by M. Z. Kelly
After Mom gave her statement, she retired to her living quarters with a migraine. Natalie and Mo met up with me in the living room as the crime scene unit arrived and set up.
“Karma and Vee want to know if they can leave now,” Natalie said. She smiled in that little girl way she has when she’s bursting with excitement.
I looked from her to Mo and back again. “What’s going on?”
“You’re looking at the formerly unemployed,” Natalie said, clapping her hands together. “We got a case.” She turned to Mo. “We gotta lay in some supplies, handcuffs, ankle chains, more pepper spray.” She reached into her purse. “And bigger guns.”
I held her hand in place before she could go for the pistol again and shook my head. “Okay, spill it. What gives?”
“Sistah Snoop has a client,” Mo said.
“A celebrity client,” Natalie added.
“Don’t tell me.”
Natalie jumped up as she and Mo did a high-five. “We’re Karma’s new bodyguards.”
“Oh, my god.” Maybe I should have added, “Are you crazy? Have you lost your minds? Why can’t you get real jobs, like working as bookies or pimps or even prostitutes? Bodyguards for the most famous celebrity in the world?” I looked around, hoping that Skully hadn’t heard us talking. Maybe murder-suicide was still a viable option for me.
They continued with the high-fives as I walked away shaking my head and answering my phone. “We just broke the news to Nordquist’s sister, Eleanor,” Charlie said.
My partner had an irritating habit of eating between sentences and made a smacking sound as he spoke. Charlie was divorced, a single parent to his sulky teenage daughter, Irma. Maybe you reached an age when chocolate kisses were all you could get.
“The sisters lived together,” Charlie went on. “They’ve both known Karma since she was in grade school. Harriett was her piano teacher and their friendship grew over the years. Karma’s mother died in childbirth. She pretty much raised her, later took over as Karma’s agent when she made the big time.”
“Did her sister know if Harriett had any enemies?”
“Harriett and Eleanor never married, went to church every Sunday, raised poodles, fussed and worried over Karma. Total grandma types.” I heard more chewing, swallowing. “Hell, I wish they would’ve adopted me.”
Based on what Charlie said my earlier suspicions about Karma being the real target seemed even more plausible. “What did her fiancé have to say?”
“The uniforms should be heading out there about now. As soon as they make contact, we’ll head over. I’m hoping for an autograph.”
“Didn’t know you were a fan.”
“The Dawg’s one of Irma’s favorites. She’s crazy about his Twitters.”
Charlie probably didn’t know the difference between a Tweet and Twitter. Maybe he thought Twitter was some kind of breakfast cereal the rapper endorsed. I asked them to notify me when the uniforms contacted Love Dawg and ended the call.
I chatted with the Scientific Investigation Division, or SID, supervisor, Bob Woodley, as he began processing the area. I’d known Woodley for almost a decade and had complete confidence in his abilities. His youthful assistant was another matter.
I’d seen Chandra Martin a couple of times before at other crime scenes. She seemed odd, almost impulsive in her actions. The young woman had black blunt-cut hair, wore tons of black eyeliner, and had on a pair of black skinny jeans and a striped navy blue shirt with buckles.
Maybe the outfit was something out of a clothing line for hip, young professional Goths. Chandra also had a sleeve of tattoos, and more punctures from where she’d removed her piercings than a dart board. I also knew from experience that she lacked any understanding of basic social etiquette.
I ran down my theory to Woodley about Harriett Nordquist leaning over to Karma when she was shot.
“Just looking at the way her body fell forward, I’d say that’s likely,” Woodley said. “We’ll do the usual measurements, check all the angles, but it looks to me like a single shot. We found a nine millimeter casing in the grass just outside the window.”
“What? You mean the shot didn’t come from the street?”
“Close range,” Chandra said, interrupting. I looked over at her as she went on. “The shooter drew a direct bead on the victim. The agent was the target, there’s no doubt about that.” The young woman looked away from me. “If you want my opinion.”
Woodley and I were quiet for a moment. He and Martin exchanged glances. “That could very well be the case,” he said, drawing in a breath and turning back to me.
If that was true, it blew a hole in my theory about Karma being the intended target. I noticed Chandra walking around the victim, examining the body. She had a strange smile when she looked over at me again.
“The bullet entered through the back of the head and came out her mouth,” Chandra said. “Bad case of indigestion.”
I turned to her supervisor, shaking my head. It was out of place for a new employee, someone twenty years Bob Woodley’s junior, to make off-color comments that weren’t solicited.
Woodley walked over, took the young woman by the arm, and moved her to the corner of the room. As he admonished his employee, the coroner, Chuck Samuels, arrived and began examining the body. I’d heard through the grapevine that Samuels was all business at a crime scene and seldom shared anything useful until the autopsy was complete. I left the room, deciding that I’d better check on my mother.
I found Mom lying in bed with a compress on her forehead. She moaned as I checked on her, obviously still in distress.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“It’s all my fault.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Mom. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I saw it coming.”
“You mean the shooting?”
“The darkness, the evil. It was in the room.”
I huffed out a breath in frustration, not knowing what to make of her statement. Maybe I could ask what her spirit guide knew about the crime. I killed the errant thought, imagining Skully getting wind of me questioning a ghost. My mother, the psychic, was also the same woman who’d recently fantasized about having sex with a dead president. I pulled the cellophane envelope out of an evidence folder.
“Mom, can you help me with something?” I held up the card. She removed the cloth from her forehead and sat up. “I found this in the street near a car that left in a hurry right after the shooting. Is it possible that you dropped it in the road.”
She shook her head, her eyes growing larger and her mouth gaping open.
“What is it? I asked. “What’s the matter?”
She took the card from me, turning it over in her hands for a moment, before her gray eyes came back up to me.
“It’s a tarot card, Kate. The death card.”
Chapter Five
The cop stops his car outside the gate to the mansion, gets out, and presses the intercom button. A few yards away, hidden behind a wall, Myra waits, watching with her sisters. There’s no response from the intercom and the cop tries again. After a final try and some cursing, the officer gets back in his car and moves off down the road.
Myra isn’t surprised that no one answered the intercom. She knows the housekeeper goes to bed early and sleeps with one of those machines that makes it sound like it’s raining when there isn’t a cloud in the sky.
As for the rapper, he’s probably passed out by now. When you start your day with a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, it’s a matter of time until it takes a toll. Myra knows all this because she’s seen it up close and in person.
Creepy-crawlies.
It’s the same technique the Manson family used. Secret missions, crawling through houses while the occupants sleep, before coming back and taking care of business.
Thank you, Charlie.
Her creepy-crawly excursions have paid off well, not to mention the excitement of secretly moving through the house of
a superstar, watching the parties, the sex games, the drugs.
Even after she was banned from the estate, Myra’s been in the house practicing with Chloe, secretly putting everything on camera for Azazel and the others. It’s all been part of the entertainment.
After the cop car disappears down the road the women don their masks again. Myra slips over to the service entrance, using a key to open the door. She waves her sisters inside, seeing that someone has left a light burning in the pantry, its soft white glow spilling onto the polished marble floor of the kitchen.
Myra moves to the counter, sliding drawers open until she finds what she wants. She turns, seeing Chloe’s eyes through her mask as she pushes the handle of the carving knife into her own pocket. They exchange nods, listening as Rose begins to chant.
Rose’s sapphire eyes are glazed and distant, her lips moving rhythmically as she repeats the words. Myra knows the prayer well. It’s a plea for protection, asking for His guidance and assistance in what is to follow.
They move up the stairway, but Myra pauses, letting her gaze sweep down over the great room below, noticing the overstuffed sofas and chairs, the polished end tables, and the standing brass lamps. She then takes another step up the stairs, seeing the framed photographs of the two stars.
Myra studies the photos, her hands trembling. There’s a buzz of electricity behind her eyes. A fire erupts deep inside her, the rage exploding and clouding her mind. The woman she has become is swept away, as her past surfaces and Myra’s mind retreats into the darkness of years gone past.
***
Myra sees her younger self, wearing a thin white cotton dress. Her arms tremble as she sits across the desk from the psychiatrist.
“Your mother?” Dr. Thurston looks up at her from the thick file that’s open on his desk. “You murdered your own mother?”
Myra doesn’t answer. Her dark eyes sweep away from him, finding a tattered area in the rug where a piece of yarn has unraveled. She follows the worn stitching, losing herself in the pattern embedded in the carpet.
“We have a lot of work to do, Lenore,” the psychiatrist says. “We’re going to spend many hours together trying to understand what happened to you.”
Lenore. The name, and the thin, forlorn girl in the office seems like another person to Myra. She watches as Lenore’s gaze sweeps out the window. Havenhurst. The sign seems pleasant and inviting, as though it is advertising a bed and breakfast, instead of a state mental institution.
The chair creaks, skidding against the hardwood floor as the psychiatrist pushes it back. He comes around the desk, stands behind her chair, and bends down. She can feel his hot breath on her neck, the smell of his aftershave mixing with coffee. Her stomach cramps, bile rises in her throat. His hands move down, touching her shoulders.
“The reports say that you’ve never explained why you murdered your mother, Lenore.” The hands continue to move over her shoulders, sweeping along the cotton fiber at the top of her dress.
The psychiatrist’s words grow softer as he continues, just above a whisper. “You’re going to talk to me. You’re going to tell me everything…your deepest, darkest secrets, all of your sins.” He pauses, his lips brushing over her neck as his hands lower to her breasts. “Before we’re done I will know everything about you. This is just the start of a very special relationship.”
The doctor’s words stir the young woman’s emotions. A presence, that has been pushed down and hidden, begins to arise. She feels it growing stronger, surging through her, a force that will not be denied. The memory of Azazel surfaces. The one who saved her now guides her actions.
Myra stands and faces the psychiatrist, her eyes burning into him as she regains her power. “You need to understand something, Dr. Thurston.”
The psychiatrist is so startled by the sudden change in her that he takes a step back, glances over to the door making sure it’s still closed. “What is that, Lenore?”
Her eyes are more intense now. Myra feels something alive, a living, breathing presence that’s within her, almost as a second entity. She is no longer the frightened waif of a woman who has been committed to a psychiatric hospital for murder.
“Lenore is dead,” she says. “My name is Myra.”
Chapter Six
Now that I knew I’d found the tarot card of death in the street, I had no idea what to make of it, just as I had no idea what the words the silence is broken meant. The one thing I did know is that the silence of my mother’s neighborhood was broken by the throng of reporters camped out down the block.
We managed to get Karma and her FFF through the press only by a police escort. But they were followed by the media and covered live by local television networks all the way to the celebrity’s gated estate in Holmby Hills.
I then called my brother, Robin, who’d already heard about the shooting, and asked him if he could spend the night with our mother. I explained that Mom was having one of her spells, which was our code word for, Mom is acting nuttier than a squirrel on meth.
By the time I managed to get Robin past the reporters to Mom’s house, it was late. The exhaustion of the day’s events was catching up with me.
After briefly discussing the shooting, Karma, her FFF, and my green dress, Robin’s blue eyes focused on my hair. “What the hell happened?”
Robin is not only my brother, he’s my hairdresser and he’s gay. It was obvious that he was horrified by both my ensemble and my hair, which made me feel like crawling back into a grave with the other zombies.
“Just a bad combination of murder, fog, and chasing a killer through the neighborhood,” I said.
He stood there, shaking his head, looking me up and down. “Come by the shop tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do. You’re a fashion and hair disaster.”
I tugged at the frizzy mess on my head. “Yeah, maybe I can stick a finger in one of the light sockets at your salon and reverse the polarity.”
“So how is Miss Daisy doing?” he asked, changing the subject.
“As good as any psychic who conjures up a murder can be. At least she’s not having orgasms.”
We’d both been scarred for life by the hallucinations Mom had about having sex with Richard Nixon after a bad reaction to medication for her recent face lift surgery. Yes, Nixon, as in the dead president.
We chatted for a few minutes more, Robin promising to call me if there were any problems with Mom. The crime scene unit was packing up and I was also ready to call it a night when my cell phone rang.
“Nobody’s home at the Dawg pound,” Charlie said then chuckled, apparently impressed by his own joke. “Pearl and I were able to get ahold of his manager, guy named Harley Porter. He’s not sure where his client is tonight, but we’re supposed to meet him at the house in the morning.”
I turned and saw Skully pacing, motioning for me to hurry up.
“Okay, I’ll meet you there,” I said to Charlie. “By the way, SID has been here and gone. They found a casing in the grass just outside Mom’s window. The shot came from close range, so unless our shooter is nearsighted, it looks like Nordquist was the intended vic.”
“Doesn’t add up. She and her sister are about as harmless as you can get. Maybe somebody wanted to get to Karma by killing her agent.”
“Maybe, but Karma gave me nothing to go on.” I turned and saw Skully’s face flush, a vein popping in his forehead. I’d given up on the stroke prayer. “See you in the morning, Charlie.”
“I suppose you talked to Woodley,” Skully said, coming over to me and checking his watch. “Since Nordquist was the target, I want you to follow up on her first thing in the morning, interview anyone who knew her, see where it leads.”
“Winkler and Kramer already talked to her sister. She and Harriett were a couple of spinsters without any enemies. We’re going to interview Love D…”
“I want Nordquist to be our focus.”
I want a gun. Wait, I remembered I already had a gun. After the initial impulse to kill Skully, I
decided that a double homicide was probably not a good idea. I was exhausted, green, frizzy, and ready to agree to whatever he wanted.
“Maybe there’s a financial angle,” Skully suggested. “If Nordquist managed the celebrity’s affairs, maybe she was skimming off the top and somebody got wind of it.”
“We’ll check. But, according to Charlie, she and her sister lived a pretty frugal lifestyle.”
“Or, it could be jealousy,” Skully suggested. “Maybe the sister didn’t like the fact that Harriett was Karma’s manager; got all the attention.”
“Or hormonal.”
“What?”
“Maybe Harriett’s sister was having her period, went into an estrogen-induced rage. Finally let her sister have it. Blew her brains out.”
Skully nodded. Did he actually think what I’d said was plausible?
“Stranger things have happened,” he finally said.
Oh my god. Harriett’s sister probably last had her period during the Civil War.
Skully started to walk away, but came back to me. “You look like hell, Detective. Go home and get some rest.”
“Why don’t you go find a straight razor and cut off your dick?” Okay, I didn’t actually say it. It was just one of those random, homicidal zombie thoughts that crosses the mind of an exhausted, ugly green woman. Thanks for telling me I look like hell, Skully. I needed that.
Bernie and I met up with Natalie and Mo as we were getting ready to leave. I agreed to give them a ride to their apartment. They’d recently moved in together after Natalie separated from her husband.
I helped Mo into the backseat, removing the bungee cord that I use to keep Olive’s passenger door shut.
I call my ancient Ford Escort, Olive, because she’s green, yes green. I paid cash for her after my ex left me nearly bankrupt and I couldn’t get a car loan. I drive my own car instead of a department pool car for the mileage reimbursement checks, which lately weren’t keeping pace with the repair bills. I’d named her before I knew anything about Karma’s power color.