Chapter One
3 Women & a Funeral
THEY SAY WOMEN DON’T KILL themselves with a single bullet to the head.
They’re dead wrong.
The entire funeral screamed of blasphemy. Payton Doukas’s father, of fierce Greek Orthodox persuasion, insisted that viewing the body was a necessary ritual in the institution of a proper burial. As self-proclaimed host of the event, he was none too thrilled that his daughter had decided to blow her brains out. In compromise, Payton’s casket commandeered a corner of the chapel veiled behind cranberry colored sheers. I kept trying to peer through the fabric while knowing I would avoid any sight of what might be left of my best friend.
Divorced, Payton’s mother left a much different thumbprint on her daughter’s final service. She did this theme thing. The altar in front of me brimmed with potted plants, buckets of cut daisies, and an odd assortment of gardening tools, sunbonnets, gloves, and clunky looking black rubber shoes. I guess it could have been nice if Payton had lived to love the garden, but she couldn’t sustain the life of a Christmas cactus. I knew better. If Payton had a theme it was the little foil package of not-so-clunky black rubbers, also known as condoms, she kept tucked inside her fake crocodile purse.
I hadn’t spent much time in the desert. It must have been Payton’s final laugh to go and kill herself in Tucson in June. At 109 degrees, the historic church didn’t have air-conditioning. A few floor-stand fans blasted out hot air. The tired looking surroundings offered a splintered cross, suspended above the altar and impressive in size. It seemed to be the only adornment other than the temporary garish gardening exhibit and those wretched cranberry sheers.
Carly Posh sat next to me. A gifted Los Angeles interior designer, she preferred to dress as if she’d just returned from some combat boot camp. Always organized and in control of both body and mind, Carly was the fine stitching that kept our tapestry of friendships woven together.
To the left of Carly, Sterling Falls constantly adjusted the miniskirt that seemed to be sticking to the wooden pew. Late to arrive, she’d wedged her slim body toward Carly from the opposite side of the church. I didn’t see her face, but there was no mistaking who she was. Sterling’s trademark wardrobe was skimpy and bright, but not as shiny as her long lacquered fingernails adorned with even brighter gemstones. Her fingers looked like popsicles with giant chunks of lime and cherry ice swirls clinging to the sticks. When her dad became the legendary jeweler to the stars, Sterling was quick to partner up with him. Their sign on Rodeo Drive simply read, ‘Falls & Falls’. Falls of cascading diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, that is. Fair to say that Sterling was the shellacked gold threads embedded in the fabric of our friendship.
Payton’s father rose to the altar and conveyed his final goodbyes to his Petroula—Payton’s given name and one she loathed. The heavy Greek accent made his words difficult to understand. Instead his grieving eyes, red and swollen against an ashen face, communicated his story of deep loss.
I had been witness to this type of grief far too many times. I admit my mind was drifting from the service when Sterling shoved the latest issue of my magazine across Carly and into my lap.
The sound of her voice carried loud enough the family members in the pew ahead of us turned and shook their heads in disapproval. “What’s up with this, Lauren? Are you asking for death threats? These types of stories are going to get you killed.”
I shrugged my shoulders in an attempt to shun the conversation. Between the glossy images of male models, my articles solicited an abundant readership of both sexes. CoverBoy would become known, if not respected, for presenting in-your-face current world events based in fact not commonly known or believed, or even conceived. The stories pushed the edge and this time, maybe, I had gone too far. A death threat is pretty far.
Who knows why I loved Sterling. She fell into the obnoxious and self-centered and rich and drop dead gorgeous category. She was just pissed to be the last one to know I was moving my magazine to Los Angeles. And that meant I was moving, too.
We were four. We had become friends when we were only eleven years old. Now we were three, and I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be one. I wanted to sit in the back of the church away from everyone and out of earshot from the minister’s words and all the other people that had to stand up and drone on about something irrelevant regarding my friend behind the cranberry sheers. I’d feel safer in the back. Safer? Safer if you’re a bowling pin, maybe.
Who needed protection? Not me. But anyone and everyone who had ever loved me had died. My loved ones were not safe. This much I knew. And apparently I was not safe either, but I hadn’t mentioned this to my friends. I hadn’t mentioned it to my own self.
Chapter Two
An Empty Pew
THE DARK AND HANDSOME man had a spy planted at the services. Just to make certain all the details were neat and tidy. A mere kid, but good at blending into any crowd of mourners. Dressed in black. Good boy.
FOLLOWING THE SERVICE we moved across the church grounds to a noon gathering of Greek food. The three tables offered grape leaves, moussaka, unidentifiable fish replete with metallic eyeballs, and flaky baklava dripping with golden syrupy butter.
Sterling, lanky and lithe ever since I met her in fifth grade, devoured her second chunk of baklava. Between gulps she asked me, “So, what gives? Why the tell-all story on one of the most famous ballplayers in the country?”
Why not, I thought, even though I felt the knot in my throat pulsing while knowing someone out there was ready to kill me over it. “I stand by my work,” I said. I had the facts. Steroids. Steroid sales. Steroid cancers. One could call it an old story, but I took a spin on it with the big money bribery.
Carly looked on and attempted to hide the concern that seized her eyes. She tried to blink away the tension.
Oblivious to Carly, Sterling changed the subject. “What do you say we ditch this place? Go back to the resort and splash around in the pool. Hang time. Payton would have wanted that.”
Sterling was right. But it didn’t feel right.
“You guys go ahead. I’m going to stick around here for a bit. Maybe take a walk,” I said.
Sterling tossed her long blond hair to the side, “Yeah, right. 109 degrees and Lauren wants to take a walk.”
I grabbed a bottle of cold water from a nearby barrel. “I’ll catch up with you soon.”
I walked, all right. Right back into the already emptied church. Where had all the mourners gone? And Payton’s casket? The flowers, the tacky garden crap, even the cranberry sheers were gone. I took my preferred seat at the back of the church.
And I made the mistake of turning my phone back on and checking messages. Three of them were from the identified person in my article accepting bribes. One was from the identified briber. All were irate. Screaming they were going to get me. Shit.
I’m twenty-nine and I’ve lost too much, too soon. My mother died of a heart attack when I was away at university. My father and my fiancé perished together in the family jet that was bringing them to me the day before my wedding.
And now, Payton. She’s one of my best friends. Why didn’t I see this coming? Suicide? Could it be I had no idea that Payton was suicidal?
Distance separates no one in today’s world of instant communication. Sure, Payton and I talked. Phone, emails, texts, even webcam chats, but over the years I admit the contact became less frequent. We sold out to careers and endless promising futures.
Yeah, right. Futures. Mine was just as secure as any futures market. Nothing but speculations and hedging bets. Who would start up a glossy magazine when they were folding like origami and sinking like forgotten treasure chests in reckless seas? My future and my past seemed to die and I couldn
’t let go of the bullet. Perhaps that’s why I still held on to my own box of the dead—the first thing I had packed to make the move from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Tucked inside the box, I’d wedged the envelope in between a copy of The Prophet and a box of tattered and fading family photographs. The gold ribbon on my own wedding invitation stuck out, curling around the top of the box like golden angel hair growing out of a hastily covered grave. The very good and the very bad. My own personal dichotomy of life.
I grew aware of the stale air in the church and took a deep breath. Almost historic and in need of restoration, I thought. Aging wood bled of life from the rays of sunlight streaming in from the clerestory windows, I watched dust particles sway and settle in the unseen movement of space.
Remorse and regret overwhelmed any grief. An old familiar guilt consumed me. Payton Doukas died because I loved her too much. The Lauren Visconti Curse. But there was a different feeling this time. A certain angst that went beyond the shock of an unexpected death.
They found Payton at her home and slumped over her computer soon after she hadn’t shown up for work. Her method of choice, the .357 Magnum, had fallen to the tile floor. The pooled blood had been tracked through every room of Payton’s house by the tiny paw prints of her cat, Teddy.
I wasn’t the last person to see Payton alive, but I was the last one she had emailed. She was my best friend, and yet her typed words made no sense to me.
Saguaro National Forest. CAC. 3 Skeletons. Import
Chapter Three
Case Closed
DEATH IS ABRUPT. ALWAYS. It is impossible to digest. Even though it may lie in propinquity to your heart because of some terminal illness—a death expected, even then after any attempt to prepare for it—there is still no reconciliation of lost time. It is always stolen from us.
As for the unexpected, is it worse?
Two days after Payton’s funeral my phone rang again. The caller had identified himself as a detective. I was stupefied.
“Is this Lauren Visconti?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Pima County?” I asked.
“Southern Arizona,” he said. “Tucson.”
My palms grew moist. “This is about Payton?”
The detective told me he was just wrapping things up. He wanted to know what Payton’s final email to me might mean. I told him I had no idea and asked him why.
“Just routine when someone so young dies. We never found a suicide note. Would you know anything about that?”
I had never thought about that.
“Nothing to worry about, I’m sure,” he continued. “It happens more often than you think. Some people get so wrapped up in their final intent they actually forget. Sometimes they just have nothing left to say. It’s when we get a case of a female with no suicide note, and—,” he cleared his throat, “—well, her means of death.”
“You mean a gun?”
“Yes, ma’am. Firearms aren’t usually used in a female suicide. There’s no need for alarm. We did the background work and everything is as it appears.”
“You mean the suicide?”
“Ms. Doukas had no enemies and not too many friends, either. She worked for some national lecturer. She worked out of the elderly man’s home with his wife of almost fifty years. Not exactly any love triangles going on. Doesn’t seem she dated much. Besides a nine-to-five job in a quiet home she lived almost like a recluse. Does this seem about right to you?”
Sadly, it did.
“And there was no evidence of a forced entry to her home. We want things nice and tidy before we close the case.”
I didn’t know there was a case. And now it looked like it was closed.
Why didn’t Payton sign the email to me? She always did. A joke of the day, usually. And then her trademark way of signing off. BFF, I love you. Payton.
It was a bad case of nerves, I told myself. The rash extended down my inner arms and the back of my legs. What did I expect, for crisakes? I had just returned from a funeral.
HARLAN COAL WAS ANYTHING but satisfied. He was so close. He could smell it. He could reach out for it. He could grind his molars on it and taste the juice, but the meat and cartilage remained just outside of his clenched jaw.
Coal studied his image in the mirror while adjusting his Brioni tie, appreciating the fact his looks opened doors for him. He was those three little words. Tall. Dark. Handsome. At six-foot three he towered over most people. His frame was slim but athletic. He used his physique to his full advantage, not unlike most Hollywood types on the big screen or not. He had perfect white teeth. Coal’s imposing smoky eyes hosted deep crevasses at each side making it appear as if he had a friendly wink and a perpetual smile. His hands were gentle, but with a firm handshake he’d practiced over and over again before he was even twelve years old. That was after his mother’s boyfriend du jour told him he had the grip of a limp pussy.
Beyond his good looks, Harlan Coal knew his mind would keep those doors open just as long as he didn’t make any more mistakes. He’d earned his way. A Rhodes Scholar, he was so much more. Coal had a rigid plan that would launch him into fame and fortune. He was well on his way to becoming the leader of a revolutionary frontier in psychotherapies.
He thought himself to be a patient man who simply used his resources to his advantage. Resilience was his next-of-kin. When things didn’t work out in New York he was quick to relocate to Tucson. The incident there wasn’t really his fault. Perhaps he let his desires put him in harm’s way when it came to getting caught. He would not let that happen again.
Coal was smart enough to pick-up and move, again, to Los Angeles where the pulse of the city was hard and fast and no one ever really knew what was beating.
Chapter Four
The Welcome Mat
PHOTOGRAPHER SUKIE FIELDS was getting up there in age. I was lucky she didn’t retire. Instead, she gifted me with her skills and exuberance behind them. As CoverBoy’s new head photographer, Sukie sat with me at the O’Hare gate awaiting departure to Los Angeles. We finally boarded the last flight of the day—one that should have never left Chicago. Despite a late hour snowstorm gathering strength across the Rockies, the plane landed in Denver to wait out an even more dangerous rainstorm that had LAX shut down. I white-knuckled both legs of the trip.
Sukie slept through most of it. She’d just returned home from Antigua, her last assignment for Earthly Wheres, my first magazine I was turning over to good hands. While I had been planning the move for months, Sukie’s schedule gave her about four days to pack in between travels. I admired the gentle smile she wore while sleeping. Sukie welcomed the change. “I’m too damn old for the travel business,” she told me. When I worried she might retire, she quickly added that she became bored easily. That’s exactly what she was when photographing more landscapes, villages, and exotic dishes of glow-in-the-dark scorpion soup and rattlesnake pasta. What she wanted was a challenge. The opportunity to jump into portrait photography, she said, would complete her life’s mission. I promised her carte blanche to create and produce, including choosing her own models.
Also making the journey was Geoff Hayes, our IT guy. I heard plenty of whispers after I made that announcement to our team at Earthly Wheres.
“I don’t get it,” someone at my Chicago-based Earthly Wheres offices said. “Geoff’s a good guy but why would Lauren take on the expense of moving him?”
“Something’s up,” another had answered. “Techies are a dime a dozen in California.”
My former staff was unaware I assigned my IT guy the role of top model before I even got his consent. Correctly pronounced with two syllables and lovingly coined Queen Geoff, he was everything fabulous about the letter G. Geek. Guru. Genius. Gentleman. Gorgeous. Everything G was Geoff except going for any G-spot. G was also for gay. Geoff wore gay pride the way a Tiffany lamp wears its fine stained glass. It was a damned shame, though. Geoff was
a captivating African American male specimen. Women constantly tried to be the lucky girl to change his sexual orientation, if only for a night.
God, did he have fun playing it straight. He held my hand throughout much of our long flight, well aware he had captured the heart of every female flight attendant. Queen Geoff confided in me, as he always did whether I liked it or not, that he could almost feel himself growing hard. Not for the women pining for him, of course, but for the infusion of misplaced attention he received while harmlessly playing the game. My new magazine would launch with him gracing the cover and he’d devour the spotlight. Los Angeles would suit him well.
Our plane landed in turbulence, two and a half hours late. As we entered the terminal I said my goodbyes to both Sukie and Geoff.
“Not nice of you to leave us at the airport, sweetie.” Geoff looked at me with mock despair.
“I hardly call a limo and reservations at a five-star hotel grounds for grievance,” I answered.
“Who is this guy picking you up, anyway?” he quizzed.
“I’ve already told you. His name is Brock Townsend. I’ve known him since I was a kid. Now he’s a famous sports star.”
“There you go again, attacking my lack of macho sports trivia knowledge,” Geoff whined. “I just worry about you, Laurs.”
“Seems to me you’re the one that told me I needed to loosen up and find some sexy thing. You said something about me finding rock candy, if I remember correctly.”
Sukie trailed behind saying nothing, which is not atypical for her. We made our way to the baggage claim, where the limo driver I’d hired would be holding up a placard with her name on it. It was clear she wanted nothing more than the sight of the limousine and the key to her suite, and I didn’t blame her one bit.
Spotting Brock two carousels over, I pecked both Geoff and Sukie on the cheek, promising to meet them for breakfast at their hotel first thing in the morning.
Brock’s big eyes fixed on me and he started to run. In seconds I found myself wrapped in my old friend’s arms.
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