Grave Endings

by Rochelle Krich

  I nodded. It was Trina’s story. I wasn’t about to rush her.

  “He dropped off my ticket and said something came up,” she said. “If he could make it, he’d meet me there. He didn’t show. He called later that night and said he was sorry, he couldn’t get away. And after the police talked to him, he asked me to tell them he was with me. He was afraid they wouldn’t believe him otherwise, because of his record. But he didn’t kill her. My brother wasn’t a killer. Just because he had her locket doesn’t mean he did it.”

  “How do you think he got it, then?” I asked.

  “I think he stole it,” Trina admitted, her face flushed. “To get even with her, you know? I saw it in his room. There was writing on the back in some language. I guessed it was Hebrew. I figured it was hers. When I asked him about it, he said she gave it to him.”

  “What about your locket?”

  “Randy bought it for me a couple of months ago.” She pulled the locket out of the pajama top and opened it. “He said this red thread is supposed to protect me. He made me promise I’d wear it all the time.”

  I asked her about the red threads Randy had ordered for Rachel’s Tent.

  “I don’t know about that. Randy didn’t like to talk about his work.” She slipped the locket back under the pajama top. “I don’t want to talk about Aggie anymore. I can tell you don’t believe me. I don’t know why it matters so much to you, anyway.”

  I felt I owed her the truth. “Aggie was my best friend. I’m trying to understand why she didn’t tell me about your brother.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.” It was hard to miss the accusation in her voice, the sudden edginess. She looked as if she wanted to bolt from the room.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d talk to me if I did. Or tell me the truth. Did you read Randy’s journal?”

  Trina blushed. “I thought maybe something in it would help me figure out who killed him. But he didn’t write all that much. Mostly about the family. My dad, my mom, me, Alice. There were a couple of pages about her.” She snickered. “He wrote about Doreen, too, and I can see why he didn’t want her reading that part.”

  She gave us her first smile of the evening, but it disappeared quickly, a sliver of sunlight poking through clouds on a gloomy day.

  “Did he write anything about Aggie?” I asked, ignoring Zack, who was shaking his head. Let it go, Molly.

  “A little. He wrote how he loved her, how hurt he was when she told him it wouldn’t work because he wasn’t Jewish and she was real religious. He wrote about her parents, too. He blamed them for making Aggie break up with him.”

  That startled me. “Aggie’s parents knew about Randy?”

  “That was one of the letters he wrote. There were other letters, mostly to people I don’t know. He wrote a list at the back of the journal. He put a check next to some names, I think the ones he already mailed letters to.”

  She was obviously referring to the letter Connors had mentioned, the one he’d found with the locket. He’d made me promise not to mention it or the locket to anyone, but Trina knew about the letter. I asked her about it.

  She narrowed her eyes. “That must be a second letter. He mailed one to her parents, saying he was sorry about what happened to Aggie, because he’d never told them. He wrote that he knew they were good people, that they’d raised their daughter the way they thought was best.”

  This letter didn’t sound like the one Connors had found. “Maybe Randy rewrote the letter.”

  “He showed it to me before he mailed it. It was the same day he mailed a letter to our mom.”

  It took me a second to react. I exchanged a look with Zack. “He knew that your mother was alive?”

  “He’s known since he got out of prison. Alice let it slip. I was in my room and heard her ranting. ‘You think your mother’s so grand, why did she leave you and your daddy and sister? I’ll tell you why. Because she was sick of you. She had the right idea. She’s living it up somewhere, thrilled to death people don’t know her son is a drug addict, an ex-con.’ She went on and on.”

  I pictured Alice Creeley. I pictured the words coming out of her pinched mouth, a ribbon of hate and resentment, saw the ribbon twist itself around Randy’s neck.

  “She tried taking it back,” Trina said. “She said she meant if my mom was alive. Randy didn’t believe her. He made me promise not to say anything to my dad, and I don’t think he ever told him. It wasn’t a big deal to me. I hardly knew my mom. But Randy never got over her. I think things would have turned out way different if she’d stayed.”

  I had more questions, but Trina was talked out. She took one of her sleeping pills and went back to bed. Zack helped me with the dishes. I didn’t bring up Trina or Aggie, and neither did he.

  “If you’re at all scared,” he told me when he was leaving. “If you hear a noise, or anything worries you, call 911. Then phone me, no matter what time. Promise?”

  I promised. I dead-bolted the door and watched through the front window as he walked to his car. He turned and waved at me. I waved back.

  I checked on Trina. She was sound asleep, curled into a fetal position. I shut the door to the room and prepared for bed. I thought about Randy, what he had felt when he’d learned that his mother was alive but hadn’t cared to see him all these years.

  Maybe that had changed him, given birth to anger, turned him into a man who would hold a knife and use it. Trina insisted that her brother wasn’t a killer, but Roland Creeley had talked about his son’s despair. Something from his past that he couldn’t fix, Roland had said. And in the letter Connors found, Randy had asked forgiveness from the Lashers and said he wished he could undo what he’d done. And Randy had told Mike he’d killed a woman.

  I couldn’t fault Trina. She was trying to hold on to an image of her brother, just as I had been trying to hold on to an image of my best friend.

  Sometime before I fell asleep I realized I’d forgotten to ask Trina about the package.

  twenty-four

  Sunday, February 22. 9:02 A.M. 1200 block of Horn. During the afternoon, persons unknown burglarized an apartment and stole a laptop computer, cash, jewelry, a video camera, and miscellaneous items. The preliminary estimate of the loss was $20,500. (West Hollywood)

  TRINA CAME INTO THE LIVING ROOM WHEN I WAS RECITING the Amidah, a unit of eighteen blessings toward the end of the weekday morning prayers. You’re not supposed to talk during the Amidah, or interrupt the prayers in any way, but I acknowledged her with a nod before genuflecting.

  “Sorry,” she said, with an awkward smile.

  She backed out of the room. I resumed my prayers, a moment later beseeching God to bring a speedy recovery to a number of people, including Bubbie G, whose Hebrew names I keep on a slip of paper at the front of my siddur. I tried hard to focus, but Trina’s voice carried from the kitchen, and I heard her say, “Hi, Dad,” and then, with impatience, “No, I’m not home. I’m okay, I’ll call you.”

  “Do you pray every day?” she asked me later over breakfast.

  Two pieces of French toast for her, one for me. You wouldn’t know from the way she fit in her tight jeans that she had such a hearty appetite.

  “I try to,” I told her. “Sometimes I skip. Sometimes I rush through the prayers, which isn’t the idea. Zack is much better.”

  Trina poured syrup over her toast in a lattice pattern that quickly lost its shape. “He’s a rabbi, right? I figured he was, ’cause he was wearing a skullcap.”

  I nodded. “But not all men who wear skullcaps are rabbis.”

  “Randy went to church a lot the last year. He wanted me to go with him, but I never did.” She ate a few bites of toast. “So you guys probably aren’t allowed to have sex until you’re married, huh? How do you know you’ll be good together?”

  It was an unusual conversation to be having with a woman I barely knew. “I’m not worried. We have a lot of chemistry.” Zack and I had never slept together, but we’d had some steamy moments in high school that
make my face hot when I let myself think about them, as I did now.

  “Aggie wouldn’t have sex with Randy,” Trina said. “He wrote that in the journal. He was okay with it, though.” She gazed at me. “Do you not want to hear this?”

  “I’m not sure.” I sensed she was testing me. I did feel strange and uncomfortable hearing her talk about an Aggie I hadn’t known. A little jealous, too, if I’m totally honest.

  “Some people have sex when they’re dating but stop a week or a few days before the wedding,” Trina said. “I kind of like that. I used to talk to Randy about stuff like that. I couldn’t talk to my dad, or Alice. You met her, so you know.” Trina grimaced, as if she’d caught a whiff of a noxious odor. “It would’ve been nice having a real mom. Do you get along with yours?”

  “Pretty much.” I have a remarkable relationship with my mother and father and siblings, but felt the need to downplay my embarrassment of riches. The ayin harah, I thought. “Did you try to get in touch with your mom?”

  “I thought about it a couple of times but decided not to. What if she didn’t want to see me? And that’s cool. I don’t have much to say to her anyway.” She twirled a chunk of toast in the syrup that had pooled at the side of the plate.

  She was trying to sound tough. I could hear the hurt in her voice and I wanted to give her a hug, but sensed she wouldn’t appreciate it.

  “How did Randy find out where she lives?” I asked.

  “He wouldn’t say. I don’t think he planned to tell me he found her, but I guess he had to tell someone.”

  “When was this?”

  Trina thought for a moment. “A couple of months before Aggie died? He was real tense. I thought it was because Aggie dumped him. I told him, ‘When are you going to get over her?’ That’s when he said he found her. Our mom, I mean.”

  “Did he tell you where she lives?”

  “No. But he said it’s half an hour’s drive from his apartment.”

  That was a surprise. “Your mother lives in Southern California?”

  “Can you believe it? Alice would croak if she knew.” A look of spiteful amusement hardened Trina’s face.

  “Do you know what was in the letter he wrote her?”

  “No. But he was saying he was sorry about something. That’s what all the letters were about.”

  I wondered what Randy had done that would require making amends when it was the mother who should be asking forgiveness. “You said Randy wrote a list of names at the end of the journal. Do you remember any of them?”

  “Like I said, aside from our family and Aggie and Doreen, it wasn’t people I knew. But I have—”

  Her cell phone rang. She flipped it open, cutting short a jaunty tune, and listened. The color left her face.

  “I told you, I don’t have any package,” Trina said.

  Jim. My stomach muscles curled.

  “You can threaten me all you want,” Trina said with amazing cool. “I don’t have it. If you call me again, I will phone the police!” She shut the phone and slammed it onto the table. Her hand was trembling.

  “That was Jim?”

  She nodded. “My home phone service forwards calls to my cell. So does Randy’s.” She ran both hands through her hair. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, about calling the police.” She looked at me for reassurance.

  “You should call them, Trina. Talk to Detective Connors again. I know he’ll help you. I’ll talk to him, too, if you want.”

  She shook her head. “I have to tell my landlord about the door. They have to fix it, right?”

  “Yes, but they’ll want to file a police report. And if they decide to report it to the insurance company, the insurance company will want a police report, too.”

  “So I’ll fix it myself.”

  “Trina—”

  “Let me think about it, okay? I need to figure some things out.”

  I couldn’t imagine what she meant by “things,” but the warning in her voice told me to back off. “Trina, do you have any idea what the package could be?”

  “None. Randy was into a lot of stuff he didn’t tell me about.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. She sounded unhappy.

  “Aside from his laptop and journal, he didn’t leave anything with you?”

  “I have his cell phone. The cops were busy in the bedroom, looking at . . .” She bit her lip. Her eyes filled with tears. “I saw it on the coffee table, under a stack of newspapers. I put it in my purse. I’m not sure why, and then I was afraid to tell them.”

  “Do you have it with you?”

  “You want to see if Jim phoned Randy, right?” She nodded. “I don’t have caller ID at home, but now that he called me, maybe the same number will show up.”

  She left the room and returned with a phone similar to hers. Flipping open her own phone, she accessed a screen that showed the numbers for the ten most recent incoming calls. Jim’s would be the top one. I glanced over her shoulder as she punched buttons on Randy’s phone. There was no match on the screen of incoming calls, or on the screen showing outgoing calls. Three of the calls were listed by name, not number: TRINA, DAD, and MAX.

  “Max was Randy’s NA sponsor,” Trina said.

  On her own phone, she selected Jim’s number and pressed SEND. Ten or fifteen seconds later she shut her phone. “No one answers, and there’s no answering machine.”

  “He probably used a pay phone. That’s what I would have done.” That’s what I had done when I’d tried phoning Doreen.

  I took another look at Randy’s outgoing calls. The eighth one, at the bottom of the screen, had a 619 prefix.

  “Don’t shut that off,” I told Trina.

  I fished in my purse for the slip of paper with the numbers the Russian limo driver had dictated. I found it and compared the numbers to the 619 call on Randy’s phone.

  No match.

  “Whose number is that?” Trina asked, pointing to the one on my paper.

  “I’m not sure. Did you try any of these numbers?”

  “I was going to, but then I got nervous that if one of them was Jim’s, he’d know it was me. Dumb, huh?”

  “I don’t blame you for being careful. Okay if I check?” She nodded. I picked up Randy’s phone, selected the 619 call, and learned that he’d placed the call on Wednesday at 9:29 A.M. I was about to press SEND but stopped.

  “If I use Randy’s phone, I’ll be eliminating the earliest call he made.”

  “Use mine,” she said and handed me her phone.

  I placed the call. After three rings a man answered. He sounded like the person who had identified himself as Brian.

  “Is this Brian?” I held the phone between Trina and me so that she could hear, too.

  “That’s me. Who’s calling?”

  So the Russian had given me the correct number. “A friend of Doreen’s. Can I talk to her, please?”

  “There’s no Doreen here. Sorry.”

  “This is the number she gave me.”

  “Well, she gave you a wrong number. I guess you have the wrong Brian, too.”

  “Is this the Morgan residence?” I asked, hoping he’d supply his last name.

  “Not even close.” He hung up.

  Either my redhead wasn’t Doreen, or she’d given Randy a false name. But why? And if she wasn’t Doreen, who was she?

  Trina hadn’t recognized his voice. “Who was that?” she asked.

  I gave her a brief, edited explanation.

  “She probably lied to Randy from the start,” Trina said, anger and fear darkening her blue eyes. “She’s probably with Jim.”

  I didn’t see the logic to that. The woman’s terror had been convincing. She was the pursued, not a pursuer. If she was telling the truth, I reminded myself.

  With Trina watching and a pen and paper in front of me, I checked the other outgoing calls and wrote down the information. The most recent, number ten, listed at the top of the screen, had been to a pizza shop. I recal
led the congealed leftover lasagna I’d seen in Randy’s kitchen. Randy had placed the call at 6:42 the Wednesday night he’d died. The ninth call, to TRINA, had been an hour earlier.

  “He sounded fine when I talked to him,” she said. “I told that to the police, too.”

  The eighth and sixth calls were the same, with a 310 prefix and digits that looked familiar. Both had been placed after noon that Wednesday. I dialed the number.

  “Rachel’s Tent,” a woman said. “How can I help you?”

  “Sorry, wrong number.” I hung up. Bramer hadn’t mentioned that Randy had phoned him shortly before he’d died. Then again, I hadn’t asked.

  The seventh call had been to DAD. The fifth, sent at 10:08 on Wednesday morning, had been to MAX, Randy’s sponsor. The fourth call, sent at 9:43 A.M. Wednesday, had been to a number with a 626 prefix. That was in Pasadena, I knew. I tried the number. There was no answer, no voice message.

  The third call was to Brian.

  I scrolled down to view the first two phone numbers Randy had called. I sucked in my breath and stared at the bottom number. Trina was watching me.

  The second number had a 213 prefix. Randy had placed the call Wednesday morning at 9:01. I dialed the number and listened to seven rings before I ended the call.

  “Nobody named Jim.” I put her phone on the table. “I didn’t think there would be. And nothing from Doreen.”

  “What about the incoming calls? Shouldn’t we check those, too?”

  My head was throbbing again. “Right.”

  I accessed the screen for received calls. The most recent call was from the 619 area, at 12:38 Thursday morning. After Randy was dead, I realized. The thought was macabre.

  I tried the number. No answer, no voice message. I scanned the numbers and saw that he’d received another call from the same number at 9:17 Wednesday morning.

  Several calls matched the outgoing calls—one from Rachel’s Tent, one from the 626 number I hadn’t identified.

  And two calls from DOREEN. I felt a flicker of excitement as I selected her name and pressed SEND.

  “Leave your number, I’ll call you back.”