Grave Endings

by Rochelle Krich

  “Who’s this?” She held a photo of Zack in front of me.

  “My fiancé. We’re getting married in two weeks.” If you say it, I told myself, it will happen.

  “And you want me to feel sorry for you, right? Does he know about your good friend, Molly?”

  I tried to remember where in my wallet I’d put the slip of paper. With the photos? With a few receipts? Behind my business cards?

  I heard the rustle of paper. Maybe it was a receipt, I thought. I shut my eyes. Please, let it be a receipt.

  “Where did you get this?” She was rattled now, her voice a fierce whisper that made me shiver.

  “Where did I get what?” I asked, desperate to buy time, hoping she’d decide it didn’t matter that I’d copied down her phone number, she could tear it up and let me go.

  “This.” She thrust something in front of me.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the photo of Aggie, the one taken in her backyard. Not the paper with the woman’s number. I thanked God and felt weak with relief.

  “It’s mine. That’s me on the left, with my friend.”

  “Aggie Lasher.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  “She was murdered.”

  “Yes.”

  She moved the photo out of my reach. “This doesn’t look like you.” Her voice was sharp with accusation.

  My heart was pounding. “That photo was taken six years ago. My hair was different.”

  She didn’t answer. “You and Aggie were friends?” she said a long moment later.

  “Best friends.”

  “Best friends,” she repeated. She sounded thoughtful, calmer. Sad. Then she inhaled so sharply that her breath whistled. “You gave her the locket with the red thread!”

  I almost turned my head around. “How did—”

  “What do you want from me? Why did you follow me?”

  Her voice had changed. The venom was gone. In its place was anguish and something I couldn’t define.

  “I thought you were Randy’s girlfriend,” I said. “Someone described you. He said you were tall and thin and had black hair. I could tell you were wearing a wig.”

  “Did he tell you my name?”

  I hesitated. “Doreen.”

  “Did he tell you my last name, too?” Her tone was angry again.

  I shook my head.

  “What else do you know about me?”

  “Nothing. I promise.”

  “What do you really want, Molly?”

  “I want to know why Randy killed Aggie.”

  “Now that was a true crime, but I don’t think you want to write about it, Molly-Morgan. I can tell you but then I’d have to kill you. Or they would.”

  “Who is they?”

  “The ones who killed Aggie. The ones who killed me. If I leave you here, will you let me disappear?”

  “Yes.” God, yes.

  “I want to believe you, Molly. I do.”

  I heard clicking sounds I couldn’t identify and wondered what she was doing.

  She tossed my cell phone onto the ground, in front of me. “I took the battery out. In case you’re thinking of phoning someone so they’ll be looking for me. I know where you live, Molly. On Blackburn.” She recited the address. “I know where to find you if you try to find me.”

  “I won’t try to find you.” When I said it, it was the truth.

  “People always lie to me, Molly. That’s just the way it is.”

  “Did Randy lie to you?”

  “He lied to everyone. But it was the truth that caught up with him and killed him.”

  Seconds later she was gone.

  eighteen

  I WAITED AWHILE BEFORE I MOVED, EACH MINUTE CRAWLING by like an hour. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t just feet away, lurking behind a car, testing me to see if I would follow her.

  I pushed myself to a standing position, my knees creaking and threatening to snap my legs in half. The movement intensified the throbbing in my head. I touched the area where she’d rapped me with the gun and I winced. Drawing in a hissing breath through my clenched teeth, I probed the area and felt a bump the size of a lemon. I looked at my fingers. No blood, so the skin wasn’t broken.

  After walking in place for a few seconds to get my circulation going, I squatted and gathered the items that had been dumped onto the concrete. Lipstick, car keys, batteryless cell phone, a contact lens case, pens, a handful of Hershey’s Kisses, the pillbox with the Advil. An antique cloisonné compact, a gift from Bubbie G, had chipped. The mirror inside was cracked.

  I dry-swallowed two Advil and hoped I wasn’t overdosing. I checked my wallet. My driver’s license was behind the plastic window, the smile on my face absurdly happy. My credit cards were all there, and the photos. Not the one with Aggie. I checked a few times to see if it had stuck to one of the other photos. I wondered why she’d taken it.

  The slip of paper was where I’d stuffed it as I’d hurried toward the lobby, tucked behind a tiny laminated card with an abbreviated version of the Wayfarer’s Prayer. Hebrew on one side, English on the other. “May You rescue us from the hand of every foe, ambush, bandits, and evil animals along the way. . . .” The card had arrived eleven years ago with my El Al ticket to Jerusalem. I use it whenever I travel far from home, which doesn’t include following someone from Downey to Century City. Or maybe it does.

  I had to use a credit card to pay the ten dollars to redeem my Acura, which had been valet parked.

  “You were gone almost an hour, ma’am,” the valet said. The ma’am sounded mocking, probably because of my skirt, which was wet and streaked with grime and reeked of root beer. I was clearly not Century Plaza material. “It’s eight dollars for the first hour, two each additional. Twenty-three, max.”

  He didn’t offer to return my five dollars. I considered asking him for a single to tip the driver, who brought my Acura to a screeching halt inches from my toes and dismissed my apology with a shrug and a look that said he didn’t believe I had nothing to give him.

  On the way home I stopped at the Verizon store on La Cienega near Third, signed in, and waited over thirty minutes before someone sold me a replacement battery.

  “If you bring in the original, maybe we can exchange it, no cost,” my salesman said. “If it’s defective.”

  I told him I didn’t think so and thanked him for the offer. With the new battery inserted, my phone told me I had five messages. Two from Zack, wondering where I was. One from his mother, telling me how touched she was by the note I’d sent to thank her and her husband for the candlesticks.

  Edie had phoned. She and Mindy wanted to know if the flower girls were going to wear wreaths, and if Zack and I had decided on the processional order.

  The last call was from Connors.

  “Sorry about today, Molly. Call me if you want to talk.”

  It was after two by the time I parked in my driveway. My head still hurt like hell, and I don’t think I said more than ten words to my seventy-eight-year-old, thrice-widowed landlord, Isaac, who stepped onto the porch when he heard me arrive. He’s a sweetie who wears his pants practically like a bib and is always full of neighborhood gossip that he loves to share with me.

  “Terrible headache,” I said when I saw his hurt look. “Talk to you later.” I hurried past the porch glider to my door before he could stop me.

  Inside my apartment I stripped out of my clothes, which I left in a heap on my bedroom floor, and filled the tub. I added jasmine bath salts, sat on the edge, and phoned Zack.

  “How was the funeral?” he asked.

  So much had happened that I hadn’t had time to assess my feelings. I told him about Creeley’s eulogy. “You could tell he really loved Randy, no matter what Randy had done.”

  “I can’t imagine anything worse than burying a child,” Zack said. “I’ve counseled parents who have lost children, and I always feel so inadequate. Are you glad you went?”

  “I suppose. Although now I can’t help thinking of Rand
y as someone’s son, not just Aggie’s killer. I’m finding it hard to hate him.”

  “That’s not a bad thing, is it? Maybe it’ll help you get closure. What about Rachel’s Tent? Did you learn anything?”

  “I didn’t go.”

  “Probably just as well. So where have you been?”

  “Here and there. No place special.” Maybe I would tell him later. Right now I didn’t want to think about what had happened. “Your mom phoned to thank me for the thank-you note. She’s so sweet.”

  “She loved your note. She loves you. She wants to take you to lunch before the wedding, but I told her you’re swamped.”

  “Is she upset?” I liked my future in-laws, and the last thing I wanted to do was upset them.

  “Not at all. She understands.”

  “That I’m preoccupied with Aggie, you mean.” I wondered what Zack had told them.

  “That you’re planning our wedding and writing a crime sheet column and have a lot on your plate. Are you all right, Molly? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “I’m a little blue, and my head is killing me.”

  “Want me to come over?”

  “I’m about to take a bath.”

  “I guess that’s a ‘no.’ ”

  Despite my mood, I couldn’t help smiling. “Baths always relax me. I’ll call you later.”

  Minutes later I lay in the tub. With my eyes shut, I inhaled the jasmine fragrance and trailed my fingers through hot water that reached my chin and lapped gently against the island of my body. I felt some of the tension seep out, but my aching head was a constant reminder of what had happened earlier.

  When I had toweled myself off and put on jeans and a sweater, I sat on my bed and took out the slip of paper with Doreen’s phone number. She was probably on the road now, on the way to somewhere in the San Diego area. In the safety of my home, the promise I’d made two hours ago, that I wouldn’t try to find her, seemed unnecessary.

  Not that it mattered. I had only her cell number. If I had her home number, and if she wasn’t home, and if she had an answering machine, the message might reveal her last name. A lot of ifs, and I wasn’t sure what I would do with the information.

  I was way behind with my Crime Sheet column, which I had to e-mail to my editor tomorrow morning. I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening fine-tuning the data I entered and was only half done when Zack phoned after his meeting and offered to come over. He was disappointed when I told him I had work to do. I was, too. But unlike Ron, who never respected my work, Zack understands about deadlines.

  At a quarter to twelve I was done. I went into the kitchen, where I celebrated by finishing half a pint of Baskin-Robbins Jamoca Almond Fudge. As I turned off my cell phone before plugging it into the charger, I wondered whether Doreen had turned off hers. If she had, I’d hear her voice message, and maybe her last name.

  My home phone has call blocking, so if Doreen’s phone was on, she wouldn’t know I was calling. If she took the call, I could hang up. Still, I wasn’t sure whether she could learn that I’d called, and the memory of the gun at my head and the fact that she knew where I lived recommended caution.

  I was about to leave when I realized I was in my jeans. At that time of the night, I was unlikely to meet anyone I knew, but I’d made a commitment to Zack. Slipping on a skirt over the jeans, I grabbed a handful of quarters, dimes, and nickels and drove the few blocks to the Beverly Connection, where I found a phone booth. I dialed the number and inserted the necessary coins.

  “You’ve reached Brian,” a pleasant male voice informed me. “Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

  I cursed the Russian driver. He’d given me a wrong number—intentionally or accidentally, the result was the same. Or maybe I’d transposed the digits. I didn’t have enough coins to sit there and play a Rubik’s Cube of phone numbers. I was out fifty dollars and change and had no way of finding Doreen. A part of me, the part that throbbed at the back of my head, said maybe that was a good thing.

  I wondered how Doreen knew about the locket and the red thread. Had Randy showed it to her? Told her it was Aggie’s? But how would he explain having a locket that had belonged to a murdered woman?

  And how had Doreen recognized Aggie in the photo? I hadn’t seen a photo of Aggie when I was in Randy’s apartment, but Gloria Lamont had been in a hurry for me to finish, and I hadn’t checked every inch of the place.

  I hadn’t found any red thread, either. According to Mike, the yard salesman, Randy had ordered a large quantity of the threads online, had offered to e-mail Mike the link to the website. He could have used them all up, given them to Trina and to his friends.

  Or maybe he’d stashed them somewhere. I replayed my visit to the apartment, mentally walked through the rooms. There was Randy’s desk in the living room. I hadn’t seen any red threads in the desk drawers, or in his bedroom closet, or in the bathroom or kitchen.

  Something was nagging at me. . . .

  I canvassed the place again: living room, dining area, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. My mind kept taking me back to the desk in the living room.

  I was halfway home when I realized why: Randy had ordered red threads online. His multipurpose fax machine no doubt served as a printer, but I hadn’t seen a computer anywhere in his apartment.

  “Sure, he had a computer,” Gloria said when I phoned her early Friday morning. “One of them laptops. ‘Pick it up,’ he tol’ me. ‘See how light it is.’ It weighed less than a gallon of milk, but I guess it cost a lot more.” The manager chuckled.

  “When was the last time you saw Randy’s computer, Mrs. Lamont?”

  “When?” She thought for a moment. “I know he had it the day before he died. Jerome was over at Randy’s playin’ games on it. Randy was nice like that. He showed Jerome how to use it, and not just games. Kids today, they know more’n their folks do ’bout computers. I wouldn’t know how to turn the damn thing on.”

  I told her I hadn’t noticed the laptop when she showed me the apartment, and asked her if she remembered seeing it the night she found Randy dead.

  It took her some time to answer. “Well, now that you mention it, I don’t think I did see it, no. But I was all shook up, you know? But you’re right. It wasn’t there when I showed you the place, huh.” A grunt, not a question. “Could be Randy gave it in to be fixed.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  nineteen

  Friday, February 20. 10:04 A.M. 3800 block of Huron Avenue. A woman told officers her husband was in the garage smoking narcotics with a woman she didn’t know. In the garage the officers found the two practically sitting in cocaine residue. The other woman said they had been smoking cocaine “in his religious office.” The man said he had converted his garage into an office and shrine devoted to “black magic.” The two were arrested for possession of cocaine. Both suspects had yellow teeth. (Culver City)

  THE EXTERIOR OF RACHEL’S TENT, A TWO-STORY STUCCO building on Palms south of Pico, was a darker shade of sand than I remembered. I found a spot in front but sat in my car. Almost seven years had passed since I’d been here, long enough to weaken the threads of memory, but I was reluctant to enter the building where Aggie had spent so much time.

  I’d been inside Rachel’s Tent only once, a month after Aggie had organized her desk and hung her diplomas on the terra-cotta walls of her first-floor office. Five months shy of twenty-three, she had been the youngest social worker at the facility. I’m sure the hiring committee saw in her what we all did: wisdom beyond her years, determination, compassion, a yearning to help others. In high school, while I split my time between my studies and my social life and fared reasonably well in both, Aggie aced enough AP courses to eliminate a semester at an all-women New York college, where she received credit for her year of Judaic studies at a Jerusalem seminary not far from the one I’d attended. She eliminated another year and a half by enrolling in the accelerated track of a piggyback program with a social work school.


  By the time she was twenty-two and a half, she had a BSW, an MSW, and a job she had coveted. I had graduated from UCLA and was figuring out what to do with my BA in English and with my life, which hadn’t followed the path my parents had anticipated. I envied her single-mindedness, the passion she invested in the many twelve-hour days her work demanded of her, her absolute faith in God and His laws that gave her a clear blueprint and, for the most part, an acceptance of whatever life brought her way.

  She wasn’t a saint. She had a wicked sense of humor and a temper for which she was constantly doing penance. “I need Yom Kippur every day,” she would tell me. She was intolerant of those less focused or efficient. She was enraged by injustice, dishonesty, and hypocrisy and quick to express her feelings. She worried about her weight and cried when the man she’d hoped to marry ended their relationship. But while I pined over Zack for more than a year, and other failed romances for months, Aggie was ready to move on after a few days.

  “It wasn’t bashert,” she told me. “God obviously has other plans for me.”

  For a long time I wondered whether God’s plans for Aggie had included having her murdered while she walked to the meeting hall.

  Not God’s plan, my father said. Man’s plan. For God, time is a continuum with no past, no present, no future. He sees the video of your life, the beginning and the end. That’s what predestination means, Molly. But God doesn’t dictate people’s actions. People have free will to choose between right and wrong, between compassion and cruelty, between good and evil. God knows what they will choose because He has seen the video.

  The lobby of Rachel’s Tent was large, with a domed ceiling painted an azure blue and the finish on the walls a textured pale yellow stucco. To my right was a reception area. I took a brochure from the stack, introduced myself to the youngish blond woman behind the teak desk, and told her I was writing a story about the agency.

  “Monica Prince is our public relations person,” she said. “Or you may want to speak to the director.”

  I opted for the director. While the receptionist checked to see if he was available, I crossed the entry and gazed at a mural of Rachel’s Tomb—the way I’d seen it, before it had been enclosed by guard towers. In the foreground was the domed stone edifice. Behind the building, palm trees shot up from sandy mounds, their fronds scraping the robin’s egg–blue sky. Off in the distance two camels trudged along under heavy loads.