If I joined the study and lived, I’d get a double pass, from both death and the criminal justice system.
I’d taken every possible precaution to avoid spending my final days in a literal cell instead of the figurative one of my impending death. I obscured my identity two different ways at the candy store and the shipping service, made cash payments with twenties from East County ATMs, wore gloves at every stage of the maneuver except the actual sale counters, where I touched nothing. I used my own cheap ballpoint to fill out shipping forms, flushed or burned the remains of the chocolate-doctoring session, kept only Molly’s cloisonné box and the four rings it contained.
The rings.
I watched Gwendolyn continue to bat the pink ball and remembered the heavy silver ring I’d been wearing when I fixed Laverne’s final snack. It was back in the cloisonné box, but I’d slipped Molly’s opal onto my finger for good luck when I headed out to ship the candy. The ring was a little loose, but that didn’t really matter. It didn’t fit the character I was playing at the shipping service, so I’d tucked it into my purse.
I moved in slow motion now toward the little drawstring bag, its contents still jumbled from when I’d stuffed everything back in as I waited in line to send my package, dismayed that I’d called attention to myself. I dumped the contents on the table.
No ring.
I took my time about it, checked and rechecked, ran the film back and forth in my brain. I went out and searched the car. Checked my purse again. There hadn’t been pockets in the sweat suit I was wearing at the time, and in any case I’d left it in a Salvation Army drop box on my way home twenty minutes later, after changing in a McDonald’s restroom.
So I’d dropped it on the floor at the shipping service, where cops were probably already trying to find out who’d sent the candy. Where somebody would surely find it. And trace it to Molly, who bought it on eBay and told me the seller had assured her only three existed in the world just like it.
I opened the cloisonné box and put the chunky silver poison ring on my finger. I sent a brief reply to the doctor’s e-mail, saying that I had decided not to participate in the clinical trial. Then I opened the poison ring and removed the capsule it still held.
Instant karma.
THE ANGEL’S SHARE
BY MORGAN HUNT
Hillcrest
Betty Lou Thomas from Muncie, Indiana, complained as though the pot at the end of the rainbow had a flush valve. Thick-bodied, flat-chested, 5'2”, with brown eyes, coarse features, and hair the color of stone-ground mustard, she was the sort of woman you didn’t notice. And she carried a twenty-carat diamond chip on her shoulder about that.
She resented being short. (“In Indiana we lived for basketball. What chance did I have on the women’s team at five-two?”) Being female. (“Why don’t men have periods and cramps?”) Being a lesbian. (“Still waiting for my Emancipation Proclamation.”)
She was currently issuing a whine-a-thon into the phone about the lack of cleaning power in modern laundry detergents. Jesus.
I lay on rumpled sheets in my bungalow near Front and Spruce streets. San Diego’s “June gloom,” otherwise known as the marine layer, had finally burned off and sun now warmed my bedroom. Next to me in all of her considerable glory lay Caterina, a thirty-nine-year-old self-styled mixed-media artist and boutique owner whom I’d known for exactly twelve days.
On Caterina’s index finger, a crimson nail sharp enough to serve as Occam’s Razor traced its way from my ankle, along my calf, to the tender flesh of my inner thigh. There she dug in and drew blood. I would have screamed, but she covered my mouth with her other hand.
This latest maneuver made the phone conversation more difficult than before, precisely Caterina’s intention.
Betty was droning on, something about a neighbor in her condo building who kept taking her assigned parking space in the garage.
I twisted my mouth free of Caterina’s hand. “Why don’t you report him to the building manager?” I asked, knowing she’d reject any practical suggestions that might lead to a resolution.
“Oh, he’s just an asshole,” Betty sighed. “What are you having for dinner tonight? I never know what to cook. Last night I tried meat loaf with salsa …”
“Betty, I’m in the middle of something right now; I really have to go.”
“I need to change the settings on my satellite dish tomorrow and I could use some help …”
“What time?”
“I’d like to get it done first thing. Could you come over around seven-thirty a.m.?”
“Betty, I have to work tomorrow. If it can wait a few days, I’ll—”
“No, I’ve got my whole day planned. Your work schedule’s flexible; go to work later. I need to get this done early.”
The talon enameled with Heavenly Heartache now circled a very sensitive part of me. Never answer the phone when you’re lying naked in bed.
“I’ve got a major work project pending and a staff meeting tomorrow. Find someone else to help this time. I’ve got to go.”
“But we haven’t talked in over a week. And I—”
“Sorry, talk to you again soon.” The snap of my cell felt harsh, but I’d spared myself a clitorectomy.
“I thought Betty was an ex from ages ago,” Caterina probed. “I thought you said she was boring.”
“True and truer.”
“Then why do you still talk to her?”
Why, indeed. Because she reminded me of an underdog boxer who struggles up from the mat on the count of nine repeatedly until she finally wins the bout. Because when she wasn’t complaining, she cracked corny jokes. Because for the sixteen months we were together, she tried her damnedest and it was my fault it didn’t work out. Because when I broke my ankle years after we split up, Betty walked my dog and made me dinner every day for six weeks. Because I could feel her heart from across a room.
These were not things I would be able to easily explain to Caterina, who had forgotten her own question and was now gliding around the house nude in search of asparagus stalks and cellophane. I like that in a woman.
I got up early the next day to brainstorm a new marketing campaign for my employer, Sciortino’s Winery, in the San Pasqual Valley. To save gas, they allowed me to telecommute most of the time. Caterina had, as usual, slipped out and returned to her home in the dark of night. I sipped Brazilian coffee and concentrated on strategies that would inspire critics to hyperbolize about our new Tempranillo.
The first call came at 7:48 a.m.
“I’m so sorry, Nikki,” a friend’s voice said.
“About what?”
“About Betty. You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Turn on channel 39.”
For the next few minutes I ignored twelve more calls while I watched reporters second-guess the situation pertaining to the body lying on the sidewalk. They were calling it a suicide. They were calling her a jumper.
Traffic being what it is, I knew it would be faster to walk the mile or so from my house to Betty’s. I grabbed my house keys and cell and headed out.
I couldn’t swallow. Guilt and shame percolated deeper with every footstep. My pulse pounded. Suicide? Why hadn’t I been more patient? Why couldn’t I have been more helpful? Hanging up on her when Caterina distracted me was a very human thing to do, but hiding behind the species is a cheap excuse.
I walked fast, a dyke on a mission, hardly noticing the Craftsman bungalows, Spanish-style stuccos, gay bars, and boutiques that filled the neighborhood.
Hillcrest used to be dominated by a huge Sears, Roebuck and Co. When chichi condo complexes, an art-film theater, and distinctive eateries squeezed out Sears, blue collars were replaced by lavender boxers. Promises of erotic satisfaction now hang in the Hillcrest air, like the pots of petunias and pansies swinging from summer lampposts.
While not as well known as the Castro or WeHo, Hillcrest received national media attention in ’97 as the home of Andrew Cunana
n, the twisted serial killer who murdered Versace. Now Hillcrest was on TV again: a dead body, sirens and news crews, with Betty Lou Thomas headlining.
I turned east on University toward the Uptown Shopping Center near where Betty lived. I just missed the Walk signal at Vermont. Too fidgety to wait, I strode another block to Richmond to burn adrenaline.
At Richmond the front door of the Alibi, Hillcrest’s oldest neighborhood saloon, stood open revealing a murky interior behind the jukebox. Nothing much going on at this hour. The corner smelled of cigarettes; the sidewalk was confettied with butts.
I caught the light, crossed the street, closed the distance, and insinuated myself into the crowd. Betty’s body had landed atop fallen jacaranda blossoms, their soft periwinkle blue crushed and smeared into a bruise-colored shroud.
I squirmed through the scene, inching my way toward the officer in charge. “Why are you calling this a suicide?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m one of her closest friends. I spoke to her yesterday and she didn’t seem in the least bit suicidal. Not at all.”
Gently: “Sometimes it happens that way.”
“But it could’ve been an accident, right? She could’ve slipped and fallen?”
The officer—a slow-moving whelk of fiber, muscle, and taut uniform—studied me more carefully. “There’s a safety parapet around the perimeter of the roof. If someone slipped and fell, they’d slide into the wall.” Seeing I was not persuaded, he leaned down so he could speak directly in my ear. “We found Prozac in her medicine cabinet.”
“If you took a survey here,” I gestured toward the crowd of looky-loos, “you’d probably find 70 percent of them are pumping their serotonin. The rest are on Adderall and a pharmacopeia of other fine substances.”
Officer Whelk did not respond.
I persisted. “Did you find a suicide note?” If the police had, maybe it would explain what had provoked Betty to take such an extreme measure. And if there was a note, had she cited me as one of the provocations? I used to be able to talk to Nikki, but now she acts as if our friendship is of no importance.
“Not yet, but we’ve barely begun our investigation. Now, unless you’re a family member, please step back …”
I took a few snapshots with my cell and reluctantly started the trek home. In a strange state, I let feet and mind wander on the return route. I paused in front of a Thai restaurant to check the menu posted in the window. Choo-Chi Prawn. Chicken Volcano. Lard Prik. Was there a lesbian in Hillcrest who had ordered Lard Prik? Was there a gay man who had not?
I passed Milo’s Erotic Apparel and assessed their new window display. A reclining masked mannequin in a black leather bustier sat with one leg crossed over the bent knee of the other. A papier-mâché cucumber dangled from a chain on the spike heel of her silver boot.
This was the Hillcrest Betty had fallen in love with. She’d spent many years in Indiana being neurotic, closeted, and lonely. Finally she’d found the courage to move two thousand miles away from everything and everyone she’d ever known. In San Diego she was like a child who’d run off to join the circus and Hillcrest was the center ring. Everything had been fresh, colorful, exotic—the palm trees, the sunshine, the Pride Parade, the sense that diversity was a good thing. Here, even vegetable bondage was acceptable.
Despite her habit of complaining, Betty seemed reasonably content most of the time. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the whole suicide concept. Yes, she suffered from mild depression, but it had been well controlled for years. Yes, she was single and sometimes lonely. But thousands of married people sit, equally lonely, in front of the TV every night and they don’t jump off the roof.
If I was going to find out what really happened, I couldn’t be encumbered by guilt. I began to strip it from my soul like so much old furniture varnish. If Betty had been depressed, she could’ve asked for support instead of complaining about laundry detergent. If she had given me any indication that our last conversation might be our last conversation, I would’ve paid more attention.
At Third and Robinson, I stopped in at Caterina’s scarf shop. The moment our eyes met, I knew she knew. “Now don’t blame yourself, darling,” she oozed. “Nothing you could’ve done.”
“I don’t know about that, but there’s something I can do now.”
“What do you mean?”
“The police are calling it suicide.”
“The woman jumped off her roof. What else would you call it?”
“The whole thing doesn’t smell right. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she was pushed.”
Caterina draped a gold scarf decorated with black fleur-delis over a display. “Don’t you love what Burberry does with this new line?”
I stared out the window where orange birds of paradise, magenta bougainvillea, and blue agapanthus made the street look like Odin’s coloring book. “I’m going to be busy for a while; I’ll call when things calm down.”
“We have tickets for the San Diego Rep on Saturday.”
“I know.” I kissed her and headed for the door.
“Don’t spend too much time on the dead; it’s the living that matter.”
Her words echoed as I legged the last few blocks home.
I called a friend who works as a crime reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune. “You get access to police reports right away, don’t you? I want to look at the preliminary report on the death of Betty Lou Thomas.”
“That the suicide over on Cleveland Avenue?”
“The police are calling it a suicide, yes. Can you e-mail me a copy of the prelim? Sooner rather than later?”
My friend hesitated; there’d been many favors over the years. There’d be a price.
“Can you get me four bottles of Sciortino’s 2006 Mourvèdre?”
Our ’06 Mourvèdre goes for about forty-five dollars a bottle. I did the math. “I’ll drop them off this evening.”
I drove to Sciortino’s that afternoon to attend a staff meeting and pick up the wine. Traffic was light on I-15 for a change and I arrived early. I wandered the grounds looking for my boss. Maybe he’d approve an employee discount.
Joe Sciortino wasn’t in his office. The vineyard supervisor said he wasn’t out among the trellises. I walked by the crush pad; no Joe. I checked the barrel room. When I opened the door, a sensual bouquet curled into my nostrils: the Angel’s Share. That’s what those in the business call the portion of wine that evaporates from the barrels during the aging process, while the remaining product soaks up oak vanilla tannins. Over the years, 5 or 10 percent of the wine will diffuse into the air, filling the tightly sealed barrel room with potent ambrosia. The angels know a good thing when they see it, and sip their share when no one’s looking.
I located Joe among the barrels and negotiated a deal on the Mourvèdre.
That evening I deposited four bottles at my reporter friend’s apartment. He handed me a sheaf of papers. “I e-mailed these too. I’ll update you every few days for a week. Fair?”
“Fair. Happy uncorking.”
At home that night I studied the report. There had been nothing unusual about the condo; no packed boxes, no suicide note. In fact, the only note was a handwritten to-do list on Betty’s kitchen table. The list had seven items on it. The first was: Take garbage out. That item was checked off, and the police confirmed that garbage had, indeed, been taken out.
The second item was to change the settings on her satellite dish receiver—the favor she’d asked me to help with. To SDPD’s credit, they had called her satellite dish company to see if there’d been a problem. There had. The company had advised her to try a new setting configuration, and if that didn’t work, to bring the receiver back to the office and exchange it for a new one. SDPD had removed the satellite dish and tagged it as evidence, although evidence of what I wasn’t sure.
Betty never got to items 3 through 7.
The police had called Betty’s closest living relatives, a younger brother and an older sister back
in Muncie. They told police that Betty was an unhappy, immoral woman, alienated from church and family. That, along with the Prozac prescription, led SDPD to the suicide verdict, but I still wasn’t buying it.
I poured myself three fingers of Irish whiskey on the rocks. I work for a winery, but sometimes I need something stronger than sour grapes to take the edge off.
After a few sips I returned to the report. It seemed blatantly obvious to me that the fall had been an accident. Women aren’t jumpers, not in my experience. To validate my intuition, I Googled women and suicide methods and discovered that only 3.5 percent of female suicides in the U.S. are jumpers.
I needed to see Betty’s roof and its safety wall for myself. I was wondering exactly how to accomplish that when my phone rang.
“Some friends of mine own a condo in the building where Betty lived. I know you want to snoop, so I wrangled us a dinner invitation for tomorrow.”
Betty may have longed for my attention but Caterina knew how to get it.
She was in fine form for dinner with her friends the following evening. There was an uncharacteristic chill in the air, enough that I wore a black leather vest over my shirt. She selected one of her new pashmina shawls in jade green and a long, loose skirt. The outfit complimented her lithe body and she knew it. She flirted wickedly throughout the meal. Her friends, Glenn and Mike, wondered aloud if she’d met her match.
At the earliest acceptable moment, I excused myself, took the elevator to the fourth floor, and found the roof access door. No crime scene tape barred entry.
Out on the roof I paused to breathe the cool air. The western horizon over San Diego harbor was slashed by bands of neon scarlet, gold, and fuschia. To the east, the sky was the color of blue pen ink. City lights outshone the stars.
Betty, was this the venue of your chosen farewell?
The roof was flat; no angle jeopardized my safety. The material beneath my feet offered good grip, a skid-proof surface. A thirty-inch parapet did, indeed, encircle the roof. I knew from the police report where the satellite dish had been located and it was nowhere near the roof’s edge. Even if Betty had slipped and fallen, the officer was right: she might have slid into the parapet, but it was very unlikely she’d have gone over it.
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