“Once I got the report, I hit the roof. I disliked the man. I disapproved. I couldn’t believe Nina could fall for someone so—fake. Well, Ginny was there, quiet, taking it all in.”
“How did she react?”
“She seemed okay. But apparently, one of her criticisms of me was true: I’m an insensitive clod. A few days later, she revealed that she had gone to Richard Filsen’s office and made him an offer.”
“What kind of offer?”
“She paid him to leave Nina alone. Nina didn’t want to have anything to do with him at that point. The payment—she never asked me. She shouldn’t have done that. I was appalled. I wouldn’t have paid that creep anything. I’d have just knocked his block off. We argued about it pretty intensely. Well, you were just asking about it. She ended up in the ER. We separated soon after.”
“What were your objections?”
“Listen, guys like him never go away. He had boatloads of gambling debt, people after him. He’d got in too deep with Nina. He didn’t want a son. Money—that’s another story. That he wanted. Ginny and I weren’t getting along by then. She didn’t trust my advice.”
“She went in by herself?”
Reilly nodded. “After that, Filsen told Ginny she had a deal, that he’d stay out of Nina’s life.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, until recently.”
“How much did Ginny pay him?”
“Thirty thousand dollars.”
“Where did she get that kind of money?”
“She had some money of her own that her sister, Helen, left her. She used that. All of it. That was why she was so goddamn poor when we separated. She spent it on that fool.”
“Have you had any direct dealings with Richard Filsen?”
Harlan squinted. He turned back to face Paul. “Once. Last week. Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Ginny called me, all worked up. Matt let it slip that Filsen had been harassing Nina, threatening her and Bob. Ginny said she was going over there again. She would confront him.” He sighed. “Well, guess what? I’m not a monster. I mean, this wasn’t her kind of confrontation, but it sure was mine. So she made me promise, and I went to see him, over at his plush office in Seaside.”
“When was this?”
“Tuesday afternoon, a little after lunch.”
“What happened?”
“I told him to cease and desist or I’d cut his balls off.” Harlan laughed mirthlessly. “Makes me look good now, huh? Just a father trying to protect his little girl. Whoever did it used a gun, right? Not a machete?”
“What did he say?”
“That piece of crap. He said I wouldn’t want Nina to know about Ginny’s little transaction of a few years ago. That might harm their relationship, right?”
“Would it have?”
“Do you know my daughter?”
“As a matter of fact, we are friends.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Friends.”
“Well, when you get to know her better, you’ll realize she likes to control her own fate. She doesn’t like anyone butting into her business. She doesn’t even take advice well. That makes her wonderful in my book, but really tough to help.”
“I can see how that would be so.”
“So telling her about Ginny’s and my invasion of her privacy would have incensed her and caused a rift. For Ginny, at this time, with all her health issues and family issues, it might have been fatal.”
“What did he say when you got there?”
“He asked how much more we’d be willing to fork over to keep him quiet. He kind of laughed. I don’t know how serious he was. I told him we’d see him in court, that taking a bribe to stay away from his own baby wasn’t going to sit well with the judge.”
“And he said…?”
“‘Bring the whole family along, pal.’ Then he recommended lawyers Nina ought to use at the custody hearing. Chuckled. What an asshole.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing. I left. I didn’t go back to kill him, either.”
“Did you tell Ginny what happened?”
“She insisted on every detail.”
“Hmm. Let’s talk more about that. Were either of you prepared to have this all come out at a custody hearing?”
“Hell, no! Nina can’t know. She blames me for the divorce. She damn near hates me now. If she realizes how her mother and I interfered with her and Filsen—she’d never talk to me again. And she would see Ginny’s role as a complete betrayal. Buying off the boyfriend. And it didn’t work anyway. It would have been horrible for both of them.”
“Nina’s going to hear about this, you know. You can’t hide it anymore. This man was murdered. Everything will come out.”
“Maybe you can figure out how to put a good spin on this when you tell her all about it. You’re gonna tell her, aren’t you?”
“Why don’t you tell her?”
“Huh?”
“Why not act like a father and go to her house, see how she’s doing? Bring her some supper. Sit down and tell her what you and Ginny did?”
Harlan shook his head.
“Why not?”
“I just can’t stand the thought.”
“She just lost her mother. She needs you.”
Harlan expelled a sigh. “I’m an expert at not helping her the right way.”
“Well, in any case we need you to come into the station to make a statement.”
Harlan got an appointment card with the supervisor’s name and number. “I’m not hiding anything,” he said, taking the card. “But I offer you this—don’t even think about my son. He’s sick, not violent.”
They climbed the last hill to the clubhouse, spotting Angie on a deck overlooking the course sipping her Pepsi.
Seeing his wife, Harlan upped his pace like a kid spotting a video arcade. Just before they went into the restaurant, he said quickly, “I called Ginny a few days before she died. We talked about reducing the spousal support payments,” he added, heading for the door, back straight, not looking at Paul.
Paul thought Harlan looked good for both murders, at least on the outside. However, his forthrightness about what had happened with Richard Filsen rang true.
Now, Ginny’s involvement with Filsen—that definitely might lead in another direction. Paul made a note to check Harlan’s alibis but had a feeling they might just hang together. “You talked about giving Ginny less money, okay. So how’d she take that?”
“Hung up on me. She knew she would lose in court. All I had to do was talk to the judge about supporting my new family. You really think he’d make me continue to support her forever?”
“She stayed home to raise your kids for decades, didn’t she?”
“Oh, man.” Harlan shook his head. “I wish I could show you how much I loved her when we met, and while we were having those two crazy kids. How pretty she was. How she made me laugh. But our relationship eroded. Things didn’t work. She didn’t like the way I handled the kids. She hated my messes, hated my successes because they took time away from her.
“Sometimes—I’m confessing here—I almost believed she made herself sick in retaliation for my leaving her.”
Justification for bad behavior: Paul felt familiar with the concept.
Harlan waved. “Angie’s waiting.” They arrived at the bar. Angie had moved inside and sat at a table where the wide windows overlooked the steady beating of white surf. Even here in the warm bar with the windows closed they could hear the distant roar, evidence of a storm far out at sea.
“Life goes on or you die,” Harlan said, dismissing his first love with those brutal words, moving toward his young wife. He touched her with lips to cheek. She shone in response.
Paul watched them curiously. He hadn’t seen a happy couple for a while. Angie turned her head as his lips touched her cheek, and he met her lips with his. They hugged.
She was going to have a baby. They didn’t give a shit about anything or anybody else.
He c
hanged his earlier assessment. Harlan was not shallow but was happier than he deserved. The thought hit Paul like a mallet on a gong: as of today, he was no longer hitched. Laura was no longer his wife.
He looked at his hand, the slight crease at the bottom of his finger where he had worn the band. How long would it take the sun to restore this protected skin to its glorious tan?
On the trip back down the darkening Holman Highway, blinded by headlights, he drew a mental picture of Nina in this family. She played sane, he figured. The rest played eccentric.
The separation certainly cast Nina and Matt’s father neatly as the villain in this piece. It went deeper. Paul had a feeling that the separation of the parents in this family had somehow led to all of it, all this pain and heartache. And if it hadn’t directly led to these murders, it had poisoned the air somehow, poisoned things for Ginny, and then all of them.
Miffed at the feeling that he had missed something in the interview, Paul went over his mental notes, finding nothing new.
When he got back to the station, depressed, thinking about divorce in general, he called Jack. Good ol’ Jack. They’d go out and get drunk and talk about the old days.
He got a recording. He didn’t leave a message.
CHAPTER 36
EL ENCINAL CEMETERY IN MONTEREY ON A STORMY DAY conjured up one word, Nina thought, bleak. She had no trouble locating her mother’s grave site. The mahogany casket sat above a deep hole in the ground, covered with flowers, surrounded by damp green grass, accompanied by a howling wind. A hearse had parked nearby on the narrow road, discreet and ominous.
She held Bob’s hand tightly. Bewildered, he kept asking if Grandma was in the box. She shouldn’t have brought him, perhaps. But she had decided earlier that day that Bob should be a witness to this, discover the passing away that occurs as part of the great cycle, have a vague childhood memory of the good-bye when he grew up.
Ginny Reilly had insisted on no formal service in her will. Here stood her friends and family, without the benefit of any spiritual tradition, no minister, rabbi, or priest. Shouldn’t someone say something?
Nina couldn’t. Her heart had turned to lead. She couldn’t trust herself not to shout something angry into the wind. This was no soft death, the one she would have wished for her mother.
Harlan Reilly shivered, his arm around his wife.
Two gravediggers in dirty overalls stood with their shovels at a respectful distance, huddling against the cold. Friends and family, including Jack, Klaus, Remy, her mom’s card group, and a few older women friends, stood with long faces beside the casket, black umbrellas above their heads, swathed in black coats, holding flowers for Ginny. Harlan, almost hiding behind Angie, held an ostentatious bouquet of gardenias.
Did he remember Ginny’s wedding bouquet had been gardenias?
Vague recollection might have inspired him, but he didn’t take the time to think why, Nina decided. She remembered her father kissing her mother under the mistletoe at one of his office Christmas parties way back when.
She should cry, but anger was what she felt as she looked around at the mourners. None of them should be here. They had all been injured. They had all gone over some sort of cliff.
She missed Matt. In lockup, detoxing, he could not make it to his own beloved mother’s burial.
Buffeted by the wind, some umbrellas turning inside out, the mourners strewed flowers over Ginny’s casket, piling them on when it was already covered. Nina approached the grave. She had bought pink carnations, her mom’s favorite but not hers, unhappy that the hothouse flowers didn’t hold a scent, unhappy even more that her brother was not beside her where he belonged.
Water leaked over the edge of her shoes, cold and alienating as dead lizards. She paused, looking down at the raindrop-tipped grass, feeling leaky herself, unable to face these other nice people who had cared enough about Ginny to show up on such a miserable day.
Jack took her arm. He walked her the rest of the way.
She laid the carnations over her mother’s brass-detailed casket. She looked toward the gravediggers, shovels at the ready. “I’m going to stay here while they bury her. At least at first.” Jack wore a pained expression. “Go on. I’m going to talk to her while this is happening. Could you take Bob and meet me at my house?”
“Sure, but—she’s not here, Nina.”
“Oh, yes, she is,” Nina said fiercely. She stood silently, accepting a few more hugs, patting people, letting them fade away as time passed, until only she and the cemetery workers remained. Somewhere a funeral lunch would be happening, with a lot of food. She just couldn’t go. Her mother’s friends had told her it would be a celebration of Ginny’s life.
Celebration of life? What illusions people could invent for themselves. This was death, deep and profound and inexplicable, as powerful as life. Better to stand forlorn and let it whirl around her now, than to fight or suppress it.
They waited for her sign, then used a winch to lower the casket into the waiting hole in the ground as the drizzle polished its fittings for the last time. She wanted to lie down on the wet grass next to the hole as the dirt began to fall on her mother, lie down close by to be with her. She took down the umbrella and let the rain touch her.
Still no tears. She let the sky cry for her.
The next Monday morning, as a dank winter fog swirled outside the picture window of the courthouse hallway, Jack met Remy for coffee.
Jack had just finished a sentencing hearing on the client who had molested a fourteen-year-old. He had told the judge that the young man was a case of arrested development, an alcoholic who had only one thing going for him: he could hold down a job as a cook if the judge released him from custody to live with his father. The judge knew and Jack knew that the Monterey County jails were overflowing anyway, and the California Supreme Court was about to issue another order that the jail population be reduced.
Lucky for Jack, it was the client’s first offense of any kind. Released on probation, he showed no emotion and did not thank Jack. He would later, when it hit him that he was free.
Remy came in at the tail end of the proceedings to invite Jack for coffee. They took the elevator down to the depths of the building where a tiny lunchroom smelling of doughnuts and soggy tuna-fish sandwiches had been created out of an old storeroom. Undersized tables crowded against each other. A boy and a girl held hands, their baby snoozing in a bassinet against the wall.
They sat in back and talked in low voices. “So sad about Nina’s mother,” said Jack.
“She was a complicated person,” Remy said. “I saw her a week or so ago, and even though she was failing, she had strong survival instincts. She must have been very lovely once,” Remy said dreamily. “I wonder…”
“Don’t tell me you question whether Dr. Wu put those needles in her?”
“No, no. I wonder how things would have gone if she hadn’t needed the amputation.”
“My gut says there’s a connection between the two killings,” Jack said, squeaking his styrofoam cup against the tabletop.
“Besides Nina?” Remy asked. “Her lover and her mother died. She had cause to kill her lover, that’s for sure.”
“Wrong track, Remy. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh?” Remy frowned.
“Sorry. You’re not ridiculous.”
“Maybe we should look closer at her brother, Matt, who’s on drugs, who hated seeing his mother suffering, who must have hated the man threatening his sister and his mother?”
Jack said, “Put it like that and I get worried the kid could have done it.”
“He wasn’t at the funeral.”
“He’s busy detoxing.”
“I’m glad to hear that, if he didn’t do it.” Remy leaned close to Jack, close enough so that he could smell her perfume. “I heard from the governor’s office,” she almost whispered.
“Christ! You didn’t tell me right away?”
Remy drew back, and Jack knew immediately he had made
another major error. He hid his feelings, trying to feel good about the news for her sake. “You got it!” He stuffed congratulations into the comment.
Remy’s smile, tremulous and triumphant at the same time, told all. Jack got up and came around the table to hug her. She bent like a willow in his arms. When he let go, she had tears in her eyes.
“It’s all I ever wished for.”
“When do you go up?”
“Pretty quickly. I’m leaving the firm on December fourteenth; I’ll be inducted at the first of the year. I already asked Judge Sturdy to swear me in.”
“You deserve this.” Jack gave her a broad, only slightly phony smile.
“I’ll have to load work on you, Jack. Klaus can’t take it, and Lou only knows his way around tax court.”
“We’ll work things out.”
“At least you won’t get stuck with the Reilly case.”
Jack went over to the counter to refill their cups. In the corner, talking so quietly to each other, they were as isolated as if they were in a high-walled booth. Remy’s pale skin seemed to glow above the soft blue suit and the pearls. She wore $200 pumps. Jack had heard her once instructing Nina about the importance of wearing the most expensive formal high heels she could find. Something about being at eye level with the guys. Nina drank it in, but still wore her worn black boots under her jeans, Jack had noticed.
“I feel closer to you than I have in a while.”
She touched his hand.
“You seeing anyone else?” It just slipped out. He hadn’t known he’d say it. He cursed himself, then relaxed, because he needed to know.
She didn’t answer, just squeezed tighter.
“Rick Halpern?”
“You assume I slept with him to drum up support? He has four children and goes to confession every month at his church. Give me a break!”
“You’re not around for me anymore. I call you, I get your answering machine. You don’t have time for me at work. I guess I want to know—how do things change now that the judge campaign is over?”
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