The Deepest Cut

by Dianne Emley

  The walls on the backs of the buildings along the alley were covered with graffiti. Attempts had been made to cover it up with neutral-colored paint, but that only provided a fresh canvas for new tags.

  She looked around and didn’t see any security cameras. A wooden plank fence was on the other side of the alley. A couple of planks were broken or missing. Vining directed her flashlight beam inside and saw the backyard of the bungalow that faced the side street. The yard was mostly dirt but had persistent patches of grass. Weathered white resin lawn furniture and toys were scattered around.

  She walked the street that was perpendicular to the alley. It was lined with small houses and ramshackle apartment buildings. She went down a cracked cement path that led to the front door of the house that was along the alley. Shifting land had made the three cement steps that led to the porch separate a few inches from it. A beat-up couch and a small table were on the porch.

  She pressed the doorbell buzzer, but the button sank beneath her thumb without sounding. After knocking and announcing, “Police,” she saw movement from behind the closed drapes. A young Latina opened the door holding a baby boy on her hip. The baby had wide brown eyes and was sucking a pacifier.

  Vining asked her in English about the tag, and then exercised her rudimentary Spanish. The young woman said she didn’t know anything, which didn’t surprise Vining. No one around there would want to be seen talking to the cops.

  She returned to the alley and walked down it behind two auto repair shops. Their yards were surrounded by chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. Neither had security cameras. She walked in the other direction, passing the loading dock of the Terra Cosmetika building.

  The cosmetics firm might have been on the cutting edge of eco-friendly, but it took an unfriendly stance when it came to intruders. It was all about high-tech security. CCTV cameras were positioned on both corners of the building to observe the loading dock. The one on the western side might have caught the length of the alley behind the tire store.

  She walked to the front of the building. The corner diagonally across was where Scrappy had last worked, waving his arrow in his clown suit, and where Victor Chang was still standing, wearing his King Tut headdress.

  She thought of Scrappy’s tag in the Hollenbeck Paper building: China Dog 187. The style of the “Vining 187” tag was completely different. She thought it unlikely that Scrappy was responsible for both tags. Still it was odd to find a tag with the same verbiage on a wall near where Scrappy had last worked.

  There was a CCTV camera over Terra Cosmetika’s front entrance. The building’s façade was of stamped concrete and bamboo wood. Drought resistant plants spilled from large painted concrete planters. A plaque beside the door stated that the building was built with environmentally friendly materials and largely powered by renewable resources.

  Vining looked around at the homely but friendly mom-and-pop businesses on the street— the brass shop, the hubcap shop, the mechanic who specialized in British sports cars— and reflected that the Pasadena that she knew and loved was being crushed under the steamroller of so-called progress.

  She tried Terra Cosmetika’s sepia-tinted glass door and, of course, it was locked. There was a smart-card device for employees and a buzzer for visitors. She looked up at the CCTV camera and waved. Guess no one had figured out a way to make criminals eco-friendly

  She’d come back tomorrow.

  BACK IN HER CAR, SHE CALLED KISSICK. HE WAS 13 ON HER CELL PHONE speed dial. His phone rang several times before going into voicemail. Her name would show up as a “Missed Call” anyway, so she might as well leave a message.

  “Jim, just checking in. Hope everything’s going good. Bye.”

  As tired as she was, she felt a little horny.

  After a years-long sexual drought, Kissick hadn’t just awakened her sensuality, he’d jump-started it. She’d never felt this way before. She’d never craved sex. She’d had few sexual partners. Her ex-husband Wes had been her high school sweetheart and her first. After he’d walked out on her, she’d dated a little, mostly for revenge. She’d soon given it up, not wanting to re-create with her daughter the parade of men that her mother had made her endure. She still took pains to hide from Emily her true relationship with Kissick.

  She’d thought that her and Wes’s sexual relationship had been good. Now that she knew the difference, she realized it had been warm and comforting, like a bowl of Cream of Wheat. During the short months that she and Kissick were together the first time, she’d thought their sexual relationship was lovely and nice. Now she knew she’d been tentative and restrained.

  All that had been before. Before T. B. Mann had broken her down and seized her life, until, at the last second, she’d seized it back. “Restrained” wouldn’t be in the vocabulary of words she’d use to describe her and Kissick now. Only tired clichés came to mind— fireworks, runaway trains, geysers erupting. Still, sometimes clichés were apt.

  That brought her up to today. She thought of her strange meeting with the subversive Marvin Li, when he stroked the spiraling butterflies on his pectoral with his fine, long fingers. Was what she was feeling now set in motion by him? Maybe she should be disgusted.

  Maybe she should just tell her brain to shut up and relax.

  She looked at the cell phone in her palm. She again dialed 13 and pressed the pound sign. Again she got Kissick’s voicemail. Her message was plain.

  “I need you tonight.”

  She mashed her thumb on the button to end the call and immediately regretted having left the message.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  STANDING ON THE SANDSPIT NEAR THE YELLOW NYLON ROPE THAT marked the snowy plover restricted habitat, Zeke Denver pointed to show Kissick where they’d found Marilu Feathers’s body He also showed him where they’d found the remains of the campfire inside the restricted area.

  Even though September was still summertime in California, with long, warm days into which twilight crept slowly, the beach was not crowded. Groups of surfer dudes, the tops of their wetsuits pulled down to reveal toned-and-tanned torsos, gathered on the sand with their girlfriends in bikini bottoms and hoodies. The wind had kicked up as the sun began to set. The ocean was dotted with whitecaps.

  After Denver had indicated the spot, he dropped into thoughtful silence. They both watched as the setting sun disappeared behind a fog bank, radiating bright orange. It reappeared beneath the fog a few minutes later.

  Out of the blue, Denver said, “There are people who believe this place is magical. Where else can you stand on the beach and be eye-level with the ocean?”

  Kissick looked straight-on at the roiling waves.

  “Mighty force, that ocean,” Denver added. “I believe she wants to kill us. Rogue waves snatch people off this shore a couple of times a year.”

  As if on cue, a woman on horseback appeared from the passageway between the dunes. After the horse trotted across the softer sand, it eased into a gallop once it hit the waterline, seemingly without urging.

  Kissick thought he saw moisture in the corner of Zeke Denver’s eye.

  AFTER KISSICK BID DENVER GOOD-BYE, HE HEADED TO CAMBRIA, TO THE house where Marilu Feathers had grown up and where her mother, Margaret, still lived. He drove with all the car windows down, traveling north on Highway 1 along one of the most beautiful, unspoiled stretches of coastline in California. He used to drive this route as a college student off to visit friends at U.C. Santa Cruz in his Volkswagen Beetle that he’d modified into a Baja Bug and painted tangerine with a metallic flake.

  He reached Cambria, an artsy town that straddled the ocean and a mountainous pine forest. He followed Margaret Feathers’s directions into the forested part, winding higher through narrow streets until he found her address.

  The small, sturdy wooden cottage was set off the road and nestled among pine trees. Its red paint with brown shutters needed refreshing. Two stone chimneys pierced the pitched roof that was littered with dry pine needles. The modest flowe
r beds were planted only with shade-loving impatiens that had grown leggy. The small front yard was circled by a white picket fence and consisted of sandy dirt and pine needles beneath towering pines.

  The house wasn’t decrepit, but it looked careworn. Zeke Denver had told Kissick that Margaret Feathers had been a widow for several years and lived in the house by herself. Marilu’s brother and his family lived nearby. Denver and his wife checked in on Margaret and helped her with chores and maintenance. Her son was encouraging her to sell the house and move into a senior community in a bigger city that was closer to more services. Margaret, vibrant at age sixty-eight, wasn’t ready for that just yet.

  Kissick opened the gate in the picket fence and walked down an uneven flagstone path, avoiding stepping on pine cones. The air here was warmer than on the sandspit and smelled of pine forest rather than ocean. The forest side of Cambria gave no hint of the ocean on the other side.

  As he approached the cozy, solid-looking house, he understood Margaret Feathers’s unwillingness to move. A wreath of silk flowers framed a brass look-through in the door that had a grate of narrow bars on the outside and a knocker beneath. Kissick knew that inside he’d find a small brass door that closed with a latch. He had something similar on his front door.

  The front door swung open before Kissick had a chance to sound the knocker.

  “Detective Kissick. I’m Margaret Feathers. Please come in.”

  “Nice to meet you, Dr. Feathers.”

  “Call me Margaret, please. A doctor of sociology doesn’t even get a good dinner reservation.”

  Kissick smiled appreciatively at her wit as she stepped aside to let him in.

  Dr. Feathers was tall, big-boned, and lean like her daughter Mar-ilu, but her face was softer and more feminine. Marilu had inherited the strong features of her accountant father. Margaret was dressed in a white blouse trimmed with lace tucked into gray slacks. Her gray hair still showed a little brown and was styled in soft, close-cropped curls.

  The house was as inviting as Kissick had imagined. The front door led directly into the living room, which had a deeply pitched ceiling with exposed knotty-pine beams. The Early American maple furniture covered in plaid fabric was in need of reupholstering. The floor was of random-width knotty pine planks covered with an oval braided-wool rug. There was a stone fireplace with a raised hearth and a tarnished brass fireplace set. Firewood was stacked in an iron basket and kindling was in a brass bucket. Two easy chairs and a couch were positioned to enjoy the fire. One chair was draped with a throw that was heavily coated with light-colored pet fur. Through an archway beside the fireplace he saw a dining room and a kitchen beyond it. To the left was a comfortable-looking den with an old television on a stand.

  The fireplace was clean of ashes. That was reasonable as it was late summer, but Kissick wondered if Margaret ever built a fire just for herself. He thought of his own parents, who were both alive. If his father were dead, would his mother continue the simple routines they enjoyed that made the house a home? Would the traditions bring warm memories or would they feel hollow if not shared? Perhaps a fireplace fire made too big a mess at the end of a life in which much time had been devoted to cleaning up messes.

  “Can I offer you tea or coffee, Detective?”

  “Whatever you’re having would be great.”

  “I enjoy English Breakfast tea, even in the afternoon.” Margaret’s voice was evenly modulated and she precisely enunciated her words, reminiscent of the college professor she’d been. “I hope you won’t turn down a slice of my banana nut bread.”

  “I wouldn’t consider being so impolite.”

  “You’re a fit young man. I’m sure you can handle a little piece of something sweet. Everyone’s so concerned about eating carbohydrates these days. When I grew up, we had dessert after every meal and I did the same in my household. I guess it’s all about staying active. People these days spend too much time indoors, looking at computer screens. Please make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

  She left for the kitchen. Her footsteps in low-heeled shoes were alternately muffled on the area rugs and resonated softly against the hardwood floor.

  The silence in the house was broken only by the ticking of a grandfather clock that Kissick spied in the adjoining den. It emitted a firm “tick” followed by a lower-pitched “tock,” and silence in between, like a heartbeat. Kissick found the silence in older homes unique. They didn’t so much exclude sounds, but rather were selective about the ones they embraced. The silence felt rich. It wasn’t missing anything, but rather was full and complete in itself.

  He looked at framed photographs that were arrayed on the mantel, end tables, and built-in bookcases beneath the windows. He’d examined many such collections in the homes of murder victims’ families. The photos always made him reflect about that corner turned when murder takes its place at the table, never to leave. For the loved ones left behind, the photographs still provoked happy memories, but the happiness was forever tarnished. No amount of polishing would restore its prior beauty. He sensed that tainted happiness in the silence of this house.

  There were rocks and shells placed around the photographs. Kissick absently picked up one of the stones and carried it as he explored. It was gray and marked with fine, darker gray striations. It was lighter than it looked.

  An overweight, orange tabby cat sauntered into the room from the den. The large cat moved straight toward Kissick, delicately placing one paw in front of the other, like a gymnast on a balance beam, her gold eyes fixed upon the intruder. She sniffed Kissick’s outstretched fingers, but reared her head beyond his reach when he attempted to touch her. She minced to the easy chair that was draped with the fur-covered throw, and leaped onto it with ease that belied her girth.

  He continued perusing the photos until he saw one that pulled him up short. It was a studio photograph of Margaret and her husband, perhaps taken ten years ago. Margaret’s hair was worn in the same style, but wasn’t as gray. He had on a coat and tie and she was in a pale blue dress. Around her neck was a pearl necklace. It was nearly identical to Vining’s— the same length, the same size pearls, the same pendant surrounded by small stones that glittered like diamonds. The only difference was the gem in the pendant. Vining’s necklace had a pearl. Kissick couldn’t quite make out the stone in the photograph, but it wasn’t a pearl.

  Margaret returned, carrying a silver tray laden with a china teapot, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, cups, saucers, and small plates, one holding fanned slices of rich-looking banana nut bread. There were also small, crisp linen napkins with embroidered flowers, and silver teaspoons and dessert forks that looked as if they’d been recently polished.

  Kissick returned the photograph to the shelf and realized he was still holding the rock. “I’m sorry. I picked this up and I don’t know where it goes.”

  She had set the tray halfway onto the coffee table and was picking up copies of National Geographic, The Saturday Review, and The Economist with one hand. “Oh, just put it anywhere. Marilu was always giving me rocks and shells. She always brought me shells that were pink and rocks that were heart-shaped.”

  Kissick looked at the rock and realized that it indeed resembled a heart. He set it on the mantel.

  “That photograph you were looking at was taken on our fortieth anniversary.” She set down the tray. “Harold died a year later. I see Miss Persimmon has deigned to grace us with her presence.” She scratched the cat’s ears. The cat heartily rolled her head against Margaret’s hand as if in ecstasy eyes slit, and began purring robustly.

  She stroked the cat once more then patted a wing-backed chair beside the sofa. “Please have a seat, Detective.”

  She perched on the sofa and poured tea into a china cup decorated with hand-painted flowers and a gold band around the rim. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black, please.”

  She set a cup and saucer on the coffee table near him and followed with a slice of banana bread on a small plate, tuck
ing a napkin beneath it.

  He picked up the delicate napkin. He wouldn’t have dared to soil it, but she wanted him to use it, so he opened it at the first crease and draped it across one leg.

  “In your anniversary photo, you’re wearing a pearl necklace. Does it have a history?”

  Something about the way she looked deeply into his eyes made him suspect that she had always had a question about the necklace. “Someone gave it to Marilu. She felt it was an extravagant gift and would have refused it, but she couldn’t. It had been left in a bag on the doorknob of the ranger residence where she was living. She asked me if I wanted it.”

  “When was this?”

  “About nine years ago.” Her spoon tinkled against the china cup as she stirred in cream and sugar.

  “Nine years ago. That was around the time Marilu shot Bud Lilly.”

  “Yes. Why the interest in the necklace?”

  “It’s a lead we’re following.”

  “So that’s why you came here. I knew you had something personal to discuss beyond what Zeke could tell you about Marilu’s murder.”

  He was about to ask her if she still had the necklace when she took in a breath, as if to speak.

  “I believe I was wearing it that Christmas Eve. The one when we waited for Marilu. I wore it to her funeral. It was something beautiful that she’d given to me.”

  She paused, holding the cup in mid-air. “Are you suggesting that the person who killed Marilu might have given it to her?”

  Kissick sensed the pain she’d endured all those years. It started that Christmas Eve with mild anxiety when Marilu, who was never late without calling, had not shown up. Anxiety turned to fear as time dragged on. She’d probably served the Christmas Eve dinner anyway, lest it completely dry out in the oven, but no one had eaten much. Before long, her worst fears would be confirmed.