Killer Swell

by Jeff Shelby

  “He didn’t have a lot to do without patients to see,” Charlotte continued. “Some paperwork, but not much else. He came to my office frequently.” She paused, pursing her lips. “One thing led to another.”

  “Were you in love with him?” I asked.

  “Thought I was,” she answered. “He’s handsome, charming, intelligent. Gave me back what I’d lost in my divorce. But I started to realize that wasn’t what he was looking for.”

  “So did you break it off?”

  She finished the coffee, then shook her head. “Not right away. I was enjoying having someone around. I stayed with it until about a month ago.” She paused and set the now empty cup on the ledge. “I realized I wasn’t the only one.”

  “You mean Kate.”

  She turned to me. “No. I had somehow rationalized having an affair with a married man. Got it in my head that I was the good one, Kate was the bad one. I was the one he needed, not his unsympathetic wife.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand then.”

  “He was seeing someone besides me and besides his wife,” she said, sadness in her eyes. “His cell phone was ringing with calls he wouldn’t take in front of me, I was getting hang-ups on my home line. He started making excuses to get out of meeting me. So I asked him.”

  “And he didn’t deny it?”

  “No,” she said, almost laughing. “Can you believe that? I don’t know if he thought I wouldn’t care or maybe he just didn’t care. I don’t know. I think he was surprised when I said that I was done with the whole thing. But I don’t think he was sad.” She looked at me again. “I could rationalize being the other woman to his wife, but I couldn’t justify being one of the other women. Stupid, but I guess I have my limits.”

  “Any idea if Kate knew about the affairs?”

  “No,” Charlotte said, shaking her head. “I didn’t think she did. That’s why I was so surprised when you showed me that piece of paper.”

  “Did you know Kate?”

  “Not really. Saw her at a hospital function once or twice.” She smiled ruefully. “Not a great idea to make friends with the wife of your lover, you know?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  She looked at her watch and stood. “I’ve gotta get back in there. Time to wow them again.”

  “I’m gonna need to tell the police working Kate’s investigation about you,” I told her. “They’ll want to talk to you.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I really am sorry. You shocked the hell out of me when you said she was dead. I don’t feel good about that.”

  I nodded and stood. “One more question, Charlotte. Any idea who the other woman was?”

  “None,” she said, straightening the folders under her arm. “And that was probably for the best.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She brushed the hair from her forehead with her free hand. “Because I would’ve done one of two things. One, I would’ve found her and kicked her ass. I was furious when he admitted it and I would’ve confronted her if I could have.” She smiled, but it didn’t seem happy. “Or, two, I would’ve told Kate about her. Just to hurt everybody.” She paused, staring at me. “You ever cheated on anybody, Noah?”

  I thought about it and didn’t know how to answer, so I just shrugged.

  “Then you haven’t,” she said. “Because the second you get involved in it, the second you can call yourself an adulterer, you change. You know you’re different than you were before,” she said, shaking her head like she wanted to remove the memory from her mind. “And, trust me, it’s not for the better.”

  I watched Charlotte Truman walk back into the hotel, taking her guilt with her.

  50

  The late-afternoon sun burned brightly as I drove back to San Diego. The traffic choked up in the hills of Mission Viejo, and the half-moon-shaped Dana Harbor looked like a bathtub out in the distance, filled with tiny sailboats as I crawled along the winding concrete highway.

  I called Liz at the office, but got her voice mail. I told her about Charlotte, explained why she might want to talk to her, and gave my opinion that she probably didn’t have anything to do with Kate’s death. I knew Liz would interview her anyway, looking for something I might have missed. I thought about asking Liz to call me, but instead said, “See ya later.”

  I turned Jack Johnson up on the radio, traffic lightening as I passed through San Clemente. I glanced wistfully at the crowded waters at Trestles, which offered arguably some of the most maneuverable waves in southern California. I didn’t have my board or the time, but that didn’t prevent me from momentarily wishing that I could stop for a quick session. Instead, I continued driving and let Johnson’s guitar and smooth vocals wash some of the tension out of my body as I thought about my conversation with Charlotte Truman.

  I believed the things she had told me. I could understand how Randall must’ve seemed attractive. Her telling of the story laid most of the blame in her lap, but I knew that Randall was an equal party. There are always at least two pieces to the puzzle. In this case, though, there seemed to be three, and I didn’t know where I was going to find the third.

  I pondered that as I walked into Carter’s hospital room. He was staring at the television in the far corner of the room, the remote in his hand.

  He motioned to the screen. “I am never going to a game again.”

  I saw several Padres players walking off the field, heads hung low, as the entire Dodgers team danced around home plate.

  “Yes you will,” I said.

  He shook his head violently like a child disagreeing with a parent. “No way, dude. I’m finished with them.”

  “Then who are you gonna root for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the Devil Rays. They don’t have any fans.”

  I sat down in my chair. “Whatever.”

  He clicked the TV off with the remote and dropped it in his lap. “Where you been?”

  “That is a loaded question,” I said, not sure where to begin.

  Carter studied me for a moment, leaned over the edge of the bed. “You were with Emily again.”

  “No I wasn’t.”

  “Yeah you were. I can tell.”

  “What?”

  “You had sex.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  He pointed to my head. “Those lines in your forehead are gone.”

  “That means nothing.”

  He leaned back in his bed. “Does too.”

  “I haven’t seen Emily,” I said.

  “Well, you did something with somebody,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  We stared at each other for a minute, neither of us blinking.

  His eyebrows rose up slowly, and the rest of his face broke into a look of horror. “No.”

  “Afraid so.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No. No way.”

  “Yup.”

  “The Ice Queen?”

  A big grin was my only response.

  He dropped his head dramatically back onto his pillow. “I’m in here for a couple of days and you start making decisions like someone stole your brain.”

  “I’m not here to argue about this with you,” I said.

  “Well, somebody’s gotta argue it because being with her ain’t right.”

  “Isn’t that a country song?”

  “Shut up, Noah,” he said, raising his head up again. “Were you completely ripped? Or maybe in a coma?”

  I showed him my middle finger, but smiled. “No.”

  He looked at me, then waved his hand in the air. “I don’t wanna talk about this right now. My heart can’t take it.”

  “You weren’t shot in the heart.”

  “Whatever. Where else have you been?”

  I told him about my trip to Los Angeles to see Charlotte.

  He whistled when I finished. “Randall just can’t seem to do the right thing.”

  “I know.”

  “But you don’t think she had anything to do
with Kate?”

  “She’s clean,” I told him. “She’s a pistol, for sure. But she was pretty honest about the whole deal. Didn’t blame Randall for any of it.”

  “Maybe that’s what she wanted you to think.”

  “I don’t think so, but I left Liz a message about her anyway.”

  Carter winced at Liz’s name. Then he shivered like he had goosebumps.

  “I need to ask him about this other woman,” I said. “She may be just like Charlotte, but I want to talk to her.”

  “Yeah, I agree,” he said.

  I thought about another loose end. “Do you have that key Emily gave me?” I asked. “I gave it to you right before…”

  “…you got me shot,” he finished. He looked over to the small dresser sitting under the television. “Top drawer. It’s with my wallet and watch.”

  I walked over and opened the drawer. The key was resting on top of his wallet. I turned back to him.

  “Charlie Stratton,” he said, anticipating my question. “He has a kiosk in Clairemont Square, by the theater. Makes keys on the spot.” He nodded at the key in my hand. “He’ll know.”

  I put the key in my pocket. “Okay. You alright here tonight? You want anything?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m not feeling so good anyway.”

  I walked over to the bed. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  He leaned forward, clutching his stomach. “Oh, God.”

  I grabbed the blue, half-moon-shaped tray off the shelf next to his bed and slid it onto his lap.

  He flopped back, waving it away. “Never mind. I guess it was just the thought of you and the Ice Queen again.”

  I flipped the tray at his head. “I gotta go.”

  He ducked. “Where?”

  “See Emily.”

  “Jesus. Aren’t we the sexual deviant?”

  “No,” I said, frowning, walking toward the door. “I need to set things straight.”

  “Noah?”

  I opened the door and turned back to him. “What?”

  “Last night,” he said. “With Liz. Seriously. You feel good about it?”

  “As good as I’ve felt about anything this week,” I said.

  He nodded solemnly, cracked a small smile in my direction, then doubled over, retching loudly.

  51

  I pulled into Emily’s condo community in Del Mar and parked in front of her stairs. I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation, but I knew I needed to clear the air. The longer I let it go, the more difficult it would be for me to see her, something that was going to happen if I was going to figure out what happened to Kate.

  I walked up the steps to her door and knocked. I waited a minute, then knocked again. Still no answer.

  I ran back to my car, scribbled a quick note, and ran it up to her door. I knew that I was getting off easy, but I tried to convince myself that leaving a note was at least pushing the issue.

  As I drove down PCH, the sun was starting to dip and I decided to pull off and walk the beach at Torrey Pines State Beach. I knew I couldn’t make it to Clairemont Square in time to talk with Carter’s friend about the key, and I’d found that walking the sand at dusk does wonders to organize my thoughts.

  I’d walked a couple hundred yards to the south, just to the edge of the bluffs, and was kicking myself for not having my board in the rental car when I recognized a familiar face walking in my direction.

  Emily smiled at me as we met. “Hey, stranger.”

  “Hi. I was actually just up at your place.”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “Got that. I left a note.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds serious.”

  “Sort of,” I said, a mixture of relief and dread coursing through me in anticipation of our impending conversation.

  She tugged on the hem of her gray T-shirt. “Noah, last night—”

  I held up my hand. “Let’s not apologize or do any of that stuff. That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

  She motioned toward the rocks at the base of the cliff, and we walked over to them and sat down.

  “I didn’t know he was coming over,” she said before I could say anything. “I hadn’t seen him in a couple of months. Things just kind of went nuts.” She paused. “But I told him that last night was one night. That’s it.”

  I nodded. “You don’t have to explain anything to me, Em. Really.”

  “I know. But it was awkward.”

  “Yeah, it was.” We watched the water for a minute before I spoke again. “Emily, I just don’t think this is a good idea.”

  She looked surprised. “What? You and me?”

  I nodded. “There’s too much going on right now. With both of us.”

  She bit her bottom lip, her gaze now riveted on the surf. “Okay.”

  My stomach dropped further. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, Em. I really don’t. I’m trying to make Kate’s death a priority and starting a relationship with you at the same time…it just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Fine,” she said, her voice a dull monotone.

  “And we’re gonna be around each other,” I said before I lost the courage to keep talking about it. “I need to be able to talk to you without feeling weird around you. And if something’s going on with us, I don’t think that’s gonna work.”

  “I get it,” she said, but still didn’t look at me.

  We sat there in silence. The sun sunk further, turning the ocean from a dark blue to more of a metallic hue. The waves got smaller, long lines of foam washing easily to the shore.

  “This feels like it’s about last night,” she said finally, hugging her knees to her chest.

  “It’s not,” I said. “I promise. Maybe last night made it clearer to me. I don’t know. But this is about you and me—nothing else.”

  She turned to look at me. No tears in her eyes. I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe a little anger, maybe a little sadness. But her expression was blank.

  She brushed the blond hair from her face and stood. “Thanks.”

  “Thanks?”

  “For letting me know,” she said.

  I stood. “Emily, I didn’t—”

  It was her turn to hold up her hand. “I mean it. Thanks for letting me know where I stand.”

  She walked past me, up the beach toward the parking lot, leaving me without anything else to say or anyone to say it to.

  52

  I spent the night wrestling with Emily’s reaction to me and new thoughts about Liz. I ended up getting about two hours of sleep. When I woke, I felt too sluggish to hit the water or take a run, so I took a long shower, read the paper, and watched a thick marine layer build over the coast. A day without sunshine.

  I drove up to Clairemont about mid-morning to see Carter’s key guy. About twenty minutes from the beaches, the only notable thing about the area was that the high school with the same name was rumored to have been where Cameron Crowe did his undercover research for Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The school did not put that on its enrollment materials.

  Situated between the canyons, the area housed middle-class homes and lots of strip malls. Clairemont Square had undergone numerous renovations, trying to keep up with the changing retail times, but it never seemed to quite make it with each new face-lift. The giant theater that still loomed as the anchor of the outdoor plaza was the place to see movies when I was a kid. Now it ran films you could see at half price if you didn’t mind the grainy print quality or that it had already been out for a month.

  I found the kiosk in the middle of the plaza. A guy with a long ponytail was lounging on a tall director’s chair, his feet up on the cart and a cigarette in his mouth. Long, skinny arms emerged from a grubby white tank top that matched the dirty jeans and work boots.

  “You Charlie?” I asked, admiring the vast quantity of keys hanging in every possible place on the cart.

  He pulled the cigarette from his lips and squinted at me. “Yeah. What can I do for you, man?”
/>
  “Got a question about a key.”

  He spread his arms wide, grinning. “Well, you’ve found heaven then.”

  I pulled the key out of the pocket of my shorts. “Carter Hamm sent me.”

  He tapped the cigarette and ash fell to the ground. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “No shit? My good buddy Carter?”

  “Yeah. Said you might be able to tell me what this belongs to.” I handed the key to him.

  He jammed the cigarette back into his lips and turned the key over in his palm a couple of times. “Probably.” He grinned at me. “For the right price.”

  “I said Carter sent me.”

  He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, tossed it to the ground, and stepped on it. “Exactly. That’s why it’ll only cost you twenty instead of forty.”

  I extracted a twenty from my wallet and handed it to him. “What a deal.”

  His laugh sounded like a hiss. “I know, dude. You’re lucky.”

  Charlie turned around, his ponytail whipping over his shoulder. His bare neck exposed a tattoo of a black panther with its fangs bared. I tried to imagine the pain of ink needles dancing around the top of my spine.

  He turned back around, an old metal toolbox in his hand. He set the box on the cart and opened it up. He rummaged through what looked to be thousands of keys. Old, new, shiny, rusted, big, small.

  “Heard Carter was in the hospital,” Charlie said, moving some more keys around.

  I tried not to look surprised. “Yeah. Actually, he is.”

  He hissed or laughed or whatever it was again. “That dude gets in more shit.”

  “He’s gonna be alright.”

  “Good to hear.” He stared at a particular key he’d pulled from the toolbox, then at my key. “That’s it.”

  “What?”

  He held up my key. “This goes to one of them rental lockers. Put a quarter in and pull the key out and it’s locked, you know?”

  “Yeah. Like at the airport.”

  He shrugged. “Or Sea World. Or wherever.”

  “Is it possible to tell where it came from? I mean, exactly.”

  Charlie held the key up and flipped it around with his fingers, then nodded. “Probably.” He smiled at me.