive. But somehow the others had.

  Reese's brother Frank had left Los Angeles the day after the accident. Maggie had never met him, but Reese had once told her Frank worked on the family farm back in Deep Creek.

  After the crash, Eddie had disappeared on a years-long journey to find himself. When he returned, all his addictions and frustrations were gone. Now he was a serene Zen master married to a yoga teacher. They had a home in LA, but spent most of their time here, in Carita, where Eddie had an office to manage his charitable foundation.

  The couple dedicated their entire existence to bettering the lives of disadvantaged children, and to raising their two angelic little daughters.

  It was all so stereotypically New Age-y that Magg
ie would normally find herself rolling her eyes at it, but in Eddie's case, she couldn't.

  Eddie had been as damaged a soul as Reese. And it was his own brother who'd died in the car crash that broke up the band. Who was she to judge his way of coping with the destruction of all their lives?

  She knew one thing: if she ever had kids—which was looking pretty unlikely given her lack of love life—she was keeping them far away from show business.

  Jasper rolled over on his back, knocking into the craft lamp.

  She jumped up to catch it before it fell, and the dog lay there on the floor at her feet, his furry white belly exposed, and a big grin on his face.

  "If they do a remake of Lassie, you are not getting the part," she told him firmly. "No kid of mine will come within a hundred miles of Hollywood."

  Chapter Twelve

  The third day after the murder things were quiet, with no progress in solving the case, and no sign of the two missing teens.

  Abby came in to the bead shop mid-morning. She was still subdued, though she'd returned to her normal black clothing, and Maggie for a moment thought maybe all was well between her and Harper.

  But no.

  "I just like my clothes," Abby said when Maggie asked. "I didn't feel like myself in those bright colors. I don't have to change my style just because I'm not seeing… anyone… right now."

  "Okay. Not that it's any of my concern," Maggie said, though she did feel concerned about Abby's obvious unhappiness.

  So they worked for a while, setting up bead trays for a beginning stringing class with large-hole beads and lengths of narrow cording.

  "I'm sorry you miss Harper," Maggie said at one point. "She asked about you last time I talked to her, you know."

  "I don't miss her," Abby said stubbornly.

  "Right," Maggie replied.

  "I don't. I just miss her car."

  "Her car?"

  "She would give me a ride downtown in the morning so I didn't have to bike all the way. My legs are tired."