by Zara Lisbon
Oh, Justine. I put one hand to my cheek. You’re losing it. Grief can cause you to imagine things, I told myself. Your brain is grappling to make sense out of something that will never make sense.
Frances Joy hung her head, eyes closed and hands clasped, for several moments, then breathed herself back upright.
“And now we’ll hear from Josie Bishop,” she said. “A lifelong friend and confidant of Eva-Kate’s.”
With encouraging squeezes from London and Olivia, Josie made her way to the podium, a folded-up piece of paper clutched tightly in her hand. She wore a black silk formfitting midi dress with matching gloves and the same absurdly large tortoiseshell sunglasses she’d had on the last time I’d seen her. Eva-Kate’s death had already taken pounds off Josie’s body. She looked like a widow. How chic, I thought, to be a young widow.
“I met Eva-Kate when we were four years old,” she sniffed, reading from her paper. “Before Jennie and Jenny. My parents moved into the house next to her parents, and we were the only kids on the block. Me, her, and Liza. Right from the beginning she was always the assertive one, you know, the kid who makes all the rules.” She paused for a weak wave of laughter from the audience. “When we were five or six we’d get together and pretend to be the Spice Girls, even though there were only three of us. Eva-Kate insisted on being Baby Spice each time; she insisted I be Ginger and Liza be Posh. We didn’t have anybody to be the Melanies, but Eva-Kate always said nobody cared about the Melanies anyway. We were so young, but she would choreograph these really elaborate and impressive dances for us to do, and she’d write scripts for us too and then direct us in these little plays. We weren’t allowed to take a break until we got it all down just right.” She forced a small, girlish laugh. “It might sound to you like Eva-Kate was a bossy kid, and maybe at the time I thought so too, but I don’t see it that way now. Looking back, I realize she was so much more than ‘bossy.’ Kids are bossy, but she wasn’t a kid. She never was. Instead, she was driven, she was determined, she knew what she wanted and was willing to work hard to get it, even at five years old. Even at five years old she demanded the respect she knew she deserved, and she carried herself with the confidence of a seasoned boss. That confidence stayed with her until her last day on this planet. As some of you know, this funeral was planned by Eva-Kate herself. Now, I know that may sound morbid, but I think it’s spectacular. I think it’s a reflection of a girl completely in charge of herself. Since she was seven years old, people have been trying to take her power, but she’d never let them. She never let what anyone said change what she knew about herself, which was that she was one of a kind and heaven-sent, capable of achieving anything that she set her mind to.”
This felt scripted and dishonest—the Eva-Kate I knew didn’t have that confidence or self-respect. Maybe she’d had it as a kid, but by the time she died it had been taken from her. Or she’d given it away. Of course, she wanted the world to think she felt good in her own skin and knew her worth, so she’d written it out this way. Even in death, she controlled the narrative.
There was no air-conditioning in the chapel and I could feel my makeup sweating off, my heartbeat speeding up. It was getting hard to swallow. There was no end in sight for Josie’s eulogy, so I quietly excused myself and leaned on the heavy chapel doors until they opened, then stumbled out into the sunlight.
The sun was too hot and the air felt dirty, filmy with car exhaust. I walked around to the side of the building where I could sit in the shade and catch my breath.
“Mom, Mom, try to calm down.” Somebody was talking, but I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. It was just like Eva-Kate’s voice, only lighter and without the smoky edge. Liza.
“I can’t calm down!” This must have been Debbie. “My daughter is spending eternity in a Juicy suit. What is this, some kind of joke?”
“Ms. McKelvoy,” said a third voice, a man’s. “I can assure you this is what Eva-Kate wanted, we have it all written down in the prepaid documents.”
“Get those out of my face,” Debbie bit back. “Why would she do this, Liza? Did she know she was going to die? Who plans their own funeral, who does that?”
“From what I understand, Miss Kelly had recently purchased a home?” the man said, adding a generous inflection at the end that made his statement a question, inviting Debbie into what she was otherwise barred from.
“Yes,” Liza said. “That’s right.”
“So what?” Debbie asked. “What’s your point, Mr. Ellis?”
“When she bought her house, she also wrote up a will. She didn’t have to plan out her funeral in such detail, but some people find comfort in it.”
“She didn’t find comfort in it, she just saw one last way to torture me and took advantage of it.”
“Mom, it’s just a Juicy suit, okay?” Liza tried in a soothing tone. “This isn’t personal.”
“Of course it’s personal. She knew how much I hated those things. So tacky. And her makeup! She looks like a hooker—and not a very good one. Doesn’t a mother get a say in all this?”
Silence. The sound of papers shuffling. Delicate knuckles cracking.
“Not if Miss Kelly was an emancipated minor,” Mr. Ellis said finally.
More silence. A light breeze. The whir of a lawn mower slicing through grass.
“You’re judging me, Mr. Ellis,” Debbie said. “I can see that you’re judging me. But don’t. You have no idea how difficult that girl was. An impossible creature from the day she was born. A pure nightmare, Mr. Ellis. Do you understand?”
“Mom, stop,” Liza pleaded. “Not now.”
“She tells people I was stealing her money? Bullshit. She has the world wrapped around her finger, even now. The true story, you wanna know the true story?”
“No, Ms. McKelvoy,” said Mr. Ellis. “That’s not my business.”
Yes, I thought, tell me the true story.
“We were broke,” she spat out. “Eva-Kate was a multimillionaire and we were broke, but she wouldn’t give us a penny. And when we wanted to borrow some from her just to stay afloat, she emancipated. Do you understand what that means? She fired her family for wanting to borrow some cash. What did she need it for, Mr. Ellis? She was only fourteen; what did she need ten million dollars for?”
“Like I said, Ms. McKelvoy, it’s none of my business.”
“Well, maybe it should be,” Debbie huffed. “Come on, Liza, it’s so hot I could faint.”
Next thing I knew their footsteps were coming around the corner, headed toward me. I jumped up and pretended to be taking a phone call. They brushed past me like I was invisible, Liza gripping tenaciously on to her mother’s arm, practically holding her up as they walked. Why wasn’t Eva-Kate willing to lend them some money? I wondered, standing in the cloud of dust they’d kicked up. And was Debbie telling the truth, or was this just the version of the story she wanted told? There are countless sides to every story and most people, I’ve found, want to tell the version in which they’re the victim or the hero. Nothing in between.
I wanted to leave, to take a hot bath and drink cold whiskey. I wanted to fill the bath with whiskey and lie in it. But I stayed. I stayed so I could see her lowered into the ground. I needed the proof that she was truly gone, otherwise I’d go the rest of my life not really believing it.
* * *
The periwinkle-lacquered casket descended so slowly the movement was almost imperceptible to the human eye. It was attached to one of those mechanical devices designed to make the process more pleasant, but I couldn’t think of anything more awful. An elevator of death savoring every moment it took to pull her away from me. I wanted to sever the cables, to make it quick.
As the coffin lowered, Frances Joy read “Requiescat,” a poem by Oscar Wilde. It was a creepy poem, made twice as creepy by the fact that Eva-Kate herself had planned for it to be read.
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
/> The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life’s buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
“Do they have any idea who did this to her yet?” a woman standing in front of me whispered to the man standing next to her.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He shrugged.
“Um … no?”
“She did it to herself.”
“Shut up,” the woman hissed. I seconded the sentiment.
“Think about it,” he urged. “Boyfriend dumped her to date her sister. Her career’s been kind of over for a while. What else was left?”
“That’s not a reason to kill yourself.”
“Maybe not. But then look at this funeral. She planned the whole thing! She’s just a kid; why plan a funeral if she didn’t know she was going to die?”
“Still. Doesn’t mean she killed herself. Maybe she just knew she was going to die.”
“You mean she knew somebody was going to kill her?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. He shrugged a reply, then they both went back to staring ahead, waiting for the casket to finally dip out of sight as if they were watching a sunset, as if they had all the time in the world.
I had made up my mind to leave when out of the corner of my eye I saw Rob’s tall, hunched figure swaying and swaggering over to where we stood. He found a tree, leaned his full weight onto it, then slid down with his back against the flaky bark and lit a cigarette. I had to laugh. He was like a cartoon. The enemy of discretion. He wore grass-stained jeans and a white T-shirt torn at the neck; his face had the red puffiness of a drunk’s. Sure enough, he pulled a flask from his back pocket and held the cigarette between his teeth as he unscrewed it. Then he dropped the cigarette and took a sip, snatching the cigarette back up just as a blade of grass was catching fire, stomping clumsily on the blade until the flame went out. He was bound to attract attention in a minute, and once he did there was no way I’d get a chance to talk to him.
“Rob.” I crouched down to his level. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Hm?” His eyes were pink and glazed over. He smelled strongly of sweat and whiskey.
“You’re wasted and the paparazzi are everywhere.” I tried to make my voice sound official and authoritative, a voice he might take direction from. “You don’t want them to get you looking like this.”
“I didn’t want people to think I don’t care,” he slurred, looking into the open flask. “So I came. But I couldn’t do it sober. Could you?”
“Not really, no.” I hooked my hand around the crook of his elbow and coaxed him upward. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” To my total shock, he stood up.
“Not far,” I told him, scouting out a nearby mausoleum. It would have to work; as soon as one picture of the two of us was snapped, all bets would be off. And it could happen any second. The mausoleum had Greek-style decorative pillars and marble steps leading up to a cement-sealed door. I took his wrist and pulled him behind it.
“Can I help you?” he asked, half scowling, half giggling like a schoolboy.
“You can tell me where you were the night Eva-Kate died,” I said, releasing his wrist.
“Oh boy.” He rolled his eyes and took a drag from the cigarette. “We have a detective, do we?”
“You may not realize this,” I said, “but we don’t have time for witty banter. You and me, the detectives have their eyes on us, and if you don’t have an alibi—”
“Me? Why do they have their eyes on me?”
“You’re the boyfriend. It’s almost always the—”
“Ex-boyfriend,” he corrected me. “And I don’t have a motive.”
“Maybe not an obvious one,” I said, recalling the screenshots Eva-Kate was all set to release the night she died. The proof that he had gotten an underage girl pregnant. Had he known? Had she told him?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He was getting too loud.
I considered asking him about it, rolling the thought back and forth like dice, then decided against it.
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Do you have an alibi or not?”
He paused for a moment and looked me up and down with a dazed smile, as if he enjoyed watching me squirm.
“Of course I do,” he said finally. “I was with Liza.”
“And people can vouch for that?”
“Uh, Liza can.”
“Well, how convenient,” I said, ripping at my cuticle.
“What, you think we both did something to her?”
“If she was standing in the way of you being together, sure.”
“Fuck, Justine, you’re so far off. She wasn’t standing in the way of us being together. We were together, we were happy. But when Eva-Kate died, Liza dumped me.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yep.”
“But … why?”
“No explanation. Just says it’s too painful now.” He dug the toe of his boot into the soil. “She can’t be with me anymore. Won’t even talk to me. Moved back in with her mom.”
“She dumped you … after Eva-Kate died?”
“Yes!” he laughed bitterly. “Do we have to keep talking about it?”
“No, I’m just trying to…” I’m just trying to figure out how she could have died, I didn’t say. Trying to figure out why you might have killed her.
“Rob, over here!” a man’s voice hollered, followed by the ballistic snapping of a camera and the accompanying bursts of light.
They found us. I shielded my face from the flashing bulbs that multiplied from one to dozens in an impressive few seconds. They must have been hiding out in plain sight, slipping through the trees, disguised as civilian mourners casually passing through.
Rob, did you do it FLASH Rob, where’s Liza FLASH did she help you do it FLASH why are you with Justine FLASH are you together FLASH Justine, do you think he did it FLASH what are you wearing FLASH why’d you kill her FLASH FLASH why’d you do it FLASH FLASH Rob, how much have you had to drink FLASH FLASH FLASH do you miss her yet FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH!
Through the blinding splotches I saw Rob put out his cigarette and light a new one, calm and cavalier as if alone in the privacy of his own bedroom. I put my hands up to shield my face and tried to slip away like I had that day outside Eva-Kate’s, but this time they followed. As my footsteps quickened, so did theirs, the questions getting louder with every step. These were grown men, and I was no athlete, there was no way I could outrun them. Disoriented by the lights, I couldn’t see any way out. I tripped on a rock and fell, scraping my knee. I burst into tears.
Then there were hands on my shoulders. Warm, strong, unexpected.
“Run.” It was Rob’s voice in my ear. “I’ll take them from here.”
I looked up at his face, urging me to go, and I ran.
CHAPTER 5
ROB DONOVAN COMFORTS A HYSTERICAL JUSTINE CHILDS
I drank myself to sleep and woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. My head pounded, my bones ached, the room spun. My knee still bled. Memories of the funeral were foggy and felt a lifetime away. There was a smoke screen between then and now, making the whole thing feel like it had taken place in another dimension. I found the hand-me-down iPhone 5 at the foot of my bed, swiped it on, and typed “Eva-Kate Kelly funeral” into the search engine.
NEW ROMANCE? ROB DONOVAN EMBRACES JUSTINE CHILDS AT HOLLYWOOD FOREVER CEMETERY
It sat among the other headlines like a tombstone. I whimpered. This was so much worse than
I’d imagined. The pictures portrayed Rob and me as distorted versions of ourselves. With his arms around me he looked nurturing and sober, almost fatherly. One picture was a zoomed-in close-up of my wet, red face with the caption: “ROB DONOVAN COMFORTS A HYSTERICAL JUSTINE CHILDS.”
Why had he helped me? He’d flicked his cigarette at the cameras and given me an escape route. It was a decent thing to do and made me wonder if he was decent. The thought itself felt like a betrayal of Eva-Kate. I shook it off. He knew she was going to release the text messages and so he killed her before she could do it, I told myself. I just needed proof.
You always hear the loved ones of murder victims talk about needing to find out who killed them, needing to see the killer brought to justice. I never understood. Knowing who killed them, seeing that person pay for what they’d done, none of that brings back what was taken from you, so why bother? Now I understand. Not knowing what happened to Eva-Kate felt like a screaming itch deep in my skin that nothing could silence. I hoped answers would at least quiet the scream. If Liza could confirm that Rob wasn’t with her that night, prove that he was lying, then he wouldn’t have an alibi. And if I told the detectives about the texts he was afraid of getting out, then he’d have a motive.
I remembered that day at the Madonna Inn. Eva-Kate had said that if she ever wanted to break up Rob and Liza, all she had to do was show Liza the texts. Maybe she did show her and maybe Liza dumped him because of them. Maybe Rob went to Eva-Kate’s house to confront her about it, and maybe things got out of control. It made all the sense in the world. I just needed to hear it from Liza.
She can’t be with me anymore. Won’t even talk to me. Moved back in with her mom.
Rob’s slurred, jilted words bubbled up in my mind just as I needed them to. If I was looking for Liza, there was a good chance I’d find her at her mom’s house. Wherever the fuck that was. Burbank? Chatsworth? Eva-Kate had told me once, but all I could remember was that it was in the Valley. Somewhere that got up to 110 degrees in the summer and adult toy stores littered the boulevards. Somewhere I preferred not to go.