by Kelly Irvin
Nina surveyed the crowd to her right. Dozens of people she didn’t recognize stood, respectful, waiting for the procession to pass. Her gaze zipped down the back row. Then back again, more slowly. A woman with a half smile out of place in this moment of shared misery stared back at her. The pale-blue eyes were familiar. They were the ones Nina saw in the mirror every time she brushed her teeth. Despite wrinkles and sun damage, the woman still resembled Nina with her high cheekbones and long chin. The blonde hair streaked with gray like unintentional highlights had been cut in a page boy meant for a younger woman.
The woman moved. She squeezed past the couple standing between her and the aisle.
Dragging Grace with her, Nina picked up her pace. She had nowhere to go. The pallbearers minced along, carrying Dad to his last resting place with all the dignity due to a judge and pillar of the community.
Jan’s startled cry marked the moment she realized who the woman was.
Sun burst through robust clouds just as Nina and Grace started down the long steps in front of the church.
“Nina. Jannie.”
No one called Jan Jannie. Not anymore.
“We have to stop. We have to talk to her.” Grace tugged her arm free. She craned her head and looked back. “Lizzie?”
“Not here. Not now.” Nina grabbed her arm again. “This isn’t the place.” She swept them toward the waiting black limousine.
“Gracie, please.” Her biological mother had acquired a southern accent. South of Dallas maybe. Or Louisiana. “Just stop for one second.”
“She’s your dad’s only sister.” Grace pulled free and halted. “She’s your mother.”
“You’re my mother.”
Liz Fischer grabbed Grace and pulled her into a hug. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Gracie.”
“When did you get here? How did you know?”
“Just got here. Saw it on Facebook.” Her voice quivered. She drew back and turned to Nina. “Baby, you’re a beautiful woman.”
“Don’t baby me.” Nina’s arms argued with her heart. Hug or no hug? Her arms refused to move. Her heart did handstands. Her brain might explode. “Where have you been? Doing what? Not getting in touch with your family? Then you saw a post on Facebook and decided Dad’s funeral would be the best time to talk?”
“You call him Dad. That’s so sweet.” Liz—she was Liz now, not Mom or Mommy or anything in the vicinity of parent—crept closer. “Do you call Gracie Mom?”
“Not here and not now.” Nina made a show of looking over Liz’s shoulder. “You didn’t bring our brother? Or is it a sister?”
“I know you hate me.” Liz smiled. Her teeth were yellowed from tobacco and coffee. How could she smile at a time like this? “But I wrote you. I tried to stay in touch. You know that. Geoff was the one—”
“Just stop.” Nina didn’t hate her. She’d read the letters. She knew the story. She knew her mother just as if she’d spent the last eighteen years following her around from one bad motel to the next dingy apartment with no AC, roaches, and water that came from the kitchen sink, cloudy and full of sediment. “Not here.”
“Is this my granddaughter?”
She leaned down and patted Brooklyn’s face. “She looks just like you, Jannie, when you were little.”
“Get in the limo, Brooklyn.” Jan nudged Brooklyn forward. Her sniper-Army-sergeant voice was in full force. “We need to get going.”
“I need to talk to you.” Liz grabbed the open door and held on. “We need to talk.”
“Not here.” Nina tugged the door from her grasp. “You know where we live.”
They piled into the funeral-home limo.
Her pixie face white and stained with tears, Brooklyn snuggled against Jan in the deep, cushioned leather seat across from Nina. “Who was that, Mommy?”
Jan put her arm around her daughter. “Just someone Aunt Nina and I used to know.”
“She smelled funny. Like dirty clothes.” Brooklyn wrinkled her nose. “And cigarettes.”
Unable to turn away, like a spectator at a train wreck, Nina stared through the tinted window. Liz turned and melted into the throng of people milling about on the sidewalk. King approached her. Their conversation appeared animated. As the limo pulled from the curb, Nina leaned forward. The two turned and walked toward the parking lot. Liz’s hands moved. Tie her hands and she wouldn’t be able to speak.
She would be forty-five now. She looked sixty. Even though she was thin to the point of emaciation, she walked in that ponderous way old women had when their hips hurt. She probably told people she knew when it would rain because her sciatica flared up.
What were they talking about?
It didn’t matter. Liz didn’t live in the house. She knew nothing about any of the murders. King could milk her for information all he wanted.
Liz couldn’t tell King anything because she wasn’t family anymore. She hadn’t been for a long time.
* * *
Funerals were the worst. Aaron had once arrived at an accident scene where a little old lady lay in the middle of the street. Her knitting needles and red yarn had catapulted into the neighbor’s yard after she was hit coming home from Wednesday night Bible study by a teenager on his way home after a date. He once shot a story about twenty abused, emaciated, sore-covered horses. He’d shot video of a body stabbed sixty-eight times. Another time he arrived at the scene of a head-on highway collision before the first responders. Two children lay dying yards apart on the asphalt. He had to decide which one to comfort. Fortunately, others stopped as well.
Still, funerals were worse. The public display of agony wrapped up in a neat package for all those vicarious ghouls watching the six o’clock news.
Add to the torture that this involved Nina, and it was excruciating. Watching her suffer. Knowing how much she hated public speaking. They shared that phobia. His hands sweat just thinking about it as he slipped into the area at the back of the church reserved for the media. Her voice had been steady and clear.
He was proud of her—at least he would be if he weren’t busy extricating himself from her life.
Time to back away, to get back to the station. Time not to think about that lip-lock between Nina and Rick. He’d driven up to the house just in time to see them in the front seat of Rick’s car.
Just in time to drive away.
Nina didn’t need him. She had Rick. She’d always had Rick.
How long could Aaron go on knocking his head against this particular brick wall?
He unclipped the camera from the tripod, rested it on one shoulder, and picked up the tripod. The burial was private. His work here was done, if Kelly Moran would stop schmoozing with the mayor and get her rear in the vehicle.
Too many of the mourners in the crowd were there to see and be seen, but at least it was over. Geoffrey Fischer wasn’t who he said he was. Neither was Rick Zavala. He was using Nina. Another man who deceived and lied.
Aaron would never lie to her.
Yet she kept choosing Rick over and over again.
Detective King exited the church at that moment, right behind Councilman Leon Murphy and County Commissioner Joe Beltran. The detective didn’t seem happy. He ducked between two court reporters and touched the arm of a skinny, gray-haired woman dressed in wrinkled, faded black pants and a black short-sleeved blouse, who had stopped to light a cigarette.
She turned. The woman in Nina’s Christmas picture faced King. Older, gray, wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, a lot of sun damage, but still the same skinny, tanned woman with pale-blue eyes. Once she and Nina had looked alike. Now the mother looked old beyond her years.
Whatever King said, Liz Fischer didn’t seem happy to hear it. Aaron squeezed past his buddies from Channels 4 and 5. He started rolling. King had his back to Aaron. Liz shook her head. King said something, and she shook her head more vehemently now. They walked down the steps and headed across the street, still talking.
It would be obvious if Aaron headed after them. He
stopped at the corner, camera still hot. A man in a black sweatshirt followed King a few yards behind. Maybe he was headed to the bus stop at the park.
King looked back. The man turned and cut diagonally across the park. King motioned to Liz. They sat on a park bench usually reserved for homeless folks waiting for the Travis Park United Methodist Church’s soup kitchen to open.
Sweatshirt man circled back around. He leaned against a massive heritage pecan tree, head down, arms crossed over his chest as if he were taking a nap.
“What are you doing?”
Aaron jumped three feet. He turned. Kelly laughed. “Sneaking around much?”
“It’s broad daylight. I’m spying on Detective King.” He saw no need to tell the reporter King was interviewing Nina’s biological mother. “You got everything you need for the package?”
“Who is he talking to?”
“A family member.”
“Which one?”
She was a reporter. Not as good as Melanie. “Her name is Liz Fischer. She’s the judge’s sister.”
Liz threw her cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with her black pump. King stood and shook her hand. Even at a distance it was easy to see the discussion had not gone well.
King headed directly at Aaron and Kelly.
“You ready to go?”
“I think it’s too late for that.”
King halted between Aaron and his illegally parked station unit. The detective’s hands rested on his hips. Inches from his service weapon. “Are you spying on me?”
Seriously? “It’s a public event and a public park. I was just waiting for Kelly so we can go back and put our package together.”
“Were you filming the whole time?”
“Dude, no one films anymore.”
“You know what I mean.” King’s frown deepened. “Did you shoot my interview with Liz Fischer?”
“I was just getting a weather shot for the five o’clock forecast.”
“Was the guy in the black hoodie in your weather shot?”
Aaron handed his tripod to Kelly, who took it without complaint. “You saw him too?”
“Yeah, I saw him and I want that video.”
“You sure want a lot of our video lately.” Aaron hit the Record button again. “Maybe in return, you’ll give us an update on the investigation into the murders of Melanie Martinez, Serena Cochrane, and Geoffrey Fischer. Have you made any progress at all?”
“If you cooperate now, maybe I won’t haul your butt over to PSHQ for another interview regarding your presence at a murder scene.” King didn’t look the least bit hot and bothered. “Maybe I won’t get a warrant to search your apartment.”
Aaron sighed loudly, just for show. He wanted the mystery of these deaths solved as much as King. Maybe more. So Nina could move on with her life. And so could he. “I’ll put the video in Dropbox for you when I get back to the station.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Who do you think he is?”
“I don’t know, but I plan to find out.”
King’s expression said hoodie man would not find their first encounter pleasant.
25
The roar of the industrial-size dishwasher helped Nina block out the questions that whirled around in her mind. Around and around. She concentrated on wiping down the counters. The final meal of the day had been served at Haven for Hope. The San Antonio Food Bank served more than one thousand meals a day, seven days a week, to homeless folks receiving services from Haven for Hope. All the servers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day were volunteers. Simple meals when compared to the fancy china serving dishes filled with New York strip steak, baked potatoes, green beans, Caesar salad, and four kinds of dessert cake served at her father’s funeral reception.
Her family had pronounced her crazy for refusing to miss her turn serving food on the day of her father’s funeral and the reception afterward. She needed this. Not volunteering meant the killer took yet another piece of her life and threw it in the trash. It had been almost five o’clock before she could slip away from her mother’s side. Grace was a wreck. She needed her daughters. Once she lay down to rest, Nina had slipped out. Too late to get to the bank. Now it was closed until Monday. Aaron was gone. Who knew what Detective King was up to.
She rinsed the washcloth and started on the stove tops. Monday she would go to the reading of the will and from there to the bank. If only Aaron would go with her. He’d promised to help her solve this. Instead, he seemed to be avoiding her. At the funeral, he’d been working. She understood that, trying to separate work and personal feelings. It couldn’t have been easy. Maybe it had been too much for him. Melanie’s death, Serena’s death. Maybe he needed space too. She would give him until tomorrow. If texting didn’t work, she’d track him down.
She would offer him comfort.
She inhaled the lingering scent of baking chicken thighs marinated in barbecue sauce and tried to piece the events together. Could Serena’s death have been an accident followed by a scared driver making a run for it? Could Melanie’s murder have been the result of a home invasion in which the burglar had been caught in the act and fled before he could steal anything?
Coincidental? Ridiculous. They had to be related.
“All the trays are washed and put up.” Deb Washington, another longtime volunteer, sang out as she chugged by with a huge bag of paper napkins. “I restocked the shelves.”
She settled the bag on the shelf next to a box of salt and pepper packets. “Hey, I wanted to say how sorry I am about your father.” Deb slung her beaded braids over her shoulder and smiled. She wore red lipstick even when she volunteered. “It was awful. My whole church has been praying for your family.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“Have the police found the killer?”
“No—”
“Nina Fischer.” The volunteer coordinator from the front office marched through the double doors to the kitchen, Liz right behind her. “You have a visitor. A very insistent visitor.”
Visitors weren’t generally allowed, and they couldn’t access the grounds unescorted.
“What are you doing here?” The same question as before. Only more so. Liz had failed to materialize at the reception. No surprise. She’d always liked to pick and choose when to show up. She could be counted on to pick the least opportune moment. “You shouldn’t be back here.”
The volunteer coordinator gave Nina a pained smile. “She wouldn’t take no for answer.”
“I’m her mother.” Liz directed that outrageous statement to Deb. “Pleased to meet you.”
“I’m so sorry. I’ll escort her out when I leave.”
The coordinator nodded, but her backward glance at Liz was anything but friendly.
“Do you mind if I step out for a minute?” Nina shot Deb an apologetic look. “I promise not to leave you holding the bag with all these cucumbers.”
“No worries. Go, go.” Debbie made shooing motions with her voluminous apron. “I’ll keep an eye on the chicken.”
Nina nudged Liz from the serving area and across the long room filled with orange-topped tables with attached benches. She didn’t stop until they reached the commons area with its half-grown trees that did their best to shade picnic tables a stone’s throw from the chapel.
She took a seat and motioned for Liz to sit across from her. “How did you find me this time?”
“I went home. Pearl told me. She wasn’t happy about it. She wouldn’t let me in. She said everyone else was napping. I told her I’d sit on the steps and wait for you if she didn’t tell me where you were.”
Home. Sometimes Nina forgot her biological mother once had lived in the Fischer house. “Why?”
“You’re my daughter. I came back to San Antonio because I missed you and Jannie. I want to see you. And Brooklyn too.”
“Missed us? After eighteen years, you suddenly missed us? Weren’t you busy raising my half sister or brother? He or she must be
about thirteen now.”
“Hudson is thirteen. Emma is ten.”
“Hudson. Emma.” Dizziness swept over Nina. Accompanied by a strange sense of the surreal. Her mother had replaced Nina and Jan with new kids. New kids who had no uncle to swoop down and save them. How had they survived? Were they surviving? “Where are they?”
“Hudson took Emma to the library. She likes the library. And it’s free.” She shrugged as if her daughter’s fondness for the library was a mystery to her. “I know you don’t understand—”
“Of course I don’t understand. You kept having kids, even though you couldn’t take care of the ones you had.”
“It’s not like I planned it that way. Besides, I think I’ve done a decent job with these two.”
“Did Dad know there were two more?”
“Yes. He said he wasn’t going to take them. Which was rich, because I never offered them to him.”
“Offered them? I guess you never abandoned them in the middle of a tent city filled with strangers, many of whom live on the street because they have untreated mental illnesses. Some suffer from psychotic breaks. Some, like people who live in houses, are simply mean.”
“I meant to come back for you and Jannie. I did come back, but you were already gone.”
“You meant to come back? Mom, I was nine years old. Jan was seven.”
“You think I don’t understand what I did to you? I was messed up. You know I was.”
“The adult me knows that. But the little girl me was terrified, hungry, and afraid to close her eyes at night.”
Nina refused to unearth old memories with Liz. A few people had been kind. Annie let them Dumpster-dive for food with her and gave Jan the least rotten pieces of fruit found in the bin behind the grocery store. Keith, an Iraq war vet with a prosthesis on one arm, let them sleep in his tent a few nights while he kept watch. Tippy showed them how to sneak into the YMCA locker room to take showers. Good times.
“I know it was hard.”
Liz pulled a cigarette pack from her faded denim shirt pocket. The sound of the cellophane crumpling and the smell of phosphorus when she struck the match sent Nina down another memory lane. She’d opened her eyes one morning to see snake tattoos slithering up both arms of a man slumped in a chair next to the motel room bed where she and Jan slept. He wore a black T-shirt and faded jean shorts. His legs were covered with black hair. He smiled at her, stubbed out the cigarette, and smoothed her hair. He smelled like beer. “Morning, sunshine.”