His statement startled me, and then slowly the puzzle pieces snapped into place. The poem. The blowup. The affair.
“Are you suggesting Cissy Brice thought Evan was having an affair with me?”
Green raised his eyebrows slightly and let my words linger heavily in the air. Finally he said, “I didn’t say that, ma’am, but is that what you think?”
My face felt warm with self-doubt and embarrassment. “I don’t know . . . no, of course not.”
“Have you ever known Mrs. Brice to be violent?”
Cissy had been a captivating young woman back in high school and college, a real charmer. She’d also been my best friend until she charmed Evan Brice out of my bed and into hers. At the time, her betrayal had felt like an act of violence, but it didn’t make her a murderer now.
“No,” I said finally. “At least not the kind of violence you’re talking about.”
“You’re evading the question, Ms. Sinclair.”
There was an edge to his tone. It occurred to me that Green’s initial Mr. Sympathy routine might have been a ploy to offer the jilted ex-girlfriend a shot at revenge while helping him make a case against the obvious suspect in every murder: the spouse. If so, there was history between Cissy and me that Green hadn’t figured into his strategy, history that would keep me from ever playing the revenge card.
“What’s her motive?” I said.
He leaned back in the chair. “People kill for a lot of reasons: jealousy, revenge, financial gain. Take your pick. Apparently the victim was blowing money right and left on all sorts of things, including women and drugs. Maybe Mrs. Brice decided to preserve her assets while there were still some to preserve.”
“So she turned Evan into Swiss cheese? I mean, how many times did you say he was stabbed?”
“I didn’t say.” He paused as if considering the wisdom of telling me. “Seventeen.”
“Seventeen? How could she physically do that?”
“You mean, because she’s a woman? Maybe you’re too young to remember the Manson family, Ms. Sinclair. Susan Atkins stabbed Sharon Tate to death, then used the victim’s blood to write ‘PIG’ on the door near her body.”
“Fine. You made your point. As far as I know, Cissy was never physically violent. Aside from that, I haven’t seen her in years. I don’t feel comfortable speculating about what she may or may not be like now. I’m sorry.”
Green’s lips pressed together in a hard line. “I can accept that.” He stared at me for a few moments and then added, “For now.”
The narrowing of his eyes gave me the impression that he no longer trusted me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like the idea that my reunion with Evan may have interfered with his already fragile marriage. I certainly didn’t want to feel responsible for helping the police use our one meeting and a few phone calls to complicate a murder investigation. Green would soon find out that anyone who knew Evan could come up with a list of suspects that were at least as viable as Cissy, like a disgruntled client or a jealous lover, and certainly no one could rule out a possible connection to Evan’s love affair with drugs.
Green asked several more perfunctory questions, which I answered to the best of my ability. I’d erased Evan’s last telephone message, but I gave him the gist of it as accurately as I could. I also printed out the few, benign e-mails we’d exchanged. The detective told me he’d have to contact my mother to verify my whereabouts around the time Evan was murdered. He said it was routine, and I believed him. I wasn’t his target. I was sure of that. I told him he could check with Pookie later that evening.
After I watched Moses Green’s car turn from my road onto Pacific Coast Highway, I walked through the French doors to the deck to clear my head. The jet stream had now masked the sun and was bringing in some uninvited moisture, which blurred the horizon with haze. Near the shoreline, a half-dozen surfers peeled off wetsuits as waves pummeled the sand. A few feet down the beach, a springer spaniel waded through the surf, trying to fetch a Frisbee. His best intentions were thwarted again and again by the crashing waves.
The scene reminded me of the elusiveness of second chances. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Evan might still be alive if I’d returned his call that night. I’d failed him, hadn’t been there when he needed me most. There’d be no second chance to change that. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me again.
Cold air began creeping through my flannel shirt, so I went inside and tried to purge my mind of all thoughts of Evan’s death and tackle the mundane things that had to be done so life could move forward. I tidied the magazines on the coffee table. I went to my desk and halfheartedly tinkered with a list of questions I was writing for the focus group. Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t keep my thoughts from drifting back to Evan’s last message on my answering machine. He’d asked for nothing but my time—time I hadn’t been willing to give him. His voice had been raspy. I’d thought he had a cold, but now I wondered if he’d been crying, overwhelmed by troubles he could no longer contain.
An unbearable heaviness settled in my chest. I couldn’t concentrate. When I finally realized why, I pulled my address book from the desk drawer and carefully flipped through the pages until I spotted the entry. I listened to the dial tone for a long time, gathering my courage before dialing Cissy Brice’s number.
-2-
the Brices’ telephone rang at least eight times before a man answered. He explained in an even, emotionless tone that Cissy was unavailable. When I told him that the police had just left my house, he asked me to hold. Several minutes later he came back on the line. He explained that Cissy had appointments scheduled for most of the day, but that I was welcome to pay my respects in person if I came over by ten o’clock. That didn’t give me much time. According to my watch it was nearly nine, and I was far from ready to meet the day.
I went to the bathroom mirror and slapped on a little makeup. I put on my tomato red pantsuit, pausing briefly to consider whether black might have been a more appropriate color to wear on a condolence call. Then I reminded myself that red had been Evan’s favorite color. That was all the validation I needed.
As I was leaving the house, I glanced toward the kitchen counter and saw the light on my answering machine blinking, signaling a new message. I hadn’t heard the telephone ring, so the call had probably come in while I was in the bathroom. I pushed the Play button and heard the voice of Eugene Barstok.
For the past few days my former administrative assistant had been calling me every morning at exactly nine o’clock. Technically, he was on vacation from Aames & Associates. He’d planned to take a road trip to visit friends in Palm Springs, but he had been forced to cancel because his cat, Liza, had come down with a respiratory infection and couldn’t travel. Eugene would never leave her behind. I guess after a couple of days of being cooped up in his apartment, he began to feel isolated; hence, the daily phone calls to me. Eugene was sensitive. I hoped he wouldn’t feel slighted, but I didn’t have time to call him back at the moment.
I put the top down on the Boxster, hoping the cold March wind would brace me for what was to come, but the temperature was mild, and the air rushing by my face was neither hot nor cold. Forty-five minutes later I was nearing the Brices’ address.
Benedict Canyon is one of a series of ravines that slash through the Santa Monica Mountains, linking Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley. Canyon living has a mystique all its own. It’s where the hills begin to close in on you, nudging the eclectic array of houses within a hairsbreadth of the street, where finding a place to park is a joke, and driving slow along the narrow, twisting road is a risk few are willing to take. Somehow it seemed a fitting place for Evan to have lived.
Just past the crest of the hill, I turned onto a side street and was surprised to find it lined with news vans. Tall trees and a rock wall camouflaged the Brices’ house, but I was able to see the address on a plaque next to an ornate metal gate.
Across the street, a man with a camera perched on
his shoulder was trampling a bed of impatiens that bordered a neighbor’s yard. He was trying to get a good shot of a tall, blonde woman speaking into a microphone: Darcy Daniels. I’d seen her on TV a couple of times after she’d marshaled a win on the reality show Staying Alive into a permanent gig as a reporter on the tabloid TV show Celebrity Heat. It was comforting to know that looking good in a thong bikini could still get you places in this world.
I inched my car toward the gate and gave my name to a rent-a-cop with thighs the size of Doric columns. As he conferred by cell phone with the powers-that-be inside the house, I heard a tapping sound on the side of my car. Startled, I turned and saw Darcy Daniels. Her cameraman stood next to her, pointing his lens directly at me. Up close, Darcy looked older than she did on TV. Staying alive had obviously taken its toll.
“Excuse me,” she said, aiming her microphone for my mouth. “Are you a friend of the family?” Without waiting for a response, she lobbed a verbal grenade. “My sources tell me that Evan Brice’s murder was a drug deal gone bad. Care to comment?”
I felt a white-hot anger to think that she was turning Evan’s death into some kind of cheesy entertainment. I ignored her question, driving away just as the gate jerked open in short, hiccupping spurts.
I made my way to the top of a private knoll, amazed by the remoteness of the surrounding area. Undulating hills covered by dull, green trees and brittle grass, tense with the threat of fire, stood as a backdrop to a wide expanse of lawn that rose up gently to greet the surrounding hills before dropping off into a ravine as if it had suddenly lost its will to go on. It was odd to realize that a mile or so beyond this urban wilderness were eight million people, many of them packed in so close together, they could hear their neighbor’s john flush. At least they were alive to appreciate the irony.
The Brices’ place was a surprisingly modest ranch house. I wondered if they liked the intimacy of a small place, or if the architectural plans for an expansive Tuscan villa were gathering dust in a closet somewhere because all of Evan’s discretionary income had disappeared up his nose.
A little girl’s pink bike lay on the flagstone driveway. Near it was a forest green Jaguar with a personalized license plate that read; SEXY CC. A lone Adirondack chair, similar to those on the beach in front of my house, stood on the lawn at the edge of the canyon. I felt a crushing sadness as I imagined Evan sitting there writing poetry and trying to make sense of his life. I took a deep breath and walked toward the house.
A man somewhere in his thirties answered the door. He was about my height, five-nine or so, with bleached blond hair and the small sharp features of a fox. A pink hankie that looked like the chute from Paratrooper Barbie blossomed from the breast pocket of his dove gray sports jacket. He introduced himself as Jerome Fielding, Evan’s personal assistant, in the same dispassionate voice I recognized from our earlier telephone conversation. Maybe he didn’t care about Evan’s death, or perhaps he was just trying to hold it together for the sake of a house in mourning.
To my relief, no one else was around. The house was still except for the syncopated rhythm of our footsteps on the hardwood floors, and the echoing silence. A few seconds later, we emerged from a sliding glass door and stepped onto a patio that surrounded an angular swimming pool and a small cabana.
Cissy Brice stood in front of a round metal table, arranging a bouquet of red tulips in a heavy crystal vase. I was impressed that she hadn’t changed much in the past ten years. She wasn’t beautiful in the Hollywood sense of the word, but she had a flawless complexion, eyes the color of Texas bluebonnets, and enough capped teeth to help send her dentist’s children to Harvard. Her hair was red now. She was wearing it pushed off her face with a headband that looked like a Brunhilde braid. It was probably the latest in Beverly Hills chic, but it made her look as though she were on her way to a yodeling contest.
She was wearing a black dress, which provided a fitting background for the platinum cross she wore around her neck. I’d never known Cissy to be religious, but I could see how losing your mate to violent death could move you in that direction. The cross was encrusted with large diamonds. It looked as if it had cost more than the weekly wages of a hundred illegal immigrants sharing jerry-rigged living quarters in some Pacoima garage.
Clinging to Cissy’s leg was a fragile-looking girl of six or seven whom I presumed was Dara. The child was sucking her thumb and fingering a faded rag that looked as if it might have been a pink baby blanket a thousand wash cycles ago. She had dark smudges under her eyes, and burnished brown hair, which reminded me so much of Evan’s that I was taken aback. When Dara saw me, she buried her head among the folds of Cissy’s black dress.
Cissy didn’t look up. She caressed her daughter’s hair with one hand and, with the other, tried to make the tulip stems crisscross symmetrically in the vase. Unfortunately, she hadn’t clipped off the bottom leaves, which made the stalks hopelessly tangled. She tried to pull one out but managed only to eject the entire bouquet in one snarled mess. I guess no one had told her that in floral arranging, as in everything else, planning is the key to success.
It wasn’t until Jerome cleared his throat that Cissy finally lifted her gaze. A brief frown appeared on her forehead, as if she resented his intrusion. A moment later she spotted me. Our eyes locked as both of us calculated our next move before the spell was broken.
A wan smile brushed across her lips. “I see you made it past the vultures.”
“Just barely.”
“Ever since Evan was murdered, they follow me everywhere. It feels like I’m living in prison.”
“I’m sorry.”
Cissy disentangled the child from her leg and walked toward me. When she was within touching distance, she took my hand and squeezed it gently. “Thanks for coming, Tuckie.” She stepped back and surveyed me like a proud mom checking out her daughter’s first prom dress. “You’re as beautiful as ever.”
I tried to remember the last time a man had told me that, but I couldn’t recall a single incidence. I felt uncomfortable holding her hand, so I let mine drop away.
“You must be devastated,” I said.
She put a finger to her lips to shush me. In a voice louder than necessary she said, “Tucker, I want you to meet my daughter, Dara. Honey, come meet Mommy’s friend from a long time ago.”
Without the support of her mother’s leg, Dara looked as if she’d been set adrift in a hostile sea. She didn’t look up, just shook her head and let her chin loll on the blanket around her neck as if she’d given up all hope of rescue.
“Sorry,” Cissy said. “Dara’s not feeling well today. Are you, honey? Maybe if you say ‘pretty please,’ Jerome will get you some banana cream pie.”
A disapproving frown appeared on Jerome’s face, but nonetheless, he picked up his cue. He took Dara’s hand, the one that wasn’t picking at the remnants of the blanket’s satin binding, and guided her toward the sliding glass door as Cissy watched her child’s every hesitant footstep until the house swallowed her completely.
Cissy stared at the door until moisture filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Now she’s just like us, Tuckie. She’ll grow up without a daddy and be cheated out of all those memories. Did you know my uncle walked me down the aisle when Evan and I got married? In some ways, it was the saddest day of my life.” Her voice had a hollow detachment to it, as if she were talking in her sleep.
My body felt as if some vital organ had suddenly stopped functioning. I understood her pain. Both Cissy and I had lost our fathers at an early age. Mine died before I was born, so I’d grown up without expectations. Frank Jerrard had been around long enough to teach his daughter that a man’s adoration was her birthright. In many ways, life had been easier for me.
“My world is falling apart,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “and I don’t know what to do about it.”
It felt lame, but I said it anyway. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
She roughly brus
hed away the tears. “No, but thanks for asking.”
I kept quiet until she regained her composure. “Cissy, the police told me—”
She interrupted. “Told you what? That I killed my husband?”
I hesitated. “Not exactly . . .”
“Well, whatever they told you, it isn’t true. I’ve never even been to Evan’s apartment. Besides, I was with Mom that night. I told them, but they won’t believe me. They’re trying to scare me into saying I did it. One of the cops said if I was implicated in any way, they could put Dara into protective custody. My daughter means everything to me, Tucker. Everything. You of all people should know I would never take her daddy away from her.”
There was fierceness in her tone, and the ring of truth to her words. I looked at the mascara smeared by her tears, at the fingers nervously twisting the chain of her necklace, and knew I believed her. When I told her so, relief softened her expression. She picked up the tulips one by one and began tearing off the lower leaves and fitting them into the vase.
“The police told me you saw the poem,” I said. “I want to make sure you don’t think it meant Evan and I were together again.”
Cissy let out a sigh of frustration. “I know you’re a better person than that, Tuckie. Look, Evan and I had a fight on Sunday. So what? We didn’t have a perfect marriage. He cheated on me, but I wasn’t afraid he’d leave me for another woman. He didn’t have sex with people he loved; he had sex with people who loved drugs, and he wasn’t exactly discriminating. I was afraid he’d get something horrible like AIDS. If you’d ever loved an addict, you’d understand what it was like for me.”
To her credit, she caught herself and quickly added, “I know you loved Evan once, Tucker, but that was before cocaine hijacked his life.” She paused before placing the final tulip in the vase, stroking it gently just as she had earlier stroked Dara’s hair. “Look,” she went on. “None of that stuff matters anymore. I’m sorry for what I did to you back then. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I’d like to think I’ve changed. I hope you can forgive me.”
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